Writing A Novel is not a set of rules and regulations. It is an atlas, a guide to finding your own way over the treacherous passes of your first novel.Pulling together his years of experience as a novelist and a teacher, Richard Skinner covers the basics of writing great fiction - narrators, characters, settings - with charm and rigour. But more than that, he argues that the journey towards a final manuscript is as important as the finished article itself.His approach works: many of Richard's students have gone on to secure publishing deals and many more have left his courses with work to be proud of. With its balance of warmth and wisdom, Writing a Novel will give any aspiring writer the confidence to face the blank page -- and to fill it.

Richard Skinner is the Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy. He has taught the Faber Academy's flagship six-month course'Writing A Novel' since its inception in 2009 and has helped hundred of people to tell their stories, including Baileys Prize-shortlisted Laline Paull and international bestseller S. J. Watson. Richard is also a talented novelist in his own right: his most recent book, The Mirror, was described as "beautifully written. immersive. captivating" by the Guardian.