Course Information
Registration period
Year-round Recruitment
Course Level
Study Mode
Duration
2 Hour(s) 14 Minute(s)
Language
English
Taught by
Smarter Artist
Rating
1 views
Course Overview
Learn the Step-by-Step "Story Beats" Process That Two Bestselling Writers Use To Publish 1.5 Million Words a Year
In this course, Smarter Artist co-founder Sean Platt will show you the step-by-step process our 3-person bestselling author team uses to plan and outline over 2 million words per year of high-quality, reader-loved fiction without hassle, delays, or the frustration most writers face.
The most important thing any independent author must do to sell more books and make more money is to "write, publish, and repeat," getting new work to market fast. In this course, we'll show you how to get faster while making your stories richer, deeper, and flat-out better.
Through ten videos and just under 3 hours of content, you'll learn a pre-production process we call "story beats" -- a way of planning that combines the thoroughness of traditional outlining with the flexibility and high creativity of "seat of the pants and trusting the story" writing. Having the very best beats in place before writing will take the frustration out of daily writing because you'll always know your characters, their world, their motivations, and their conflicts. You'll know what they look like, how they act, and what they're up to.
Sean will show you this process using our favorite writing program: Scrivener. He'll show you what to put where, how to use images and the different sections to define your project, and how to show up at the desk tomorrow ready to kick butt and take names.
Course Content
- 6 section(s)
- 10 lecture(s)
- Section 1 An Introduction to Using Scrivener for Beats
- Section 2 Synopsis to Outline
- Section 3 Character Planning and Development in Your Outline
- Section 4 Scouting Locations for your Story
- Section 5 Story Construction and Writing Your Beats
- Section 6 Further Learning Resources
What You’ll Learn
- Plan your entire story from Day One starting with a no-fuss, stepwise outlining process ... but WITHOUT locking yourself in and cutting off creative expansion as happens with most outlining methods., Learn how "casting" your characters the way Hollywood does will give you amazing shortcuts to understanding their personalities, appearance, and mannerisms., Use "location scouting" (complete with online, image-based research) to effortlessly build your story's locations and world (even if your world isn't on Planet Earth)., Find your book's central nuggets by working "narrow to wide," beginning with a single, simple sentence., Effortlessly craft a story summary, book description, and boiled-down "elevator pitch" with no extra work as you follow the process., Use Scrivener's native organizational features to keep everything together and searchable, right where you need it whenever you require it., See how the deepest stories can come from the very simplest of ideas -- and learn how you can make a great story from just about anything.
Reviews
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KKen Presti
Based on the title, I was expecting a lot more depth into what beats are, how to select them, how to use beats, the rationale, the process, how to structure them, how to group them, tips for success, etc. Instead, it was a 2-hour monologue focused on his novel, his plot decisions, why he built characters the way he did, etc. It's one thing to use examples from his own work. But this went way down the rabbit hole of his active project, and covered very little of what the title and description promised.
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PPaul Martin
A film making team and their creative process for telling a story to be enjoyed my many. Look forward to including some of the lessons learned from their team effort.
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RRay Romanowski
It took a bit of time to get to the beats (and how it helps with the story), but worth the wait. All the character and location creations are important for the flow of the story.
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JJimmy Lawley
This is mostly based on the Snowflake method of story building. It also relies heavily on the Save the Cat story method. Both are great. It is an unprecidented look at how they wrote a novel, breaking down nearly every aspect, their thoughts and processes as they went along, etc. With all resources available today to teach writers, you will be hard pressed to find where an author goes step by step in showing you how they wrote a novel. Because of this it is an incredible learning tool. I have read tons of books on writing, have different software I've used, and this is one of the best things I've come across. So I am now modifying my Scivener template to the one used in this course to finish my first novel. Look in the Q and A section to find it because for whatever reason the template is not provided as a resource. I can say this also, that there are tons of classes courses, etc. out there that are valuable but much more expensive and the value of this Udemy course is amazing.
