Happy Friday!
Wow, It’s December already. In spite of all the drama this year, the time flew by!
I am so excited to share our latest episode of JokeOnaStick #49. Please enjoy, share, and subscribe for four free jokes in your inbox every Friday.
This past week I held my webinar, How to Write Timeless Holiday Stories, which was a lot of fun.
The three topics we covered in the webinar were:
1. The elements of timeless holiday stories.
Key takeaways were:
- Holidays create urgency and stakes.
- Increased relatability and context for the reader or viewer.
- An organic “ticking clock” that creates a deadline.
Some movies are about the specific holiday so the question is moot. Examples are Born On The Fourth Of July , A Christmas Carol, and Easter Parade.
Other types of movies use a holiday as a storytelling device such as Four Weddings and A Funeral , Hannah And Her Sisters and Jaws .
If you reframe the idea of a “holiday” as an event, then it becomes clear that most stories will benefit from this organic framework. A birthday, a closing, a christening ( remember how the climactic massacre in The Godfather occurs while Michael Corleone is attending the christening of his niece) and other personal holidays can infuse an otherwise tame story with suspense and urgency.
3. How to take a personal experience and use it as a basis for a great holiday story.
One of our attendees, Virginia, had published a short story about being adopted as a child, and how kind strangers helped her during Christmas. This is a perfect example of how to take a life experience and use it as a basis of a unique and memorable story.
One of our jobs as writers is to make sense out of life for our readers. Life is the best place to find ideas, so I invite you to observe your holiday seasons from a writer’s perspective and make notes about true events that you can use to generate better imaginary stories.
If you’d like a copy of the webinar, email me.
Look for a new Webinar coming on January 6, 2021.
