A 5-week live fiction experience for romance readers and writers
Fall Fictionfest
How romance inspires transformation, and how to write it in your own pages.
Join Fall Fictionfest, a 5-week live reading and discussion experience where we explore how romance novels create transformation through voice, vulnerability, metaphor, difficult topics, reframing, and the power of language.
When we’re willing to write honestly into those moments, we give readers more than a story to follow. We give them something to feel. They might recognise their own longing in a character’s silence, their own fear in an argument, or a possibility they hadn’t considered in someone else’s choice.
Sometimes, seeing themselves in a fictional life lets them see their own life differently. Not because we’ve told them what to think, but because they’ve felt something that opens up another way of seeing.
Over five weeks we'll read current romance novels closely, as working writers, and track exactly how the author makes that change transformational to the reader. Each week you take the lessons and apply to a scene of your own.
Ready to join Fall Fictionfest?
Enroll now to join the 5-week live experience. You’ll read, reflect, and discuss romance novels through the lens of transformation, voice, vulnerability, and craft.
Starts Monday 9 November 2026
5 live sessions, Mondays at 8pm UK
(3pm New York · 12pm Los Angeles)
Limited to 10 writers
ÂŁ199 one-time paymentÂ
(payment plan available)
Doors close Thursday 5 November
For writers who want to understand how change happens on the page
Fictionfest is for fiction writers, romance writers and serious readers who want to move past "I loved it" into how a book actually works.
You don't need to write romance. We use romance as the lens because it puts transformation in plain view: desire, resistance, fear, intimacy and risk are all there in the scenes. If your writing is used as a vehicle for a deeper life lesson for your reader, and you want to add to your skills, then this is for you.
Come if you want to…
- Track emotional arcs and character change scene by scene
- Read romance from the inside, as a writer
- Use language, metaphor and voice with more precision
- Write conflict and vulnerability your reader can feel in the body and transform in the mind
- Make the change and vulnerability of your own story matter
Why romance?
Romance is often read quickly and personally. That's part of its power.
In Fictionfest we slow it down. We read romance novels as intricate pieces of craft and study how they build longing, tension, trust, misunderstanding, vulnerability, share deeper topics and can invoke transformation. We notice how small choices in point of view, word choice, metaphor, pacing and scene structure shape what the reader feels.
We explore how sharing a story of deep struggle, in a compassionate and emotive way, can inspire transformation in the reader. Your story and message matter.
A character starts somewhere, wants something, protects something, reveals their deepest something, and risks something. By the end they are someone else, and every step of that movement is made through craft.
Your guide
Heather V Masters
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I'm an NLP Certified Master Practitioner/Trainer and ANLP Trainer Member, and I host the Creative Writing Tips community of more than 9,000 writers.
NLP is the study of the structure of subjective experience. How we experience a moment. What we notice, what we make it mean, and what changes when we begin to see it differently.
As writers, that’s the territory we explore through our characters. Not just what happens to them, but what it feels like to be them. We explore the things they can’t quite admit, the pain of the truths they avoid and the moment they risk being seen.
That’s where vulnerability gives writing its power.
When we’re willing to write honestly into those moments, we give readers more than a story to follow. We give them something to feel. They might recognise their own longing in a character’s silence, their own fear in an argument, their own childhood abandonment in a characters recollection or a possibility they hadn’t considered in someone else’s choice.
Sometimes, seeing themselves in a fictional life lets them see their own life differently. Not because we’ve told them what to think, but because they’ve felt something that opens up another way of seeing.
Recently, a handful of romance novels did that for me. They caught me off guard and unexpectedly moved me. They left me thinking about things I thought I’d already worked out.
I wanted to understand how. What was happening on the page that made those moments feel so personal? And what could I learn about writing with that kind of honesty?
Fictionfest is that exploration.
What we'll study together
Current romance novels as a vehicle of transformation for our readers.
Perspective & intimacy
How point of view controls closeness, distance, tension and revelation.
Conflict & desire
How outer and inner conflict expose what a character wants, fears and resists.
Vulnerability & risk
How characters protect themselves, what breaks through, and how emotional risk shows on the page.
