This 3-disc DVD set is packed with some of my best writing tips on how to be a successful author. The three workshops cover: ”How to Get Started and Finish”, “Craft of Writing”, and “Marketing” your writing. I’ll show you how to boost your career as a writer!

But first, here’s what students of “The Writer’s Toolkit” said:

“I felt inspired to look at my writing again…I found my ideas unlocked, problem areas exposed and strengths endorsed.”–Jane Morrell

“Nina was very relaxed, informal, very knowledgeable and interesting…She gave a lively presentation and gave lots of examples to relate to.”—Lauren Seaton

“Nina encouraged me to actually start my novel. She is very good, easy to understand.”—Patricia Slauenwhite

“Nina was engaging and inspiring… I was able to use specifics that were discussed to  improve my writing immediately.”—Susie Buck

“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”—Candice Croft

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

As a special bonus for a limited time only, I’m including my popular guidebook, The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! All for the price of just $195.00. The DVD set normally retails for $250.00 and the book retails for $27.95. So, you’re getting a great deal!

My writing guide The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! provides the basis for my workshops and contains a lot of useful information to you. It’s a great companion reference to the DVDs.  For instance, you can go to the workshops for an easy-going listen to the “skinny” on all aspects of writing then refer to the book for specific details, examples, exercises and further references on areas you need to get more detail or practice on. The book also includes an index and bibliography at the end for easy reference. It’s written in an easy to read conversational style and packed, like the workshops, with real examples.

The guide is popular with college and university instructors of creative writing and English, and thoroughly enjoyed by students of writing and professional writers, alike.

“The Fiction Writer is at the top of the required reading list for my students…A veritable cornucopia of hands-0n help for aspiring writers of any age…The quintessential guidebook for the soon-to-be-published.”–Susan H. McLemore, Language Arts Instructor, Glynn Academy

“Nina’s ability to take arid academic prose and make it interesting to students is actually rather remarkable. I have been regularly using material she created for helping my students understand the hero’s journey in literature – the students find her writing engaging, accessible, and (and this is important) easily applicable not only to their readings but to their essays as well. Brava, Nina, brava.”–David Merchant, English Instructor, Louisiana Tech University

I wish you a fulfilling and fruitful career writing and publishing your works. It’s quite a journey. I hope you enjoy every step of it.

All the best.

Sincerely,

Nina Munteanu, M.Sc., R,.P. Bio.

Acclaimed author, scientist and writing coach

Nina with an eager workshop student

Internationally published author and teacher, Nina Munteanu, gives several workshop courses on writing in Nova Scotia winter of 2010. Workshop courses include:

October 14th to November 18th:

“How to Write and Publish Science Fiction“. What is Science Fiction? What isn’t it? What’s involved in writing SF and how do you get it published? Internationally published SF author, blogger and scientist Nina Munteanu answers these questions and more in a 6-week interactive & hands-on workshop designed to help you define your project, get started and successfully see it to publication. Learn some essential tools of this genre such as world-building, research, plot approaches and how to generate and follow through with premise, idea and theme toward a publishable original work. Students are expected to bring in and discuss their own works.  Workshop includes lectures, use of examples, discussions, exercises, readings and some writing. Recommended resource: The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! (Starfire World Syndicate) by Nina Munteanu.

6-week course every Thursday from 7pm to 9pm at the WFNS on 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS. Register here: http://www.writers.ns.ca/workshops.html

November 13th:

“The Hero’s Journey: Plotting Your Way to Publishing Success“. Are you stuck in your writing project? Can’t focus? Not sure about the characters or where the story is going? These all relate to plot. All stories consist of common structural elements found universally in myth, fairy tale, dreams and movies. Scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, took the concept of the Hero’s Journey from the depth psychology of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and assigned 12 steps to the Hero’s Journey within the three-act play. Internationally published novelist and essayist Nina Munteanu shares details of this highly successful plot approach that will improve and jumpstart your writing and guarantee its improved marketability. 

