Self- Editing - Harry Bingham

Workshops - Self-editing your Novel

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter." - James Michener

You've written your novel.

Perhaps you've started to submit it to agents, or perhaps you know that your MS needs more work until it's good to go.

The aim is to teach you to look at your own work with the eye of a demanding, professional reader. That kind of scrutiny will inevitably throw up problems, and the course will cover ways to address the most common issues.

Because the Writers' Workshop is Britain's biggest editorial consultancy with an unbeatable track record of getting work taken on by major agents, we have an unparalleled understanding of what it takes to make the grade. The course is being run by Harry Bingham, an author and novelist himself and the WW supremo. As a result, you'll end this course with a realistic sense of just what it takes to make the grade in this most difficult of industries.

The workshop will also cover the whole business of submitting your work to agents.

Course leader - Harry Bingham

Harry is the author of five novels, all of them major titles published by HarperCollins. He's been longlisted for the Impac Dublin Literary Award (the world's richest literary prize) and shortlisted for the (ahem) almost equally prestigious WH Smith Thumping Good Read Prize. He's currently writing non-fiction for 4th Estate, a HarperCollins imprint.

As editorial director of the Writers' Workshop, it's Harry's job to make the final decision on which WW manuscripts are ready to be sent to agents and is in charge of pitching them when they are. Consequently, he has an unrivalled understanding of what it takes to secure representation by major London agents.

Although Harry has written commercial fiction himself, he is an eclectic reader, with a taste for demanding literary fiction - so please don't think that this course is more suitable to genre fiction writers. It's aimed at anyone at all who has completed a full length novel and is serious about securing an agent and a book deal.

Course Outline:

9.30 am: Assemble, Coffee & Introductions

10.00 - 12.00: The Microscope

• When agents (or agents' readers) are going through the submissions pile, they'll give your work about half a minute to prove its quality. Only if your work passes that test will agents go on to invest in reading entire chapters of your work. That means that your work must stand up to that kind of scrutiny. The opening session of the workshop will place participants' work under the microscrope. We'll look at presentation (briefly), prose quality (in depth), and open up more profound questions about the novels under examination. Many participants find this single session worth the entrance fee on its own!

12.00 - 12.30: Planet Agent

• Agents take about 1 in 1000 of the manuscripts that come their way. Many top quality agents take even fewer than that. These days, even senior agents sometimes fail to sell work that they take on - something that was almost unheard of 10 years ago. We'll talk in detail about the mysterious & inaccessible world of Planet Agent, and how to beat the odds.

12.30 - 1.00: Lunch

• Lunch & more conversation. Mostly about agents, we'd guess.

1.00 - 2.45: Character

• Good novels - literary or commercial - need strong characters that need to speak, think, and act distinctively. Characters also define themselves through relationships with others. Also, writers often fail to round out a character by failing to develop a full enough understanding of who their characters really are. This phase of the workshop will drive at understanding how to analyse and develop your own skills at characterisation.

2.45 - 3.00: Tea / Coffee

3.00 - 4.30: Plot, Pace, Hook

• In these degenerate days, all books - literary or commercial - need strong plot momentum and, ideally, the kind of 'hook' from which a marketing campaign can ultimately be hung. A clear majority of first time writers fail to keep their plot sufficiently pressurised. Any lack of pressure will kill your chances of securing a book deal. This session will focus on teaching writers how to identify plot weaknesses, and how to go about addressing them.

4.30 - 5.00: Round-up, Questions, Good-byes

Homework

The more you put into this course, the more you'll get out of it. We do ask participants to supply some material that will be used in each of the main workshop sessions, namely:

• The Microscope - any one single page (A4, double spaced) of your MS.
• Character - a chunk taken from your MS in which one of your major characters is first introduced to the reader. Preferably a scene that involves other people. Chunk no more than 1000 words please. If you don't have a chunk that fits this brief exactly, then just pick out the bit that fits most closely.
• Plot, Pace, Hook - Please give us (a) a one paragraph outline of your story, (b) a one sentence outline of your story, and (c) for your first 5 chapters only, please supply a 1-2 sentence outline of the dramatic purpose of each chapter.

Please (1) do not put your name on the "Microscope" page. (2) It does help if all the material is sent in one single document. Also, (3) we do need this material at least one week before the start of the workshop, so we can have a look at it and copy it for group discussion. You don't absolutely have to supply this material to attend the course, but you'll get much more out of it if you do.

Location & Transport

The course is held at the Oxford Union in central Oxford. There are excellent bus, coach & rail connections to Oxford. If you want to come by car, then the Westgate car park has plenty of spaces and is close by - but it's relatively expensive. Alternatively, the city's Park & Ride scheme is cheaper, but needs you to allow a little more time for the bus ride in.

Cancellations

We can take cancellations for a full refund up to 22 days before the event. Thereafter, no refunds - sorry. If we do need to cancel a course (which happens very seldom), then we will give at least 21 days notice.