Plot To Thrill: Creating a Story for an Audience That’s Already Seen Every Story
In this live webinar taught by William Rabkin, you’ll learn the tricks, the gimmicks, and the honest plotting moves that allow these shows to keep even the most jaded audiences in constant suspense.
The victim is actually the killer! The police chief is actually the head of the conspiracy! She’s my sister AND my daughter! Twists like those used to be enough to keep an audience enthralled, happy, and satisfied. But in these story-saturated times, with 600 new series appearing every year, viewers have seen so many stories they can spot just about any plot twist coming two episodes before the writer can get there… and when they do, they’re not going to stick around to be proved right. Is it even possible to craft an original story that can entertain and surprise an audience that has seen it all a hundred times before?
Three recent limited streaming series prove that it is. The Diplomat, Inside Man, and Rabbit Hole provide a master class in deception, distraction, camouflage, and bluff, and in this live webinar, we are going to tear apart every piece of deception to see just how the writers pull it off. We will learn the tricks, the gimmicks, and the honest plotting moves that allow these shows to keep even the most jaded audiences in constant suspense.
William Rabkin, the author of the best-selling Writing the Pilot books, has been creating and writing mysteries for 35 years and has been nominated twice by the Mystery Writers of America for their Edgar Award and has always been fascinated by the way plots work… or don’t.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
- What makes a great thriller work
- How to keep the audience in suspense
- How to design a concept that will allow you to thrill
- How to fool even the most sophisticated viewer
- How to use deceit to tell an honest story
- What audiences want in a mystery or thriller and how to provide it
- How plot depends on character and character depends on plot
- How to keep twisting the story without losing the audience’s trust
- How to keep your audience coming back for more
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
- Writers who want to create the next big, buzzy streaming series
- Writers who want to improve their plotting
- Writers who are looking for a killer thriller concept
- Writers who need to get ahead of their audiences
- Writers who want to keep their readers and viewers in suspense
- Writers who are sick of audiences outguessing them
- Writers who see a magic trick and want to know how it’s done
Learn from an expert instructor!
William Rabkin, author of the best-selling Writing the Pilot trilogy, has spent 35 years studying the craft of constructing mysteries and thrillers as he has written for shows like Monk, Psych, Diagnosis Murder, Spenser: For Hire, The Glades, and Nero Wolfe. He co-created and wrote the science fiction thriller Dream Raider for HBOAsia, and wrote the conspiracy thriller The Hunner for the Netherlands’ Blooming Media, and a fictional investigation into the real-life mystery of the sinking of the ferry Estonia for the Nordic Entertainment Group and ITV.
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