Writers' CLC · Summer 2026
First Draft Novel Writing
One Page at a Time
A six-week course for the writer with a novel inside of them. Structure, character, and the freedom to experiment and play in your draft. Led by Evea Raye.
A Novel, One Page at a Time
This course is inspired by Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It is about writing as a way of being, not as a sprint to a perfect first draft. The idea is to break the novel down into something approachable, give yourself the freedom to experiment and play on the page, and stop treating the draft as a thing you have to get right the first time.
Over six weeks, you will move through the architecture of story: structure, the inciting incident, rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the craft elements that elevate a draft into something that resonates. Each week pairs a focused lesson with in-session writing and a peer workshop, so you are not just learning about your novel, you are writing it in the room.
The community matters here as much as the craft. Previous cohorts have requested follow-up sessions to keep working together, and that is by design. You are building a draft, and you are building the writers who will read it.
Course Details
What You Will Learn
Week 1
Structure and Foundation
The cohort meets and shares what each writer is working on. From there, Evea introduces the structural frameworks that shape a novel and works with you to find the one that fits your story. By the end of the session, you have a foundation to build the next five weeks on.
Week 2
The Inciting Incident
The moment your character is pulled out of their normal life and into the world of your story. What makes an inciting incident land, how it sets up everything that follows, and how to write it so the reader is invested by the time it happens.
Week 3
Rising Action
The obstacles your character faces and how each one advances the character arc. Building scenes where every obstacle does double duty: complicating the plot and revealing or changing who the character is. This is the work that earns the climax.
Week 4
The Climax
The big moment the entire story has been building toward, and how to deliver it with a bang. Character development at peak intensity, paying off the promises you made earlier in the draft, and writing a climax that feels both inevitable and earned.
Week 5
Falling Action and Denouement
Tying the loose threads together into a satisfying ending. The work of resolution: which threads to close, which to leave open, and how to give the reader a sense of completion that lingers after the last page.
Week 6
Craft Elements
The craft tools that elevate a draft. Show don't tell, sentence-level decisions, and the techniques that turn a serviceable scene into one that resonates. You leave with a working understanding of what to keep practicing after the course ends.
Lesson, Exercise, Workshop
Every session follows the same rhythm. You learn something, you write something, and you read your work to the room. Writers should be writing in a writing class, and that principle shapes every week.
Lesson and Discussion
A focused discussion on the week's topic, anchored in craft and example. The lesson sets the frame for the writing that follows.
Writing Exercise
In-session writing applying the week's concept to your novel. You leave every session with new pages, not just new ideas.
Peer Workshop
Exchange writing with the cohort. Real-time feedback from your peers and from Evea, the kind that has unlocked entire stories for previous writers.
Pages, a Plan, and a Cohort
You leave with new pages of your novel produced in session each week, a working understanding of the architecture your story needs, and a cohort of writers who know your project. Previous writers have gone from struggling to put down a single word to writing fifteen pages in a week, and from being stuck on whose story it is to unlocking the whole novel through a point-of-view shift. The momentum starts here, and it carries.
Evea Raye
Evea Raye is a fiction writer and course instructor at the Writers' CLC. She holds an MFA in fiction and a master's degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing.
Her own writing lives in speculative fiction. Fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, folk horror, and the occasional literary turn. That range matters in the room: she has spent years reading widely across forms, and she brings that fluency to whatever you are writing, whether it shares her genre or sits somewhere else entirely.
Evea also leads the Intermediate Novel Writing course at the Writers' CLC, which means she knows where this course leads and how to prepare you for the next stage of your draft.
Your Novel Starts Here.
Six weeks. A small cohort. One page at a time, the novel inside of you begins to take shape on the page.
Enroll Now – $365Questions? Contact us at info@writersclc.com or call (781) 663-2800