September 12 – Plot It Out: Brainstorming, Plotting, and Getting Unstuck

Presented by Candi Scott

We all have that one story idea we can’t seem to flesh out — or in my case, more notebooks full of ideas than I’ll ever live long enough to write.

Over the years I’ve built a whole system for cracking those ideas open: phone calls with writing friends (we call them plot calls), plot luck lunches with my local chapter, HODFW, and a stack of go-to techniques I return to again and again. Plotting and brainstorming are hands-down my favorite part of the creative process, and in this workshop I’m handing over everything that works.

We’ll cover:

• Starting from nothing — mind maps, free writing, and list making to get the ideas flowing
• Starting from stuck — the What If? method, plus a set of basic questions that dig into your character’s motives and your story’s central conflict
• Starting from the end — reverse outlining, working backward from a scene to make the rest of the story fit

Plotter or pantser, you’re welcome here. There’s no one right way to build a book, and you’ll leave with more than one way to try.

Bring your stickiest plot problem. We’ll do rapid-fire plotting live in the workshop — and there’s a good chance you’ll walk out with it solved.

AUTHOR BIO:

Candi Scott is the super spicy pen name for award winning author Leslie Scott. She’s been writing and plotting for as long as she remembers. With over a dozen books under her belt and more than a dozen coming down the pipeline, she takes her plotting very, very seriously. Most of the time.