Set phasers to stun -- with knowledge!

Today I travels to the wilds of Houston, but not just so I can quench my insatiable thirst for oil.  I arrive today so I can be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the start of the all-day seminar I am teaching tomorrow for the Houston Writers Guild.  People have paid good money so I can tell them how to write a novel, but I’m going to pass it all along to you, the loyal reader, for free.  That’s how much I love you.   Admittedly, some of these points require a little elaboration, so I may put the drive to good use by trying to figure out what I was thinking when I wrote out this agenda.  Rest assured, however, that anyone who attends this seminar will depart with novelistic superpowers.

The agenda  of power!

Part 1: Unlocking your inner power animal, and then locking it back up again

• The single most important thing you will ever hear about crafting fiction.
• What gives fiction energy?
• Debunking the myths; or, self-aggrandizing garbage you may have heard from other writers, that I will now tell you to ignore.
• The magic that is the three-act structure.
• The core of the story.  How to begin.
• The secret they don’t want you to know – despite my having no idea who “they” are or why “they” would try to keep this from you.

Part 1 (part 2): My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

• Should you outline or not?  And how I could possibly know the answer to that question.
• No, you can’t tell me your idea for my next book.  And why.
• Using research in your fiction.
• Samuel Johnson on Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”  Seriously.
• Voice, tone, style: the things no one ever talks about, even though they should.
• Writing genre fiction.
   

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