Plot is not decoration.
It's the engine.
Stories collapse when the plot is weak — not because the writing is bad, but because the underlying structure isn't doing its job. This program focuses on exactly that: how plots are actually built, session by session, across live broadcasts with direct expert access.
Live sessions, recorded replays, and structured feedback — all in one program.
Six sessions on plot mechanics
Each session isolates one part of the plot — opening tension, rising stakes, midpoint reversals, escalation chains, and resolution logic. The focus is on the mechanics, not the inspiration. You'll leave each session with a clear model you can test on your own work immediately.
The format is live broadcast with live Q&A. You watch, ask questions in real time, and get structured feedback on examples you bring to the session.
- Scene-level cause and effect — why scenes must earn their place in the sequence
- Conflict types and what happens when the wrong type is used at the wrong moment
- Pacing — when a plot reads too slowly and how to diagnose the actual source
- Multiple-thread plots and when subplots start working against the main line
- Endings — how the final plot beat earns or undermines everything before it
Two instructors, different approaches to plot
Both instructors have worked with plot problems in published work — not in academic theory. They disagree on a few things, which makes the live sessions genuinely interesting to watch.
Cormac Devereux
Plot Structure & Conflict Design
Fiction writer with eight published novels. Focuses on how constraint shapes plot — fewer options, sharper story.
Britta Falkner
Narrative Arc & Pacing
Screenwriter and prose editor who moved into teaching after ten years working on long-form serialised narratives.
Yusuf Tamboli
Resolution & Final Act Structure
Literary fiction writer with a particular focus on how stories close. Author of two short fiction collections.
"Plot doesn't happen to characters. Characters make it happen — or fail to stop it."
Six sessions, one focused subject
Plot development only. No tangents into character theory or style questions unless they directly affect the plot. The program is short by design — long enough to go deep, short enough to stay on topic.
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