One day course on Saturday from 2pm to 4pm at the Bridgewater Library, Bridgewater, NS. Register through the South Shore Libraries.

November 27th:

“How to Use Blogs and Social Networking to Promote Yourself.” Most promotion by authors is currently done online. The many opportunities boggle the mind, however, particularly for those of us who aren’t terribly proficient with internet social media.  Both published and soon-to-be published authors are using Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Websites with podcasts and other social networks to great success. Learn how to command this incredibly inexpensive and highly potent and efficient medium to promote you and your work.
Internationally published author and essayist Nina Munteanu is an active blogger and proficient social networker of many years. She publishes several blogs and participates in many social networks on the internet. Nina will share her knowledge and experience in this interactive discussion and multi-media lecture. Nina will go over steps on how to build a blog, and cover topics like how to get traffic to your site, Search Engine Optimizatin (SEO), what makes a good blog, how to write copy, the pros and cons of social networking, and other topics related to internet promotion and marketing. Bring your imagination.

2 pm at the Bridgewater Library, Bridgewater, NS. Register at the library.

December 11th:

“Alien Tracks to Magician Spells: Learn How to Write and Successfully Publish SF and Fantasy”.  Learn some essential tools of this genre such as world-building, research, plot approaches and how to generate and follow through with premise, idea and theme toward a publishable original work. Workshop will include use of examples, lists, discussion and writing. Bring a sample of your work and be prepared to discuss it. 

10:15 am at the Semiahmoo Library, 1815 – 152nd Street, Surrey, British Columbia. Register at: http://surreywritersschool.com/coursesandregistration.aspx

These three  major workshops cover ”How to Get Started and Finish”, “Craft of Writing” and “Marketing” your writing. The DVDs will be available shortly (third week of August, 2010) for purchase on the Passionate Writer. Here’s what students of “The Writer’s Toolkit” said:

“I felt inspired to look at my writing again…I found my ideas unlocked, problem areas exposed and strengths endorsed.”–Jane Morrell

“Nina was very relaxed, informal, very knowledgeable and interesting…She gave a lively presentation and gave lots of examples to relate to.”—Lauren Seaton

“Nina encouraged me to actually start my novel. She is very good, easy to understand.”—Patricia Slauenwhite

“Nina was engaging and inspiring… I was able to use specifics that were discussed to  improve my writing immediately.”—Susie Buck

“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”—Candice Croft

Nina with one of her workshop students

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

DVDs will go on sale right here in a few weeks. Guests of Nina’s Writer’s Digest Webinar may be eligible for a special price.

Nina, the Writing Coach

Join Nina Munteanu, acclaimed author and writing coach, for a FREE Webinar through Writer’s Digest University on how to improve your writing and succeed in getting published.

Nina joins journalist and editor Vernon Oikle on “Toolkit Talks“, a conversation in which Nina shares some of her best tips on how to get published. Nina answers some commonly asked questions provided by Writer’s Digest Magazine; questions faced by writers getting started as well as those finding their career stagnating. Learn some of the secrets writers use to jumpstart and keep their career in upward motion.

Register for Nina’s free webinar by September 15th and you may have access to additional materials and be eligible for additional perks.

Hope to see you there!

“The Writer’s Toolkit” DVDs Coming Soon!

For those of you waiting to purchase Nina’s DVD set of “The Writer’s Toolkit“, a 3-disc DVD collection based on  three  major workshops that cover ”How to Get Started and Finish”, “Craft of Writing” and “Marketing”, DVDs will be available shortly (first week of September, 2010) for purchase on the Passionate Writer and other sites. Here’s what students said:

“I felt inspired to look at my writing again…I found my ideas unlocked, problem areas exposed and strengths endorsed.”–Jane Morrell

“Nina was very relaxed, informal, very knowledgeable and interesting…She gave a lively presentation and gave lots of examples to relate to.”—Lauren Seaton

“Nina encouraged me to actually start my novel. She is very good, easy to understand.”—Patricia Slauenwhite

The Writer's Toolkit 3-disc DVD set

”Nina was engaging and inspiring in a low-key way, no hype, practical, good humour. This was a really pleasant and helpful experience. I was able to use specifics that were discussed to immediately improve my writing.”—Susie Buck

“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”—Candice Croft

“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

Guests of Nina’s Writer’s Digest Webinar will be eligible for a special price.

