This course will provide support and guidance for anyone who wants to write a novel. It will explore setting, character, structure, style, genre, plot, dialogue, tone, and other novelistic techniques, enhancing your understanding by considering examples of excellent writing, from the classics to contemporary fiction. From the very first stages of planning your novel and writing a first draft, through the process of editing and refining, to finalising a manuscript which can be submitted to agents and publishers – all of the challenges, pitfalls and delights of novel-writing will be explored in a friendly and encouraging atmosphere. Writing exercises will be assigned both in class and to be done at home, and students will have the opportunity to receive feedback on their work.

Rob Doyle’s acclaimed first novel, Here Are the Young Men, is published by The Lilliput Press. His fiction, essays and criticism have appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, gorse, The Moth, The Penny Dreadful and elsewhere.