Planning & Plotting: Methods for Outlining
When: 25 Feb 2024 2:00 PM, PST
Where: Zoom
In this 1.5-hour interactive online workshop, FBCW ambassador Christina Myers will share Planning & Plotting: Methods for Outlining.
Have great ideas for a book but struggle to organize them? Get started with lots of energy but then lose steam after a few chapters? Planning can help. This session will introduce outlining methods, from the simple synopsis to a full scene-by-scene outline, with some exercises and takeaway information to continue on your own.
Participants will learn about the difference between “pantsing” and “plotting” and the many ways to approach planning a book that fall at either end, and between, this spectrum. The session will explore benefits to planning ahead, ideas for how to keep going, and will introduce ways to outline, including a closer look at the “Snowflake Method” as well as simple ways to incorporate more basic plotting tools.
This session is for writers thinking about writing a book-length project or already writing a work-in-progress but facing roadblocks; for anyone interested in learning about how and why to outline, or anyone who doesn’t currently use outlines but are curious about how outlining might help their work. The session may touch briefly on writing non-fiction proposals as a tool of outlining and planning, but most of the session is aimed at fiction projects (though many tools are cross-genre.)
Presenter bio: Christina Myers is a writer, editor, and former journalist. Her novel The List of Last Chances was longlisted for the Leacock Medal and was the fiction category winner in the 2023 Canadian Book Club Awards. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, online and in a dozen anthologies, and she was the editor of an award-winning anthology in 2020. Her next book, Halfway Home: Thoughts from Midlife, is coming May 2024 from House of Anansi. She is a member of Da’naxda’xw First Nation, grew up all over Canada, and lives in Surrey, BC.
Digital Doors Open at 1:55 PM, Event Starts at 2:00 PM
**This event will be recorded.
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