Hi Catherine! It is exciting that you will be with us this year for the conference.
I was wondering if you could give us a little teaser about what you will be covering during your Friday workshops, “Cause and Effect Sequences: Pace & Flow” and “Becoming a Storyteller, not just a Writer.” They both sound intriguing! Your Saturday sessions “View, Verbs, and Vividness—A Different Way to Look at Show-Don’t-Tell” and “Revision is a Process: Simplified” also sound extremely craft-worthy and informative as well.
Catherine E. McLean: A little teaser for “Cause and Effect Sequences”? How about— what was meant wasn’t what was written?
Writers are warned not to do anything that takes a reader out of enjoying the story world. Putting the wrong sequence of actions down or leaving out a sequence of actions, reactions, or responses nets a very confused reader who stops reading.
Keep in mind that readers are not mind readers. They only have the words on a page to go by. Should the reader stop to reread, then guess what was meant, and discovers later they guessed incorrectly, well, the reader is miffed. If the writer does this enough times, the reader quits reading, never to buy from that author again.
Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group 