Margie Lawson
Make your writing soar
Learn how to write body language and dialogue cues from a kinesics specialist. Writers will learn how to write fresh:
Each teaching point will be illustrated with examples from bestselling authors, their excerpts dissected and analyzed.
Bonus Lecture from a Police Detective: Body Language in the Police and Criminal Worlds — Interrogations, Spotting Criminals, Hostage Negotiations
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!
I was thrilled by how much I learned in the Body Language & Dialogue Cues class, taught by instructor Suzanne Purvis. I had been searching for a way to study and analyze best-selling-author fiction techniques, to incorporate them in my own writing. How exciting to discover Margie Lawson could teach them to me! As an instructor, Suzanne was positive and encouraging, offering quick and valuable feedback to all assigned lessons. She also offered tips on how to take your newly stellar prose and make it even better. I thoroughly recommend this course. It’s as if someone has handed me the key to a locked room filled with the writing tools I had been seeking!
"Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues" is my second class at the Margie Lawson Academy. I have previously taken the course on "Deep Editing and Rhetorical Devices". My teacher was Suzanne Purvis, for both classes and she is an amazing instructor and mentor.
My biggest takeaway from this course was that turning a dialogue tag into a dialogue cue can amplifying your message and really make dialogue jump off the page.
I no longer just write WHAT my characters are saying, I also try to add HOW they're saying it. This has helped my dialogue a lot and given me lots of new ways to tell the reader about my characters.
Suzanne was wonderful with her prompt and helpful feedback. Her line edits were always right on target and helped me better apply Margie's lessons to my own work. I really learned a lot from Suzanne's critiques of my work and that of the other class members.
I will definitely take another of Margie's classes with Suzanne Purvis in the future.
Taking the Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues class was one of the best decisions I've made for my writing. The information and feedback given was priceless. It is such a huge boost to writing creatively. I really enjoyed the discussions with the other writers and the teacher, Suzanne Purvis. She led with kindness and honesty. The honesty is needed in order to grow, but there was plenty of praise too. I learned so much, but the beauty of it is that they are all lessons you can refer to again and again.
This was my first class at the Margie Lawson Academy (far from my last!). My teacher was Becky Rawnsley, and she was amazing.
The class focuses on writing better gestures, facial expressions, and what Margie calls dialogue cues, which replace the basic "he said' or "she said" or even worse "he said angrily."
You focus on things like how to write a better smile. It wasn't something I'd though about much before taking this class, and it has completely changed the way I write and the way I think about writing.
One big difference for me between this class and other writing classes I've taken, is that you actually work with your manuscript on a sentence level. There are so many classes that give you an overview of plotting or process or character arcs, but very few (I can't think of any) that actually help you write a better smile, a better shrug, a better tone in someone's voice. And I honestly believe those things make the difference between an okay book and a great one.
Becky is a fabulous instructor. There is constant, helpful feedback in this class. I honestly can't recommend it enough. I've taken other online classes and in person writing classes that cost hundreds of dollars more than this one, and haven't found anything else that has affected the way I write on such a profound level.
There's a reason that The Big 3 here at LWA have the reputation that they do, and it's because the information is so valuable. Writing Body Language and Dialogue cues has completely changed the way that I write. The information contained in this class is so powerful that I can honestly say that I'm a much better writer than I was before taking the class.
I also really love the hands-on approach. The lectures are succinct and full of so many great examples, it's easy to see what Margie is getting at. And the opportunity to post assignments and get direct feedback from the instructor is amazing. I have had the privilege of taking this class twice with Becky Rawnsley, and she is so amazing. Her feedback is fantastic and she explains why something works (or doesn't) and then you get to try again. Honestly, I can't recommned these classes enough.
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