Creative Writing: Write a Novel with YA Novelist Kim Purcell

Students will learn everything they need to know to write a novel. This is listed in detail above, but we will cover all areas of craft, including characterization, world-building, setting, plot, tension, dialogue, sentence structure, and literary language. 

I'm a published young adult novelist and a writing teacher with over twenty years teaching experience. 

I've written two acclaimed young adult novels, Trafficked and This Is Not a Love Letter, published by Penguin and Disney-Hyperion, and I have another book contracted with Little, Brown. This Is Not a Love Letter was one of NPR's top books of 2018 and Trafficked made several state lists for top books. They've both received starred reviews and made top lists for books. If you want to learn more about me, you can always go to my author website, under my name. 

Besides writing my own books, my passion is helping kids, teens and adults write their books and achieve their dreams. As a novelist, I've been teaching novel-writing classes for kids, teens and adults outside of Outschool for over fifteen years. I've done author visits at schools all over the United States and Canada. I have over twenty years of teaching experience, teaching creative writing, novel writing and English as a Second Language. I currently run two successful in-person after-school programs for creative writing in Los Angeles. 

Before I taught novel-writing, I taught ESL and writing of all genres. I've taught homeschooled kids in both New York City and Los Angeles. I was the first curriculum director of the famous non-profit, WriteGirl in Los Angeles, and I helped build it into the multi-sensory interactive writing program it is today. 

In terms of education, I have a BA in international Relations from the University of British Columbia, one of Canada's elite colleges, as well as a journalism degree from BCIT and a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from VCFA, which qualifies me to teach at the college level. 

More importantly than my education and experience, I think, is that I have so much fun with my students and sincerely care for their well-being. My goal is to make them feel confident about their writing and inspired to write even more or go on to achieve any other creative goal in their lives. 

Students should aim to write at least ten pages a week. 

Students set their own goals, and we check in at the beginning of each class to see if they've met their goal. I'll give them general notes about what I love about their work and what they can work on. I like to focus on what they are doing really well because this helps them write more which will ultimately help them improve as writers more than anything else.

55 minutes per week in class, and an estimated 2 - 4 hours per week outside of class.

I will give students a PDF of my book for teens,  a guide to help them write the twenty core chapters in their novel, so they can write on their own and always have an idea or inspiration for what to write. This has been sourced from many craft books on novel writing, my own MFA, and my experience as a novelist.