This exclusive pre-conference workshop kicks off the 2019 Writer’s Digest Annual Conference weekend on Thursday, October 24th. Seats are limited, so register today!
Like most complex tasks, writing a novel that works—those two words being key—comes with criteria that imbue efficacy and excellence, and there are dozens of them to consider. They are sometimes regarded as standards or best practices, rather than specific targets that enrich story development. Professional novelists often understand these criteria in an instinctual way, while newer writers are left to discover for themselves the layered nuances that cause a novel to sizzle and soar. But even experienced authors realize that instinct alone may not be enough. This isn’t an issue of process, but rather, a means of empowering your preferred process, whatever that may look like.
In this full-day workshop, Larry Brooks—author of Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves and three other books on writing craft—will examine element-specific criteria across the entire arc of a story, including:
- How to vet the writing conversation and recognize what works for you.
- How to make your writing process—any writing process—more efficient.
- The rarely plumbed depths of the story conception stage, where story ideas must become viable, fully-wired premises.
- The essential nature of scenes, and the criteria that make them work.
- The truth about story structure, which is more an issue of flow and context than simply advancing plot.
Who this session is for:
- Beginning novelists looking to advance their story intuition
- Professional novelists who’ve hit a wall or need a reboot
- Novelists in any genre seeking to up their game
- Writers seeking to better understand “the sum of the parts” of story
This information empowers a higher level of narrative power and an earlier arrival at a “final” draft that leaves nothing untended on the table. This just might be the stuff you’d wished you’d learned earlier, a way to finally wrap your head around what hasn’t worked for you in the past, while discovering that it’s never too late to understand the differentiating raw grist of bestsellers and break-in novels.
INSTRUCTOR
Larry Brooks is the award-winning USA Today bestselling author of six novels and four writing craft books, including the bestselling Story Engineering and the new book Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves: Criteria-Driven Strategies for More Effective Fiction, from Writers Digest Books. He is the creator of a widely respected craft-building website for fiction writers, and frequently teaches at workshops and conferences nationally and internationally. He lives in Chandler, Arizona with his wife, Laura, who is an artist. He can be reached through his website, www.storyfix.com.