Deep Craft | 4-Part Bundle

Deep Craft With Don Maass

A 4-Part Workshop

$500 Value Save $50 when you claim the class bundle! Do your stories seem flat? Lack emotional depth? Do they fail to connect with readers? If so, go deeper into your writing. Make that emotional connection and grab readers who will return to your work again and again.

Join master teacher Don Maass for this 4-part series that will take you on a deep dive into storytelling. Learn to breathe life into your stories and generate that critical emotional connection with your readers. This is what agents, editors, and readers are searching for.

PART 1 — Wednesday, November 4: Deep Reader Engagement

Why do we read stories and feel “as if” they are happening to us? Plot hooks and sympathetic characters do not explain it. The irresistible tug of story results from deeper connections that readers feel. This hands-on workshop explores the methods of creating those connections through universal story elements, the storyteller’s spell, underlying values and hopes, ultimate stakes, enveloping perils, and other ways in which the stories of fictional characters become the stories of us all.

PART 2 — Wednesday, December 2:  Character Depth

Creating likeable or admirable protagonists whom we care about is only the beginning of creating characters with enduring resonance. Great characters are also great human beings who undergo not only their tasks, but the journeys of living. This hands-on workshop explores the often-underutilized aspects of protagonists’ humanity: seeking, striving, warring internally, progression through life stages, grappling with greater questions, and searching for the self.

PART 3 — Wednesday, January 6: Depth of Plot

A good story tells us what happens, but a great story feels like it is about more than that. What produces that effect? This hands-on workshop explores sophisticated ways in which to make not only plot twists but human twists, unexpected layers, psychological traps, rising commitment, hidden pacing, ironic reversal, and more.

PART 4 — Wednesday, February 3:  Story Meaning & Importance

Beyond topicality and theme lies a realm of story significance that derives from factors frequently unexplored in manuscripts. This hands-on workshop delves into deep reasons for characters to act, high importance in the everyday, momentous changes inside, emotional resonance for readers, testing underlying values, the moral map of story, and more.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

A literary agent in New York, Donald Maass’ agency sells more than 200 novels every year to major publishers in the U.S. and overseas.  He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), Writing 21^st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2016).  He is a past president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc.