The Way of StoryWay of Story Online Writing Course
WAY OF STORY ONLINE WRITING COURSE
Join award-winning author/playwright/screenwriter and global writing teacher Catherine Ann Jones
This course is for all forms of narrative fiction and non-fiction, including memoir, and plays and screenplays. Here are some excerpts from The Way of Story book available on Amazon and Kindle. For live workshops see Upcoming Events.
I am often asked by clients and The Way of Story workshop participants, how to choose which story to write. The important guiding line is to choose a story you have a strong emotional connection with. Generally speaking, people go to movies or read in order to feel. Just remember that it is the emotional power of your story that will ultimately determine its success.
But then, I began to be drawn in.
The more it drew me, the less touch I had with the concrete
world. I was in another universe entirely. I was in myself.
And this world seemed far, far more real than the one I had left.
Catherine Ann Jones, On the Edge: the Final Years of Virginia Woolf (NEA Award)
Stories written by formulas rarely move us, and consequently fail. They are too generic, not about specific people.
Though the starting point of my play, The Women of Cedar Creek (NY Drama League Award), was the actual feminine members of my own family, I pushed both character and story to extremes, leaving far behind the bare facts of my own family’s history. It is well to remember that good writing is more an impressionist painting than a literal photograph.
Sometimes a story might appear in a dream, as did the Disney family film that I wrote for Dolly Parton, Unlikely Angel. The theme of unconditional love necessary for spiritual growth, told in a simple way, combined a specific, personal value with a universal truth which found a response in the collective. Often the best ideas arise from our own unconscious minds, either waking or in sleep.
The challenge is to discover the meaning for your self in the story you have chosen, and then adopt the necessary form that can be meaningful to others. One might say, first, the passion, and only second is craft necessary to birth an authentic and great story.
It is passion in a relationship or marriage that will sustain it for years through thick and thin. Similarly, it is passion in a story that will sustain the writing process through the weeks, months, and sometimes years of completing the work.
It is my belief and personal experience that whenever you follow that inner guide, the world will respond, often magically.
The essence of Art is to use the outer form to convey an inner experience. This sacred thread, your inner most being or Soul, binds you emotionally to what you write, and if given respect, will lead you on to the desired end. Stories written from this center will move mountains — and even create livelihoods.
Anyone is capable of finding a story. The plain fact is not everyone will invest the time and passion to write it down.
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WAY OF STORY ONLINE WRITING COURSE
Heal Yourself with Writing online course