Plot Blueprint + Building Bolder Scenes= Save $100 buying both courses
Learn to plot your story AND design those important scenes to bring the story to life
Enroll Now-- Plot Blueprint AND Building Bolder Scenes with Alicia Rasley
Plot Your Story and Build Your Scenes= Save $100.
So ... interested? Here's how we'll get to work on building your story and then your scenes:
Plot Blueprint:
Four modules taking you through the entire process of imagining, structuring, and deepening your plot and characters:
1: Introduction—Get to know yourself as a writer, and get to know your story.
2. Plotting the Three Acts—Structure your story in three acts, from
- Act 1: Setting up the characters and conflicts
- Act 2: Increasing the action and building to the crisis
- Act 3: Exploding the conflict in a dramatic climax and then resolving the story.
3. Designing the Nine Turning Points- Craft three major plot points in each act, to create a powerful progress from set up to conclusion.
4. Develop the Characters—Deepen and individualize your story by plotting the journey, goal, and strengths of the main characters.
Then we’ll have several ways to plot all of this together, the three acts, the nine turning points, and the three character elements.
Along the way, we’ll have exercises and assignments so you can immediately apply each aspect to your own story. You will be able to fill out concise workbooks for each module, so that you’ll have a written record of your insights and planning to consult as you write the story.
The Plot Blueprint classroom will also provide you with a library of great resources: Articles and books I’ve written about plotting, character-building checklists, sample plot outlines, lists of helpful links, blog posts about writing and editing… I’ve been writing about writing for years, and I have a lot of information to share!
You get permanent access, by the way. In fact, if you decide you want to write a sequel to this story, you’ll be able to work through those four modules for the new plot too! (I bet it will be a breeze the second time with all your new skills and insights.)
Building Bolder Scenes
Once you've got everything plotted, you'll probably want to dive right in and start writing some of those great scenes you planned! That's great... but before, during, and after drafting a scene, you could intensify the drama with a great scene design.
- Character point of view (Who are we this time?)
- Setting (Where and when are we?)
- Theme and motif (What’s the point?)
- Dialogue (What are you talking about?)
- Emotion (without purple prose!)
- Comedy/Suspense (They’re sort of the same thing—same structure at least!)
- Character point of view (Who are we this time?)
- Setting (Where and when are we?)
- Theme and motif (What’s the point?)
- Dialogue (What are you talking about?)
- Emotion (without purple prose!)
- Comedy/Suspense (They’re sort of the same thing—same structure at least!)
And most important, maybe, will be EIGHT coaching calls! You can split that into four for each course, or concentrate them on one particular aspect-- it's up to you. You can talk directly with me at any point, especially when you want to discuss possibilities for a particular turning point or character element. I will give affirmative, useful suggestions to help guide you to just the right decisions that will make your plot more coherent and dramatic.
Writing is so often a solitary process. But here, you won’t be alone! There’s nothing so fun as letting your imagination grow and explore, especially with other writers. So what do you think? Are you ready to get started on taking that idea and building a story from it? And then designing and writing scenes that bring the story to life?
Come join us! We’ll have fun along the way, and in the end, you’ll have that plot you’ve been thinking about, and you will be able to write and revise a strong and dramatic story.
Building a story is like building a house: You need tools. And you'll find plenty of plotting tools here in the Plot Blueprint and Building Bolder Scenes courses.
When you enroll in these courses, you'll get access to all the modules and extras in the classroom.
But that's not all. You'll also be able to use a library of articles I've written about story building and design.
I'll also send you memos about how to solve some plotting issues that we encounter while plotting our stories.
You'll also be able to listen to the Plot Blueprint podcast, where we discuss in depth some interesting aspect of story, like "ambiguous endings" and "villains."
And to help you understand the examples, you'll be able to watch clips of Casablanca ("The Nine Turning Points") and The Godfather ("The Character Journey") with podcast commentary.
And finally, we can stay in constant contact! Don't forget about the EIGHT coaching calls, just you and me talking through any plot problems you encounter, or brainstorming plot events and character journeys, or even discussing the intricacies of making your voice more vivid in the scene.
This adds up to a comprehensive pair of courses that will take you all the way from idea to plot and then into the scenes-- adding depth and drama at every point!
Get started now!
Prefer to enroll in one or the other first?
