Description
Scene and Sequel--Plotting Super Power
- Would you like your next book to be optioned for film or TV?
- Does your plot pack a powerful emotional punch?
- Want the secret to eliminating sagging middles?
- Is your plot dilly-dallying on an escalator? Or strapped to a thrilling roller coaster?
PLEASE NOTE: This is an in-depth, Intermediate to Advanced level class.
Never write a dull scene again! Scene & Sequel is like a plotting machine--it shifts reader emotions into high gear and keeps your fans turning the pages. Professor Dwight Swain spent decades figuring out which elements made certain books and movies into blockbusters. He and his student and fellow professor, Jack Bickham, wrote more than a hundred successful novels—several were made into blockbuster films. They guided hundreds of other writers to bestselling fame: Louis L'amour, Tony Hillerman, Ken Follett, Jim Butcher, to name only a few.
Scene & Sequel is a SUPER powerful tool! But it can be challenging to grasp—and even tougher to put into action. Good news! Kathleen developed an EASY TO UNDERSTAND method. She distilled the process, and in this hands-on workshop she gives you cheat sheets and examples. She’ll walk you through how to apply the power of Scene and Sequel to your current manuscript.
Scene & Sequel WORKS! Kathleen uses it in her award-winning bestselling novels. To date she has had more than eight producers, screenwriters, and directors vying for options on her latest YA series, A School for Unusual Girls. The first option she agreed to was with a Paramount producer, Ian Bryce, producer of Spiderman, Transformers, Saving Private Ryan, and other notable films.
Reviews:
Summary:
Details:
I give this course two stars for the content. Dwight Swain and Jack Bickham both cover scene and sequel in their writing books. However, their use of terminology always seemed hard to follow, thus making the principles too distant to apply to my writing. This course does a pretty good job of converting dated terminology into something more recognizable and applicable to modern writing. Action and reaction make more sense to me than scene and sequel. But the course drills down deeper beneath the surface of action and reaction. Two stars for that. Unfortunately, the written lectures have never been proofread. Otherwise, this course would not be sold in its current chaotic and, sometimes, incoherent state. The lectures need to be seriously edited. There are numerous grammatical mistakes and sometimes in back-to-back sentences. There are even incomplete sentences! The formatting is atrocious. Also, the graphics are too distracting. It reads more like a graphic novel than a lecture. Margie is an editor and clearly has never reviewed these lectures. Otherwise, she would have cleaned it up. I complained to her about this but she never responded (thanks, by the way). Finally, as you progress through the course, the author uses every lecture to bombard you with advertisements for her novels. It would have seemed more appropriate to do something like this at the beginning or end of the course. Perhaps offering a link to her website advertising her books would have come across as less intrusive. The quality of writing in a writing course is held to the highest standard. If you can get past horrible formatting, numerous grammatical mistakes, over-the-top and cartoonish graphics, and novel advertisements, you probably will get something out of the course material.
I've read many articles and taken classes on scene and sequel and it just never really clicked with me. I mean, I understood the concept, but couldn't apply it to my writing without making it seem clunky and forced. But this lecture packet explained it in a way that clicked with my brain. I had the "a ha!" moment which made it all make sense.
