Unforgettable: Threading Conflict Into Every Aspect of Storytelling to Create Stories They’ll Remember Forever
Unforgettable: Threading Conflict Into Every Aspect of Storytelling to Create Stories They’ll Remember Forever
The heart of story is change. Characters changing and causing change in their world is what makes readers turn pages. The harder this change is, the deeper readers fall into the narrative. Stakes are what make readers care about characters. Conflict fuels these stakes and is, therefore, the fuel of your story. It’s what gives meaning to your plot and tangible form to your theme.
Through hands-on individualized workshops that use your own stories, you’ll learn how to weave conflict into every aspect of your work in the following ways:
- Character: Tie conflict into how the characters define themselves and what they need to overcome to survive.
- Plot: Drive the plot through the conflict between characters and their goals.
- Narrative and Pacing: Keep the conflict alive on each page at the scene level to create a page-turner.
- Story Arc: Use turning points to ramp up stakes and leverage conflict to bend the story arc.
- Setting: Avoid the potholes of skippable descriptions by threading conflict into world-building.
- Dialogue: Make inner and outer dialogue about moving the story and changing character.
- Theme: Deepen meaning by understanding conflict as wanting versus the world.
Each attendee can work on an existing work-in-progress or bring a story idea to develop.
Who Should Attend:
Note: Attendees at all levels, writing in any genre, will benefit from exercises and discussions throughout the day.
- Novices will learn the basics of incorporating conflict into the story building process, by using it to develop character and plot.
- Experienced writers will learn how to use the lens of conflict to identify story holes, strengthen plot, and deepen character.
- Experts will learn advanced strategies to layer conflict into the underpinning of scenes, and to disturb and delight readers by twisting the characters’ relationship with their internal and external conflicts.