When you read a novel or story, it feels so easy – so natural and inevitable. But a great deal of labour has gone into creating that serene surface. Across five weeks, Tessa Hadley opens up her unique experience and process – from how to use ‘the dreamy space’ to the importance of experimentation and the need to envisage every scene from all angles and keep working it through to get the best out it.
Whether you’re writing a novel or shorter fiction, this course will show you how to establish your contract with the reader, write sentences that are strong and original, and imagine your way into your true writing self.
Follow the course at your own pace. Our online courses are designed for flexible study – you can take part at times to suit you and from wherever in the world you are. To get the best out of it, we recommend spending four-six hours a week on the coursework, and to be progressing your own novel or story throughout the five weeks.
All students will be given the option to purchase feedback on their final task from a CBC editor.
Do you want to know more about the contents of our end-of-course reader reports? Click the button below to download and read an example report.
Encourage your friend or loved one to get creative! We have £190 digital gift vouchers available, enabling you to buy any five-week online course as a present.
Tessa Hadley has published eight novels – including The Past, Late in the Day, and Free Love – and four collections of short stories – including Bad Dreams and After the Funeral. She publishes short stories regularly in the New Yorker, and reviews for the Guardian and the London Review of Books; she was awarded a Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction and the Hawthornden Prize in 2016, and she is a two-time winner of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She lives in Cardiff. Photo by Sophie Davidson.