Tension, pacing and suspense are essential aspects of successful storytelling. Join noted author, editor, and writing teacher Margaret Lucke at our June 15 meeting to explore these three important topics. Whether you are writing fiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir, this discussion will provide you with valuable tips, and techniques for crafting a powerful and rewarding story.
Every great story is a suspense story, no matter what its genre might be. Suspense is the artful balance you create between the readers’ hopes and doubts, between their concern for your characters and their uncertainty about what lies ahead. The flip side of suspense, and just as important, is tension—the means by which you induce your reader to make an emotional investment in your story.
Pacing, the tempo or rate of speed at which your story moves, is one of your key tools for building and controlling tension and suspense and giving your reader the kind of powerful experience that is the goal of storytelling.
In this presentation, we will look at ways you can make your readers ask, “What happens next?” and keep them turning pages in their eager quest for the answer.
Join us on Saturday, June 15, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. at Tri-Valley Writers meeting location: Las Positas College in Livermore, Room 2470 in Building 2400 (Multi-Disciplinary Building). Check-in begins at 1:30 p.m. There is a two-step RSVP & Payment process.
- An Email RSVP is REQUIRED at treasurer@trivalleywriters.org by Thursday, April 18, 2024
- Payment is REQUIRED
REGISTRATION DETAILS:
CWC adult members, $10; nonmembers, $12. CWC student members (ages 14-22), $5; student nonmembers, $8.
Margaret Lucke flings words around as a novelist, editor and writing coach. She pens tales of love, ghosts, and murder, sometimes all three in one book. Her paranormal suspense series features Claire Scanlan, a Marin County real estate agent who specializes in haunted houses. Her other series stars artist and private investigator Jess Randolph, who considers both of her dual careers to be ways to search for the truth. The editor of Sisters in Crime NorCal’s first anthology, Fault Lines, Margaret has published a number of short stories and two how-to books on the craft of writing. She teaches fiction writing classes for UC Berkeley Extension. Visit her and sign up for her newsletter at https://margaretlucke.com/