Setting as Character...

Setting provides an “emotional landscape” upon which a character’s own temperament may play counterpoint or may resonate in a wonderful symphony

—Nina Munteanu (The Fiction Writer)

In my online writing classes and workshops I cover several common pitfalls of beginning writers. One common pitfall is to forget the importance of setting in story. Think of Frodo in Lord of the Rings without his beloved Shire. And what about wayward Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz without her dear home in Kansas and the contrasting Land of Oz…

Setting includes time, place and circumstance. Without a place there is, in fact, no story. In the examples I gave you, place plays a principle role in defining major and minor characters. Like the force in Star Wars, setting provides a landscape that binds everything into context and meaning. For author Richard Russo, it goes beyond place; he suggests that “If you’re not writing stories that occur in a specific place (my emphasis), you’re missing an opportunity to add depth and character to your writing.” He describes some of his students’ responses to his challenge, “where does the story take place?”: it doesn’t really matter, they say; it’s really more about the people. The irony is that we do want to know and, oddly enough, the more specific you get, the more universal your truth becomes. It’s one of those wonderful paradoxes in life that writers need to embrace.

I’ll go even further: settings can not only have character; they can be a character in their own right. A novelist, when portraying several characters, may often find herself painting a portrait of “place”. This is setting being “character”. The setting functions as a catalyst, and molds the more traditional characters that animate a story. The central character is often really the place, which is often linked to the main protagonist (e.g., Scarlet O’Hara and Georgia in the 1860s in Gone With the Wind; Eustacia Vye and Egdon Heath of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native; Paul Atriades and the planet Arakis in Dune). In each example I gave, the main character comes to symbolize the setting and vice versa. Setting ultimately portrays what lies at the heart of the story.

In fact, D.H. Lawrence, in commenting about Hardy’s book Return of the Native, suggested that Egdon Heath was the most important character of the story:

Egdon, whose dark soil was strong and crude and organic as the body of a beast.

How you portray setting and place, then, becomes an integral part of the story itself. You can significantly increase metaphoric meaning in your story with a richly textured setting. You can use setting to amplify a character’s emotions or contradict them, depending on the circumstance of the character, her mood, disposition, tendencies, and observational skills. Either way, setting provides an “emotional landscape” upon which a character’s own temperament may play counterpoint or may resonate in a wonderful symphony.

Here are some suggestions that can help every fiction writer create vivid, memorable and meaningful settings:

• Choose your setting purposefully; make it an integral part of the story with meaning (e.g., linking it to your main characters)
• Describe setting selectively, through integration in “scene” rather than exposition.
• Be specific (e.g., beat up Chevy, not car; old clapboard cottage, not house.
• Use similes, metaphors, and personification to breathe life into setting.
• Use the senses like sight, sound, smell, taste, feel.
• Show, don’t tell (e.g., instead of saying the time is the 1920s; show the cars and dresses. Instead of telling the reader it’s raining; show them by describing the dripping trees, etc.)
• Don’t describe setting all at once in the beginning; work it in slowly throughout the story; let it unfold as the story and the characters do.

You can find more about “Setting” in Chapter H in my writing guidebook, The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! by Starfire World Syndicate (available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other quality bookstores).

