The new year is upon us and with it, some fabulous new writing classes. Take a look at these workshops being offered around the web.

Getting Rid of the Junk That Holds You Back by Cheryl St. John – Take an honest, in-depth look at your behaviors, your thought processes and the things that are holding you back on your writing goals.

Edit Your Book In a Month by Eliza Knight – Get information on how to fix the most common mistakes made in manuscripts and learn what editors and judges are looking for in a manuscript.

Personal Brand Express: An Action Plan for Authors by Jenn Stark – Get the tools you need to create and refine an ideal Writing and Industry Brand for you and your work, and learn tips and techniques to effectively showcase these Brands in your marketing, publicity and promotional efforts.

The Truth about Psychic Research: What It Is, Who Does It, and How to Use Psychic Research to Build Your Fictional Worlds and Distract Your Readers with Red Herrings by Mary O’Gara – Learn about astrological research, scientific research organizations, psychic research organizations, special research-in-action projects and magical societies.

Breaking Rules to Break In or Break Out by Allison Brennan – A class for serious writers who want to take their writing to the next level by learning how to shuck the rules that don’t work and focus on strengthening their voice with a special focus on the suspense genres–romantic suspense, thrillers, mysteries, and paranormal suspense.

New Year, New You by Laurie Schnebly Campbell – Learn practical and psychological techniques for dealing with rejection, writer’s block, frustration, motivation, and other issues that keep writers from loving their craft.

Anatomy of a Hook by Natalie J. Damschroder – Learn how to craft The Hook, the importance of continually barbed pacing, the anatomy of a hook, and how to pay it off, all with the goal of making the reader never want to put that book down.

Purpose Driven Scene by Lynn Kerstan – This workshop focuses on how to develop a scene that is chock-full of character development, conflict, emotion, and—for the reader—a vivid sense of “being there.”

Do you know of any other low-cost online writing classes being held in January? Please give details in the comments!

You may have heard about the need for an “elevator pitch” for your book. It’s a brief (usually one or two sentences) summary of your book–the main essence of it–short enough that it could be given during a chance 30-second elevator ride with the agent of your dreams. (Also useful when people find out you’re a novelist and ask what your story’s about.)

This is also sometimes described as the “high concept”, a term that originated in Hollywood to describe a movie idea, though an elevator pitch and a high concept have different nuances.

The elevator pitch is a short plot synopsis that intrigues the listener enough to want to know more. Character-driven stories do well as an elevator pitch.

The high concept is more of a big commercial plot (hence the reason that Hollywood uses it) that gives the listener an instant grasp of the “hook” in the idea. The stakes are usually higher (end of the world, city will blow up, plague will kill everyone) with more of an emphasis on plot events and action.

High concepts for movies usually use other movies as a reference because they’re so easily grasped, like “Pretty Woman (love story between businessman and hooker) meets Die Hard (cop must defeat terrorists who’ve taken over an office building at Christmas)”.

Example of an elevator pitch – A no-nonsense businessman hires a hooker to be his date for a week and then falls in love with her, but has to give up his heartless business practices to win her. (Pretty Woman)

Example of a high concept – Pretty Woman meets Die Hard on a cruise ship. (I think I’d like to read that book.)

Which Do You Use?

Which do you use for your novel? Start with the elevator pitch. Craft a good 30-second summary of your story. As you work on that, consider the stakes involved for the characters. Is an an end-of-the-world type of story? Or is there something amiss that will affect more than just the protagonist? You might have a high-concept story, if there is.

Identify the unique elements that take your story from beyond ordinary to amazing and see if you can craft a high concept from them. For help in creating an elevator pitch or a high concept, check out these links.

How to Create an Elevator Pitch

The 50-Word Elevator Pitch

Going Up! Honing the Elevator Pitch

The Importance of an Elevator Pitch

How to Create a High Concept

What is High Concept?

