Start date: 16 September 2024
You can still write your novel with Amanda Saint through the following courses:
The Mindful Novel Course - starts October 2024
A Year of Mindful Writing - starts January 2025
The Mini Novel Course - starts January 2025
Designed and delivered by authors and teachers, Amanda Saint and C.M. Taylor, with additional mentoring support from Isabel Costello, this course is for writers of all genres in adult and young adult fiction who want to understand the fundamentals of storytelling and learn how to write tighter, more compelling drafts with memorable characters.
We designed this course specifically to take you from wherever your writing is at right now to a completed, professionally reviewed draft. It’s the course we wish we’d had when we first started writing.
The course starts in September with breaks for Christmas, Easter and the Summer holidays. There’s a dedicated writing week between each module where you can focus on getting words on the page.
Access tutorials at the time that suits you best and write when it works for you.
Monthly deadlines for submitting work to your personal mentor help those who might struggle with accountability or motivation.
These are the published novels written on the course between 2019 and 2022.
London in Black by Jack Lutz was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Debut Award, which is one of the most prestigious literary crime prizes. Congratulations John!
Get info on what's covered in each of the 8 modules in the course curriculum .
Amanda Saint
Amanda is the author of two novels, As If I Were A River (2016), and Remember Tomorrow (2019), and a novella-in-flash, Pressure Drop (2024). Amanda’s short stories have been widely published, listed and placed in many international prizes, and nominated for Best Small Fiction 2023. She has almost finished a flash fiction collection, and is now working on her third novel. She also writes The Mindful Writer and The Tao of Storytelling.
From 2018-23, Amanda published 24 books through the award-winning Retreat West Books (Winner: Most Innovative Publisher 2020 Saboteur Awards), a mix of novels, memoirs and short fiction anthologies and collections. She has been designing and teaching online courses, and live workshops, for many years and has worked as an editor on hundreds of manuscripts. She is passionate about helping writers get to the heart of their characters to create memorable narrators that really come alive for the reader. She is also the founder and publisher of the online lit mag, WestWord, which she launched in 2022.
C.M. Taylor
Craig’s novels Premiership Psycho (Corsair, 2011) and Group of Death (Corsair, 2012) form two-thirds of a satirical trilogy described as ‘Brilliant’ by The Sun, and ‘Horribly entertaining’ by The Mirror. They’ve been optioned for TV by Plan B, with Craig writing the pilot. He’s been nominated for the British Science Fiction book of the year, while his comedy drama Staying On (Duckworth, 2018) has been described as ‘a trademark sweet-and-sour Mike Leigh film in novel form’. He co-wrote the thriller film Writers Retreat which was premiered at the Sitges International Film Festival and he continues to be commissioned to write scripts for TV and film.
Craig works as a freelance editor of fiction for a variety of publishers, and is a Senior Lecturer at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing. He has taught hundreds of creative writers, in one to one development settings, as well as in classes and workshops, including at the Manchester Children’s Book Festival and at the British Library. His particular enthusiasm and passion is for helping writers develop their understanding of the underlying structures of narrative art.
Isabel Costello
Isabel is the author of novels Paris Mon Amour, a WH Smith Travel Book of Summer 2017, and Scent (Muswell Press, 2021), which was longlisted for the Polari Prize. Her writing experience to date includes digital only, self-publishing and traditional publishing, and she is a passionate supporter of independent presses and bookshops. Her short fiction has been widely published and includes the title story in Retreat West charity anthology The Word for Freedom. Isabel’s home territory as writer and reader is the place where literary and commercial (and especially women’s) fiction overlap.
Isabel is an experienced creative writing mentor, workshop leader and book doctor, and having run the Literary Sofa blog for over ten years she has a wide and up-to-date overview of the publishing market. She is also a co-founder of the Resilience for Writers project with psychologist Voula Tsoflias and has a special interest in helping writers to stay motivated and reach their personal goals. Isabel has worked with Mslexia, Jericho Writers, The Place to Write, Word Factory and many individual writers.
Mentored Spaces are by application only.
The course also includes a year’s membership to our friendly and lively online community. This gives you access to all of our community only articles, monthly masterclasses and workshops, live Zoom feedback sessions, and Zoom writing sessions. There’s also loads of writers hanging out there chatting about all things reading and writing!
COURSE FEES
FULLY MENTORED VERSION (9 SPACES AVAILABLE IN TOTAL - 3 REMAINING)
Includes 24/7 access to the online course materials; eight 1-1 Zoom or phone mentoring sessions; eight live Zoom Q&A sessions; feedback on your novel plot outline and on 21,000 words as you write the novel; a detailed editorial report on the completed draft; feedback Zoom session with literary agents and publishers; dedicated course forum; and membership to our friendly, motivational and supportive online community.
Pay in Full- £2200
Pay in Installments - £200 a month for 12 months
NON-MENTORED VERSION (6 SPACES AVAILABLE IN TOTAL - 5 REMAINING)
Includes 24/7 access to the online course materials; eight live Zoom Q&A sessions; dedicated course forum; and membership to our friendly, motivational and supportive online community.
Pay in Full- £1000
Pay in Instalments - £110 a month for 10 months
“I thoroughly recommend the Novel Creator course, it’s brilliant! The course really opened up the world of novel writing to me. I had an idea, but where to start? The step-by-step nature of the course broke down what seemed like a massive task into manageable chunks. Having a mentor, guiding me, gave me the confidence and conviction to keep writing.”
“My approach to writing an entire book is more time efficient. The prose itself is more contemporary and the voice more direct. When Amanda told me what was working in my novel and what I needed to change, she was right every time. Her editing transformed my work into the best writing I have ever done. Can you ask for anything more?”
I feel lucky to have taken this course. The tutorials and exercises were excellent; the mentoring truly outstanding. If you are serious about the craft of writing novels, I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
“For years writing a novel was a pipe-dream for me. Then I joined this course and 9 months later I had a manuscript and was talking to agents. If you’ve had a book idea in your head and not known how to progress it do the course.”