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Loosely based on Blake Snyder’s famous screenwriting guide Save the Cat, novelist Kim Wright's 3-hour workshop will help you improve the plotting and pacing of your novel or memoir. Focusing on such pivotal scenes as the catalyst, the midpoint and the finale, Wright will explain how eight key scenes (or “story beats”) support the entire structure of a book. Get them right and the rest will follow. Get them wrong and no matter how beautiful your line-by-line writing may be, your book will lack unity and dynamism.

And if you’re more of a pantser than a plotter, not to worry (Kim is too). Story beats only set the outline of the plot and don’t hem in your creativity. They may serve as a road map but your imagination is still driving the car.

If you have a work in progress, bring it, and have your opening scene handy for analysis. If you’re still just thinking about your next work, be prepared to brainstorm potential story beats around your central idea. Either way, the class is designed to be practical, not abstract, and the goal is to apply the story beats model to your own work in progress.

Kim Wright turned to fiction ten years ago after a career in journalism. Since then she has published four novels:  LOVE IN MID AIR (Grand Central), THE UNEXPECTED WALTZ, THE CANTERBURY SISTERS, and LAST RIDE TO GRACELAND (all Gallery). LAST RIDE TO GRACELAND was the 2018 winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. Kim teaches at Charlotte Lit and offers developmental editing through her Story Doctor service (kimwright.org).