Write Great Fiction: Plot and Structure

Discover how to set up your novel the right way: by looking at plot and structure as extensions of character, motivation, and conflict. By beginning with character – using the LOCK system from James Scott Bell’s Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure – you’ll learn how to formulate plots which keep both the physical and emotional stakes high… and which keep your reader glued to the page.

Course level: Beginner / Intermediate

Required Book:  Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell

Workshop Length: 8 weeks

Tuition: $349.00 ($314.10 for VIP)

Start Date: View Write Great Fiction: Plot and Structure Course Schedule

Course Structure
The workshop will consist of eight one-week sessions. Each session will include online lectures (text based), associated textbook reading assignments, and creative writing and practice exercises submitted to the instructor for private review. In addition, the course provides a number of interactive venues through which you might further the conversation with your peers and advance the cause of the course as community.

You will learn:

  • How a strong Lead character reveals the plot and structure of your novel.
  • How to spark ideas for plot and character that will keep your book moving forward
  • How to shape scene, chapter, and story as a whole.
  • How to pace your novel by balancing showing and telling, action and reaction, setup and deepening.

Who should take this course:

  • Graduates of other beginner level workshops
  • Writers who want to learn how to utilize the elements of characters, scenes, and chapters to advance their story
  • Fiction writers of any genre

Register for Write Great Fiction: Plot and Structure Writing Workshop

Course Outline

Session One: What Is A Plot?

  • The relationship of plot and character
  • Letting complex character lead
  • Rewriting a classic from character up

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals): Exercise on creating and following complex character, culminating in 300-word opening paragraph based on this character.

Writing Assignment (Advanced): Breakdown of existing character/work based on LOCK system; 1-2 paragraph analysis of strengths/weaknesses of your character using LOCK system; potential 500-word opening paragraph with focus trained on lessons from LOCK.

Session Two: How to Generate Plot Ideas

  • Opening to plot ideas from sources around us
  • Learning to avoid problematic plot ideas
  • Avoiding rigidity and encouraging flexibility

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals): Generate plot ideas choosing one of the suggested everyday sources; let the suggested plot spark potential opening paragraph of 250-300 words.

Writing Assignment (Advanced): Take an existing scene and re-envision it using one of the prompts, seeing how openness to new plot ideas sparks unexpected directions.

Session Three: Structure

  • The relationship of character to structure
  • The shape of a story

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals and Advanced): Choose one of the outlining systems in Chapter 10—Headlights, Narrative, Morrell, or Borg, whichever is most thorough and effective to you—and construct an outline for your novel.

Session Four: Beginning Strong

  • Constructing tone and the “fictive dream”
  • Understanding story vs. discourse
  • Showing and telling

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals and Advanced): Craft your first 1,000-1,250 words of the novel in such a way that it sets up the world, tone, character, and hints at later conflict.

Session Five: Scenes

  • Structure of a scene
  • The major and minor “chords” of fiction
  • Using hook, intensity, and prompt

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals and Advanced): Write three short scenes of 500-600 words each—1,500-1,800 words total—from your first act. Consider what needs to be done in each scene individually, in terms of the elements discussed in this chapter. Then consider how the three scenes together form a cohesive chapter.

Session Six: Middles

  • Applying “adhesive” to your character
  • Considering internal conflict/motivation
  • Pacing with ARM (action, reaction, more action)

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals and Advanced): Write three short scenes of 500-600 words each—1,500 to 1,800 words total—from your second act. Consider how to stretch tension in these scenes using the suggestions from the chapter … and how the tension of the scene is both immediate/external and internal, forming the character’s adhesive.

Session Seven: Endings

  • Applying “adhesive” to your character
  • Considering internal conflict/motivation
  • Pacing with ARM (action, reaction, more action)

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals): Try writing your climactic scenes … those leading up to and including your climax. Aim for 1,500 to 1,800 words total, making sure these don’t just fulfill the problems of Objective and Confrontation but that they are emotionally resonant, resolving the internal conflict as well as the external.

Writing Assignment (Advanced): Try writing your climactic scenes … beginning with your climactic scene and then writing past it to your Last-Page Resonance, aiming for 1,500 to 1,800 words. Does the ending not only make sense but seem to be the inevitable conclusion, the ending everything that comes before has worked toward? Make sure the ending and last page seem both an amazing surprise and at the same time the perfect, logical, and only real conclusion.

Session Eight: Revising Your Plot

  • Examining macro- structure
  • Tips for seeing through fresh eyes
  • The necessity of “killing your darlings”

Writing Assignment (Fundamentals and Advanced): Take a passage or scene from the heart of your novel—roughly 1,000 words—and practice your revision skills, looking at everything the micro level (language, readability, pacing) to the macro (scene structure and goal; clarity of plot; effectiveness of dialogue). Make the changes you need and compare the two versions to see if the revision makes the scene sharper … and to see what might still be done to it.