A Fiction Writing Course That Gets Your Story onto the Page
Who This Novel Writing Class Is For
This novel writing class is for writers with a story they cannot stop thinking about and no clear idea yet how to tell it. It is for the novelist who keeps starting over on chapter one. It is for the writer who wants a short story writing course that pushes deeper than they have gone before. And it is for anyone who has ever quietly wondered whether they have what it takes to write fiction worth reading. The honest answer is usually yes. The structure or the teacher you needed to find out was missing.
You do not need a finished outline or a degree in literature. You need characters who will not leave you alone and the willingness to chase them onto the page. If you have always meant to learn to write fiction, this is the place to begin. You will leave with more than pages. You will leave closer to finishing the book you came in with, and surer that you are, in fact, a writer.
What You Will Learn in This Fiction Writing Course
This fiction writing course will show you how to master the art of controlled invention. Anyone can dream up a character or a scene. The craft is in making them work, in getting a reader to believe a person who never lived and to care what happens to them. Through the Imaginative Storm method, you will build the core skills of fiction writing piece by piece. You will learn to write characters who seem real, scenes filled with tension, dialogue with impact, and a voice that is uniquely yours.
You will learn how a story builds momentum and how to keep it from sagging in the middle, the place where so many drafts quietly die. Whether you are working toward a novel or a single short story, you will leave with new work, sharper instincts, and a clearer sense of the writer you are. You will also learn the thing most courses skip, which is what to do once the first draft exists. A draft is not a story yet. Revision is where invention becomes craft, and you will practice it on your own pages, not on someone else’s examples.And the craft scales: the same skills that shape a single scene will carry a whole novel, a memoir, or a family history.
Fiction Writing Course Curriculum
We built the curriculum around the working parts of a story: character, voice, scene, structure, and the long arc that holds them together. Each week adds a tool and gives you the chance to use it on your own pages, so the craft is never abstract. Here is what you can look forward to:
You can expect 10 sessions, each about 90 minutes long. Each session includes a short intro, a warmup prompt, two 10-minute prompts with a shorter list-making prompt between them. (We do the timing for you.) Each session ends with a Surf the Storm prompt to do in your own time.
The course also includes access to the Prompt Archive, so you can hear what other course participants wrote to the prompts you’re working with. (We recommend you listen to these after you write your response to the prompt yourself.)
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Learn the principles of the Imaginative Storm method which includes: writing by hand, using a timer, writing what you don’t know.
What you’ll learn:
The benefits of not trying to write well, and why unleashing your imagination is the secret to powerful, original writing.
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Unlock the creative power that’s been waiting inside you
In this first session, you’ll discover the freedom of writing without second-guessing yourself. You’ll learn simple techniques to tap into your inherent creativity and write like you’ve never written before. This session opens the door to creative breakthroughs that will amaze you.
What you’ll learn:
● How to tap into your imagination and write with spontaneity, originality, and creative flow
● How to find your true writing voice and express your experiences, insights, and emotions with authenticity
● How to revive stories you’ve told before by uncovering fresh angles, deeper truths, and untold layers
How to write more powerfully and freely by letting go of perfection and embracing curiosity
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Unleash your raw, uncensored voice
In this high-energy session, you’ll write without rules or judgment. When you silence your inner critic, you’ll find it easier to develop characters, write realistic dialogue, and engage your readers. Your creative writing feels more alive.
What you’ll learn:
● How to transform your writing and produce material you didn’t know was inside you
● How to tell vivid, visceral stories that evoke emotion in the reader.
● How to make a character feel unique and grounded in their own reality by writing truthful dialogue.
● How to silence your inner critic, let the truth come forth, and develop your authentic writing voice.
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Write with sensory power
Great writing doesn’t just describe—it immerses. Get ready to engage all your senses—physical sensations, intuition, memories, and the vibe of a place—to bring experiences to life.
What you’ll learn:
● How to make your readers feel what you feel
● How to make scenes come alive using sensory language
● How to uncover rich details that create an emotional connection
● How to re-enter experiences through the body and the imagination
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Use details of place to deepen emotional connection
In great writing, setting is more than just a backdrop. It holds memory, mood, and meaning. In this session, you’ll learn how to use location as a tool for emotional depth, character development, and narrative movement.
What you’ll learn:
● How to avoid descriptions that read like laundry lists
● How to use sensory and spatial information to build atmosphere, suspense, or reminiscence.
● How to use a place’s textures and echoes to bridge the past, present, and future.
● How to re-inhabit past moments with honesty and depth
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Incorporate nature’s power and symbolism
Nature is more than scenery—it’s the original storyteller. In this session, we will explore ways to integrate the natural world into your writing. The natural world will help you explore your life and your characters’ paths.
What you’ll learn:
● How to use nature and elements to build impactful metaphors
● How to connect personal experience to universal cycles for deeper resonance
● How to transition from granular focus to an expansive perspective to craft a scene or memory
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See beneath the surface of human interaction
Great stories are constructed not only from words but also from subtext, tension, and unspoken elements. This session explores “Socialese,” the secret language of relationships, group dynamics, and social identity. This will teach you to recognize the subtle indicators of human behavior and to effectively translate them into your written work. This is where character, motivation, and emotional complexity take shape.
