Most of the submissions we receive at Mandrill Press are unpublishable. There’s often the germ of a good story there. But the writers make the same mistakes over and over again. Their characters aren’t convincing. They tell us things instead of showing them to us. The structure is hopeless. There’s no conflict. Or no theme. Or, well, it’s a long list.

A lot of those mistakes could be put right if the writers knew they were making them. That’s why we're creating a series of short classes on the various things that novice writers get wrong, and how to fix them. We hope that the quality of submissions will improve.

This course breaks the ice with a fairly light-hearted look at something all would-be novelists need to learn. How do you write about sex without writing about sex? (It's about not distracting your readers from the meat of the story). It uses examples from published novels and includes exercises that students can complete and return for a publisher's comments.

There is also a bonus section on brevity in writing fiction, complete with exercises.