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.
Your Can’t Copyright Tropes but You Can Make Them Your Own – Tere Michaels
First, we need to work out why certain tropes attract readers and what their expectations are. Then this workshop will discuss subverting tropes and reinventing approaches, without losing emotional buy-in from the reader.
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
Make Villains Memorable – Mary Marvella
Learn how to make your villain the best he/she can be!
The Postproduction Outline: Keeping Pantsers and Plantsers Alert to What’s Happened and What Needs to Happen Yet! – Beth Henderson
Recently, I tried something different. A Postproduction outline. I created it when I was past the middle part but still a ways to go to hit the conclusion.
Wait, What?! Writing Killer Plot Twists – Cynthia Owens
As readers, we all love to get into a good book with great characters and an engrossing plot line. We also like to guess what’s going to happen. But what we love most of all are those moments when you’re bowled over by some totally unexpected that you didn’t see coming, yet when you read it, it makes complete sense.
Plotting From Character
Have no idea what to do with your characters? Do you have a story but no idea how to structure the plot? This workshop covers some ideas on how to create the story from the inside out.