The Octopus Scheme is our initiative to nurture writing talent from under-represented or disadvantaged backgrounds. This includes, but is not limited to, writers from a low-income background, primary carers, ex-offenders, writers with a disability, writers of colour and writers from the LGBTQIA+ community. You should be able to genuinely support a claim to be without the financial means to afford to pay for one of our courses. You should be able to begin the course in July/August 2023. Please review our terms and conditions before applying here. Your application constitutes acceptance.

We will be open to applications in March 2023 at which time you can apply by sending an email to us at [email protected] with The Octopus Scheme in the subject of your email. You should include in your email a note on your circumstances and your qualifications for consideration, and attach with the email 500 words of your creative writing as a sample of your work. The deadline for entries is May 31 2023.

We will email all applicants by the end of June 2023 to let you know whether you have or have not been successful. There are many applicants and we will select our Octopus Scheme candidates based on the merit and potential of their writing.

A notebook, a pen and a computer with a decent internet connection for use of our online learning platform and the Zoom-based coaching sessions. Our online learning platform is easy to use, even for the less tech-savvy among us. You will need to be able to set aside one hour a day for 3 months for your writing when you begin the course.

In the self-paced course, you will enjoy over 100 lessons with videos and text giving you guidance as to what to do on the day of your writing. You’ll be guided step-by-step within the course and be served downloads and tools at just the right time for the development of your story. Besides your writer coaching, you’ll enjoy the support of the online community, and be able to join us for live weekly writing classes suitable for all writers and regular online workshops for those at every stage of their writing, in every genre.

You will have access to the course for a year.

You can take the courses at your own pace. We suggest one lesson a day which will take from 20–30 minutes. When you start writing, on day 7, you’ll need to set aside an hour a day for your writing. We’ll share with you our ‘One Hour A Day’ method. All the ‘heavy lifting’ of creative development happens during the rest of the day as you consider what the lessons bring to your story. 

We’ll give you guidance on how to choose within the first lessons of the Ninety Day Novel Course before your first coaching session. Once we have shown you how to scope out your story, and you have considered the genre you’re writing in, it will be fairly obvious who your writing coach should be as they’ll be an author successfully published in the same genre. You can browse our writing coaches and find the match when the time comes, then book your coaching session at a time that suits you in your Membership Area.

We may recommend a certain writing coach to you if we think there is a very good fit that best serves your writing development.

Your coaching begins after the first 7 days of the novel course lessons. Before your first session, we’ll guide you on how to create an outline for a novel, and you’ll be nudged to submit it to us. We’ll then look at your planned storyline as a team. If we think another writing coach would be best suited to your story, we’ll drop you a line.

Every writing coach reviews your storyline in advance of the session with our brilliant online system which tracks your progress via a tool we call ‘The Plan’.

Your first coaching session begins with your writing coach understanding your intentions and aspirations. That allows us to give you the dedicated and personal guidance and support you need to achieve your ambition.

All sessions are recorded for you to keep and we keep abreast of your story progress with our interactive process.

The coaching sessions are 30–45 minutes by Zoom, and you’ll find it’s plenty of time to get help with story development and troubleshoot any problems to stay on track with your writing. 

During the writing of a first draft, our focus is on your storyline and we work with you to creatively develop and expand the story together. We suggest you leave getting feedback on your work until after the first draft. A first draft should allow you to find the story, to be experimental and fearless. Unlike other writing courses we advise you don’t share, or workshop, the novel at this stage where your confidence and the story are still vulnerable.

Our courses are suitable for people with visual or auditory impairment, dyslexia and for those with English as a second language. We offer an app which translates the course into 99 languages and a speak-aloud option too which you can find out more about here.