Book in a Month: Novel Writing Tool Kit

Novel Writing Online Class with Kit Frazier

Kit Frazier

Self study, online course

starts Oct. 26 – Nov. 30, 2009

$149 WLT members / $209 nonmembers

Just in time for National Novel Writing Month! Whether you’re thinking about writing a novel or mired in the middle of your work in progress, this is the class for you. The intensive course of study reviews Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey’s three-act structure and Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation, and Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction, and breaks these concepts down into a manageable, 30-day writing regimen, with particular emphasis on those all-important first five pages and middle-of-the-story conflict.

The Book in a Month Tool Kit includes:

• PowerPoint Videos of Class Instruction
• Personal Goal Tracker Calendar
• Character Worksheets
• Character Goal, Motivation & Conflict Sheets
• Story Board Worksheets
• Time Tracker Worksheets

Instructor Kit Frazier will provide daily encouragement to students and host Friday online brainstorming chats. Students will also have the opportunity to share work in small online groups. Bonus! Students who complete their novel by November 30 will receive a discount on an entry in the 2010 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest.The Manuscript Contest has nine categories, and each category winner receives a complimentary consultation with an agent at the 2010 Writers’ League of Texas Agents Conference on June 26.

Writing Prompt News

The weekly prompt is taking a break until January 2009.  Have a safe and happy holiday season, and check back with us once you recover!

Writing Prompt #7

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

Write from the perspective of a character who has just found out that he or she has six months to live. What are your next thoughts, feelings, and actions?

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, December 2 and I’ll post my favorite with the next writing prompt!

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Thank you for all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Shannon Barrington below:

It did not turn out the way I thought it would.

Being single, in my late 30s and knowing that crazy statistic about lightening, I decided to try online dating. I thought for sure I’d find someone interesting. And, as a matter of a fact, I did.

We started sending emails back and forth and he seemed like such a great guy. He had a good job, was close to his family, no criminal record. All in all, a decent fella.

So, the emails led to texts which led to phone calls. He’d call and say all the things a lonely woman sitting at home wants to hear. He’d ooh and aah over the pictures I’d post and we’d spend hours talking about our interests. We really seemed to hit it off and I couldn’t wait to go to the next level.

An actual date.

So, the stage was set. He’d picked one of my favorite restaurants even though we’d never discussed it. Was it a sign that we were right for each other? I surely thought so. I began to plan the evening days before it happened. What would I wear, how should I do my hair, what perfume should I use? So many things to think of. I almost took a vacation day to plan.

It was finally time! We had agreed to meet at seven, at the bar. We’d seen enough photos of each other, talked enough and spent more hours online together than most married couples I knew. So, for me, I just knew he was the one.

I arrived at the bar a little early (yeah, I know I shouldn’t have, but I was so excited!). As I ordered my first drink, I nervously scanned the area. There were a few men at the bar by themselves, but they weren’t who I was looking for. As I ordered my second drink, I began to fret. And, by the time I’d finished my third, I was pissed.

He stood me up. How could that be? We were meant for each other. What about all the texts, emails, phone calls. How could he have done this? How could I have been so stupid? I was about to leave, dejected and embarrassed, when the bartender handed me a drink.

“I didn’t order that.”

“From the guy at the end.”

I glanced his way. Nice! I smiled and mouthed, thank you.

Coming over to me, he said, “Would you mind if I join you? My name’s Dave.”

So, like I said, it did not turn out the way I thought it would.

But then again, as Dave and I just celebrated our one year wedding anniversary, I can’t say I’m unhappy about it, either.

“Monday” Writing Prompt #6

Due to a low number of submissions, the prompt below will be open until Monday, November 17, at 10:00m a.m.

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

Start your story with, “It did not turn out the way I thought it would…”

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, November 10, and I’ll post my favorite with next Monday’s writing prompt!

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Thank you to all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Shannon Barrington below:

Alma wanted nothing more than to tell him how she really felt about him before he died. She held the gun steady while she looked for the words.

She looked around the room she had deemed “hell”. Everything was perfect. Not a dust speck in sight. No dirt on the floor. Not even a loose hair from the dog could be spotted in the foyer. Martha Stewart had nothing on the décor. It was exactly the same set-up as last month’s cover of The World of Interiors. Even the white roses on the table were arranged in such a way that each petal was in perfect proportion to the other.

Below her feet, the gleaming white marble tiles shone like the sun and blended in with the lustrous mother-of-pearl banister. The expensive white pine -wood on the stairs was polished daily and looked new. Above her, the crystal chandelier dazzled the eyes with over 100 bulbs. Even the walls shone. They were painted snow-white with a white trim and molding.

