Challenge,  workshops

Fantastic New Craft Special Workshop

August 31, 2021 /

How to Make Place a Character…

Kris and I are watching a Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez series called ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING.

Wow is it funny and twisted, very twisted, and we are only two episodes of ten into it. The really cool thing is that the apartment building in New York is a major character.

Kris writes a series of stories and now a novel she calls Spade/Paladin Conundrums. You can see the stories that are available in the series here.

She has been writing them for a good decade or more. They are all mysteries set at science fiction conventions.

Kris has now finished a full novel-length Spade/Paladin Conundrum and we are going to do a fun Kickstarter to launch it.

One thing about the Conundrums is that the science fiction convention setting is very real and very much a character in the book and pretty much in every story. So for the coming Kickstarter, we were thinking of doing a special three-week workshop on how to make a place (setting) into a full character in the story or book.

Both of us are excited about doing the class because this is a craft skill that once you control, your books can come alive even more.

So if you want to see an amazing example of a place as character, just watch the ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. We’re going to teach you how you can do that.

We hope to launch the very short kickstarter campaign later in the month. Stay tuned, it will be the only place to get that special class.

 

7 Comments

  • Connor whiteley

    September 1, 2021 at 12:36 am

    Hi Dean, this sounds great. I can think of lots of fun ways for you use. Especially on ships and abandoned space stations in scifi. Looking forward to it.

  • Jim

    September 1, 2021 at 10:08 am

    This, is intriguing. Since going through Depth and Advanced Depth, you got me hooked on James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels. So much so that I’m going through them in order. I love how he drags me to the bottom and keeps me there by using setting/place. Never could understand what he (and similar authors) did to draw me in like that until those two classes and started paying attention to the words.

    I will watch for this Kickstarter… and found a new series to dive into. 😉

  • Nick

    September 3, 2021 at 6:08 am

    Yes! I’m all over this, sounds amazing.

    This is one of my favourite things as a reader (and movie watcher). Place/city as character.

    Connelly’s Bosch series does this well for L.A.