Presenter: Ebony McKenna
In the dark about editing? Let Ebony McKenna show you how to edit your own manuscript with this intensive online course. All welcome! This is for writers who have written a novel in a month and need to know what to do next. Or for writers who have a few manuscripts in the ‘early draft’ stage but can’t figure out how to fix them. It’s also for writers who are great at starting new stories, get stuck and end up abandoning them.
In this OWL, participants will use the editing techniques I’ve developed over the decades to look objectively at their own work. We’ll start with the easy one - Backstory. It’s easy to spot, once you know how. (And I’ll show you the easiest way I’ve developed.) Backstory is the number one thing that suffocates momentum in all the competition entries I’ve been reading lately.
The next thing we’ll do is an adaptation of my 13 Main Scenes workshop. This is a romance-specific structural guideline. It’s something I’ve created over many years, taking structural cues from The Hero’s Journey, The Virgin’s Promise and Save the Cat, creating something that will deliver a satisfying reading experience for romance readers. It helps writers see the ‘whole story’ at a glance, while also showing them where scenes are missing and how to fix the soggy middle. I’ll then move on to The Staircase of Turning Points, which drills down to the action/dialogue and power struggle within a scene, to make sure the ‘big moments’ of a novel really deliver.
This is a unique course in that it will give writers the tools to edit their own novels. Of course, novels will still benefit from further editing by an objective third party before publication (whether self-published or traditional) but it will train participants to structure their stories from the very beginning. Even ‘pansters’ who can’t cope at all with plotting will have a great time training the editing part of their brains.
Ebony McKenna is the author of many young adult novels, including the charmingly funny four-part Ondine series, where a girl’s pet ferret starts talking with a Scottish accent. She is a huge fan of structure and has presented many workshops on this topic at RWA conferences and roadshows.
Course Dates: 3rd - 30th April 2017
Cost: RWA-Member – $30.00 Non RWA-Member – $80.00
*Please note, there is a $0.30 Trybooking fee at checkout.
About the presenter
Ebony McKenna is the author of many young adult novels, including the charmingly funny four-part Ondine series, where a girl’s pet ferret starts talking with a Scottish accent. She is a huge fan of structure and has presented many workshops on this topic at RWA conferences and roadshows.
Course Dates: 3rd - 30th April 2017
Cost: RWA-Member – $30.00 Non RWA-Member – $80.00
*Please note, there is a $0.30 Trybooking fee at checkout.
Starts: 3rd April 2017
Ends: 30th April 2017