1. Yes, You Can Write! And here’s how . . . Vincent H. O’Neil www.vincenthoneil.com

2. Writing is nothing more than telling a story. And if you’ve ever told a joke at a party and held your listeners’ attention, then you can tell a story.

3. A Guy Walks Into a Bar . . . If you think about it, a piece of writing is the same thing as a story someone told to a group of listeners—just written down

4. If You Can Talk, You Can Write If you were telling an anecdote, using an introduction, development, and a conclusion, and someone wrote down what you were saying, that would be a written story And if you wrote it down yourself, you’d be a writer

5. Elements of a Story Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. No surprise, right?

6. The Beginning There are many ways to start telling a story, but the one thing to remember is that you have to get your audience’s attention

11. The Beginning -- concluded Once you’ve got the readers’ attention, you have to keep it. We often have a pretty good idea of the beginning and end of the story, and so the challenge is to keep the readers reading through the middle portion. In the following slides we’ll use the tale of “Jack and Jill” as an example.

12. The Middle: Developing the Story Don’t just fill the space between Beginning and End. Develop the story, but keep it interesting Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water Jack fell down Jack and Jill went up the hill Beginning : Developed idea : Jack fell down and broke his crown And Jill came tumbling after Why were they going up the hill? What happened when Jack fell down? We’ve lost track of Jill; What did she do? End :

26. In the Adirondack town of Schuyler Mills, playwright Jack Glynn may just be writing the script to his own murder . . .

27. Check out my books Published by St. Martin’s Press in hardcover Available on Amazon as Kindle eBooks and on B&N Nook Available on Amazon in paperback or as Kindle eBooks, as well as on B&N Nook books