A novel is a relationship, a place outside of time where both reader and writer are challenged and validated, stretched and rewarded.Richard Skinner believes it is your duty as a novelist to bring your whole self to the page; to find your story, not force it; to meet your reader in a spirit of openness.In Writing a Novel he offers up frameworks, strategies and stimuli to help you meet that duty, drawingon his deep experience as one of the UK's leading creative writing teachers.He covers the essentials - narrators, character, setting - with charm and rigour.But Writing a Novel is not a set of instructions: it is a way of thinking, a conversation, a relationship in itself.