Plotting, Pace and Tension with Caroline Green

Course Summary:

Please note that no class will take place on 17 March and the course will finish on Thurs 31 March

Hosted by best-selling, award-winning author Caroline Green, this course will take you through the fundamentals of plotting your story, with a range of techniques and tips that will ensure your book is built on a strong framework from the beginning. You will also learn how to handle pacing a novel so your reader will keep on turning the pages, with plenty of tension to keep them hooked throughout.

Course Outline:

Week One: Getting started. Finding the story and mapping out where it might go. Fundamentals of plotting, including different tools you can use from ‘snowflakes’ to the Hero’s Journey to plotting with notecards and post-its.

Week Two: Elements of pacing. From working out the chronology of events in your story to all the different ways you can handle pace through language and movement through scenes.

Week Three: Handling tension for a page-turning story. Looking at the different tricks and techniques you can use to ensnare your reader, from hooks and twists to understanding the tool of ‘psychic distance’.

Each session will include a range of written exercises. You can submit a piece of up to 2000 words at the end of the course for direct feedback.

Course Outcomes:

The participant will come away with an understanding of how plotting techniques can help them plan their novel, along with tools for handling its pace and tension.

Caroline Green’s (writing as Cass) debut adult novel The Woman Next Door was a Number 1 e-book bestseller. In A Cottage, In A Wood was a Sunday Times top ten and USA Today bestseller. She is also an award-winning author of fiction for young people, with a new children’s series out in 2022. A genre-busting crime series for adults (writing as CS Green) starts March 2021. Writer in Residence at East Barnet School, she also teaches for City University and Writers and Artist’s Yearbook.