Metaphor & subtext
How images, objects, settings, silence and repeated language carry meaning beneath the plot.
Voice & language
How narration, rhythm, humour, restraint and word choice reveal character.
Transformation
How a story creates resonance and deep connection, and moves characters through their journey from self-protection to risk, and from longing to choice.
The five weeks
Week 1: Reading like a writer
We separate reviewing a novel from studying it, and learn to track emotional movement, scene intention and transformation while still enjoying the story.
On your pages: map where your main character starts and where they need to end up.
Week 2: Perspective, voice and intimacy
How point of view and voice give the reader access to longing, fear, attraction and self-deception, and how closeness and distance are built sentence by sentence.
On your pages: rewrite one paragraph closer in, then further out, and notice what changes.
Week 3: Conflict, desire and vulnerability
How romance builds pressure through what characters want, what they fear and what they refuse to admit.
On your pages: find the moment your character protects themselves, and write what it costs them.
Week 4: Metaphor, language and subtext
Recurring images, charged objects, sensory detail, silence and restraint: the moments where language says more than the character can.
On your pages: choose one object in your story and let it carry a feeling across two scenes.
Week 5: Transformation on the page
Turning points, reversals, declarations and repairs, and endings that feel inevitable without feeling simple.
On your pages: draft or revise the turning point of your story using everything from the five weeks.
How the cohort works
Fictionfest runs for five Mondays, 9 November to 7 December 2026, live at 8pm UK (3pm New York, 12pm Los Angeles). A welcome weekend from 6 to 8 November gets you settled, with the reading guide, community and the discussion space open before we begin.
Our anchor novel is In Five Years by Rebecca Serle, read across the five weeks, with short extracts from other current romance novels for comparison. Week 1 works from the opening chapters, so you have time to read as we go.
Each week you get a writing topic focus. We meet live to discuss the reading through that lens, then you take it to your learning to your own writing with a short exercise. Between sessions the group talks in a private community. It stays small, ten writers at most, so everyone gets to speak, ask questions, share and be heard.
Your place includes
- 5 live weekly sessions with Heather
- Live Q&A hot seat session, every 2 weeks
- A writing topic focus and reading guide each week
- A weekly exercise for your own work in progress
- A private community for the cohort
- A small group of supportive, like-minded writers
- Optional Focus hour - time to write
ÂŁ199, one-time payment.
Questions
Do I need to write romance?
No. Romance is the lens, and the craft carries into any fiction genre where characters want something, fear something, have a deeper story to share and change along the journey.
Is this a book club?
It's closer to a craft lab. We read novels together, and the conversation is about how each book creates tension, intimacy and change.
Will we work on our own writing?
Yes, in small doses. Each week ends with a short exercise on your own pages, and you're welcome to share it in the private community. Full manuscript critiques are outside this cohort.
Which novels will we read?
Our anchor novel is In Five Years by Rebecca Serle. We'll read it across the five weeks and compare it with short extracts from other current romance novels. Week 1 only needs the opening chapters.
When are the sessions?
Mondays at 8pm UK from 9 November to 7 December 2026. That's 3pm in New York and 12pm in Los Angeles.
What if I miss a session?
The live discussion is where most of the learning happens, so come when you can. Replay details will be confirmed before registration opens.
Is it beginner-friendly?
Yes. You need curiosity and a willingness to read closely. No academic background or craft vocabulary required.
Do I need to be published?
Unpublished, emerging and published writers are all welcome.
Study how transformation is written, then practice writing it.
Five weeks with a small group of writers, reading closely and taking what we find back to our own stories.
When we’re willing to write honestly into those moments of vulnerability and revelation, we give readers more than a story to follow. We give them something to feel. They might recognise their own longing in a character’s silence, their own fear in an argument, their own struggle in a shared experience or a possibility they hadn’t considered in someone else’s choice.
Sometimes, seeing themselves in a fictional life lets them see their own life differently. Not because we’ve told them what to think, but because they’ve felt something that opens up another way of seeing.
Join the interest list for the reading list, the dates and first claim on one of the ten places.
Pay in 3 installments
3 payments of ÂŁ73
Split your enrollment across three payments. Full access included.