
I’m excited to share with you a very cool course presented by MasterClass.com. This is an organization that is drawing in masters from many fields—music, novel writing, acting, sports—among others. While they only offer just a few courses at present, this endeavor holds a lot of promise. Since I’m about to create some of my own master classes on novel writing, I was excited to see what the likes of James Patterson offered, and decided to take a look around.
This course is on novel writing by the famous thriller writer James Patterson. I’ve read many of his novels, so I was excited to see an actual course presented by him. And it’s a deep, thorough one, well worth the money!
MasterClass.com is a San Francisco-based startup (my neck of the woods!) that launched in May. What amazed me was the price: the whole course costs $90 US [as of 2019, the price has gone up to $180], which seems very reasonable considering what you get. Well, more than reasonable. It’s awesome!
There are four parts to the course. You get a series of twenty-two videos (about 3.5 hours’ worth) in which James Patterson talks about different aspects of the craft of creating fiction, from ideas to plot to characters to outlining. He covers dialogue, how to research and edit, and even goes into topics such as choosing a title and marketing tips. Continue Reading…