Course Overview

This online novel-writing course is designed to be as useful and fulfilling as the courses we run in our offices, with contributions from agents here at Curtis Brown and C&W. This is a course for people who are serious about writing a novel. As well as being packed with useful content, it’s flexible so you can write and study at times to suit you.

We’re excited to be offering two brilliant tutors for this course – meaning you’ll get two experienced teaching perspectives and two distinct teaching voices focused on your work across six months. The first half of the course will be taught by author Lisa O’Donnell and the second half of the course will be taught by Simon Ings.

This course will also take a four-week break over the summer, to allow students extra time to work on their novels-in-progress and to think about all they’ve learnt from the first tutor (Lisa) before joining us again in September, feeling refreshed and ready for more workshops, tutorials and teaching from tutor two (Simon).

Your tutors will each lead weekly online writing workshops, set weekly writing exercises and provide one-to-one tutorials where they will give direct feedback to all students on their novels-in-progress. Weekly teaching and workshops will take place on our private online forum, and one-to-one tutorials will be conducted via phone/Zoom. In addition, you’ll have access to a wealth of teaching videos, notes and resources from our CBC tutor team (listed below), all made available on our online learning platform.

The Curtis Brown and C&W literary agents, and a guest author and a guest publisher will offer writing and pitching advice in special events across the course including exclusive Zoom webinars. At the end of the course, students get to share the opening of their novels informally with the agent team.

In the nine years since we’ve started Curtis Brown Creative, over 120 of our former students have gone on to get major publishing deals for their novels. We’ve had some fantastic success stories across all genres, including online course students  Jane Harper (The Dry) and Nicholas Searle (The Good Liar), both now international bestsellers whose novels are being adapted for the big screen. You can read more about our online course success stories here.

While we can’t guarantee publication or representation, we lavish our expertise on our students. The agents of Curtis Brown and C&W are hungry for new authors and will be actively looking for clients among our writers.

‘Having some really positive feedback and stirring up quite a lot of debate made me feel more confident that my characters were leaving the page and having an effect on people. It also took a while to find my protagonist’s voice – but with Lisa’s fabulous tutorials, we got there in the end!’
Rachel Marks, whose debut novel, Saturdays at Noon, was published by Michael Joseph in 2020.

WHAT DOES THIS COURSE GIVE YOU?

WORKING WITH OTHER WRITERS

We pride ourselves on the tightly-knit writing communities that are established on our courses. As well as getting feedback on extracts from your own novel during the course, we’ll be asking you to read the work of your 14 fellow students week by week, and provide constructive written comments (both privately and in our online discussion space). We find this process helps students develop their own inner editor and has a hugely positive impact on their own writing. Each week three students will submit 3,000-word extracts from their novels-in-progress to be workshopped by the rest of the group. It’ll be your turn to get the group’s dedicated workshop attention three times across the course.

Exclusive alumni services

By popular request we have now launched a range of exclusive writing services, available only to the alumni of our selective courses, which you’ll be able to access after your course finishes. These services include individual mentoring from some of our most experienced tutors (you get to choose your supervisor from the available tutors), a four-day annual alumni summer school at our London offices, editorial reports on your completed novel, submission reports on your ‘pitch package’ and coaching from experienced practitioners. If you’d like further details about these services, and current prices, before applying to this course, you can email us on cbccourses@curtisbrown.co.uk .

Additionally, any students from our selective course who want to formally submit their novels to agents from Curtis Brown or C&W will be given advice and support from the Curtis Brown Creative team with their submission. Full information about this free service is provided during the course.