Begins Tuesday, February 2nd, 2027

Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Tuesdays, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PST): 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM / Denver (MST): 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM / Chicago (CST): 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM / New York (EST): 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Now Enrolling! Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us.

Instructor Bio

Instructor Nicole Meier is a developmental editor, certified book coach, and author of four upmarket novels recognized by Booklist, Refinery29, BookBub, and Popsugar. Her mission is to help writers write and revise from a place of wholeness: not desperation or depletion, but clarity, creative confidence, and self-compassion.

She's taught writing and revision workshops at conferences and retreats across the country and hosts The Whole Writer podcast and writes the Dear Whole Writer Substack, both built on the belief that guides everything she teaches: writing well and staying whole don't have to be two separate goals.

Her specialty is working with writers in the mid-draft-to-early-revision stage, the place where a manuscript has real bones but still needs help finding its shape.

Who is this class for?

This online writing class is for novelists with a complete draft who are ready to revise but overwhelmed by conflicting feedback from early readers. Pitched at the intermediate level, this fiction workshop assumes you have pages in hand and a story you care about, not a blank page. You'll leave with a personalized revision plan for your manuscript and the structural diagnosis skills to tell which feedback to follow and which to set aside.

What to expect:

Most revision workshops teach structural technique and then leave you to sort out feedback on your own. This creative writing workshop treats those as a single problem, not two. Over four weeks, you'll learn to diagnose what your manuscript actually needs at the structural level: where pacing lags, where a scene isn't earning its place, where the real problems live and where the noise is. Alongside that, you'll build the judgment to weigh notes from early readers against your own instinct for the story, rather than defaulting to whatever the last reader said.

Each week pairs a specific craft lesson with guided practice applying it to your own pages. Week 1 puts the feedback you've already received under a diagnostic framework to find the two or three revision problems actually driving everything else. Week 2 moves into scene function and pacing, including how to decide when a reader's suggestion to cut a scene is right and when it isn't. Week 3 takes on the harder category of feedback, the kind that risks flattening your voice instead of fixing your structure. Week 4 turns the whole approach into a repeatable process you can run on this draft and every draft after it.

Nicole brings this from years of developmental editing at exactly this stage of the process, where she's seen how often a manuscript's real fix gets lost, not from a lack of craft knowledge, but from a writer who's stopped trusting their own read on the story. Every student submits pages for written instructor feedback, and short excerpts from three contemporary novels give the class a shared text for looking at interiority, scene structure, and voice on the page.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will produce a written structural diagnosis of their manuscript identifying its two to three core revision issues and where they live, and a personalized revision plan mapping out how to address them. Each student will submit up to 10 pages of their manuscript ahead of Week 2 and receive written instructor feedback addressing structural and scene-level revision, delivered before the start of Week 3. Students will also receive live, in-session guidance during Week 1 on their diagnostic work and during Week 3 on weighing feedback against their own instinct for the manuscript, with the instructor responding directly to what students bring to the discussion.

Readings

All texts will be assigned as short excerpts, not full books, chosen to demonstrate a specific technique each week. Readings may include excerpts from The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters, examined for how first-person interiority reveals what a character knows and feels without stepping outside the story to explain it; We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange, examined for scene structure and pacing across multiple POVs; and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, discussed as an example of a distinct, trusted authorial voice.

COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1: Diagnosing the Real Problem

Craft focus: Structural diagnosis, tracing a manuscript's real problems back to their root cause rather than treating symptoms, sorting out which feedback is pointing at that root cause versus which is noise, and identifying where a manuscript is staying on the surface instead of letting readers into a character's inner thoughts and reactions. Main activity: Students bring in feedback they've already received and work through a diagnostic framework to identify their manuscript's 2-3 core revision problems, what's actually driving them, and which pieces of feedback got them there. Text: short excerpt from The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters.

Week 2: Structural Revision

Craft focus: Pacing, scene function, and structural repair, including how to weigh a reader's note against your own read of a scene. Main activity: Instructor-led lesson on identifying when a scene is or isn't earning its place, including how to decide when to follow a reader's suggestion to cut a scene and when not to. Students submit up to 10 pages for feedback. Text: short excerpt from We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange.

Week 3: Feedback and Instinct

Craft focus: Evaluating feedback that touches voice and interiority, not just structure, and trusting your own instinct for the story. Main activity: Students bring one piece of feedback they're unsure about, feedback that risks flattening their voice rather than fixing their structure, and practice weighing it against their own read of the manuscript. Text: short excerpt from Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.

Week 4: Building a Process That Lasts

Craft focus: Turning this workshop's approach into a repeatable revision process for weighing structure and feedback together. Main activity: Students draft a one-page personal revision process to use on this and future drafts. Text: none assigned; this week works from students' own material.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• A written structural diagnosis of your manuscript, naming its 2-3 core revision problems and where they live
• A personalized revision plan mapping out how to address those problems
• Written instructor feedback on up to 10 pages of your manuscript, addressing structural and scene-level revision
• Structural diagnosis skills you can apply to this draft and every draft after it
• A repeatable process for weighing outside feedback against your own instinct for the story
• Practice reading contemporary novels for interiority, scene function, and voice

TESTIMONIALS:

"Nicole's program provided all the things that I needed as a first-time novelist. It was an invaluable experience that was integral to moving from trying to write a draft to finishing a draft and then knowing what to do next." — Kelly Kearsley, author of Talented & Gifted (Grand Central, 2027), former book coaching client

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Tuition is $330 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

• Instructor: Nicole Meier
• Begins Tuesday, February 2nd, 2027
• Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Tuesdays, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET
• Tuition is $330 USD.