The Emotional Arc – Tere Michaels
In this workshop, we’ll drill down into the different facets of your characters’ emotional arc and how it is both the spine (structure) and heart (feelings) of your story.
He Said, She Said: Defining Your Characters with Dialogue – Cynthia Owens
If you’re like most writers, you’ve probably taken a number of classes and read even more about writing snappy dialogue. That’s not this class. This class will focus on using dialogue to define your fictionals.
Hero’s Journey for Lovers – Tere Michaels
In this workshop, we’ll talk about the structure of the romantic journey (based on the Hero’s Journey framework) and how it is the bones of a solid relationship story.
Take Your Characters From Flat to Fabulous: Creating Characters Your Readers Will Love – Cynthia Owens
We will cover:
The basics—vital statistics, names, age, voice, and the character interview.
The Place They Call Home—the space and how to define what it means to the character,
This is the Moment – Backstory—Using the 5 Ws—Who, What, Where, When and Why—of an incident or incidents that most significantly affected the character.
Who’s Talking Now? Dialogue—how dialogue and dialect can define a character.
Body Language—how your character’s body can show what he’s feeling, and what he might want to hide.
But Why Do They Do It?—how idiosyncrasies and odd habits shape your characters.
Clothes Make the Man—or Woman!—How a person’s dress reveals who they are.
Action and Reaction—How a character’s actions and others’ reactions to them reveal character.
What Matters Most?—How the things your characters care about the most can shape them.
The Supporting Cast – Secondary Characters
Those Who Forget History: Using Backstory to Enhance Your Novel – Cynthia Owens
We will cover:
What is Backstory?
Flashbacks and How to Use Them,
The Five Ws of Backstory—Who, What, Where, When and Why—of a character’s past.
Prologues—how to use a prologue to provide backstory.
Dialogue—how to manipulate your readers by using a character’s dialogue to hint at backstory.
Weaving—how to weave backstory into your story.
Inner Thought—revealing your character’s backstory through inner thought.
What Do They Want?—how your character’s backstory can affect his goals.
The New Way to Plot: Using backstory to plot your novel
Make Villains Memorable – Mary Marvella
Learn how to make your villain the best he/she can be!
Prequeling: Harvesting Backstory for Further Tales – Beth Henderson
Sure, these could be spin-offs. I’ve done my share of spin-offs, which bump a previously secondary character into the role of main character. Recently, though, I discovered yet another avenue to travel down. The PREQUEL.
Gut Punch: Using Emotional Conflict as Plot Intensive 2-week Workshop – Tere Michaels
We’ll examine the difference between internal conflict and external trauma and how they can bring a reader closer to the character – or drive them away.
Writing Historical Romantic Suspense – Beth Henderson
Whether you want to change history (as alternative allows you to do in various ways, just jump in your time machine) or insert characters into an earlier era and give them a crime to deal with or a crime in the making if someone is hunting them, or use actual historical personages – or not – in a real historic mystery setting…well, this workshop will touch on them all.
Imagination in Overdrive: Save the Plot Challenge! – Beth Henderson
Have you ever completed a story or been partway through writing one when you realized “This just isn’t working as it should”?