How This Workshop Will Help You
How you do start your novel or memoir? Do you start at the beginning? Maybe with a prologue? Could the story start at the end, then flashback to the beginning? How do you decide?
It helps to understand what opening sentences and paragraphs are supposed to accomplish. We’ll also look at wonderful and not-so-wonderful examples from literature. You’ll leave this FREE SEMINAR with lots of possibilities to ponder for your own Great Opening Chapters.
What You’ll Learn
- Why first sentences and first chapters are so important
- Why the actual beginning of a story may not be the best place to start
- Why Chapter Three might turn out to be Chapter One
- How to avoid those boring “set up” chapters
- When to begin with a prologue
What You’ll Do in the Workshop
- Examine great first lines to see why they work
- Compare types of opening chapters
- You’ll practice improving dull first lines
- You’ll do brief writing prompts, so have a computer or paper and pen handy
Who Should Attend
- New writers are always welcome—we all work at our own level
- Writers with work-in-progress that might need a better opening
- Experienced writers open to a new twist on what they already know.
BONUS OFFER
- There will be too many participants to share our writing during the seminar, but you can email your prompts to Myra for personal feedback
About Myra
Myra Levine is on a mission: To make sure that nobody dies with their story still inside them. She shows writers how to turn their lives, experiences, and areas of expertise into memoirs and novels, and teaches writing techniques not taught in school. And her classes are FUN.
Writing isn’t about knowing where to put the commas; it’s about capturing a moment and bringing it to life. As a writing coach, Myra helps her clients master the tools of fiction, like point of view, dialog, setting, and character development to bring their writing to a higher level. The germ of an idea can become a great story, or a dozen great stories, or a terrific novel—and a coach can cut years of frustration from the job of writing a great book.
Before turning to fiction and publishing two novels, Myra spent decades writing television and radio scripts, instructional videos, and corporate marketing programs. She won many local and regional advertising awards before leaving corporate life to become a wife and mother of two adopted kids. Stay-at-home-motherhood rekindled her ambition to write fiction.
As Myra puts it, “If you turn the truth into fiction, you’re less likely to get sued.”
Her live seminars attract writers from all over the world.
Written under the name M.E. Levine, Myra’s novels, Revenge of the Soccer Moms and The Dead Mothers’ Club, are available on Amazon.com (print & e-book) and Audible.com (audiobook).