Flash Sale: Video Seminars on DVD

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* I forgot to mention
* Flash Sale: Video Seminars on DVD
* Of Interest

Quotes of the Day

“We never know the whole man, though sometimes, in quick flashes, we know the true man.” Agathe Christie Seems appropriate for a mystery writer

“Science debunks ‘no pain, no gain.'” Um, how do you “debunk” something that only served as a motivational saying in the first place?

“When a poet sees a rock in the road, he may write ‘a rock lay in the road.’ A false poet will hoke it up in the translation.” Howard Nemerov

I forgot to mention yesterday that I added a new gift to the Archives and Gifts page at https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives-gifts/. It’s one of my small collections of poetry, so if you enjoy poetry, go check it out.

And if you’re one of those unfortunate ones whom college professors convinced that you can’t “understand” poetry, go check it out anyway. I’m not one of those snotty pretend poets with my nose pointed so heavenward that I risk drowning if it rains. As with any piece of writing, whatever a poem means to you is correct.

Anyway, I revised the Archives and Gifts page a little too, so you don’t have to scroll so far.

Flash Sale: Video Seminars on DVD

This flash sale is available first only to readers of The Journal.

Back when I was still teaching in-person seminars in Tucson (2009, I believe) we actually filmed some of those presentations. Yup, me, almost live, in video and audio and with my hokey, western-twang voice.

Now, full disclosure, these are NOT studio-quality DVDs. My wife recorded them on a small video camera from the back of the room as I taught the seminars. So the lighting, voice quality, etc. is not the best.

Hence the low, low price of only $5 per hour of instruction. Also, we’re eating the shipping cost at the media mail rate.

However, the value is in the information, and the information is all there. I don’t remember what we charged for these seminars, but I can guarantee you it was quite a bit more than $5 per hour. (grin)

Now we’re offering these DVDs for sale, and we don’t plan to make any copies. When these are gone, that’s it.

Each DVD is around three hours long and is divided into three approximately one-hour sessions.

Sorry, but no sales of single DVDs. At only $5 per hour of instruction,we’re selling these seminar DVDs only as sets.

We have only seven sets, as follows:

*A full set of all 6 DVDs. That’s 18 hours of instruction. We have five full sets of 6 DVDs, but when they’re gone, they’re gone. The cost is $90.

*A set of 5 DVDs. This one contains all of the seminars listed below EXCEPT POV & Narrative Voice. That’s 15 hours of instruction. We have only one set of 5 DVDs. The cost is $75.

*A set of 4 DVDs that includes everything EXCEPT Writing Realistic Dialogue and POV & Narrative Voice. That’s 12 hours of instruction. We have only one set of 4 DVDs. The cost is $60.

Here are the seminar descriptions:

Writing Realistic Dialogue—Various techniques to further suspend the reader’s sense of disbelief through realistic, non-linear dialogue and its nuances. Accompanied by two handouts in PDF.

Conveying Emotion Through Dialogue—Convey the emotions of the characters and manipulate the mood and emotions of the reader through the nuances of dialogue and punctuation.

Creating Realistic Characters—What causes a reader to immediately recognize and identify with a character type? What makes the individual character stand out from other characters? Why should “cardboard” or “flat” characters’ dialogue be MORE colorful than that of more important characters? Includes a list of cliché character traits and a partial list of non-cliché character traits in PDF.

Writing Dialect—The old wisdom on writing dialect is a paradox: Until you know how to write dialect well, don’t write it at all. Learn to take your time and think your way through dialect. What you need, what you should leave out. Includes a list of suggested words and spellings and a rationale for and against using phonetic spellings in PDF.

Point of View and Narrative Voice—POV defined, narrative voice clarified. A lot of strong narrative tips in this one, including the natural tense for narrative (and why), what “show, don’t tell” really means, how to recognize and repair “passive” constructions and much more.

Writing Great Beginnings—How to grab the reader from the first sentence. Ways to turn a phrase, a look at dramatic, emotional, and dramatic-emotional sentence structures, and techniques that will have the reader leaping into the story of his/her own accord.

As you can see, these are not the things I talk about in the Journal. They have nothing to do with process or with grounding the reader or the five senses or setting or scene or any of that.

These are all pre-craft seminars. These are the foundation you need, the knowledge you need, to be able to write into the dark and attempt to adhere to Heinlein’s Rules.

If you paid rapt attention to the rules of grammar and syntax in school, and if you followed up by asking why those rules work the way they do and then explored the nuances of the language in depth, you don’t need these.

But if you didn’t, trust me, this information can only help improve your writing. Besides, if the language and punctuation are the primary tools of your trade, you should know this stuff.

To purchase any of the sets, either

1. send full payment via PayPal to harveystanbrough@gmail.com (I’ll know what the payment’s for) and include your physical shipping address, and the DVDs will go out in the next day’s post, OR

2. to pay by personal check, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com to reserve your set. Then mail your check pronto to PO Box 604, St. David AZ 85630. We’ll hold the set for you for up to one week, so mail your check promptly, and again, be sure to let us know your physical shipping address. The DVDs will go out in the post the day after your check arrives.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Kickstarter Best Practices” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/kickstarter-best-practices/.

See “Ringing Out the Old Year With Hate Mail” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/01/ringing-out-the-old-year-with-hate-mail.html.

See “Will AI Make Creative Workers Redundant?” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/will-ai-make-creative-workers-redundant/. I left a comment.

See “Amazon Book Sales Statistics” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/amazon-book-sales-statistics/.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 1060 words

Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal (WCG8SF3)

Day 11… 4502 words. Total words to date…… 30311
Day 12… 1098 words. Total words to date…… 31409

Total fiction words for January……… 21701
Total fiction words for 2023………… 21701
Total nonfiction words for January… 9220
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 9220
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 30923

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 71
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer because of my zen-like non-process. If you want to learn it too, either hang around or download my Journal Archives at https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives/, read them, and try WITD for yourself. The archives are free.