The Body and Soul of Writing
What
Works,
Works
 Story
 Characters in Conflict
 Scene
 Setting the Stage
 Voice
 The Heart of the Reading
Experience
 Emotional Vibrancy
 Capture your readers
through their emotions
Exposition
Rising Action Climax
Falling
Action
Dénouement
Sets up story
and ends with
inciting
incident
Obstacles,
problems,
trouble
Comedy-,
things go bad.
Tragedythings go well.
Moment of
Conflicts are
reversal after
resolved.
the climax,
Catharsis.
final suspense.
Hook me!
Show me
conflict!
Show me huge Start wrapping Give me a
change!
things up
feeling a that
lingers
 Character Arc – How does the hero change over the
course of the story?
 Hero at the beginning couldn’t defeat the villain
 Beware of passive\weak characters
 Villains are people too!
 Embrace the archetypes
 P.O.V.
 Setting
The movie camera of our
imagination…
Show Me, Don’t Tell Me!
 Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the
perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used
in narration.
 Point of view (literature) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia!
 Who should be telling your story? Why?
 Close 3rd Person versus God-like Power!
 Time?
 Place?
 Color of the curtains?
 The details you use are the details your P.O.V.
character sees.
 Setting the stage and establishing P.O.V. right away
at the beginning of every chapter.
 For a narrative, the exposition is the author's
providing of some information to the audience
about the plot, characters' histories, setting, and
theme.
 Exposition (narrative) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia!
 Scene work is visceral.
 Scene work shows us what we are most interested in.
 Scene work draws us into the conflict.
 Exposition is a talking head in a documentary
 Exposition is narration in a movie
 Exposition is boring
 Exposition is necessary
Exposition as Ammunition!
 Can you teach voice? Can you imitate voice? Can you
spot voice?
 Voice - the word choice, sentence structure, details
and dialogue
 Lemony Snicket, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King
 The spell you cast is in the voice
 Story and conflict should direct emotions.
 Show the emotional reactions of your character
 Make the emotional reactions visceral – how does it feel to
lose the love of your life?
 Definition of VISCERAL
 1: felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body : deep <a
visceral conviction>
 2: not intellectual : instinctive, unreasoning <visceral drives>
 3: dealing with crude or elemental emotions : earthy <a
visceral novel>
 www.merriam-webster.com
 Exposition in Dialogue
 “Why, Cousin Jimmy, I haven’t seen you since we both found the
murdered body of your father, my uncle, on the side of the road by the
old cemetery last October before the first snowfall. That’s right around
the time I met Janet, the love of my life…”
 Overwriting
 Cousin Jimmy was furious. He was scowling so hard I thought his face
would fall off. His eyes were glowing with the hot, hellish anger of a
righteous angel framed by the Devil for a crime he didn’t commit. His
jaws were clamped shut, almost as if Cousin Jimmy had been born
angry and the anger had rusted his jaws closed.
 Prairie Dogs
 I couldn’t believe Cousin Jimmy’s reaction to the news. He had been
full of hot, hellish anger. Kind of like the time we met at the old
cemetery last October before the first snowfall.
 Clichés
 I stopped Cousin Jimmy in the nick of time because by the time I found her,
Janet was as weak as a kitten.
 Purple Prose
 Janet’s limp hand was white, white like a swan’s feathers on a winter’s evening
with the gray light muffling the world, this weary, weary world, so old, so
withdrawn, so hopeless, that never would there be a rosy dawn to warm us—
never again, never a dawn, only cold, only winter, only night.
 P.O.V. Slips
 Cousin Jimmy wanted Janet at that moment, like had never wanted anyone, ever
before, not even when he was sixteen and Darla Plantington had dropped her
scarf in front of his house.
 The overuse of adverbs
 “Are you serious?” Cousin Jimmy asked quietly.
 “No, if you’re not,” I said quickly.
 “Maybe I am,” Cousin Jimmy said mysteriously.
 Using the slip of paper you are given, do the
following:
 Give us the scene or the opening of the scene
 Set the stage and establish P.O.V. right away.
 Avoid the diseases all except your own disease and
then do it up right.
 Look for ways to heighten conflict
 A novel is a perfect table made from 23 perfectly cut
legs
 What works, works, but this is a subjective business
 Put your best foot forward
 Don’t give them a reason to reject you
Another writer’s blockage—a more serious blockage—may
arise from an excessive need for a success not actually
related to good writing: an excessive need to please
admirers (that is, to be loved), or prove himself vastly
superior to others (that is, to be superhuman), or justify his
existence against the too obstreperous cry of some old
psychological wound (that is, to be redeemed). No amount
of work can solve this writer’s problem, because nothing he
writes satisfies the actual motive behind it.
--John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist, 135
Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless
over writing and our writing lives had
become unmanageable.
What are some of your old ideas that
keep you away from writing? Where are
you powerless over your writing and
how is your writing life unmanageable?
Fear of Success
Fear of Failure
The Time Card
Self Doubt
Critical Voices
Thinking Too big
Thinking Too small
Perfectionism
The Lie of Inspiration
Envy
Despair
Step 2 – Came to believe that a power
greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity
What does a sane writer look like?
Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will
and our lives over to a power greater than
ourselves
For me, writing is the hope that life is
good, that I am good, that there is a
purpose, a reason, for all of this pain
and chaos. When I write, I am
affirming life’s inherent goodness.
This is my sacred, secret dream.
When I write, I am spitting in the
face of doubt, despair, and death.
We write alone, but we are not alone.
How do we become successful?
Honesty
Open-mindedness
Willingness
•Books
•Conferences
•Workshops
•Critique Groups
•Other writers
•Friends
•Spiritual Advisors
•Therapists
Be Strong, Be Daring, Be
Impossibly Courageous!
Why Not You?
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me -Anything can happen, child
ANYTHING can be.
-Shel Silverstein
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest
pleasure only death can stop it
-Ernest Hemingway
 The Artists Way by Julia Cameron
 On Writing by Stephen King
 Bird by Bird by Ann Lamont
 Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for
Exceptional Storytelling by Donald Maass
 The Novel Writer’s Toolkit by Bob Mayer
 Story by Robert McKee
 Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder
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