Workshop: Pantser or Planner? Approaches to Plotting Your Novel
With Gail Anderson-Dargatz
The real work of the novelist is developing conflict and structure, and most writers struggle with it. Fortunately, the heavy-lifting has been done for us by past writers. Gail will offer an overview of approaches to constructing plot, whether you’re writing literary or commercial fiction. She’ll follow up with exercises you can do at home to help you better understand story, and the outlining process.
$50 ($45 in a bundle)
Suitable for:
Writers at any skill level
What to prepare:
Attendees do not need to prepare anything in advance. You will be answering questions as an exercise as the workshop progresses, and Gail will have follow up exercises and a blog that you can review after the event.
Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s first novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the UK’s Betty Trask Award, the BC Book Prize for Fiction and the Vancity Book Prize. Her second novel, A Recipe for Bees, was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Spawning Grounds was nominated for the Sunburst Award and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award and short-listed for the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. Her thriller, The Almost Wife, hit the Canadian bestseller lists in 2021. She taught for nearly a decade in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of British Columbia and now mentors writers online. Gail Anderson-Dargatz lives in the Shuswap region of British Columbia.
The Almost Widow
Written by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Published by Harper Avenue (HarperCollins Canada)
If the man you love went missing, how far would you go to find him?
Someone is watching Piper, and she thinks she knows who it is: the bushman. But there’s more than one danger lurking in this temperate rainforest. Poachers are taking down old growth trees and jeopardizing plans for a park, a project Piper is passionate about. When she pressures her husband, Ben, a natural resources officer, to identify the culprits, he takes his drone into the wilderness to track them down. And then, just as a snowstorm hits, he goes missing.
Refusing to believe her husband is gone, Piper begins a desperate search for him, one that continues long after the rescue team has given up. But as she begins to uncover what really happened to Ben, Piper is pursued by a stalker who may have taken her husband’s life and now threatens to take hers.