Increase Your Story’s Vitality: What Every Editor Wants
Saturday, September 20th, 1:30-4:30
Great editors at publishing houses know their readers. They know the qualities a book must have to sell well, and when your story delivers those qualities from start to finish, an editor will fight to get it for their line.
Bitch Factor, the first book in my Dixie Flannigan suspense series, created enough stir in New York that my agent called me and said, “There’s a tiny auction going on, Chris. Several editors want your book.” Silly me, I didn’t know what a big deal that was.
Years later, I discovered the quality those editors saw, which I had created without realizing the importance: Emotional Impact. That doesn’t mean “melodrama” or “horror” or “tragedy” or “sappy first love” or “forbidden love” or “laugh out loud humor” or any one thing we might label as emotional. It means an emotional connection with the reader. A reader cannot pick up your book without wanting to finish it and cannot close it without wanting more.
At the September 20 Workshop You’ll Learn How to Deliver Emotional Impact
Character and Place, when tightly woven, can help you create the emotional ride that readers – and thus, editors – want from fiction or narrative nonfiction. Why? Because the weaving of these two key elements can reflect a character’s fears, desires, and problems more effectively than merely trying to describe feelings. It tightens the reader-character bond.
If you ask a reader, “what do you want to feel when reading a good story,” you’ll likely get a blank stare. Most readers rarely think about it. But you can bet there’s a subconscious tug going on if your story delivers the emotional goods. That reader is likely to buy your next book. A book that ties up all the plot threads but fails to deliver an emotional ride will rarely provide the satisfying completion that makes a reader hunger for your next story.
Writers often prefer not to think about reader satisfaction. They’d rather “just write” (right-brain). Or they’d rather work and rework the plot details (left-brain). But you can bet editors are thinking about reader satisfaction from the moment they open that first page.
Here are some of the topics we’ll discuss for creating a tightly woven Character-Place bond:
Tone, style, language, pacing
Opening incident and setting the stage for what’s to come
Belief in the narrator
Sensory details, mechanics, minutia
Buildup, Middle lag, Ending punch, POV wrap-up
Can So Many Bestsellers All Be Wrong?
There are many ways to write a good story. I won’t try to tell you “this is it, this is the only way to get noticed, published, etc.” But we’ll look at several bestselling authors who use Character-Place technique again and again to deliver the Emotional Impact editors and readers want.
Chris Rogers, Fiction Author, Nonfiction Ghostwriter
SEATING IS LIMITED – SIGN UP NOW!
Writing Workshop: How to Increase Your Story’s Vitality through Character and Place with Chris Rogers
DATE: Saturday, September 20th, 1:30-4:30
LOCATION : Writespace, north of downtown
ADDRESS : 2000A Edwards #212, Houston, 77007
PRICE: $30 for workshop
Pre-launch Party after workshop at 5 FREE for both workshop attendees and public
In this workshop, you will engage in brainstorming exercises that breathe life into a story by strengthening the passionate bonds between your characters and the objects, goals, and people that motivate their actions. Any storyteller, no matter how experienced or in what genre, will take away gems of creative stimulus from this workshop.
Afterward, celebrate the pre-launch of Chris’ new novel Emissary .
Reading and Pre-Launch with Chris Rogers
Location is the same, Writespace, time is at 5 pm.
Come celebrate the advent of award-winning Houston author Chris Rogers’ newest novel. During this pre-launch, Chris will read from her upcoming novel and share a bit about her experiences writing it. Come ready to ask questions about writing and publishing, because after her reading, Chris will offer a Q&A, and she loves to guide new writers. Come prepared to have fun! Light refreshments will be served.
