The Romance Writing Master Class provides students deeply immersed in the writing of a romance novel with the opportunity to work with a published romance novelist and other dedicated writers in a small class setting. The class is devoted almost exclusively to workshopping— the reading, critiquing, and discussion of student novels. Every student will be allowed to workshop approximately 150 pages of a novel. Class size is limited to six students, all of whom have done a substantial amount of work on a novel and are experienced in the workshop process.
Instructor: Leigh Michaels is the author of more than 80 books, including 75 contemporary romance novels and several non-fiction books, including On Writing Romance, published in 2007 by Writers Digest Books.
More than 30 million copies of her romance novels have been published by Harlequin Books. Six of her books have been finalists for Best Traditional Romance novel in the RITA contest sponsored by Romance Writers of America. She has received two Reviewer's Choice awards from Romantic Times.
Prerequisites: The following are prerequisites for students who take Romance Master Class:
- A complete (or nearly complete) draft of a romance novel
- Completion of one term of Gotham’s Romance II course
- Acceptance by Gotham based on a sample of the student’s work
To be accepted into the Romance Writing Master Class all students must first submit a sample of their work.
Your writing sample may be no more than ten pages. Ideally, the sample will be the first ten pages of the romance novel you plan to workshop in the Romance Writing Master Class. If that material is not yet available, you may submit ten pages from another work of your own fiction.
A Note on the Class: All students in this class will be expected to read and critique segments of one hundred pages or more per week. The success of the class depends on the full participation of all students. Students should only take this course if they are confident they can handle the weekly load of reading and critiquing. To make this more manageable, students should have already done most or all of the work on the novel that they plan to present to the class before class begins.
A Note to Applicants: Master Classes often get far more applicants than can be accepted, and so talented and dedicated students are often not accepted. If you are not accepted for a Master Class, you are welcome to apply another time, and you may well be accepted then.
