- Level
- Mixed
- Basic and Premium Members Prices
- Basic Membership Price: $30.00
- Category
- Characters
- Editing
- Structure
- Genre
- GMC
- Plotting
- POV
- Class Length
- 2 Weeks
Emotional wounds are core to our characters' emotional conflicts and their journeys of transformation. In this course we will discuss the purpose of giving your characters emotional wounds, the different types of emotional wounds, and how they affect the character's behavior.
We will also identify the link between the character’s wound and their transformation arc, and techniques for developing our characters’ wounds.
We will also identify the link between the character’s wound and their transformation arc, and techniques for developing our characters’ wounds.
- Syllabus
- Emotional wounds lesson plan:
- Introduction – Overview of the class and introduction to the instructor.
- Exercise – Participants introduce themselves and the story they’re working on.
- Lesson – Why do characters need emotional wounds?
- Lesson – What creates an emotional wound?
- Exercise: Brainstorm as many emotional wounds as you can think of. What limiting beliefs can each of these wounds create? What lies might characters tell themselves because of these wounds?
- Lesson – Different types of emotional wounds.
- Assignment – Apply what you’ve learned to your own story. What emotional wounds do each of your main characters have? Write a short back story for each of your main/POV characters explaining how they came to have these wounds.
- Lesson – How emotional wounds affect behavior.
- Assignment – Apply what you’ve learned to your own story. How have your character’s personality, behaviors and attitudes been influenced by their wound?
- Lesson – How emotional wounds link to GMC and create internal conflict.
- Lesson – Linking your character’s wound to their transformation arc.
- Lesson – Techniques to create emotional wounds.
- Assignment – Apply what you’ve learned to your own story. What triggers will your main characters encounter as the story progresses, that will force them to face their wounds? How will they react to these triggers initially? What will eventually force the character to choose between continuing to believe their “lie” or to change their thinking?
- Conclusion – Summary, final notes and questions.
- Class Format
- Savvy Authors' workshops are held on a forum: a bulletin board based system. You will receive a reminder notice one day prior to the start of the workshop that includes instructions on how to access the workshop forum. If you have not received instructions by the day the workshop begins, please check your spam filter.
The forum will be available the morning (EST) of the day the workshop starts and will remain accessible to all participants thereafter. You will also be given simple instructions on how to create a PDF of all your discussions along with our privacy and data retention policy.
Please note that you do NOT need to be online at a specific time to access the lectures. This is NOT a live video based class.
