Daniel David Wallace – Writing Great Chapters

Are You Ready to write more comfortably and more confidently… Knowing that each chapter you draft is good?

Watch the full training session on keeping your reader happy and engaged.

Do you want to write great scenes and chapters that keep your reader turning pages?

Do you want the confidence that you are delivering great dialogue, thrilling drama, and meaningful conflict?

Do you want to stop hearing your readers say things like, “Well, yeah, I liked the story, but I didn’t get why he bought the chicken. What was that part about?”

If so: I designed this course for you.

Several years ago, I arrived in the United States to begin a degree in creative writing. I had won an expensive fellowship and earned my place ahead of dozens of other writers.

I wasn’t sure if the program would be a good one, but I wasn’t too worried about that: I had prepared myself with serious years of solo study: reading plotting textbooks, copying out lines from classic poems, and keeping to a strict writing routine.

However, when I started sharing my work with colleagues and mentors, I discovered something distressing, something I would never have predicted:

No one understood what my stories were supposed to be about.

I was bewildered. None of the craft books I had read had warned me about this. In fact, many of the authors I followed asserted that a real writer didn’t try to “dumb down” or “spoon-feed the reader.” They talked as though being unusual and different was a good thing…

But this didn’t seem to be the good result I had been promised.

Readers complained that they didn’t understand why these two characters disliked each other.

They couldn’t make sense of that scene in the woods with the butterfly.

They asked me crazy, insane questions, like why the character still loved this guy who was so mean to him… And when I politely explained that the character DID change in the final scene, that the shift was RIGHT THERE on the page, that the whole story had led up to this plot twist — well, these people just nodded, vaguely, and confessed they maybe weren’t great readers.

Something was really wrong.

And — even worse — it wasn’t clear what the problem was.

Colleagues said that I was clearly a good writer. Classmates could point out plot twists or descriptive passages they admired. I kept winning scholarships and minor awards.

Yet I never seemed able to write a story that made people say “wow.”

And this was the only thing I wanted.

It’s actually very hard to write a scene that readers can effortlessly enjoy and understand

Slowly, gradually, I began to figure out what wasn’t working. I sat alone in coffeeshops, copying out great scenes from famous novels, circling repeating words, noting each time the narrator spoke. I took classes in narrative theory, reading essays on reading and story structure from serious Russians and melancholy Germans.

Now I could stand in front of one hundred tired people, reading them just a few scenes of a story, and keep their attention, hearing them laugh as the character’s frustrations grew. Now I had a process for editing and fixing my own stories, checking them for moments when the clarity or energy weakened.

I began teaching other writers how to design their story’s dramatic moments “character-first.”

That’s what this course is going to equip you to do.

What is “Character-First” Writing?

Here’s why you should be writing your pages, scenes, and chapters “character-first”: