Good writing focuses on active moments, not summaries. So let’s look at how the individual events you choose to write about work together to support the plot and keep the reader turning pages.

2. 1. At what point in your life are you telling this story? How much time has passed since the
events you’re writing about? What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
2. If you had to describe your narrator’s emotional tone in no more than three words, what
would they be?
3. Are there places in your current manuscript that don’t reflect that tone? If it slips away,
what can you do to bring it back?
4. Do you feel like you have enough distance to let your narrator craft a compelling and
consistent reader-focused story? If you still carrying a lot of emotions about the
experiences you’re writing about, what are you doing to bring them to the page in ways
that still offer self reflection?
5. As you consider the protagonist, does your narrator present them in a way that
acknowledges their uniqueness? Have you stepped back enough to describe and reflect
your personality that the reader can see how you are different than others? Are you
highlighting those aspects of your personality that lead to contradictions, ambivalence
or emotion?

3. “I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.”
- Dorothy Allison

6. Prologue: Tara is seven years old, looking out over the Idaho land and the
mountain that she calls home. She knows she is different, without a birth
certificate, and she feels pride in the way she lives, separated from the
government and formal education.
1: Tara’s first memory is her father describing a violent government raid on their
neighbors. He reads to the family from the Bible and decides to purge their house
of dairy. He has revelations from God. He tells them not to trust the government.
Tara’s grandmother offers to bring Tara to Arizona for the winter so she can go to
school, but Tara backs out at the last minute, afraid to leave her family because of
the danger that surrounds them. Her grandmother leaves without her.
2: A midwife visits Tara’s mother to train her to be an assistant. Mother is
hesitant and shaken when she comes home from assisting her first birth. Father
says she must continue as a way to build the family’s self reliance for the End
Times. Despite her fear, Mother takes over as the area’s midwife, and Tara hears
her stories and sees her gain confidence. Tara’s brother Luke needs a birth
certificate, and Mother goes through the steps to get one for Tara, as well. Tara
attends a birth with her mother and sees her strength in a new way.
3: Tara recounts the stories her mother, Faye, told of growing up “in town,” the
daughter of a family that cared about social standing and appearance. Faye
rebelled from their expectations when she met and married Tara’s father, Gene,
an eccentric man who lives in the shadow of the mountain. Faye meets him at a
party and is drawn to someone so unfamiliar. Her family objects, but Faye moves
to the mountain, secluding herself in his eccentricities. Years later, Tara first hears
a professor describe the term “bipolar,” and recognizes her father.

8.  Chronological

9.  Chronological
 The e
e

10. Where does the “e” begin?
• The moment of crisis
• Reflection
• Flashback

11.  Chronological
 The e
 Collage

12.  Chronological
 The e
 Collage
 Braided

16.  The protagonist sitting quietly at the end of the day, reflecting
on what happened, or worrying about what will happen next.
 Two or more people engaging in the same argument or
conversation more than once.
 A protagonist or narrator asking the same questions over and
over, or worrying about the same thing.
 A scene or even a recurring character that doesn’t directly
impact the plot.

19. Next Class: May 11, 2024
9:00am – 12:00pm
bethjusino@gmail.com