What was your primary motivation for purchasing this course?
Achieve career goals
How would you rate the course based on skills & knowledge learnt?
“Insightful and helpful knowledge from Ken. It felt like he was in the room with me, discussing writing. I loved how he communicated his tips and tricks clearly and concisely. It was also great for him to include his author granddaughter in some of the videos to cover some of the contemporary topics.”
What was your primary motivation for purchasing this course?
Learn a new skill, Pursue a hobby, Achieve career goals
How would you rate the course based on skills & knowledge learnt?
“I had previously followed the Lee Child course on "Writing Popular Fiction" on BBC Maestro, and so was interested to see how they would differ and if I would find following both useful. The answer was a resounding "Yes"!
Ken Follett welcomes you into his world with a twinkle in his eye, thoughtful and honest insights into a wide range of topics around writing, and even invites his newly published granddaughter to share her thoughts on changes in how writers should interact with Agents and Publishers now, as things have changed since KF was first writing novels.
Lots of juicy inside tips. Overall a more nuanced course than Lee Child's, having written different sorts of novels from different points in history, which some writers might find more useful. As a new writer, maybe with a similar approach to Lee Child, I found his teachings more directly applicable, but that said, Ken's tips on how to get started were different but equally useful.
Child's approach could be boiled down to "write the story and allow it to develop". Whereas Follett could be reduced to, "what big question is the novel addressing? Write a short outline. Write a more detailed outline. Produce your first draft. Both have merit and are useful.
I thoroughly recommend writers follow both courses.
I have also followed some of the courses by David Walliams and Alan Moore, which I will get into again but again a very different approach, and I'm not writing in their genres.
Keep up the good work BBC Maestro!!”
