Interviewing and Transcribing
Sometimes the priority is that a story gets told before it’s too late. If writing your memoirs, life story, or experiences is too daunting for whatever reason, I am available to interview, transcribe, and sweeten up your story for sharing with friends, family, and loved ones. I can provide digital and physical copies for sharing.
Performance Coaching
Anybody can tell a story with the right tool kit, regardless of the size, intimacy, or occasion of the audience. I’m available to help with crafting and telling the story.
Development & Editing
If you have a story you want to tell and don’t know where to begin, I can offer some services that might help you achieve your goals:
When you’re stuck on a draft of your story, memoir, novel, or collection–and who amongst us has not–it’s helps to call in an outside eye. I can be that for you, providing editing and structural support that fits your stage of development.
Classes & Workshops
Storytelling is the one art form everyone participates in, whether they know it or not. I’ve crafted a crash course series to unpack the nuances of narrative art–as broadly or specifically as required–that covers a variety of topics.
Each class can be between one to two hours, includes in-class exercises meant to develop new writing while we have students present, and can be packaged together to deliver the equivalent of a much more expensive degree. See below for all class offerings, or reach out to request the creation of something customized to your group’s needs.
Fundamentals of Storytelling
The construction of a story can feel terribly mysterious, and the process of writing it baffling opaque–the better written the more seamless its construction. But the fundamental concepts, terminology, and building blocks of storytelling are universal, and with a shared language we can break down how great stories are made, and how yours can become one of them. This course leaves participants with an understanding of the fundamentals of story craft, and the necessary tools to get more out of any future writing workshops they attend.
Plot & Story
This class takes a deep dive into the beating heart at the center of every story: the plot. No matter how experimental, western or eastern your frame of reference is, there are concepts as old as the campfire that make stories work. We’ll lay out these ideas of time, change, and action, and show how understanding them can help you define the stories you’re setting forth the craft.
Writing Trauma
The worst day of your life doesn’t have to be painful when you sit down to write about it, or for people to hear it. There’s a lot of intention and technique we can bring to the darkest experiences to make them into art that accomplishes the most important thing our work can do: help people know they aren’t alone in the world. This two-hour workshop invites honest conversation and deep cuts into the craft.
How Publishing Works
It can be hard to know where to begin getting your work published amidst a sea of misinformation and a rapidly changing industry, but together we’ll unpack the questions, processes, and emerging developments so you can go forth prepared. We’ll cover how and when to solicit an agent, letters of inquiry, book proposals, the differences between non-fiction and fiction in the industry, book deals, marketing, residuals, advances, and emerging trends.
I’m thrilled to co-present this crash course with Jennifer Coburn, the author of The Girls of the Glimmer Factory and Cradles of the Reich, historical novels about the strength of women’s friendship and the connections that can be forged during even the most harrowing of times. She has also published a mother-daughter travel memoir, We’ll Always Have Paris, as well as six contemporary women’s novels. Additionally, Jennifer has contributed to five literary anthologies, including A Paris All Your Own.
Villains and Heroic Conflict
If you’ve ever read or watched a story where you thought the villain was infinitely more interesting and compelling than the hero protagonist, there’s a reason for that. We’ll explore the dynamics of protagonist and antagonist and how they’re essential for creating dramatic conflict in your stories, role playing games
The Story Launchpad
The Story Launchpad is a perfect entry point for beginning and experienced writers alike looking to break through a bout of a writer’s block. In an exceptionally friendly process, we take the class through a tried and true, paint-by-numbers process of understanding the stories they want to write, completing an outline, and getting enough momentum and words down on paper to go forth and finish.