What you’ll learn:
● How to create life-like, layered, and deeply human characters
● How to use silent behavioral cues and nuances to convey identity, status, and affiliation
● How to infuse everyday moments with meaning by capturing social subtext
● How to allude to your characters’ lives outside the main narrative to make your world feel richly inhabited
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Create characters with depth and complexity
The essence of a gripping story lies in its characters being propelled by things they themselves don’t understand. This session explores how to look beyond surface-level traits and expose the emotional reality behind your characters’ actions and decisions, even when the characters don’t grasp their own inner workings. This is where your characters come to life, animated by their experiences, inconsistencies, and underlying drives.
What you’ll learn:
● How to create multifaceted characters—heroes, villains, or neutral figures.
● How to use voice, gesture, and emotional tone to capture the feeling of being in someone’s presence
● How to make minor characters memorable, even with limited page time
How to create characters different from yourself with empathy, credibility, and subtlety
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Use personal experience to deepen whatever you’re writing
Your own experience is your richest source material. In this session, you will uncover the deeper meanings behind your life experiences. Discover memories, perspectives, and emotional truths that can add authenticity and depth to your work.
What you’ll learn:
● How to identify the emotional arc of your personal narrative
● How to choose the life experiences that support your narrative’s aim
● How to make your readers feel connected to the experience
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Build structure and momentum into your story
Every story needs change. It’s how your narrative gains its shape, purpose, and emotional force. In this session, we’ll cover how to identify your story’s central theme, decide what to include or exclude, and maintain reader interest throughout the narrative. This is where your powerful material takes form.
What you’ll learn:
● The building blocks of strong storytelling in fiction
● How to recognize what comes next, even if you’re not sure where you’re going
● How to build excitement in your narrative by intensifying tension, stakes, or emotion
● How to make your story feel whole and satisfying with a strong beginning and ending
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Use contradiction and paradox to add dimension to your writing
Paradox is what thrills the imagination — and where readers lean in. The most compelling narratives thrive on conflict, balancing opposing forces like light and dark, certainty and doubt, or love and fear. This session teaches you how to use contrasts to build rich characters and settings, and how opposing forces make stories more layered, truthful, and engaging.
What you’ll learn:
● How to spark imaginative energy by embracing paradox and opposing forces
● How to reveal deeper truths accepting ambiguity and complexity
● How to reimagine conflict in fresh, compelling ways
● How to craft narratives that capture life’s nuances and avoid simplistic, predictable plots
● How to let go of uncertainty and start with confidence
How This Fiction Course Works
Each session is led by Allegra Huston or James Navé. Timed prompts help you tackle fiction’s specific challenges, immersing you in a scene or a character’s voice before your inner critic can discourage you. What you write with those prompts becomes the raw material for craft instruction, which means you learn from your own imagination. Short story or novel in progress, this online, self-paced fiction course keeps you writing and accountable to the work.
Momentum is half the battle in fiction, and each progressive session is built to protect yours. By the end of the course, the project that used to live only in your head has pages, shape, and a direction you can keep building on alone. And you do not have to keep building alone. The free weekly Writing Circle, the 10-Week Writer Training, virtual intensives, and in-person retreats are all there for when you want to go further.
Meet Your Fiction Writing Instructors
Allegra Huston is a novelist. Her book A Stolen Summer carried her through everything fiction asks of a writer, the invention, the structure, the years of revision, and the particular nerve it takes to make something up and commit to it fully. She teaches from that experience. She knows where novels stall, why characters go flat, and how to coax a story back to life when it loses its pulse. Her years as an editor sharpened all of it, giving her an eye for the small fix that can unlock a whole chapter.
James Navé holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has worked with writers across every form for decades. A poet’s training shows in how he reads fiction. He hears the rhythm of a sentence, the weight of a single image, the places where prose goes slack or suddenly comes alive. For fiction writers who want their language to do more than carry information, he is an unusually attuned guide to making the prose itself a pleasure to read. Between them, Allegra and James cover both halves of fiction, the architecture of a story and the music of the sentences that tell it.
Ready to Get Started?
Purchase the full course now and save 25%! $399 $299
What You Get:
Unlimited lifetime access
You will also receive a downloadable pdf of the book Write What You Don’t Know. It is included at no extra charge.
Money Back Guarantee
If you are not satisfied with the course, let us know and we will gladly refund your money.
Not sure if this course is for you?
You can purchase just the Welcome Session and Session One for $39. If you like it, you can then purchase the rest of the sessions for $360.
What Acclaimed Fiction Writers Say
Acclaimed writers and educators hail Write What You Don’t Know as a breakthrough in writing courses
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“BRILLIANT! Your exercises are both common-sensical and revolutionary. I love this course. It's so true and so excellent and kick-ass!"
— Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist and visiting professor, Iowa Writers’ Workshop
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"Like a writer's recipe box! It helps you recognize the ingredients you already have at your fingertips, then its clever exercises help you create a banquet out of your own stories."
— Nicole Perlman, screenwriter, Guardians of the Galaxy
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"I used your exercise in a generative workshop. The writing turned out more original, more surprising, than what they'd been working on previously."
— Lan Samantha Chang, director, Iowa Writers’ Workshop
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"I felt encouraged to try new things. It brought joy back to my writing process."
Jahman Hill, poet, author of the award-winning one-man show Black Ebough, and professor, University of Alabama
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"It unlocked my writing abilities. I always nrecommend it to my students."
Judy Walgren, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and professor of journalism at Foothill College, San Francisco
In-Person Fiction Writing Retreat
Looking for an in-person immersive fiction writing experience? Join us in legendary Taos, New Mexico, and let the creative energy of the mountain inspire you.