Flash Sale: Video Seminars on DVD

Hi Folks,

Not a short story this week, but a very special offer for any writers among you.

Back when I was still teaching in-person writing seminars in Tucson (2009, I believe) we actually filmed some of those presentations. Yup, me, almost live, in video and audio and with my hokey, western-twang voice.

Now, full disclosure, these are NOT studio-quality DVDs. My wife recorded them on a small video camera from the back of the room as I taught the seminars. So the lighting, voice quality, etc. is not the best. Hence the low, low price of less than $7 per hour of instruction and free shipping.

However, the value is in the information, and the information is all there. For the live seminars, we charged probably $40 per hour of instruction.

Now we’re offering these DVDs for sale for under $7 per hour of instruction if you order them as a set. We also have a few individual DVDs, each a bargain at $25.

We don’t plan to make any copies. When these are gone, they’re gone.

Each DVD is around three hours long and is divided into three approximately one-hour sessions.

I HAVE ONLY THREE full sets of all 6 DVDs left. That’s 18 hours of instruction. The cost is $120 per set of 6.

I have only 8 individual DVDs for sale at $25 each. Before you send payment, email me to see what I still have available:

#: Title

1 Writing Realistic Dialogue

2 Conveying Emotion Through Dialogue

2 Creating Realistic Characters

2 Writing Dialect

1 Writing Great Beginnings

Here are the seminar descriptions:

Writing Realistic Dialogue—Various techniques to further suspend the reader’s sense of disbelief through realistic, non-linear dialogue and its nuances. Accompanied by two handouts in PDF.

Conveying Emotion Through Dialogue—Convey the emotions of the characters and manipulate the mood and emotions of the reader through the nuances of dialogue and punctuation.

Creating Realistic Characters—What causes a reader to immediately recognize and identify with a character type? What makes the individual character stand out from other characters? Why should “cardboard” or “flat” characters’ dialogue be MORE colorful than that of more important characters? Includes a list of cliché character traits and a partial list of non-cliché character traits in PDF.

Writing Dialect—The old wisdom on writing dialect is a paradox: Until you know how to write dialect well, don’t write it at all. Learn to take your time and think your way through dialect. What you need, what you should leave out. Includes a list of suggested words and spellings and a rationale for and against using phonetic spellings in PDF.

Point of View and Narrative Voice—POV defined, narrative voice clarified. A lot of strong narrative tips in this one, including the natural tense for narrative (and why), what “show, don’t tell” really means, how to recognize and repair “passive” constructions and much more.

Writing Great Beginnings—How to grab the reader from the first sentence. Ways to turn a phrase, a look at dramatic, emotional, and dramatic-emotional sentence structures, and techniques that will have the reader leaping into the story of his/her own accord.

As you can see, these are not the things I talk about over in the Journal. They have nothing to do with process or with grounding the reader or the five senses or setting or scene or any of that. These form the foundation for all of that.

These are all pre-craft seminars. These are the foundation you need, the knowledge you need, to be a professional or serious hobbyist fiction writer.

This is information you cannot get anywhere else. To purchase any of the sets, either

1. send full payment via PayPal to harveystanbrough@gmail.com (I’ll know what the payment’s for) and include your physical shipping address, and the DVDs will go out in the next day’s post, OR

2. to pay by personal check, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com to reserve your set. Then mail your check pronto to PO Box 604, St. David AZ 85630. We’ll hold the set for you for up to one week, so mail your check promptly, and again, be sure to let us know your physical shipping address. The DVDs will go out in the post the day after your check arrives.

Thanks,

Harvey