Structure, Characters, and Narrative Beats

Class + Live Q&A

Wednesday, April 24, 8:30pm EST

When we talk about structure, we’re talking about the narrative framework of your story. The bones of the house. The foundation upon which those bones rest. Without these, you have no house. You wouldn’t try to put a roof or hang drywall on, well, nothing, right? If you’re missing a support beam, the house becomes lopsided and ultimately collapses. Well, it’s the same with story.

Though genre does usually determine conventions, or, some of the building blocks with which a story is built, no matter your story, there is a core structural framework.

In this class, we’ll learn the rules and how to break them, the math behind the mystery, the formulae that support unique stories.

With Hannah’s background in film, you’ll learn how these two mediums together show the hidden workings of stories, whether you notice them or not–and how to make them work so YOUR book maintains tension, momentum, and keeps an agent reading.

Clips

Before settling in New York City, Hannah worked and went to school in Denver, where she obtained her degree in Writing for Film and Television. Opportunities in New York presented themselves before she could run off to LA, and she course corrected her career toward publishing, a dream of hers since childhood. After stints as a remote intern for a well-known agent, a bookseller at the famous Books of Wonder, an intern at Soho Press, a literary assistant at Trident Media Group, and a freelance editor working with well-known authors, Hannah joined KT Literary in 2016. Hannah is a proud geek and TV junkie, with an all-consuming love for Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and anything created by Joss Whedon. With her background in film and television, she is attracted to stories with strong visuals and sharp dialogue, whether presented in edgy speculative or contemporary YA and MG fiction, or dark and lyrical speculative adult fiction.