Margie Lawson
Make your writing soar
Want to add a psychological punch to your writing and editing?
Want to learn how to capture the full range of body language on the page?
Want to turn your work into a page-turner by powering up emotion and hooking the reader viscerally?
Look forward to learning:
Margie Lawson left a career in psychology to focus on her true passion—helping writers make their stories, characters, and words strong. Tired of the same old writing rules and tools? Try something new.
Using a psychologically based, deep-editing approach, Margie teaches writers how to bring emotion to the page. Emotion equals power. And power not only grabs readers, it holds onto them until the end. Many Margie grads have gone on to win awards, find agents, sign with publishers, and hit bestseller lists.
As an international presenter, Margie has taught over 150 full day master classes in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and France, as well as multi-day intensives on cruise ships in the Caribbean. Pre-COVID, she taught 5-day Immersion Master Classes across the U.S. and Canada and in seven cities in Australia too.
COVID Update: Immersion Master Classes are now virtual, taught through Zoom. Virtual Immersion classes are limited to six writers. They're two days long with two big topics--and as always, writers get one on one deep editing with Margie.
She also founded Lawson Writer's Academy, where you’ll find over 30 instructors teaching online courses through her website. To learn more, sign up for Margie’s newsletter.
Suzanne Purvis is a transplanted Canadian living in the Deep South, where she traded “eh” for “y’all.” An author of long, short, and flash fiction for both children and adults, she has won several awards including those sponsored by the University of Toronto, RWA, Bethlehem Writer’s Roundtable, and Women Who Write. You can find her work in print anthologies, magazines, ezines, and ebooks.
Visit her at www.suzannepurvis.com , www.suzannepurvis.blogspot.com, Facebook, Amazon Author’s Central.
Becky Rawnsley is a physical therapist from the UK. She started writing as a hobby some twenty years ago, but realized if she was ever going to get off the slush-pile and onto the shelves, she needed help. Hunting for answers, she stumbled across Margie’s website and struck writing-gold.
Becky is now a multi-Margie, multi-LWA and Immersion grad, and has discovered a passion for deepening her understanding of writing craft. Her work now regularly finals in contests. She is keen to share the magic of Margie’s Big Three courses to help fellow writers bring their work to the next level—and beyond!
This course made it much easier for me to figure out where a scene needs to be revised as well as to actually revise it. It helps you break a scene down into components (internalization, conflict, action, etc), look at how those components do (or don't) work together on the page, and get them to support each other effectively. It also helps you better write each component.
Since finishing the course I've revised two scenes on one project and written two scenes on another. Previously, it was difficult to narrow down what should go in each next sentence. I'd think of multiple possibilities and then go back and forth between them. Now I can look at the page, go "oh, this next bit needs action with a little bit of description followed by internals, and maybe I can turn some of the upcoming exposition into dialogue", write it, and move on.
I took the course with Becky Rawnsley after previously taking Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues with her. Becky gives thoughtful, thorough, fine-grained feedback, both on what students do well and on what we can improve on. Becky also helped make sure we were getting the key takeaways from each of Margie's lectures.
Depending on how thoroughly you do the assignments and whether you do the optional assignments, the course can be a fair bit of work. I did some but not all optional assignments, and benefited from doing what I could. I recommend treating the class like a college course and budgeting time accordingly. The course lasted a month, with two to three lectures per week. As a rough estimate I'd say I spent 2-4 hours on each lecture and its assignments.
If you're considering taking both this course and Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues, I'd recommend taking this one first. It introduces topics covered more in-depth in the Writing Body Language course and places them in context.
The EDITS system is a little bit of magic. Wielding 5 brightly colored highlighters, I marked up my manuscript according to the system and--Voila!--why a scene works, or doesn't, is as plain as blue, green, yellow, pink, and orange. This was my third class with Suzanne and she never disappoints. I highly recommend this class. Expect incisive, kind feedback and quick responses to questions, along with Suzanne's good humor.
I just finished Margie's class, Empowering Characters Emotions taught by Suzanne Purvis and I feel empowered. The class is packed with brillant examples of writing. Suzanne's insight, experience and patience helped me see that my first draft can be transformed into powerful writing.
Thank you Margie and Suzanne!
Loved, Loved, LOVED this class! Not only were the lectures all Margie and magnificent but Suzanne Purvis has way of amping up your prose to another level. I'd take it again, just to get Suzanne's feedback. Amazing!
I used to analyze great writers’ writing, to see how they did it. But with limited success, because I lacked tools. It was like trying to fix a car with a screwdriver, and spotty knowledge of auto mechanics. Then I took Margie Lawson’s Empowering Characters’ Emotions class, taught by Suzanne Purvis, which transformed my writing world. Margie Lawson’s lessons gave me advanced knowledge of the craft, along with a comprehensive tool kit, which helped me boost my writing to a much higher level. Suzanne’s guidance and feedback on my assignments gave me even further insight and helped make my writing even stronger. If you’re serious about your writing career, take this class!
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