Novel Workshop

A novel is a series of events narrated in a long prose that describes fictional or realistic characters and events in the form of a chronological story. It is the largest of the fictional genres in terms of size, number of characters, and diversity of events. It emerged in Europe as an influential literary genre in the 18^th century. Novel is a story that depends on narration, including description, dialogue, and conflict among characters, including the entailed dilemma, controversy, and events.

The Dubai International Program for Writing (DIPW) launched its novel workshop (NW) to train talented people on the correct method of writing novels through basic professional rules, most notably:

1- Characters

Participants are trained to create or choose characters that attract the reader because the right choice is very important. In order to achieve the right choice, characters must be three-dimensional like any person in life: people with fears and hopes, people with weaknesses and strengths, people with one or more goals in life.

 

2- The Protagonist (the central character):

DIPW is concerned with developing the imagination of trainees and pushing them to build a central character around which the events of the novel revolve. This character is often flexible, capable of change, and is dominated by the basic features on which the novel is built until its end: including challenge, courage, confrontation, belief in goals, development, and the ability to challenge.

2- Antagonist or Other Forces:

The NW develops the imagination to create a character or events that confronts the protagonist to create struggle in the novel there. The antagonist is not necessarily one person trying to defeat the protagonist; it is possible that the protagonist’s struggle is psychological with wrong behavior and bad decisions that haunt them and they try to overcome. Both good and bad characters may undergo a change in behavior, and this is another type of denouement (i.e., the change in personality) and not just the protagonist’s victory over the antagonist.

3- Plot

The trainer works with each trainee to develop the plot in order for the novel to proceed in the usual way, from the natural beginning of the events, the natural sequence of the crisis, to escalation and attempts to solve it. There are several types of plots, but the NW focuses on the stereotypical type prevailing in most of the novels.

4- Setting

The NW provides an opportunity to improve thinking about the setting (place and time) in which the events take place. There are two times for each novel: a period of time (century or year) in which the novel takes place, and the specific time (time of the novel), which presents the exact period in which the novel takes place, such as a certain day of the month, and so on.

The NW concentrates on explaining this concept to participants before starting writing, so that the space in which the events of the novel take place is suitable for the movement of the selected characters.

NW Objectives:

• Teach a generation of talented young people the foundations of correct novel writing.
• Train young people on the skill of linking events and sequencing them logically.
• Provide the skills of building narrative texts and literary imagination and savor the beauty of smooth narration.
• Expand the circle of interest in the art of long fiction and its branches and create major and minor characters.
• Develop ideas and benefit from knowledge.
• Find new lingual relationships and innovative images.

NW Duration:

lasts approximately 100 hours of training, over a period of 4 months, for both theoretical and practical training, and the trainees are being followed up by the trainer through a social networking group.

Workshop Outcomes:

• At the end of the workshop, each trainee produces a novel (a training model).
• The trainer can select good models and nominate them for publication
• Launching sessions for NW’s products are organized at book fairs and other events.