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You are here: Home > The Writer's Compass > Events & Opportunities > Events > City Lit: Advanced writing for children: finishing your novel with Penny Joelson
City Lit: Advanced writing for children: finishing your novel with Penny Joelson
Thu 25 Sep 2025 to Thu 4 Dec 2025
Do you start lots of stories but never finish them? Do you have a novel in progress or nearly finished? This course is for you! You can take this term independently or you can continue with ‘Advanced Writing for Children’ all year and learn to edit your novel too.

This supportive and interactive course for advanced children’s and YA writers will help deepen your understanding of what makes a good children’s book and help you acquire techniques to hone your writing and to reach the end of a first draft.

What will we cover?
The Right Idea – developing your idea to give it the best potential; making characters believable and engaging; tension and pace in plotting; multipurpose dialogue; multisensory descriptions – making setting real for the reader; analysing markets – what agents and publishers want; the submission process, letters and synopses.

Students will have the opportunity to receive written feedback on two pieces of writing.

Penny Joelson began her writing career with a course at City Lit. She has now been teaching Writing for Children courses at City Lit for over twenty years. During this time Penny has had twelve books published including fiction for young adults, middle grade and early readers and books for teens with a low reading age. 

Dates: 25 September - 4 December 2025, 10:30 - 12:00
Location: Keeley Street, London
Cost: £209 Concessions £105

Book your place here
Additional Information:
Location:
London
Region(s):
London
Price:
£209 Concessions £105

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