WRITE LIKE WATER: How to Find and Follow the Natural Path of Your Story

Dear Writers:

I’m really happy to be collaborating with the The Narrative Project and the wonderful writer/coach Cami Ostman for a conversation we are calling WRITE LIKE WATER: How to Find and Follow the Natural Path of Your Story, on January 14, 2020, at 6 p.m. Pacific time. This two-hour virtual class taught by Yours Truly will be offered FREE through The Narrative Project. The focus is your story’s structure: how to find it, and how to fix it.

Over the years, a lot of the requests I get for help with memoirs and novels pertain to structure. As we all know, establishing the architecture of a story can be tricky because the story’s structural design is both a writing tool and a container for the action line, but the structure should not upstage nor inhibit the unfolding action of the narrative, and neither should it be confused with the plot. One issue we all face is that despite everything we know about story and structure, every story is ultimately unique, so we have to somehow apply everything we know and simultaneously forget everything we know each time we conceive, refine, diagnose, and maximize a story’s structure. I have some techniques I use in my editing that authors and publishers have appreciated, so I’ll share those as a type of To Do list I hope you will find helpful.

If you want to spend a couple hours talking structure with Cami and me, here’s the link to register: https://zoom.us/…/regist…/u5Qqf-iqrjMjmiX38_c3VtGYp9KQrQcZQw.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Zoom meeting.

XO Laurel Leigh