✍️WORKSHOP: Writing to Your Through-line: Using Your Story’s Driving Force to Create Compelling Narrative w/Alida Winternheimer
** This is a LIVE workshop. Attendees will be sent a video recording after the workshop. **
Do you ever feel lost in your draft, like your story is wandering? Are you unsure how to stay on course while plotting, or what really drives your narrative forward?
The missing piece could be something as simple and powerful as your story’s through-line.
In this generative workshop, award-winning writer and editor Alida Winternheimer will guide us through the essential story drivers—plot, character, and theme—and teach you how to identify and write to your through-line from the very first page.
With examples from popular and literary fiction, as well as memoir, Alida will help you learn how to avoid narrative dead-ends, cut extraneous scenes, and build an immersive, emotionally resonant arc that matters not just to you, but to your reader.
We’ll explore:
How the three drivers (plot, character, and theme) shape your story’s outcomes
How to identify your story’s true through-line
How to avoid dead-ends, rabbit holes, and false starts in your plotting
Why theme is your most powerful (and often overlooked) tool
How to use the right through-line to write tighter, more compelling scenes
What it means to align every scene to your story’s central pulse
How to apply these tools to novels, memoirs, and works-in-progress at any stage
This hour will include guided prompts so you can leave with a working statement for each of your story’s drivers and a clear map to strengthen your current project.
About Alida Winternheimer
Alida Winternheimer is an award-winning writer, developmental editor/writing coach, and podcaster, whose shorter works have appeared in Passengers Journal, Under the Sun, Water~Stone Review, Midwestern Gothic, and others. Winner of the 2023 Page Turner Writing Award and Best Historical, she is listed as a notable in Best American Essays, and has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Alida teaches creative writing whenever she gets the chance and hosts the Story Works Round Table podcast with over 315 craft episodes. When she’s not knee-deep in the Story Works Guide to Writing books, she uses fiction to explore the core of our humanity with richly emotional, darkly themed tales about complicated, real women, their relationships, and the secrets that haunt them. When she is not writing, reading, or teaching writing, you can find Alida sea kayaking, cycling, or being walked by her golden retriever around Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Author: https://alidawinternheimer.com
Editor: https://wordessential.com
✍️ Daily Writing. Inspiring Interviews. Creative Friends.
Join the London Writers' Salon from the comfort of your home.
Join our free daily Writers' Hour writing sessions, intimate interviews and workshops with world-class writers, or become a member to connect with fellow novelists, bloggers, screenwriters, playwrights, poets & more around the world.
Attend Salon Workshops for Free. Become a Member.
By becoming a member of London Writers' Salon, you'll get free access to interviews and workshops like this every week. Plus, you'll join our cosy online community and get expert support and accountability to enhance your craft and publish your best work.