Vision: The Writing Workshops

By Holly Lisle & Lazette Gifford

Techniques, Exercises, and Useful Approaches to Common Writing Problems

This is the collection of workshops from the online e-zine Vision: A Resource for Writers that you've been asking for.

Zette and I created a large collection of writing workshops that covered everything from Getting Started, to Characters, Plot, Visualization, and Editing. And I added a certain amount of curmudgeonliness about saving the world and writing pompously. People loved the workshops, but asked if they could be put into one convenient book. This is that book.

Zette and I approach writing differently, but since no one technique will work for all writers, our different angles and takes on common writing problems double the chances that beginning writers will find something that will help with that impossible scene or unraveling plot.

In this book, you'll learn:

• How to plot under pressure
  
• How to set realistic, workable writing goals
  
• One way to approach writing short stories
  
• How to sharpen your talent and organize your research
  
• Several ways of making your characters more real
  
• A dozen approaches to plotting
  
• How to see the world you're writing in as if it were real, and how to make it breathe for your readers
  
• How to decide if that story that is making you crazy is salvagable, or if it must die
  
• How to resurrect old stories, how to revise your novel in one take, and much more

This is learning by doing---you'll go in, get your hands dirty, and most of the time, you'll come out with something better than you had before.

Table of Contents

• Holly's Foreword
• Zette's Foreword
• GETTING STARTED
  • Beyond the Basics
  • Notecarding: Plotting Under Pressure
  • The Magic of Goals
  • Zette's Quick Guide to Writing Short Stories
  • Using Your Favorite Book as a Guide
  • Organizing Research
  • The Observation Diary
  • Honing Your Talent
    
• CHARACTERS
  • Talk to Your Characters
  • Deeper People
  • Time and First Person
  • Characters Beneath the Skin
    
• PLOT
  • Four Steps to Working up Openings
  • Writing Scenes that Move Your Story Forward
  • The Basics of Setting
  • Lost on the Border at Twilight
  • Holidays in Hell and Other Delights
  • Almost Random Events
  • Creating Conflict: The Joys of Boiling Oil
    
• VISUALIZATION
  • Visualization for Writers
  • The Description Workshop
  • More Do than See
  Painting With Words
  
• EDITING
  • Burn It, Bury It, Let It Live
  • One-Pass Manuscript Revision
  • Rewriting the Beast
  • Resurrecting Old Stories
  • Creating the Useful Critique
  • What's Your Market?
    
• HOLLY LISLE'S GRUMPY WRITER SECTION
  Saving the World through Typing
  • How to Write Suckitudinous Fiction
    
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS