Scribendi.com – Webinars, Writing Advice, and April's Account of Surviving NaNoWriMo

Editing and proofreading company Scribendi is one of our great corporate sponsors, and they'll be offering a free webinar for NaNoWriMo participants called "How To Write a Novel" this Saturday, October 22! It will run from 11:00 AM - 11:40 AM EDT.

Here's an overview from the folks at Scribendi:

In this webinar, the first of a two-part series, Bryan, Scribendi.com's Senior Editor and a published writer, discusses how to write a novel. In this 20 minute presentation, which will be followed by a question and answer period, Bryan delves into setting, character, conflict, and structure. He also introduces some of the important elements of a novel, such as theme, tone, and dialogue. Finally, he points out the importance of genre, audience, and literary conventions.

Whether you're a new or experienced writer, you won't want to miss this webinar on how to write a novel. And be sure to catch the sequel, entitled: "How to Edit a Novel."

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/968082830.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

If you have questions about novel writing you'd like addressed in the webinar, please post them in this thread and Bryan will do his best to address them on Saturday!

Sounds great, but for those who are time zone challenged (2am for me!), will it be recorded?

Ferns

8-8:40 my time (Arizona). Unless the rest of the world did the time switch thing? Anyway, won't interfere with my critique group.

You say it runs from "11:00 AM - 11:40 PM", but I doubt that it's twelve hours and forty minutes long. So is it AM or PM?

Hey Everyone!

We will be recording the webinar and putting it up on our site, or on YouTube, early next week. I'll put the link to the recorded webinar in this thread so you can easily find it.

Damon, that's what you get when the Marketing Coordinator (me!) creates the event, rather than one of our editors—a 12 hour webinar! My mistake; the webinar is from 11:00AM-11:40AM. I hope you'll be tuning in.

I should also note that due to increased interest, we have opened up the webinar to more people. If you tried to sign up and the webinar was full, try again now because we've created more spots.

For those in UK/ Ireland, this should be at 1600-1640 (GMT+1). At least I think that is right.

I'm timezone challenged. Anyone know what that'd be Central time?

Hooray for the future link of the forty minute webinar!

I look forward to it, as I have to be away from the computer based interwebs this Saturday.

Does anyone have any questions they'd like answered in tomorrow's webinar?

Question for the webinar

As an author, what do you find to be the best and worst parts of writing a novel and how do you motivate yourself to get through the worst?

Question on writer's block: Have you had it? If so, do you have any tips to get passed it?

Characters can sometimes go against what you have planned for them (or at least you blame the characters). When should you reel in your characters or should you allow your storyline to get completely diverted in case it becomes better?

Hope that made sense.

Thanks for the great questions. Bryan will be answering them in today's webinar.

I'm having trouble getting into the webinar :( I showed up on time and now it's 30 minutes in and I only heard three words because my browser kicked me out and is only just now letting me back in

Maybe if he'll answer my questions here later?
How do you get the motivation to write? I'm not referring to writer's block, how do you make yourself focus strictly on writing and get things done? This is a big issue for me.

The webinar was excellent! I got a couple of questions answered. Everything said was very helpful. Thank you so much Scribendi and Bryan for this amazing webinar.

I'd also like to pass on my thanks too. After what was said, I think I do need to rein my characters slightly. I have also started putting specific plans for inside chapters, specifically what the MC will be feeling at the start, middle and the end. That was a serious help although I think I would say my concept came before my characters as they were created to facilitate the story.

Also thank you for spending so long with us, much longer than planned. Looking forward to the editting webinar as that one will be completely new on the fiction side to me.

As requested during the webinar, Bryan compiled a list of some of his top writing communities and books. Enjoy!

Some great writing forums/communities:
http://www.nathanbransford.com/
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/
http://www.fmwriters.com/

Some great writing books:
Story, by Robert McKee
A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation, by Noah Lukeman
On Writing, by Stephen King
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
Sometimes the Magic Works, by Terry Brooks
How to Write a Sentence, by Stanley Fish
Booklife, by Jeff Vandermeer
On Becoming a Novelist, by John Gardner
The Art of Fiction, by John Gardner

Where's the link guys? Real life interfered half way through so I only caught the beginning and tail end of the webinar.