Wednesdays, Nov. 6th - Dec. 18th|Limited to four students 

Discover a story roadmap, unlock your creativity, and write the best version of your novel.

Starting a novel is an exciting venture—and one that can soon turn daunting. Unlike the compressed energy of a short story, the novel’s world spools out over time and often involves the management of layered plots and a large cast of characters. But these challenges are also opportunities. In this course, we will look at published novel beginnings to discover the narrative engines of the early chapters. We will also investigate the way writers such as Brit Bennett, Scott Turow, and Jhumpa Lahiri maintain narrative tension throughout their books. We will talk about how this tension shapes finished work from these writers and from students’ own favorite writers. Through short writing assignments, we will try out different approaches to our own novel beginnings, and each student will be able to workshop one early chapter for helpful feedback.

This course is designed for writers who are just starting out on their novels, as well as those who have novels well underway and are already thinking about revision.

Born and raised in New Delhi, Anoop Judge is the author of four novels, The Rummy Club, which won the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award, The Awakening of Meena Rawat, an excerpt of which was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize, No Ordinary Thursday, and Mercy and Grace. 

Her essays and short stories have appeared in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Rigorous Journal, Lumiere Review, DoubleBack Review, and the Ornament Anthology, among others.

Anoop calls herself a “recovering litigator” —she worked in state and federal courts for many years before she replaced legal briefs with fictional tales. She holds an MFA from St. Mary’s College of California and was the recipient of the 2021 Advisory Board Award and the 2023 Alumni Scholarship.

Anoop is a Fiction Writing Instructor, teaching courses in Plot and Novel Writing at Stanford University and through The Writers’ Grotto in San Francisco. She lives in Pleasanton, California with her husband— her nearly grown kids have migrated to the East Coast and she is embracing this new chapter with open arms, a full heart, and an empty fridge!