Sally Bosco

 

This is a list of my writing workshops. They can each be taught in a length of 1 to 4 hours. Longer classes will contain more material and include writing participation on the part of the students. They can be adjusted for age and skill levels. Workshops can also be delivered via skype.  If you are interested, please email me at sallybosco@mac.com.

Using the Emotional Wound to Bring Your Writing to the Next Level

To write stories that have emotional depth, writers must know their characters intimately—not only who they are in the present story, but what made them that way. Giving characters an emotional trauma from the past allows you to create a plot that is far worse for them than it would be for the average person. This workshop explores how to intertwine your character’s emotional wound with your story’s plot to create fiction that powerfully affects readers.

Powerpint:

Emotional Wound

Handouts:

Brainstorming the Emotional Wound

Integrating the emotional wound into your plot

Microtension

“Micro-tension is the moment-by-moment tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of suspense over what will happen, not in the story but in the next few seconds.” The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

Do you want to grab the reader on the first page and not let them go until the last word of your story? Adding microtension is the answer to that. It isn’t enough to create tension through plot and unexpected twists. In order to engage a reader, tension must reside in each line of a story.

Powerpoint:

Microtension

Suspense, Tension, Conflict, and Plot Twists

There is one situation, in which everyone loves to be caught off guard—when a story takes an unexpected turn.This class will cover how to hone in on a conflict, align your characters with your conflict, and use suspense, pacing and subplots to create a credible twist ending. This workshop will include writing exercises to help you with your work in progress.

Suspense Powerpoint:

SUSPENSE

Handouts:

Suspense Handouts

How to Write a Kick A** Story Title

This workshop discusses how to craft a title that will make your novel stand out in a slush pile and catch a reader’s or editor’s interest.

Powerpoint:

Kick A Story Title 

Reboot Your  Novel    

Do you have novels that are sitting around on your hard drive taking up space? You’d love to rework them, but you don’t know quite what to do? Take heart. You’re not alone. This workshop focuses on how to take an existing “shelf” novel, analyze it, and bring it into publishable quality.

Powerpoint:

Reboot Your Novel

Story Architecture

While structure is craft, architecture is art. Just as a building can be a plain box, a structurally sound story can still lack the elements that can elevate it to art. That’s what story architecture does—gives us the tools to craft a great story. In this class we will discuss the Six Core Competencies that are the tools for creating solid fiction.

Story Architecture Powerpoint

Story Architecture Slides Adobe Acrobat

How to Prepare for a Successful Book Launch

Promoting your book is now a whole new game that’s more about building relationships and making your book discoverable than it is about the hard sell. This workshop will cover how to find the most likely readers for your book and target those readers. It will cover how to write an effective press release, create a marketing plan, find and use trending topics to promote your book, and how to request reviews from book bloggers and reviewers. All activities are no or low-cost.

Sally Bosco Book Launch MS Word

Book Launch Powerpoint

Book review query letter MS Word

Sell sheet-Cevin MS Word

Press kit Cevin’s Deadly Sin MS Word

Lessons in Creativity I Learned from David Bowie

During a nearly fifty-year career in which he continued producing art, theater, and music, David Bowie always changed it up and always stayed relevant. Here are some of the techniques he used throughout his career to remain a creative force and trend-setter that will impact the world for generations to come.

Bowie Powerpoint

Fabulous Beginnings and Unforgettable Endings

What do we remember most about novels? The beginning and the ending, of course. This workshop reviews types of beginnings and endings, how they’ve been used to great effect in classic as well as contemporary literature, and how you can employ these techniques in your own writing.

Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Best Selling Novels

This workshop will review the book Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century Novel by James W. Hall. It tells about the surprising similarities that all blockbuster novels have in common. This workshop will go beyond that to discuss the similarities in best selling young adult, romance, mystery and suspense fiction.

Binge Writing: Write a Novel in Three Days

Inspired by some of the pulp fiction masters, this workshop presents an organized method for writing a novel in three days. It covers: coming up with a suitable story idea creating a workable outline, creating a “building block” system for your chapters, making the physical preparations, getting psyched, building creative pressure, making the emotional preparation, silencing your inner critic, then gaining the momentum to finish the project. I include the experiences I had with my own crazy-three-day-writing-experiments.

For School Visits: How You Can Get Your Story Published

This workshop is aimed at high school-aged students. I talk about my writing background and instruct students in concrete steps they can take to get their stories published with special emphasis on markets that publish teen writing. I use a media presentation with handouts for the students.

How to Write Flash Fiction

This workshop explores how to capture lightening in a bottle. It includes: definition, basic elements, three unique qualities of flash fiction, four basic kinds of short stories, and an exploration of micro-fiction. A guided exercise will allow participants to generate an original flash fiction piece during the workshop.

Editing in Layers

Editing has many more facets than line editing. By going from the big picture and working down to the details will result in a thoroughly edited and more publishable novel. “Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.” – W. Somerset Maugham

How to Write Twist Endings

M. Night Shyamalan and Alfred Hitchcock are the masters of it. Twilight Zone used it weekly to develop a cult following. A twist in the tale story is like an optical illusion. Readers are lead to perceive events based on assumptions that turn out to be wrong by the story’s end. An expectation is set up that the reality of the world is a certain way, but it is really something very different. This workshop demystifies and details and mechanics of twist endings.

Using Plot Formulas to Create a Non-formulaic Plot

This class explores the use of plotting formulas that follow the dramatic plot structure. Students can plug ideas into these formulas in order to come up with a workable plot with a narrative arc. In class we go over the Quickie Plot Outline, some of the most common plotting problems, thoughts about plotting and working with subplots. Included are:

• 12 Chapter Mystery Formula
• Robert McKee’s Story Formula
• Save the Cat Beat Sheet
• Heroes Two Journeys
• The Quickie Plot Outline
• Short Story Formula
• Romance Formula
• Lester Dent’s Pulp Fiction Formula
• Romance Formula

Short Story Formulas

This workshop provides formulas that will kick-start your short story production. Some say that great short stories are not written to a formula, yet legendary writers such as Philip K. Dick might disagree. Just as there are formulas for writing novels, there are also formulas for writing short stories. This workshop explores some of them, including: The Hero’s Journey, Save the Cat by Blake Edwards, O’Henry plot patterns, Nigel Watts’ Eight Point Story Arc and Robert McKee’s story structure.

sally kindergarten with books.ppt

sally kindergarten with books.pdf