Writing Non-Fiction 2025

Is there a story you’d love to tell? Would you like to emulate the authors you most admire and tell a story with power and persuasiveness? Are you ready to develop your understanding of your own life and the lives of others?

Join Lara Feigel, an award-winning writer of memoir, history and group biography, for this online course that requires just two hours of your time each week.

Comprising stimulating workshops, discussion, practical exercises and guest speaker slots, across five weeks students will explore essential elements of writing non-fiction: how to take an initial idea and develop it into a story that others will want to read; how to craft scenes and characters in non-fiction using the techniques of the novel; and how to develop a voice both as a memoirist and a storyteller. All attendees will gain an understanding of how the non-fiction book market works and learn how to make their book proposal stand out. In the final session, Lara will share extracts of her own successful book proposals and a leading editor of non-fiction will discuss what they look for in a proposal.

The course is for a maximum of 20 students, and has been designed to welcome authors at all stages of their writing journey so, whether you have an initial idea and want to know where to start, or have a full draft and need help with revising and making it the best it can possibly be, your work stands to benefit. Each evening session will run from 7-9pm, making it ideal for those with full-time jobs and other commitments. All participants will also have the chance to stay in touch beyond Week 5, with software used throughout the course remaining available to those who'd like to stay in touch and continue sharing work.Optional extra: All course participants will have the exclusive opportunity to submit up to 5,000 words of original writing and receive a critique from Lara. This is entirely optional and comes at an additional cost of £50, with more details to be circulated ahead of Week 5.

Course Benefits:

- 10 hours of expert tutoring and advice from Lara, as well as guest speakers

- Practical sessions with hands-on exercises based around your own writing each week

- A written review of a section of original writing up to 5,000 words (optional extra)- Peer-to-peer review; amass a wealth of objective feedback from fellow students

- Deadlines issued for homework exercises

- Course materials available to view ahead of each session, plus catch-up audio recordings

- Exclusive discounts on W&A products including editing services and books

- Access to your course writing community beyond Week 5

Each week, sessions will combine tutorials with practical exercises, discussion and feedback. 

Schedule

Week 1: Tuesday 4th November

Identifying and telling a story 

- You’ve found an interesting area but how do you know what the story is? 

- What’s the difference between an argument and a story and can you have both?

- How do you create an arc with a beginning, middle and end?

- How can you incorporate the techniques of the novel in a piece of non-fiction?

Week 2: Tuesday 11th November

Writing history and biography

- How can you tell the story of a life without going from cradle to grave?

- Why write a group biography and how do you decide who to include and how to structure it?

- How can you create novelistic characters when writing about real people?

- How can you bring history alive?

Week 3: Tuesday 18th November

7:30pm-8pm: Lara will be joined by a leading literary agent Laetitia Rutherford (Watson, Little).

Writing memoir: finding a voice and turning yourself into a character

- How do you decide which part of your story to tell and how to give it a beginning, middle and end?

- How do you turn yourself into a character?

- What kind of voice does your story need? Do you want to be appealing or challenging?

- How much is your own story the story of others, and how do you negotiate this?

Week 4: Tuesday 25th November

7:30pm-8pm: Lara will be joined by commissioning editor Ian Marshall (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Writing the beginning of the book

- How do you decide where to begin the story?

- How do you establish the voice quickly?

- How do you capture the reader’s attention?

Week 5: Tuesday 2nd December

Writing a book proposal

- What do agents and editors want to hear?

- How do you identify why your story matters and why we need to hear it now?

- How to write a good overview and a good chapter summary

- How should you identify the right agent to send your work to and how should you approach them?

JOINING INSTRUCTIONS

We are really looking forward to welcoming you to our ‘Writing Non-Fiction’ course with Lara Feigel. She will be working with you to help you explore your own non-fiction projects, develop your ideas and voice, and understand the publication process.

The key details of the session are below, as well as the link you’ll need to join the class each week.

When: Tuesday 4th November 2024 7:00pm to 2nd December, 7:00pm - 9:00pm (UK time)

Where: Online

Joining Link: Writing Non-Fiction w/ Lara Feigel | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams

You can download Teams free on your computer, or join via the web: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-teams/download-app 

Breakout sessions will take place via zoom. Please make sure you have a zoom account you can use. They are free to set up if you don’t have one already. 

In order to facilitate the one to one and peer review sections of the course, we were wondering if you’d be happy to share your email with course leader Lara and the other members of the group. Do let us know if you’re happy to consent to that.

PREP

For the first session, please come prepared to talk about a non-fiction book (history, memoir, biography, or a hybrid form) that you have been particularly impressed by or would like to use as a model, and be prepared to read out a paragraph from it.

SLACK

Finally, we will be using Slack during the course, which is a free, easy-to-use platform that enables everything related to the course to be stored in one place. Please click on the below link to gain access to the Slack workspace that we’ve created for this course:

https://join.slack.com/t/writingnonfic-jwh3498/shared_invite/zt-3gj5va300-SbgoXFyXg4_7fdmellFGiQ 

When you arrive in Slack you’ll see the workspace is called ‘Writing Non-Fiction’, with several channels within that workspace. A quick bit of guidance on how these different channels will work:

• Course Etiquette: We’ve put together some course etiquette guidelines. Please have a read and comment to confirm that you’ve seen them.
• General: This is a general discussion board. James and myself will all have access but it’s not something we’re going to get involved in. This is for you guys to chat amongst yourselves, discuss, share advice and book recommendations! A great way to start would be to introduce yourselves, share info about your writing journeys so far and let the rest of the group know what you’re working on and why you’re here.
• Writing Non-Fiction: We will be sharing the homework in here each week for your reference, as well as recordings of every class.

Everyone involved in the course will have access to all channels by default. It’s therefore important to make Slack work for you, so please take a bit of time to manage your notifications. You can do this by right-clicking on the channel and then selecting ‘Change notifications’.

We will also be sharing recordings and homework by email, but this is a space for you guys to connect with each other and build your writing community. Myself and James will also be available via email so if you’d prefer to reach out to us via email then please do get in touch.

Let us know if you have any questions in the lead up!