The Language of Story

Once, back in the days before Scott fled urban life to set up shop at the Insane Angel Fortress of Solitude, he used to dispense his dubious wisdom on the craft of writing in the classroom. At long last, and under constant pressure from certain ex-students, he's reassembling his writing workshops in intermittent online form.

The Language of Story workshop will appear sporadically on the blog, in amongst other things. This page provides the easiest means of seeing just the workshop posts. To receive an automatic email notification when a new workshop post appears, just drop Scott a line.

Part 1 — Unleash Your Inner Aristotle

Part 2 — School's In

Part 3 — The Language of Story

Part 4 — The Tyranny of Structure

Part 5 — The Neo-Aristotelian View

Part 6 — There's Something About Syd

Part 7 — It's Complicated

Part 8 — Not in the Cards

Part 9 — On the Level

The Exile's Blade —

Sidnye (Queen of —
the Universe) —

We Can Be Heroes —

A Prayer for —
Dead Kings —

Blackheath —

The Voices —
of the Dead —

Tales of the —
Endlands —

One Size Fits All —

The Language —
of Story —

Free Fiction —

Extras —

One of the great disadvantages of working a fair amount as an editor and story editor is that you spend more time shaping people's creativity than you do publicly flogging your own. As such, editors and story editors (including Scott) often have to resort to vicariously dropping the names of people they work with in the hope of making their behind-the-scenes work seem justified.

The magic of being taught by Scott is that he won't merely hand you a Hollywood formula; instead he instils within his students an innate sense of story that you can make your own and adapt to each project. By the time he is done, you will actually believe that you were born with this incredible gift for story structure. I guarantee that after a course with Scott, you will never feel the need to pick up another book on writing. What I learned from Scott was invaluable, and if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to learn the craft of writing from him do yourself a favour and don't pass it up! The world wants to hear your story and Scott can help make that happen.

— Terri Tatchell,
Co-Writer, District 9, Chappie

So that was kind of cool.