Your Instructor
Hi, I'm Alicia Rasley, and when it comes to writing stories, I've about done it all. You know that Frank Sinatra song? "I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king." Well, I've been a writer, a winner, an editor, a sinner, a leader, a reader, a professor and a pupil.... Okay, I can't think of any better alliteration or rhymes. You get the idea. With varying degrees of success and luck, I've experienced a lot in writing and teaching writing.
And now I am sharing that hard-won wisdom with newer writers-- writers like you who might not want to spend twenty years in the school of hard knocks before writing a successful story. I attended that Hard Knocks University, and I have the blood-spattered diploma. You don't have to, because I'm going to help you learn in a few weeks the most important elements of crafting a good story: The structure that supports and develops the story-- the plot/character framework.
Of all those different roles, I think what taught me the most about the importance of story structure was the editing. I remember sitting at a desk surrounded by piles of manuscripts submitted for -- well, actually, the submissions were all electronic by then, so I was surrounded by piles of pixels. But these were pixels that added up to stories created with love and suffering by dedicated and determined writers. As I read the pages, I could tell how much pain and joy went into writing these stories. Those writers had put their minds and hearts into their stories, struggling over every scene and character. And I wanted to help each and every one of them make those stories better. But there I was, representing the publisher. My job, basically, was to reject-- to reject every submission except the very few who got it all right-- the plot, the characterization, the theme... the VOICE.
So often I had to write a rejection letter to authors, saying the plot was intriguing and the characters were interesting, but that the scenes were uninspired and the voice was generic.(I usually tried to make the tone nicer than that. :) The worst part was, when I told them the scenes and voice weren't good enough, I couldn't take the time to tell them how to add energy and individuality. My job, sadly, was mostly to swiftly read a plot synopsis and first three chapters, and then write a kind note saying, "Sorry, this isn't the sort of story we're looking for." I might even add, meaning to be helpful, "You might consider working with an editor or critique group to help with your sentences and scenes."
I know... that wasn't much help. Editors will edit and critique groups will critique... but there's a long step between "this is boring" to "this is how to make it interesting." And I know many writers don't want their stories FIXED by someone else. They want to learn how to write and revise their story so that it matches their vision and sounds like their voice.
Now I'm a pretty experienced editor and critiquer. I have studied and taught prose and poetry and fiction and drama, and I bring those analytical skills to editing manuscripts and teaching grammar and style. But what even I can't do is make the story sound like YOU. What I can do is go through a manuscript and teach a writer strategies for analyzing what's there and how to get from there to what it should be-- how it should SOUND to be in your voice.
Wouldn't you know it... once I could add "bestseller" and "award-winner" to my name, other writers wanted to discuss plotting with me and to ask me questions. So I started a blog with my managing editor Theresa Stevens (nothing ever dies on the internet-- it's still there, long after we've both gone back to teaching and writing: www.edittorrent.blogspot.com) where we'd explore major writing questions ("how do I keep the middle of the story from sagging?") to minor editing issues (you should read our long-running rant stream about dangling participles!).
During this time, I was writing about writing for magazines and book publishers, and I gathered many of the articles on my Story Journey website. (Okay, it took awhile, as I had to figure out WordPress first. Okay, I still haven't figured out WordPress. But I did archive a lot of articles there! www.aliciarasley.com.) I started a new blog too, focused more on plotting than editing-- the Plot Blueprint blog- www.plotblueprint.com.
Enough bragging. Point is, you don't have to do what I did. You don't have to spent two decades writing and struggling and being rejected and studying and experimenting and learning from failure and success and spending big money on writing books and writing conferences. I've already done that. And I have gathered all my knowledge about scenes and prose and voice and can help you apply that to your very own scenes. And with the magic of the internet, I can sit here in placid Indiana, and you can be wherever more interesting place you are, and we can work through your story together.
It will be fun, and it will be fulfilling. I love helping other people with their stories (so much easier than writing my own ), and I'd love to explore with you. What do you say? Would you like the benefit of my years of toil, blood, sweat, rejection, rejecting, success, failure, thinking, learning, teaching? Would you like to work with a "a writer, a winner, an editor, a sinner, a leader, a reader, a professor and a pupil"? Well, you're in the right place. Let's get going!
Courses Included with Purchase
Original Price: $994
Frequently Asked Questions
Get started now!
Prefer to enroll in one or the other first?