Saturday, Jan. 28th, 10 am-4 pm Berkeley
$95 members/$110 non-members (this class is not currently scheduled)
Testimonials for Elaine
Many ingredients go into writing a successful novel, and perhaps the most important is plot. “Yet plot is often the most difficult thing for writers to come to grips with,” says instructor Elaine Beale. “Creating beautiful sentences and convincing characters can feel easy compared to developing an overall structure for our stories.
“Novelists often find themselves stuck because they simply can’t figure out what should come next. Writers of short fiction are sometimes reluctant to take the plunge into novel writing because the idea of plot is too intimidating. Other writers brave the waters but remain nervous about whether they’ll have a book that actually comes together in the end.
“Learning about plot is critical. It can help break through blocks, give you the confidence to get started, and prevent you from spending countless hours laboring over a story that doesn’t work. No one formula exists for creating a successful plot, but there are key concepts you can learn and methods you can master.”
Elaine Beale‘s first novel, Murder in the Castro, was published in 1997, and her second, Another Life Altogether, was published by Random House in 2010. It received praise from the Boston Globe, Lambda Literary, Curve Magazine, the Bay Area Reporter, and Publishers Weekly among others, and was featured in Oprah Magazine as one of the ten must-read books of March 2010. Elaine has taught creative writing for more than a decade. She was the winner of the 2007 Poets and Writers California Writers Exchange Award and has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia