Let's Get Started! 7 Ways to Plan a Novel with Martha Conway and Radha Lin Chaddah.png
Let's Get Started! 7 Ways to Plan a Novel with Martha Conway and Radha Lin Chaddah.png

Let's Get Started! 7 Ways to Plan a Novel with Martha Conway and Radha Lin Chaddah

from $65.00

Once a story idea hits — characters, setting, and/ or possible themes — every novelist must ask themself a question: Am I a Plotter (I’m going to outline the plot), or a Pantser (I’m going to write by the seat of my pants)? But how do you choose? And what are the benefits of each?

Just as there isn’t only one way to write a novel, there isn’t one way to prepare to write. Authors Radha Lin Chaddah (a Plotter) and Martha Conway (a Pantser) will discuss multiple techniques for organizing your story material. Using live exercises, we will demonstrate different types of outlining, as well as prompts to begin free-writing without losing your direction.

Whether you are a Plotter, a Pantser, or a bit of both, we will help you to identify what preparation inspires you and gets your particular story going. You will come away from the 90 minute workshop with tools to help you organize your story material, and the motivation to start getting your words on the page.

Following class, Martha and Radha will host a public reading of their novels from earlier this year.

September 15th from 5:00-6:30 pm

$65

15% discount for Backstory co-working and community members.

Sliding scale funds available – email hi@thebackstoryabove.com for more info.

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Once a story idea hits — characters, setting, and/ or possible themes — every novelist must ask themself a question: Am I a Plotter (I’m going to outline the plot), or a Pantser (I’m going to write by the seat of my pants)? But how do you choose? And what are the benefits of each?

Just as there isn’t only one way to write a novel, there isn’t one way to prepare to write. Authors Radha Lin Chaddah (a Plotter) and Martha Conway (a Pantser) will discuss multiple techniques for organizing your story material. Using live exercises, we will demonstrate different types of outlining, as well as prompts to begin free-writing without losing your direction.

Whether you are a Plotter, a Pantser, or a bit of both, we will help you to identify what preparation inspires you and gets your particular story going. You will come away from the 90 minute workshop with tools to help you organize your story material, and the motivation to start getting your words on the page.

Following class, Martha and Radha will host a public reading of their novels from earlier this year.

September 15th from 5:00-6:30 pm

$65

15% discount for Backstory co-working and community members.

Sliding scale funds available – email hi@thebackstoryabove.com for more info.

Martha Conway (she/her)

Martha Conway is the author of several novels including The Underground River, which was a New York Times Book Editor’s Choice (titled The Floating Theatre in the U.K. and Europe). Her novel Thieving Forest won the North American Book Award for Best Historical Fiction. Her latest novel is We Meet Apart, a speculative historical novel set in Ireland.

Martha’s short fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, The Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, and other publications. She has reviewed fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Iowa Review, and is a recipient of a California Arts Council fellowship in Creative Writing. In addition to writing, Martha is an instructor of creative writing at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program. She received her BA from Vassar College in History and English, and her MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Born and raised in Ohio, she now lives in San Francisco with her family and a lumpy, lovable dog.

Radha Lin Chaddah (she/her)

Born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother, Radha grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US. She majored in Biology at the University of Chicago, earned medical and law degrees at the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. She completed Internal Medicine residency training and later practiced at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. Along the way, Radha developed a deep commitment to patient advocacy, to “meeting the patients where they are” and to combating the stigma around mental health.

Life did not slow down! Radha and her family moved, over the course of 20 years, from Boston to NYC to Taipei to Shanghai to Beijing to Princeton, and finally to Philadelphia. GO BIRDS! Each of these places was filled with amazing people, wonderful culture, and incredible personal and work experiences. Radha worked as a primary care physician in Boston, NYC and Beijing; worked with the China CDC to co-write the book, HIV/ AIDS: Beyond the Numbers; and provided mental healthcare to patients in several states as a telemedicine doctor upon settling in Philadelphia. Especially treasured by Radha are the first-hand stories she has been privileged to hear from patients, colleagues, friends, and family alike. These stories, and the storytellers that birthed them, were the inspiration behind her debut novel, And The Ancestors Sing, a historical fiction novel set in post-Cultural Revolution China which was featured on Good Morning America.