This course will guide you in how to write any type of fiction using a basic premise, ‘something happens, and someone does something.’ This is the core of story writing and outlining. At the smallest level, this is the event and response. In the scene, it can be identified by its verbs. At the largest level, it describes the entire story in a single sentence. Events and responses are the unification of the story with its parts. I’m sure you will enjoy it. It’s quite fun to chart these things out.
There are 9 core instructional videos and each video includes an activity. So, you watch the video and then download the worksheet and write away. I try to vary the genres and styles of the examples, but you learn to write using any genre and studying any author.
Scenes – Again, scenes are the event and response at the smallest level.
Conflict – Conflict is everything vs. everything. In this moment, I am in conflict with my keyboard, spelling, completing this sentence, digesting my breakfast, trying to concentrate, and much, much more. The video has a neat little process by which you can notate conflict in your reading that may open up whole new worlds of understanding for you and your readers.
Resolutions – Resolutions in scenes answer reader questions. The full term is conflict resolution questions. When an author writes about how the main character is poor, this plants questions in the reader’s mind. Later in the story, when the character becomes rich, the questions are resolved. This happens a lot in every story. I have tons of examples.
Ensemble plot – The ensemble plot is like the main plot. It covers the actions of all of the main characters in a story.
Character Arcs – Character arcs cover the whole story from one character’s point of view.
Act Plots – Act plots trace the actions of all of the characters through 3 or more acts.
Continuous Subplots – Continuous subplots follow the problem by problem continuous flow of the story. This is very close to an outline of the whole story.
Discontinuous Subplots – Discontinuous subplots are things that happen throughout the story. They’re themes and learning experiences outside of the main plot and continuous plots. Examples are plans to get into castles, big tests, ways that things work in your story, disguises, letters, and MacGuffins. These things get introduced, taken up, followed, fall and rise, just like plots and subplots.
Microplots – Microplots are larger than scenes and smaller than subplots. A 3-scene description of opening a door cannot hit all 19 beats of a subplot and so I call them micro-plots.
Learning these 9 concepts will boost your storytelling powers beyond 99.99% of writers out there. You will be able to apply these skills however you want and write all of your unwritten stories. Sign up today.
Also, there is a monthly updated video traces how these things interact in fully analyzed, hyperlinked stories like the ones in my books.
Finally, there are one or more zoom meetings where I can help writers with stories live. Email me.
Where to get the book. You don’t need the book to take the class, just watch the videos and download the Easiest Beat Sheet and the Event-Response Sheet. For each lesson write your own story in beat sheet form. Make beats sheets for each size portion of your story, ensemble, character arcs, act plots and so on.
The complete eBook is at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and other books stores soon.
