Tag Archives: idea to draft

For Reviewers/Book Bloggers: ARCs and Review Copies for 2018 Projects

Posted on January 18, 2018 by Cat

I have enough coming out in 2018 that some of the different campaigns are colliding a bit. Some are self-pubbed projects, others are with presses but I’m helping with the marketing where I can. If you’re someone who would like … Continue reading →

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For Writers: Working with Twinned and Twined Storylines

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Cat

When I sat down to work out the outline for my Moving from Idea to Finished Draft, I came up with almost two dozen possible starting points for writing a story, including scene, title, taking an old plot, a character, dialog, a particular device, and more. As I finished writing it, those categories shifted around a little, sometimes sliding together, other times diverging, but I did think I’d managed to exhaust the possibilities…

…only to be proven wrong, of course. A week or so ago at the Surrey International Writers Conference I was absolutely delighted when an audience member hit me with a new one that I hadn’t considered at all.
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How to Get Tuckerized In One of My Stories

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Cat

This month my newsletter subscribers and Patreon supporters have a chance to win a Tuckerization in one of my stories. It’s not too late to get next week’s newsletter with details about how you can enter. If you haven’t heard … Continue reading →

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Idea to Draft Finally No Longer Just a Draft

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Cat

One of the things that I’ve been working on in the past six months is converting all of my live classes to on-demand versions. A few months ago I decided to try the Idea to Draft class and found it presented more problems than any of the others. I will spare you the saga, which I have blogged about elsewhere. Here’s the section on story basics, and here’s the one on what to do when you have just a scene. I will be teaching the live version, in which I work with students on their specific ideas, on July 9, which will be the last time I teach the live version in 2016.

I am very proud of this class, because I don’t think there are any other classes that take the same approach. I’m turning it into a book, which may be e-form only because it’s going to have a wordcount in the 100k+ range when you add in all the example stories. While Creating an Online Presence is, i think/hope, useful for writers on the business and career level, this is a book that works at the craft level and incorporates a lot of my story theory, the stuff that has evolved out of teaching and writing and thinking a lot about these things.
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