Our Story
We’re here because we love storytelling and working with writers like you.
We love what we do
We’re working writers; passionate, energetic and committed. We’re here because we love storytelling. We work with writers one by one to bring their books to life. It’s a pleasure and a privilege and we cheer each and every writer through every milestone of their achievements.
We operate a policy of people before profit, which means we work with people we want to work with, because we love what we do. It helps create a community of mutual respect and understanding. It’s what keeps The Novelry a safe place.
The Novelry is a homely place where you can be yourself, only more so.
The Octopus
Any group of fish that stays together for social reasons is said to be shoaling, and if the shoal is swimming in the same direction together, it is schooling. The school may even swim faster than a lone fish.
We are open to all, and we work with people we want to work with, because we love what we do. It helps create a community of mutual respect and understanding. It’s what keeps The Novelry a safe place.
How it all began...
In the spring of 2017, author Louise Dean had a problem; the loneliness of the long-term writer. Here she explains why she started The Novelry and what it’s come to mean to writers.
Could we write together?
After almost 20 years working solo, with four novels published, I began to wonder why of all the arts and crafts, writing was an exception to the benefits of collaboration. All those years, I’d been writing in the dark, and when I finally got some feedback from my agent or an editor, it came late in the day when the novel was done! I felt I could use some company while I was writing. I was tired of writing alone.
So I decided to write a different way, with other writers writing alongside me to help each other stay on track; to share the journey and have fun.
The Bookseller publicized my experiment and some 200 writers offered to join me. For the next 90 days I wrote ‘live’ and put together the materials for what would become our first online writing course.
The Big Write
Showing how to structure and pace a novel using my own method The Five Fs —has proven to useful to many, and I’m grateful to so many writers for trusting me with their journey.
I recorded the videos for the course daily as I wrote my novel, simply telling people what I was doing and when, and sharing the creative process. I’d been figuring out how writers write for more than 20 years. But I thought that en route I’d consult with great writers, living and dead. I show, for example, how Kerouac drops you into a scene and makes it all feel familiar, how Muriel Spark uses flash-forwards, and how the Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee’s prose is composed using poetry and computer-like coding. Showing how to structure and pace a novel as you write has proven useful to many, and I’m grateful to so many writers for trusting me with their journey.
A different writing school
Because writing can be so daunting, it’s good to have someone show you how it’s done in a practical way. We have a lot of fun in the coaching sessions and at the community. We get to know each other at The Novelry. We know what drives us to put pen to paper. By being open and honest, we become close for sure. But there’s more. You need to tap into your human frailty if you want to write a book that feels real.
It’s thanks to our writers sharing their writing lives with each other so generously that we have more five-star reviews on Trustpilot than any other online writing school. We have created a warm, safe place in which writers can grow their writing skills and confidence.
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Building the best team
Writers should learn their craft from a mentor who has not just been published but has nailed a spot in the bestseller charts too. They need novelists with expertise in their fiction genres: literary fiction, crime and suspense, fantasy fiction, science fiction, historical, romance, memoir and children’s fiction. Our writers deserve the best. But I had to be careful to find authors who could genuinely care for my writers as much as I did. I took time and care to find the right people and train them in our unique Positive Coaching Method so as to give writers just the right advice and encouragement at every step. Working as a team, we share our thoughts and ideas on each and every writer’s work and work collaboratively to ensure each writer gets the right counsel at the right time to make confident progress.
Bringing brilliant editors
What if we could bring the gatekeepers of the publishing deal to the starting line? Imagine the advantage that would give an ambitious writer! How much time and frustration it could save an aspiring writer to be writing in the right direction. No other writing school or course deployed the skills of the experts from the famous publishing houses this way. Why not?
We recruited some of the very best publishing editors in the business to help our writers shape their stories for success. We sought editors with phenomenal reputations, who had worked with global bestselling author names at Big Five publishers like Penguin Random House, Pan Macmillan, HarperColllins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette. Editors with fiction genre expertise who knew exactly what readers (publishers and agents) needed from the pitch or plot of a mystery or a romcom, for example. It made sense for us to add to our team the editors who had wonderful working relationships with literary agents. Our recommendation of a writer to a literary agent comes from someone they know and respect. The mission of our editorial team? Your success story.
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Celebrating our writers
In testing times, writers need live writing classes and workshops that inspire, delight, entertain and offer them a sense of community! So, during the pandemic, we began a program of online writing classes with the famous names of the literary world.
Now we have a recorded library of masterclasses with the likes of Kristin Hannah, Julia Quinn, Joanne Harris, Rosie Walsh, David Nicholls, Tess Gerritsen, Tayari Jones, Bonnie Garmus, Adele Parks, Lucy Foley, Chris Whitaker, Yann Martel and many, many more. We have created a thriving and friendly community, open 24/7 worldwide, where writers share the ups and downs of their writing life and enjoy our accountability groups, writing sprints and challenges and daily live writing sessions together online.
