Smarter Than You Think: Trusting Readers with Subtlety, Nuance, and the Pleasures of Uncertainty

REGISTER NOW    $15 (early bird) | $25.00

Fiction & Nonfiction

Readers love putting two and two together for themselves, but too often—out of insecurity—writers forget to provide readers the space to discern and discover. 

Readers are curious people with active, agile minds. Too often, though—out of insecurity about how well our story is coming across—we provide too much information, robbing our readers of one of the key pleasures of reading: putting two and two together for themselves.

This webinar will use examples from successful memoirs and literary essays to examine how we can write as if telling our story to the smartest friend we have. Where is the line between leaving a reader in the dark and allowing for some delicious suspense? When are nuance and suggestion more effective than perfect clarity? When is contradictory character information a strength rather than a blunder?

We’ll examine how we can enter the reader’s thought processes to discern the difference between confusing our readers and leaving them intrigued. And we’ll examine our own insecurity patterns, rooting out our tendencies to tell, then show, then tell again.

In this webinar, you will:

• EXPLORE the line between confusing our readers and leaving them happily intrigued
• LEARN to write as if telling our story to “the smartest friend we have.”
• EXAMINE our own insecurity patterns, rooting out our tendencies to tell, then show, then tell again.

This webinar is ideal for writers at any level who:

• Would like their work to immediately capture attention, to engage agents, editors and—of course—readers
• Struggle with “how much to tell,” “how much to show,” and how much to “hold back”
• Want to revise work that’s been widely submitted and rejected
• Are insecure about their storytelling skills (that’s all of us)!

Closed captioning is available.
All registrants receive the recording.

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

DINTY W. MOORE  is author of the memoirs Between Panic & Desire and To Hell With It, and the writing guides Crafting the Personal Essay and The Mindful Writer, among other books. He has published essays and stories in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Short Reads, and elsewhere. He is founding editor of Brevity, the journal of flash nonfiction.

Questions? Please email Info@craft-talks.com