Writers' CLC · May 2026
First Draft Novel Writing
Foundations of story and structuring your novel. Story structure, character, strong openings, worldbuilding, pacing, and the craft of getting your first draft on the page.
Enroll NowBuild the Foundation of Your Novel
You have a story idea. Maybe you have a character, a world, or a scene that will not leave you alone. What you need now is a framework to turn that into a novel. This six-week course gives you the structural tools, the craft knowledge, and the weekly momentum to go from concept to a working first draft.
Each week focuses on a core element of novel craft: story structure, openings and character introduction, rising action, worldbuilding, stakes and pacing, and endings. The format combines focused lessons, discussion, in-class writing, and group feedback where you read your work aloud and hear how it lands.
This is a course where you write. You will produce pages every week, build a complete novel outline, and leave with 30 drafted pages and a clear plan for finishing your first draft.
Course Details
What You Will Learn
Week 1
Story Structure
An overview of the narrative frameworks that shape novels: three-act structure, Freytag's Pyramid, the Hero's Journey, and how to choose the right one for your story. You will begin building a rough outline or scene list and start thinking about your novel in terms of structure rather than just ideas.
Week 2
Openings and the Inciting Incident
How to introduce your characters through action and desire, not backstory. Types of openings, the role of exposition, establishing the "present normal," and the inciting incident that sets your story in motion. Internal versus external inciting incidents and what makes a reader keep turning pages.
Week 3
Rising Action and Consequences
What obstacles does your protagonist face, and how do their choices complicate things? Building scenes where decisions carry weight, consequences compound, and the story gains momentum. How to use cause and effect to drive your plot forward and keep your reader invested.
Week 4
Worldbuilding
How to open your reader's eyes to an unfamiliar world, whether historical, speculative, or simply a place they have never been. Establishing the rules of your world without stopping the story. Grounding the reader through sensory detail and internal logic, and knowing how much to reveal and when.
Week 5
Stakes and the Midpoint
What is at stake for your protagonist, and what is your story really about? Deepening character conflict and goals at the midpoint. Developing your pitch statement: the one- or two-sentence version of your novel that clarifies your story for yourself and for anyone who asks what you are writing.
Week 6
Endings and Falling Action
How to write endings that resonate. Resolution, aftermath, and the "new normal." Writing the final scene or resolution of your novel. A peer workshop session on your pages and a wrap-up discussion on planning the next phase of your draft beyond the course.
A Complete Outline and 30 Drafted Pages
By the final session, you will have a full novel outline, 30 original drafted pages, a working pitch statement for your novel, and a clear plan for completing your first draft. You will understand the structural framework of story, know how to build scenes that carry weight, and have the momentum and tools to keep writing after the course ends.
Evea Raye
Evea Raye is a fiction writer and MFA-trained writing instructor based near Boston. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of New Hampshire and a graduate degree in English from Salem State University, where she concentrated in creative writing.
Her teaching experience spans university-level instruction at UNH, writing center work at both Salem State and UNH, and editorial leadership as Managing Editor of Soundings East, a nationally distributed literary magazine. She specializes in fiction with a focus on structure, voice, and the craft of building novels.
She is also the course lead for Intermediate Novel Writing at the Writers' CLC, which means she understands where this course leads and how to prepare you for the next level of novel craft.
Your Novel Starts Here.
Six weeks. Limited seats. One course designed to take you from a story idea to a working first draft with structure, pages, and a plan to finish.
Enroll Now – $325Questions? Contact us at info@writersclc.com or call (781) 663-2800