We get together for parties in the USA from the west coast to the east coast, and in London annually to raise the roof and give our writing buddies hugs and thanks for all their support.
Sharing the love
Our mission is to bring new voices to the world of fiction, and to use the magic and joy of writing fiction to change lives. In 2025, The Novelry took its mission to over 1 million incarcerated people in the USA, and we are proud to serve the widest community. We remain defiantly non-selective, because we know that when it comes to storytelling, with our unique method and our expert people, we can teach it to anyone and everyone.
We want people from all walks of life to discover the life-enhancing joy of writing fiction. And if you’re going to write fiction, write to get published! Learn from the best, and have fun.
Writing is open to all. Stories change lives. Everyone’s invited!
Our Chief Wellness Officer, Blue.
Small, fluffy and formidable, he insists on a healthy writing-life balance.
Crafting compelling fiction
We support our writers by doing some of the heavy lifting of plotting and planning together, with hands-on help to guide you all the way to achieving your ambitions. But we never forget, you’re the author. We’re here to help you tell your story.
Tools not rules
We don’t believe there is a textbook method or set of rules, templates or a formula for writing a book.
But the history of fiction provides us with a fantastic set of tools we can use to give our writers fast-track insights and techniques.
Created by Louise Dean, a Booker Prize-listed author, our unique and fun course content will take you through these tools, helping you power through your writing with (relatively) pain-free plotting, saving you time and frustration as you dodge the rookie errors (overwriting and more) and deepen your understanding of how great storytelling works.
The Story First Method™
Readers don’t want fancy words. They want page-turning stories. (So do publishers!) So we start from the ground up by making sure you’re writing a story that excites you and one that’s more likely to get published so you’re not wasting your valuable time. We help you come up with the idea (The Big Idea—stage 1), and then we help you write it (The Big Write—stage 2), and then we help you get it ready for publishing (The Big Edit—stage 3).
To plan or not to plan your story? Spreadsheets or “follow the main character”? The truth lies in the middle. You need to know your destination, but the route you take is part of the pleasure of writing fiction. So, we offer a nimble one-page planning method, allowing you to stay on track, updating your route map as all the mysteries of your story unfold on the page. Even better, we offer an interactive planning process, enabling us to keep sight of your one-page plan as you develop your story.
The wonder of this one-pager? It contains all the essentials publishers, literary agents, and readers want from a book. We don’t hold this vital info back from you until after you have written your novel! At The Novelry, you’ll know what’s required for a great story straight from the start so you can write with confidence.
Our one-hour-a-day writing method
“Too busy! I don’t have time!” That’s what we all say, isn’t it?
There’s never a good time to write a novel, so don’t wait for it!
Forget that snowy mountain lodge with you, the writer, penning your great modern classic, day and night, with no interruptions. Not gonna happen! Here’s the thing—writing your novel only needs your butt on a seat for an hour a day. One hour? No excuses!
Keeping in touch with your novel every day allows for eureka moments in the shower and for real life to infuse every scene. With our help and direction, you won’t need to worry about the mountaintop; you can just take every day of writing as it comes.
Take that one hour a day for you.
Because there’s never a good time to write a novel, now there’s a good place.
The Plan
To plan or not to plan your story? Spreadsheets or “follow the main character”? The truth lies in the middle. You need to know your destination, but the route you take is part of the pleasure of writing fiction.
So, we offer a nimble one-page planning method that allows you to stay on track, updating your route map as all the mysteries of your story unfold on the page. The Plan is what we call our interactive planning form, something our writers update and share with us on a regular basis, enabling us to keep sight of your one-page plan as you develop your story.
The wonder of this one-pager? It contains all the essentials publishers, literary agents, and readers want from a book. The Plan keeps you safe from idea to edit.
The Five Fs ®
Novels don’t use a three-act structure. The novel is an immersive art form allowing the reader to assume the experience and outlook of the narrator in a particularly intimate relationship, one-to-one. Every novel is, in a sense, a moral journey for the main character. We will walk you through this simple but elegant story structure to deliver a satisfying ending.
Since Aristotle wrote about the form of tragedy (which is at the heart of big stories, even comedic ones), a five-part structure has been used to help articulate longer stories. At The Novelry, we keep it simple; you can literally count the parts of novel structure on one hand with our very own Five Fs.
So much more than a writing course, The Novelry offers a working apprenticeship with hands-on help to write fiction to the highest standard, among friends.
Transforming lives
We recognize the transformative power of education in breaking the cycle of incarceration and fostering positive change. By joining forces with Edovo, our creative writing courses can reach a broader audience across correctional facilities in the U.S.A. Thanks to our collaboration, we’re able to positively impact over 1 million incarcerated individuals, broadening our mission to grow writers, find new voices in fiction, and transform lives.
