The Second Draft: Revising Your Novel with Debra Blake

Congratulations on writing a first draft of your novel! This class provides helpful approaches to evaluate and revise your manuscript with a focus on plot and character development. We’ll consider how to deepen the characte arc by analyzing the protagonist’s needs, desires, wounds, and the internal and external conflicts that deter or promote growth and change. We’ll look at examples of how to revise the plot to create sufficient tension and causality leading to the crisis the character faces. Exercises will address revision on the level of scenes, chapters, and the book as a whole. Participants will work on specific revision exercises related to their novels and share with other class members. Bring a scene or chapter to work on.

Class meets in-person, Tuesday, January 21, 10:30 am – noon

Class size: Minimum 5. Maximum 12.

Member discount: Members of Write On receive a 10% discount on all classes and workshops. To become a member, please click here. To receive the discount, members must log in to the website using their unique password and enter member10 in the promotion code box. The code is case sensitive.

Teaching Artist: Debra Blake is a fiction writer and creative writing teacher from the Twin Cities area. Since 2019, she has taught a week-long, novel-writing course for teens at the Loft Literary Center. She also teaches fiction writing courses for adults at area libraries. For many years, she taught literature and writing courses at the University of Minnesota. She has written an historical novel about two Iowa sisters whose lives are uprooted when their family loses their farm during the Great Depression and Iowa drought. The novel is inspired by her aunts who were raised in rural Iowa, where she also grew up. In her spare time, Debra likes to read, hike, visit art galleries, and travel.