WEBINAR | The Art of the Scene: Craft Riveting Narrative Moments in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
WEBINAR | The Art of the Scene: Craft Riveting Narrative Moments in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
July 23 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT
Learn to make scenes sizzle with specifics, stakes, characterization, and drama—while staying grounded in your story’s truth.
This webinar is part of the season pass. Interested in joining the subscription? Read more here.
for Creative Nonfiction and Fiction
Filmmaker Howard Hawks said, “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes.” Substitute “movie” with “short story,” “novel,” “essay,” or “memoir,” and we have a prescription for how to inject your story with dramatic, cinematic flair. In this seminar, we’ll look at great examples of scenes—or “live moments”—where things are happening, characters are interacting, stuff is being said, action is going on, and big things change, with clear dramatic beats and an arc.
Whether you’re working on novels and short stories or narrative nonfiction and memoir, we will look at tools that fiction writers use to create gripping moments on the page. Scenes include dramatic beats and an arc, and both fiction and creative nonfiction writers need the same tools screenwriters use to create gripping moments on the page.
Learning from master writers like Jaquira Diaz, Michelle Kuo, Stephen King, Steve Brusatte, Bill Bryson, Cheryl Strayed, and others, you’ll discover powerful tools to craft your own scenes. You’ll learn to gradually build tension; create structures for your scenes with a beginning, middle, and end; build in clear conflict, stakes, and interiority; and make the world of the scene real via description.
Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.
We’ll be writing! Bring your writing tools and be ready for a fresh, exciting approach to new and existing work.
In this webinar, you will:
- EXPLORE the key elements of scene writing via examples from masters in the craft
- DISCOVER how to tap into your perhaps-unrealized scene writing skills
- ENHANCE your narratives with new scene-writing tools
This webinar is ideal for writers at any level who:
- Worry their scenes lack drama
- Want to harness the craft of fiction for their personal narratives—and find powerful truth in their fiction
- Struggle with punchy dialogue and concrete setting
- Aren’t sure how to write a scene they can’t fully remember
- Want to understand how a scene contains dramatic beats and an arc
Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER
ETHAN GILSDORF is a writer, teacher, performer, and the author of the Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wired, Salon, O the Oprah Magazine, Brevity, Electric Literature, Poetry, The Southern Review, among other publications, and named “Notable” by The Best American Essays. He teaches workshops in essay, creative nonfiction and memoir at GrubStreet in Boston, where he leads the Essay Incubator program, and at LitArts RI. He is also on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program at Lasell University.
Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com
FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.
