The Power of Prewriting

There are many ways to write a novel. Some writers are pantsers and some are plotters. Some plot garden and others are architects. But often many people fall in the middle of extremes and do a little bit of both pre-planning and just diving in. This class focuses not on plotting but on doing some sketch work beforehand to help get into backstory and characters’ headspaces. In this class, writers will focus on setting world rules, the basic details about the setting and its history, and then work on character development for heroes, villains, and the most important secondary characters via writing back story vignettes. Having this pre-work done will help you know the setting and the characters like dear old friends before you start on your story and make going forward into draft one easier than just starting from an outline or with a more vague idea of a start point. 

Ivy Quinn has written the novel Frozen Ashes and Smoldering Shards with her co-writer, Midnight Voss. The book was part of the USA Today bestselling Sirens and Scales boxset in 2018 and is currently being revamped and expanded into a longer work. She also co-wrote the novella, The Golden Stag, the first in her Jager Detective Agency paranormal noir books with Megan Hussey. That novella was published in the limited edition and also USA Today Bestselling Once Upon a Rebel Fairy Tale anthology set last summer. She worked as a ghostwriter for four years on over sixty novellas and a dozen novels, some Amazon bestsellers. She’s also taught workshops, including one on novella writing and one on adapting fanfiction ethically into original works, for a variety of RWA chapters, including the Maryland Romance Writers, the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers, the Young Adult Romance Writers, and the Yosemite Chapter of the RWA. Currently, she (usually) balances her graduate schoolwork in psychology with her writing schedule, which includes the Fanged Fairy Tales series, the Vegas Shifters series, and more of the Jager Detective Agency novellas currently in development for Sapphic Alliance Fiction.