Writing Workshops

The First Chapter and Beyond: From Idea to Novel with Kyle Lucia Wu

$445

6 sessions

In stock

Once a week Mondays, 7:00 pm EDT - 9:00 pm EDT October 20 to November 24, 2025

Online via Zoom

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This workshop welcomes all writers who are stuck at the beginning of a great idea. The beginning is so full of promise and potential but carries the expectation of a whole novel: it can be easy to get stuck in the first act. In this class, we’ll swim our way to the deep end, crafting a compelling opening, getting past the first chapter, creating a blueprint for what’s to come, and setting ourselves up to reach the end.

We’ll take your opening idea and/or chapter and examine it for conflict, engine, and surprise, setting you up for a successful narrative journey. Not all writers like to write from outlines, so we’ll discuss different strategies a writer can rely on to propel their characters forward.

We’ll also read and discuss openings of novels to explore jumping-off points, do in-class writing exercises and use prompts to generate ideas, and draw from great craft examples to examine what will best complement your own idea to make it compelling, readable, and soulful.

Course Outline:

Every student will have the chance to share brief writing periodically and to workshop a chapter once. The course will require some weekly reading and peer feedback. This workshop is ideal for beginner and intermediate writers alike.

Week 1: Examining what you’ve already built. We’ll discuss what turns an idea into a story, and find the potential within what you already have. We’ll do prompts to explore potential avenues for your characters and explore what comes next.
Week 2: The opening pages. We’ll discuss openings of selected novels and the different ways they set up story and introduce us to a world. We’ll do generative exercises to write different versions of openings and work in small groups to do mini-workshops.
Weeks 3-6: The opening chapter. If you already have written your first chapter, you can also workshop your second chapter. We’ll split class between workshop, literary discussions about first and second chapters from reading examples, and generative exercises to explore the potential of your characters.

Level: Introductory

This course will be held online via Zoom.

Led by

Kyle Lucia Wu

Kyle Lucia Wu

Kyle Lucia Wu is the author of the novel Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021), an NPR Best Book of the Year. She is the co-author, with Cathy Linh Che, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books, 2023). A former Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellow, Kyle is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and a Part-Time Lecturer at The New School.

Photo Credit: Sylvie Rosokoff

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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