Workshop Curriculum

Workshop Curriculum 9/19/2016

I’m going to divide these down into areas of study.

And the numbers are my suggestions on the order to take these workshops because many of them build on others.

FOUNDATION COURSES

1… Depth
2… Advanced Depth (Depth required)
3… Plotting with Depth (Depth required)
4… Teams (Depth suggested to help)
5… Advanced Character and Dialog
6… Point of View (Depth suggested)
7… Author Voice (Depth suggested strongly, as well as Advanced Depth)
8… Pacing
9… Cliffhanger

These nine workshops will jump you so far ahead in your writing skills, you won’t be able to see it, but your friends and readers will. And I know, interesting that Teams workshop is the 4th most important, but trust me, it is a foundation course and important.

Don’t worry about the Advanced Character title in the Dialog workshop. It was just a name that got stuck on it to help people understand it.

And yes, we have not yet done any workshop on Endings. We will, but not until 2017.

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CRAFT FOCUSED COURSES (Depth suggested for all of them except Ideas)

… Character Voice
… Adding Suspense
… Ideas
… Character Development
… Writing in Series (classic workshop)

No order on these. But don’t take them ahead of the three depth foundation workshops except for the Ideas workshop. If you are having problems getting past finding ideas for your work, that workshop can be taken at any point.

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BUSINESS FOCUSED COURSES

Don’t even think of starting into these workshops without first getting Lecture #1 Heinlein’s Rules. Or read my blog posts or get my book. Also, you might want to do Lecture #12… Stages of a Fiction Writer.

1… Sales
2… Business
3… Speed (Depth workshop suggested)
4… Productivity (classic workshop)
5… Making a Living (classic workshop)

The order above is my suggested order. After finishing these, you might want to do lectures. Almost all lectures are focused on one aspect or another of business, from pen names to investments to writer’s block and so on. This area we put most of the attention into the lectures.

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GENRE FOCUSED COURSES

… Mystery
… Thrillers
… Science Fiction (classic workshop)
… Short Stories
… Genre Structure (classic workshop)

The mystery workshop in this area can be used in most genres. Might want to take it even though you have no thoughts of being a mystery writer. Genre structure will help you figure out where to tag and list your books when putting them out for sale.

Feel free to write me with any questions on any of the workshops.