Get underneath the skin of a novel by understanding some of the main building blocks of modern fiction. What makes a great novel? How is a novel woven together? How can we best appreciate works of fiction? Answer these questions and more with this course from The University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

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On the course you’ll discover four of the main building blocks of modern fiction: plot, characterisation, dialogue, and setting using examples from a range of texts including the four novels shortlisted for the James Tait Black fiction prize. You’ll also explore the formal strategies authors use, how they came to be, and how they affect us as readers.

Syllabus

Week 1: Plot

Week 2: Characterisation

Week 3: Dialogue

Week 4: Setting

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

- Identify key strategies used by authors to alter the temporal progression of the narrative.

- Reflect on the effects generated by a narrative frame.

- Evaluate novels for signs of narrative unreliability.

- Discuss my reading of contemporary fiction with a large online learning community.

- Explore ways of understanding character, such as behaviour, speech, and motives.

- Explore the impact of various settings on the development of character and plot.

- Evaluate the effect of different ways of presenting dialogue, and the impact of dialect speech.