What’s in Your (Story) World?
Create Powerful Storyworld!
How do you engage your reader into a story, capture their imagination from the first page, and immerse them in a fictional world? It’s more than setting, fashion and time period. Creating StoryWorld is a technique used by classic authors like CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, even Jane Austin, an element of storytelling that is often overlooked, but which can take a mediocre novel to award-winning.
This 3 part Video/Audio series goes from the basics, to advanced Storyworld creation by teaching you everything from the elements of Storyworld, to how to put it through eyes of your POV character, how to write static and active description and how to utilize your Storyworld for powerful emotional impact.
Lesson 1
Topics include:
- Utilizing the 5 W’s to anchor your reader onto the page.
- Creating emotions using the 5 senses
- Finding the right dialogue and dialect
- Drawing from the metaphorical pool
- Using the material world – architecture, fashion, transportation – all in the right dosage to create details that delight
- Tricks to keeping the reader captured until the end
Lesson 2
Good description is sensory, specific, active, figurative and contains a sense of music or rhythm that acts as the musical score of the story.
Description brings us into the world and helps us understand the story. More than that, it helps us understand the story through the eyes of the POV character. The key to strong description isn’t the words…it’s the words plus the perspective.
There are two different kinds of description: Static and Active. In this lesson we’re going to cover Static Description.
Topics include:
- Point of View and how it influences Storyworld
- Static description
- A technique on how to write the 5 senses
Lesson 3
Advanced Storyworld creation is a combination of finding the right storyworld to fit your scene, then putting it through the eyes of your character and setting up a framework of emotion for your reader. This is achieved in the very specific descriptions you use. In this lesson, we’ll be examining ACTIVE description as a way to build the storyworld and emotional layers of your character.
Topics include:
- Examples of Active Description
- Drawing from the metaphorical pool
- A technique for wordsmithing your description into your Storyworld
All videos/audio are downloadable, with PDF Transcripts
Lesson 1: Approximately 23 minutes
Lesson 2: Approximately 28 minutes
Lesson 3: Approximately 14 minutes
Course Curriculum
Your Instructor
Hi. I'm Susan May Warren. I started writing while I lived in Siberia (yes, you heard that right--cold, snowy, Siberia). Alone. No one to help me, overwhelmed and not a little discouraged. Twenty years later, I've published over 80 books in five different genres, have landed on numerous bestseller lists (including USA Today bestselling), won the RITA, CHRISTY and CAROL awards (and others) and started a school for novelists.
I've learned a few things along the way (beyond techniques on how to stay warm in the tundra!) Most importantly I learned that if I wanted to be published, I had to figure out how to write a book, how to edit it, how to step back from my stories, look at them with a critical eye, figure out what a good manuscript looks like, and then use my unique voice to make that happen.
First, write a good book. Then, learn how to sell it.
This is the foundation of NovelAcademy. Learning. Editing. Growing...Getting published and Staying published.