Great Beginnings: Building Emotional Power from Entry Points

Every fiction project has a beginning—an entry point that’s loaded with emotional potential. Finding that emotional power early in your creative process saves hundreds of hours of effort over the course of your project. In this dynamic and interactive session, Eric Witchey explores how to begin stories by seeking out the emotional and thematic power in the entry point, and how to vary your beginnings to capture deeper characterization and themes. You’ll leave with a catalog of methods for starting new stories; techniques for identifying possible themes and emotional throughlines; and an understanding of how to use these techniques to develop the emotional foundations for larger works.