Fire in the Belly, Write to be Read

Name: Fire in the Belly, Write to be Read
Rating: 5.0 (4 reviews)

How to Write Your Novel or Memoir with Purpose and Passion

Created byThornton Sully

Last updated 3/2024

English

What you'll learn

Help you recognize and develop your own innate talents, which, over the course, you will see you have vastly underestimated.
Learn to integrate multiple Literary Devices, absorbing the advice of established authors and editors.
Learn to self-edit professionally, and understand the workings of the pubishing world.
Complete your novel or memoir in a passionate, professional, and persuasive manner, ready for publication.

Course content

1 section • 50 lectures • 10h 52m total length

Introduction16:02
Learn to craft a professional, persuasive, and passionate story. Discover your unique voice, master nuts-and-bolts, mindset, editing, and publishing insights, and become a confident, eloquent writer.
Piano Tuning and Mastering the art of Procrastination11:31
A conundrum: Love is risk. Writing is risk. But love of writing is no risk at all.
Reading and writing: the Spiral of Ying and Yang7:47
What you should know about why people read is as important as knowing why you write
An exercise in evolution4:48
Learn that writing is learned, not gifted, through an exercise comparing your style to idols and reshaping your mindset, plus exploring how a title preconditions readers.
What’s in a name?12:49
Shape your readers’ predisposition to loving your novel by investing thought into titles that work. Check out these examples and guidelines
The job of Page One10:02
The arrow leaves the bow. What must page one accomplish
Ten paces, turn, and Fire13:21
What Aaron Burr can teach writers when wishful thinking and visualization duel
The unbearable lightness of adjectives and adverbs8:47
How to break your dependency on low-hanging fruit
The Holy Trinity of Trust8:42
Three essential prerequisites to writing your story with confidence
Traditional, Hybrid or self-publishing: What’s right for you?15:46
Explore the pros and cons of each option.
The imagination muscle and Flipping the meme10:36
Infuse your unique worldview into your manuscript by challenging the conventional wisdom
Who did you delegate to tell your Story?12:50
Learn novel-writing's four conventional points of view and select what works for you
Attribution: the underrated asset in your arsenal17:00
Avoid picking the low-hanging fruit: let he said/she said fall to the ground. Learn creative alternatives to identify your speakers
“The Rolling Stones are the best Rock Band ever!”9:31
Learn to paint yourself into a corner and alienate your readers by misuse of superlatives and hyperbole. No need to attend if you have already mastered this skill
They’re out there. See the Child. Everyone Lies9:02
Discover how the judicious use of stand-alone sentences and paragraphs and spatial considerations of text can add drama to your readers’ experience
Viagra or Ambien7:27
Lull your reader to sleep with an infodump, or learn to convey the same information crucial to their understanding of your story in a way that will inflame their desire to read on
Bohemian Rhapsody2:57
Stories are where you find them/ This one I discovered in a Bohemian bar told by a Honduran bartender who walked across Africa with his girlfriend. What’s your story?
Once there was a way to get back home10:10
Loaded words resonate with your reader even before page one. Learn to stack the deck
How to shoot yourself in the foot7:02
Do you envision a target audience when you write? Do so at your own peril. This session explains the danger. It’s a warning. Pay attention.
In the realm of the senses5:48
Being sensitive for a writer does not mean easily bruised: it means discovering senses you didn’t even know you had before your muse seduced you. Only five? Think again
“Nothing runs like a deere” Literary devices: Part 115:46
he John Deere repair manual will never make the New York Times best-seller list. Why?
“…furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.” Literary devices, part 211:24
Sometimes a manuscript needs more than salt and pepper
How to write a book review (and a peek behind the publishing curtain)21:52
How you apply your skills will reveal as much about you as it does about the book and author
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck”13:03
How, when, and where to use profanity judiciously without losing your readers
Write drunk, edit sober?11:48
Find out what Hemingway really said about the writing process, and how other famous authors got the job done
Blood in the water11:13
You are David. Amazon is Goliath. Learn the Red-Ocean/Blue-Ocean battle plan
To be or not to be is questionable7:22
Eliminating “to be” verbs as often as possible converts your manuscript from a cerebral to a visceral reader experience. Here’s a lesson in how to do it
A Star(fish) is born2:38
Learn if your daily rental in Starbucks for the last year and a half was worth it if your novel never makes the NYT bestseller list or fails to impress that cute barista
Plot vs premise8:58
Mary Shelley plotted out how to recycle body parts past their expiration date, but it was Boris Karloff who animated the story with his unpredictability. Learn the nuances between plotting out your story, or creating characters who will do that for you
Ob-ovus (from the egg) vs mid-story: It’s not obvious10:22
In the beginning, there was the word. But is this really the most intriguing place to begin your novel?
Theme: The me13:58
Theme is the puppet master of each character to inhabit your novel. Learn how to pull the strings in this session
The art of the interview14:40
Master the art of conducting engaging interviews with real people, and then apply those same skills to interviewing the equally real characters in your manuscript
You are certainly entitled to my opinion15:23
Knowing the nuanced difference between confidence and arrogance will help you become more confident and less arrogant, making you more appealing to you reader or lover. Perhaps both
Lessons in Action17:14
A short story is dissected to understand its moving parts
Masterpiece memoirs Part 1: Tell the story of a lifetime14:50
An introduction to memoir writing. Understanding the nuances that lead from diary to journal to autobiography to memoir to novel
Masterpiece Memoirs Part Two: Tell the story of a lifetime21:09
Let’s get specific.
The secrets of successful self-editing: Part 113:32
Learn to master and apply these skills to minimize your expenses before bringing a profe$$ional editor on board
More secrets of Professional editing: Part 233:47
Put principles into practice
Writer Beat-ups: a code of conduct16:31
Tips to attend a writers’ group and still feel like writing when the’ve finished with you
Purple-ing your prose15:56
Learn why an indulgent cocktail of metaphors, adverbs and adjectives is hard to swallow. This session discusses the difference between drama and melodrama, and how to write purple prose…or not
Scene vs Situation14:17
In this session, you’ll learn the difference between the two, and how to advance your plot
Dynamic Dialogues18:56
Learn how fiction, brevity, and contradictions in urgent dialogues will have your reader forgetting to take out the trash
Exclamation Points!!!12:27
How excessive exclamation points—the pun of punctuation—exclaim amateur status
Befriending word-search8:01
No literary surgeon (editor) should be without it. Here’s how to use it like a pro
Bookending and Dennouement14:43
Apply the principles of bookending not just to your final pages, but to chapters and paragraphs
Writers on Writing24:49
Random thoughts on the craft/art of telling a good story by famous and should-be-famous writers
20 titles you can steal, 20 quotes you can’t16:01
Need an idea for a story? Nobody is watching. Slip one of these in your overcoat on your way through the checkout aisle
Lubrication: Writer exercises21:42
Here are ten exercises you can do without gym membership
Works20:24
Books by Thornton Sully, including readings, and an explanation of literary projects dedicated to saving the world.
Bonus: resources7:51
Write to share life’s misadventures and connect readers, as the speaker explains how storytelling, editing, and resilience transform personal experiences into engaging novels.