To her right, she could see her reflection in the silver mirror. Standing at 5’, she seemed so out of place. Dark skin the color of molasses and her long black hair seemed to scream her presence in the opulent white room.

Looking back at him now, she saw his fear. It almost made her laugh. There he stood. All 6’5” of him. Shock white hair, white shirt and suit. Freshly polished white leather loafers on his feet. But his face, oh, his face. Finally his wildest dream had come true. Everything about him was white. The color of his skin had paled to almost translucent. It was too bad he couldn’t see himself. Oh how much he would have loved that!

Finally she spoke. As she pulled the trigger, Alma finally told him exactly what she’d wanted to say for years. “I’m NOT cleaning this up.”

“Monday” Writing Prompt #5

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

Begin your essay with the following sentences: “Alma wanted nothing more than to tell him how she really felt about him before he died. She held the gun steady while she looked for the words.”

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, October 13, and I’ll post my favorite with next Monday’s writing prompt!

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Thank you to all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Jane Bryant below:

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask the woman who is suddenly sitting next to me on the only occupied bench in the park.

“My mother’s in the heart hospital,” she says like we know each other and nods toward the building behind us. I give a quick

Monday Writing Prompt #4

Get your creative juices flowing with a weekly short essay prompt:

You are sitting on a park bench on a Saturday morning.  A stranger sits down next to you and says, “I’m sorry, but I have to tell someone, or I think I’ll go crazy…”  Write what happens next.

Email your 300 – 500 word short essay to me by 10: 00 a.m. on Monday, October 13, and I’ll post my favorite with next Monday’s writing prompt!

Thank you to all the entries in last week’s Monday Writing Prompt! You can read last week’s favorite by Yvonne Feinleib below:

I have two gray cats – sisters rescued from Austin’s Town Lake Animal Shelter as tiny kittens. One is slender and prone to bouts of aggrieved miaows; the other, plump and fluffy with a perennially confused expression that resembles that of the owls who breed in the hollow of an oak tree in our Barton Hills backyard every year.

I discovered my special power in a most unfortunate way – when I reached down and stroked the plumper of the cats on my way downstairs to pour out my morning coffee, and her form shifted beneath my hand into a svelte longer body exactly like that of her sister. My touch now had the power to make a fat animal instantly of normal weight.

Of course, I no sooner absorbed the apparent implications than I foolishly rushed upstairs and attempted to shake my partner of 16 years awake. His sleepy expression vanished as he sat up and clutched at his formerly thick waistline, now a flat stomach with the light outline of well-defined abdominal muscles visible even in the dim light of our bedroom.

“What did you just do?” he exclaimed, throwing back the covers and trying to stand up, then almost tripping as his formerly tight pajama bottoms headed for the floor. I caught a glimpse of his newly slender thighs before he dragged his clothing back into place, clutching the unnecessary folds of cloth at his waist and looking more scared than I had ever seen him before.

“I don’t know” I responded, rubbing my hands on my own belly in a vain attempt to produce the same result. “I don’t know what I did.”

“Well, undo it!” he demanded, glaring at me. He obviously wasn’t awake enough to recognize that I had just given him his dearest wish, a body that appeared twenty years younger than his chronological age.

“I don’t know how” I shrugged. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

He rubbed his eyes and then stared at me as if he had never seen me before.

“I need to get dressed” he said quietly, his tone so flat that it took me a second to recognize the loathing in his familiar voice.

Mute, I left the bedroom and sat downstairs in the kitchen sipping my coffee as he dressed and rushed from the house without his customary kiss good-bye.

I never again changed anyone’s body without first asking their permission.

Today, I travel the world making fat people thin.

Bariatric physicians hate me, and so do the manufacturers of over-sized clothing. I’m not very popular with pharmaceutical companies, either (although one of them offered me more than a billion dollars over the course of my lifetime if I would agree to stop touching fat people).

I have five full-time secretaries who handle my mail and respond to all thank-you letters with an excellent facsimile of my signature. My staff, travel arrangements, and personal protection are all provided by the World Health Organization, as I have personally reduced global deaths from diabetes, heart disease and certain forms of cancer more than any previous health initiative.

On one day I will be in a huge meeting hall, walking back and forth, up and down the rows of eagerly waiting fat people, some in wheelchairs, some just ten pounds overweight, and the next I will be visiting a home-bound man who is of such great weight that he has not been able to leave his home for the past three years. I have touched newborn infants and elderly people with a dying wish to return to the weight of their youth. There is no continent, no country, no major city, no cultural, ethnic or religious group that has ever turned down my offer of a visit.

Only once has my special power ever failed me.

Someday, I believe that I will be only the fat person left on earth.