Kathryn Craft Tunes Our Storytelling Engines

By Glenn Walker

This past Thursday at the regular monthly meeting of the South Jersey Writers' Group, we had a very special guest. Author, editor, blogger, and member of the Philadelphia Liars Club, Kathryn Craft came to speak with our group. Her topic - Tune Your Storytelling Engine.

Kathryn's talk took us through a basic understanding of story structure, but more importantly how it works, why it works, and how to fix it when it doesn't work. Along with her presentation she provided an excellent handout outlining the process. For over an hour she dazzled us with her talent and experience, answering questions and discussing obstacles and solutions with the group. I could tell you what we talked about, but I don't want to spill all of Kathryn's secrets here. You can check out her work in that area at writing-partner.com and at The Blood-Red Pencil.

At the end of her presentation, Kathryn Craft read an enticing and emotional excerpt from her debut novel, The Art of Falling. Much of her presentation came from her experiences writing this and her upcoming second novel, so it only cemented a very subtle sales pitch for the book. I bought mine for Nook on my iPhone while she talked earlier in the evening. I'm reading it now, and it's excellent. The only downside is I couldn't get Kathryn to sign my new ebook copy.

We at the South Jersey Writers' group thank Kathryn Craft for her time and spending a wonderful evening with us. She was entertaining, educational, inspirational, and one very cool lady as well. She rocks. If you'd like to get in touch with Ms. Craft, you can go to her website, and you can buy her novel The Art of Falling here.