Category: Archives

Breaking Things Down Into Threes

With  Beth Daniels aka Beth Henderson, J.B. Dane

About the Class:
Plots require organization – even those written by Pantsers. Why? Because all storytelling requires a flow, a smooth transition from one scene to the next. Getting it doesn’t require an outline though. All it requires is a system. A system of breaking everything down into thirds.

Three is a magic number. It’s used in art, music, interior design, and in literature. After all, doesn’t every story have a Beginning, a Middle, and an End? Three things.

But we need to go further. Need to section the various elements of our storylines into smaller and smaller divisions of three. Many have already have done this in writing essays at school, or in a public speaking class. Opening either a essay or a speech by telling the audience

1. here’s what has occurred before and what we need to change, 
2.  here is how we can change it or why we should change it, and
3.  the problem is this because of this and that and we need to do this to correct it.

Storylines in fiction do exactly the same thing, they simply use characterization, action and reaction to move along. Scenes can be broken down into threes; chapters can; POVs can. And in thinking by threes to create each tale, each element of a tale, story flow results.

Participants should have a work in progress, but it can be in any state of development – thinking about, early chapters, middle, or heading toward the conclusion. Thinking by threes works at any level, including editing. It can also help identify things that aren’t really needed in the book, the sort of things editors delete.

This class is for writers at any point in their writing career from unpublished to midlist.

About the Instructor:

Beth Daniels currently writes as Beth Henderson and J.B. Dane, though she answered to Lisa Dane and Beth Cruise in the past as well. She has worked with editors at Berkley, Zebra, Leisure, Harlequin/Silhouette, and Simon and Schuster’s Aladdin Paperbacks, done e-books for a now defunct company (not her fault, she says), and began her writing life with hardcover books slated for library use with a publisher that got out of the romance business (again, not her fault). More recently she’s had a number of articles about writing picked up by e-zines, saw a short story published in a mystery and suspense magazine that turned up its toes the next year (really, really not her fault), and has a story in the MOTHER GOOSE IS DEAD anthology slated for publication by Dragon Moon Press in 2011.

For over a dozen years Beth taught college level composition, both in the classroom and online, and a credit course on Novel Writing. Twenty-six of Beth’s manuscripts have appeared in print or e-book format, and in 12 different languages in over 20 countries. At the moment she is working on various manuscripts, some fiction, some non-fiction but related to writing.

She is a member of Romance Writers of America, and an active member and volunteer with the Kiss of Death Online romantic suspense chapter, and a fixture at SavvyAuthors.com.

Website: www.RomanceAndMystery.com 

Breaking Things Down into Threes with  Beth Daniels aka Beth Henderson, J.B. Dane
Date: July 11 – August 6, 2011 this is a four week class
Cost: $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-OCC members
Enrollment Information: http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassJuly11.html
Enrollment Deadline: July 9, 2011
If you have specific questions, email occrwaonlineclass@yahoo.com
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Upcoming classes:

August 15 – August 28, 2011

Writing from the Male Point of View to Create Stronger Heroes with Sascha Illyvich

September 12 – October 8, 2011

Show and Tell: An Interactive Workshop with Shannon Donnelly

Check out our full list of workshops.  http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html

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