Knockout Novel

Knockout Novel is an online, instructional program by author and writing coach James Scott Bell. With Knockout Novel, Jim will lead you on a journey with instruction and prompts for making your story better. You can review and revise your responses at any time.

You can also repeat the Knockout Novel course for as many stories as you want. Your responses for each story are tracked separately.

Knockout Novel runs within Hiveword. Hiveword is a full-featured novel organizer so you can track characters, settings, scenes, plotlines, etc. in one place along with your Knockout Novel responses. Your Hiveword account also gets you access to the Writer's Knowledge Base (WKB) which is a search engine for writers. The WKB can help you find great articles on writing and is curated by Elizabeth Spann Craig.

How does Knockout Novel work?

Knockout Novel is presented much like an interactive book. Jim will teach you about a subject and present a series of prompts for you to answer. You can take as long as you want with each prompt. You can revise it and review it as much as you'd like.

There are only three key buttons: Save, Previous, and Next. The Save button appears on pages with prompts and will save your response. Previous and Next move you backward and forward, respectively, in the course. Finally, you can use the table of contents links on the left side of the screen to jump to the various sections.

How do I create a new Knockout Novel?

The story dashboard has a button for creating new stories. The New button provides options for creating a "normal" story or a Knockout Novel. There is no real difference between the two in that they both create a story in the Hiveword novel organizer. What's different is that choosing Knockout Novel creates the story and then immediately launches the Knockout Novel prompts for the new story. If you have a pre-existing (i.e., non-Knockout Novel) story you can always add Knockout Novel to it. To do that, just click on the Knockout percent complete link for the story on the dashboard.

How do I see all my stories and Knockout Novels?

You do that from the story dashboard. The simplest way to get to the story dashboard is to click the Hiveword logo in the upper lefthand corner.

Can I add Knockout Novel to an existing Hiveword story?

From the story dashboard, you can click the percentage link in that story's Knockout column to enter Knockout Novel for that story. This is also how you'd review your responses, too.

Can I go through Knockout Novel again for another story?

Yes, you can create as many Knockout Novels as you want. You do that from the story dashboard.

What is Hiveword?

Hiveword is an online novel organizer. It allows you to track scenes, characters, settings, and plotlines in one place. Hiveword is free and works with or without Knockout Novel. Since Knockout Novel is integrated with Hiveword, your account gets you access to both and you can thus track your Knockout Novel responses and novel information in one place.

Can I add characters, settings, scene summaries, plotlines, etc., to my Knockout Novel?

Yes! See the previous answer.

How can I print/download my Knockout Novel responses?

On a Knockout Novel page, the Actions button allows you to print or download your responses. Downloads are plaintext Markdown documents.