Sometimes the beginning is the first thing you write. Sometimes it’s the last. How do you know if your beginning is doing its best work for you? 

for Fiction and Nonfiction

A beginning plants seeds. A beginning announces voice and tone and mood. A beginning establishes the writer’s authority to tell the story or to offer the opinion that is coming. The way you start your essay, your book, or your Substack newsletter will determine just how many readers (and agents! and editors!) read on. 

Join us to explore the best among beginnings and to discover the very best in you. 

In this webinar, we’ll take a good look at exquisite beginnings, as well as a few that … might have been improved. We’ll spend some time learning from Janet Malcolm’s famous essay “Forty-one False Starts.” We’ll respond to prompts and writerly cascades that will both set new stories into motion and help redirect or reshape beginnings that already exist.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• CONSIDER the power of false starts in your writing process
• DISCOVER the key to best beginnings
• WRITE some brand new beginnings in response to given prompts
• LEARN to revise old beginnings in ways that will make your work feel brand new

This webinar is ideal for new and intermediate writers …

• CONTEMPLATING the start of a new work in progress
• UNDERTAKING their final revisions of a work in progress
• Who WISH to gain the attention of editors and agents

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Beth Kephart is the award-winning writer of three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher of memoir, and a paper artist. She is the author, most recently, of Wife|Daughter|Self: A Memoir in Essays, My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera, and Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story, as well as a series of craft books. Find her art and her musings on language and life at her Substack, The Hush and the Howl.

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.

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