Requirements

A passionate desire to share your story

Description

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Zora Hurston

Fire in the Belly: Write to be Read.

You are the world’s leading authority on your novel or memoir, and you have vastly underestimated your ability to tell a good story. Over 50 sessions, I arrest all the usual suspects (syntax, literary devices, plot, dialogue, publishing, etc.) but more importantly, together we’ll infuse your readers with the same passion and purpose that compelled you to write in the first place. Your words are the wings that lift a great story off the page. Other courses may walk you through how to write your story… but why walk when you’ve got wings?

This course is different from others because I am different; my peers in the field often refer to me as the anti-editor. While elites were sipping Chablis at Oxford, I popped open a beer with my orangutans in the jungles of Borneo, or paid a smuggler to get me across the Straits of Singapore at two in the morning, after the gunboats passed, or swam with the Gray Whales and sharks, or…

Hemingway said in order to write about life, you have to live life.

I can tell a good story because I’ve lived a good story, and I will help you to do the same. The adventure of your life within a failed or successful marriage can be every bit as intriguing and compelling as fending off pirates in the South China Sea.

What’s your story? I’m listening.

Who this course is for:

This course is for beginning writers undertaking for the first time the great campaign of writing a novel or memoir and for those who have written previously and are aware they could be more persuasive and engaging