SF Peninsula (Special Event, In-Person): Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: Crafting Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction with the Book Architecture Method

Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: Crafting Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction with the Book Architecture Method

It’s the age-old battle between the outliners and the pantsers – those who meticulously script every writing session, and those who pilot solely by feel. Finding your unique approach requires a method rather than a formula. Stuart Horwitz’ Book Architecture Method has helped bestselling writers transform their messy manuscripts into polished books. Accomplished and aspiring writers alike will learn the secrets of how to painlessly create a complex narrative such as:

• what “plotting” actually means, and why there isn’t one narrative arc but several

• how to make sure your book has one “theme” – and one theme only

• how to separate your work into scenes and use this disassembly to diagnose what’s going wrong with your manuscript, and

• the secret to why some narratives feel like they are all coming together at an emotional pay-off while others do not.

This workshop will introduce writers to a process for organization and revision that includes in-depth exercises to be completed throughout the day so that attendees leave with a new perspective on their book’s core, its structure, and where the work of revision lies most clearly. The workshop assumes nothing of a writer’s previous knowledge of technique, nor how much of their manuscript is complete.

Stuart Horwitz is an acclaimed teacher, ghostwriter, independent editor, and founder of Book Architecture. Stu’s clients have reached the best-seller list in both fiction and non-fiction, and have appeared on Oprah!, The Today Show, and in the most prestigious journals in their fields. He is the author of three acclaimed books on writing: Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise Any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method (Penguin/Perigee), which was named one of the year’s best books about writing by The Writer magazine; Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula, an Amazon bestseller, and Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: How to Write a Book, Revise a Book, and Complete a Book While You Still Love It. Horwitz holds degrees in literary aesthetics from New York University and East Asian studies from Harvard University. He is also an award-winning poet and essayist. He recently relocated to California with his family from New England, something he should have done years ago.