High-Concept Novels: Turn the Ordinary Into Extraordinary

Recipe for Success? High Concept

And for fun, check out these ultra-condensed plot summaries of some classic novels, Book-a-Minute Classics.

Out of the Box & On the Page is a book to help you get unstuck when your writing isn’t going your way. It provides a series of exercises for 10 days to help you change your perspective on your writing and look at your story or your characters in new ways.

Candace Havens, the owner of the Write Workshop group on Yahoo, usually presents this material as a workshop, but has now put it into book form and it’s available through Lulu, either as a print book or an electronic download.

What I like about this book

The exercises are easy to do and interesting. For example, Day 6 involves using a piece of art to inspire new thoughts on your story. Day 7 guides you through reviewing another book to identify what works and what doesn’t work in that book. You can then apply what you’ve learned to your own book, to include the elements you like and to leave out the ones you don’t like.

One thing that confused me initially is that every other page in the book is blank. I wondered, why all the extra space? I figured it out later… it gives you plenty of room to complete the exercises right on the pages.

Because of this, I think the electronic copy of the book is the one to buy, so you can print another copy of it the next time you’re stuck and go through the exercises again. The exercises are broad enough that you can continue to apply them to each new story and still gain new insights into your writing.

I recommend this book for…

If you’re stuck on a story and thinking of just abandoning it out of frustration or sheer boredom with it, pick up a copy of Out of the Box & On the Page before you do. You might find that your story is a lot more exciting than you realized.

The print version is $16.97. The electronic version is $6.00. Buy a copy before December 31 and use the coupon code HOHOHO for another 20% off either format.

When I was younger, I was in love with Jonathan Brandis. You might remember him from some of his movies (Neverending Story II, Sidekicks, Ladybugs) or from SeaQuest DSV (my favorite).

As I grew up, I lost track of his career. In 2005 something reminded me of him and I went to the Internet to see what he was up to. I found out that he had committed suicide in 2003.

I was devastated. Why would a young man of such promise do such a thing? I couldn’t understand it.

As I searched the internet for more information I came across dozens of websites devoted to him from fans still grieving over his loss.

He was loved and admired by so many. How did he not see that? Would he still have committed suicide if he had known?

Out of these questions came a story of a young man, lonely, depressed and thinking of ending his life, and the young woman who makes him see how many people care for him, despite her own feelings of loneliness and despair. In the end, they save each other.

As I wrote I was consumed with my grief and the story spilled onto the page. I couldn’t get it out fast enough.

When it was done, I sent the story to my beta reader, my sister, Ronda.

It made her cry.

As writers, we know that good stories evoke emotions in readers. I believe that feeling the emotion as you’re writing can enhance the words on the page.

Getting Emotions Onto the Page

Start with remembering a time when you experienced a similar emotion. A time when you were sad or angry or elated. Get the memory of that time firmly in your mind and then start writing.

If you’re having trouble getting into the right frame of mind, sometimes music can help set a mood.

I think Robert Frost captured it best:
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

What do you do to get real emotions into your writing?

My latest post over at the Saturday Writers blog tells the sad story of my experience with NaNoWriMo this year. Yes, I failed to reach 50,000 words this year.

But I learned some things about myself in the process:

Listen to your inner voice

It’s silly to take on a new project when you KNOW you don’t have the time to give it the attention it needs. I need to pay attention to that inner voice that says, “You don’t have the time and you aren’t going to make the time to get this done.”

Say no to peer pressure

It’s silly to let peer pressure guide your commitments. Peer pressure can be a great motivator to help you reach your goals. But making a commitment that you know you can’t keep just because of peer pressure is the dark path to guilt that you really don’t need. Do what’s best for you and your novel.

Writing in a group is fabulous

It’s incredibly fun to join in on virtual write-ins. The NaNoWriMo team held them on Twitter, as did my local NaNo Group, the Central Iowa NaNo’ers (#cianano). If you can’t make it physically to a local write-in, join a virtual one.

Did you finish NaNoWriMo this year? What did you learn in the process?