I discuss “setting” in my workshop, “The Writer’s Toolkit”, a workshop that I give throughout North America. This comprehensive writer’s workshop will be launched on DVD soon and will be available at Amazon as well as online here and on www.NinaMunteanu.com.

tags: online writing courses, online writing classes, The Writer’s Toolkit, fiction writing, becoming a writer, creative writing online, book writing, writing stories, setting in fiction, nina munteanu, The Fiction Writer Get Published Write Now

Nina and a student have fun learning

Nina recently gave three substantial workshops for aspiring writers in the South Shore area of Nova Scotia, based on her Aurora Award-nominated writing guidebook, “The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now“. Held at the Bridgewater Library, Nina engaged and challenged students in an actively participated workshop to hone their skills as successful writers. Students participated in writing exercises, and had their stories, query letters and ”elevator pitches” critiqued.  

Her workshops, covered by Vernon Oikle in the South Shore Now, included:

Workshop No. 1, which was titled “Getting Started … and Finishing”. In this session, Nina shared the strategies and techniques she used to write, finish and successfully publish while serving as a full-time scientist, teacher and mother. The workshop reviewed common misconceptions in the writing and publishing industry and provided practical strategies to help aspiring authors succeed.

 Workshop No. 2, “The Art and Science of Craft”, covered several models of storytelling, and examined the interrelationship of plot and theme, setting and character in a book’s overall story arc. Nina explored the language of page-turning writing with examples on the use of the five senses, power verbs, use of dialogue and other writing techniques that will transform your page into a compelling read.

Workshop No 3, “The Science and Magic of Marketing”, focused on a different but critically necessary creative process in an author’s writing and publishing career – revision, marketing and promotion.

Response to Nina’s workshops was very positive. Here are some of the things students had to say about Nina and her workshops:

“Nina was engaging and inspiring in a low-key way, no hype, practical, good humour. This was a really pleasant and helpful experience. I was able to use specifics that were discussed to immediately improve my writing.”–Susie Buck
 
“Nina was very knowledgable, relaxed, personable, unpretentious.”
 
“I enjoyed it. I was intrigued. Nina put her heart into her workshop.”–Darlene Tong
 
“I found what I had been searching for a long time.”–Candice Croft 
  
“What you’ve done for me, Nina, is you’ve just opened up a whole new world. You’ve shown me how to put soul into my books … You’ve transformed me from what I considered an oddball to somebody special and for that it’s worth a fortune.”–Hectorine Roy

The series of workshops were filmed as part of “The Writers Toolkit” series and will be available for sale shortly. Go to www.ninamunteanu.com or here for news on availability and how you can get a great deal on the 3 DVD set.

Nina Munteanu

“Discover the Writing Magic…where passion and skill collide. During my live coaching programs I was overwhelmed by the number of people seeking guidance on getting their own books published.  I’ve created a coaching and training program designed specifically for people who are serious about becoming “published authors”—Nina Munteanu, author of The Fiction Writer

Email Nina at thepassionatewriter@gmail.com or nina.sfgirl@gmail.com (subject: coaching) to book a personal coaching session or group workshop. Coaching may include:

• manuscript readings, editing and consultations
• language and grammar
• storyboarding and idea generation
• focus issuees and writer’s block
• synopsis and query letters
• marketing
• promotion

Workshops have successfully included “hotseat” panels and “hotseat” manuscript assessment/critique.  

To receive Nina’s informative NEWSLETTER (packed with writing advice from her many consultations) and to browse through awesome writer’s resources, be sure to sign up for her free coaching club. Praise for her coaching and workshops continues:

“Nina was warm and encouraging.  I felt free to share my fears and ask questions that exposed my ignorance.  She was extremely knowledgeable and gracious and honest…  I felt as though she really wanted me to succeed as a writer, and was a mentor sent to provide guidance and inspiration.”— Zoe M. Hicks, author of The Women’s Estate Planning Guide and Dream Catcher, the Power of Faith

“Nina shares her expertise with endless enthusiasm.  I always go away with double the energy than when I came!”—Krista Fogel, coordinator of Calliope Network, UBC

“As a hopeful author, I found Nina’s words inspiring. I thank Nina for sharing her acquired knowledge.”—Amanda Lott, writing student, Scribblers Writers’ Retreat, GA