$175 (early bird) | $200
Limited space!
LIVE ON ZOOM | 2-4 pm Eastern | March 23th and 24th
Part of our new series of longer writing workshops for in-depth learning with the additional opportunity for those who want to share their work to join early (1:30 Eastern) on day two. More details to come.
Learn how the three essential tools of storytelling–scene, summary, reflection–work together to create powerful narrative.
Remember the principle of the two-year-old child? When you want someone’s attention, make a scene. Scenes are the basic building blocks of story. Novels, memoirs, and stories, as well as newsletters, blogs, and essays all rely on the power of memorable, compelling scenes to draw readers in and move them through a meaningful narrative experience.
But many scenes lack truly transformative dramatic action. And, if a story is rendered exclusively in scene, drama dulls, and readers may quickly lose interest. We must use well-placed, evocative summary to create compelling pace.
Finally, the reader expects the writer to provide depth, context, and insight.
These three tools—scene, summary, and reflection—work in concert, and in this course, you’ll learn to improve your skills with each tool, and how to pull them all together.
In this two-day masterclass, you’ll learn & practice:
- The four key strategies you need to build powerful scenes
- How to use scene templates to build well-structured scenes
- The four kinds of summary and tips for writing an effective summary
- When to deploy summary and when to use scene
- How (and when) to use reflection wisely (and what not to do)
- Lastly, you will practice sequencing scenes, and interlacing reflection and summary
By the end of these two days, you’ll be equipped with a deep understanding of how scenes work, how to sequence scenes to create a dramatic story, and how and when to use summary and reflection to create memorable and meaningful narratives.
This class is ideal for…
- Novelists, story writers, and memoirists who want to use powerful, memorable scenes to keep their reader engaged
- Beginning writers seeking to learn scene, summary, and reflection basics
- Intermediate writers needing to hone scene skills and improve storytelling skill
- Experienced writers seeking to refresh their practice
- Bloggers and Substackers ready to up their game
- Anyone who wants to hone their storytelling skillset
Closed captioning is available. ✔
Think you might miss part of the class? No worries, replays will be available. ✔
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
HEATHER SELLERS has a Ph.D. in creative writing from Florida State University. She has been teaching, coaching writers, and publishing poetry and prose for over thirty years. Heather is the author of four craft guides for writers, including the popular The Practice of Creative Writing and the brand-new How to Make Poems: Form and Technique. She’s published a memoir on face blindness, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, featured on Good Morning America and NPR, along with a children’s book, a collection of short stories, and four volumes of poetry. She gives readings and talks around the country, most recently at NASA, and she has won numerous awards for her teaching. Currently, she directs the creative writing program at the University of South Florida where she was given the University’s prestigious Kosove Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Service in 2022. She offers private online courses and in-person courses in Tampa, Florida, where she lives, writes, and gardens.