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Sue Moorcroft's Newsletter
Hi Everyone,
 I’m thrilled to have been asked by Arte Umbria to run one of their residential courses in Umbria, Italy, 3-10 July 2013. As you can see from the pictures, the Poggiolame estate is gorgeous. It includes 220 acres of countryside and a country house with a pool near a medieval village and with a castle just down the road – inspirational surroundings. The plentiful food and drink are fantastic, too. Here’s the blurb for the course:
 How to Write Romantic Fiction with Sue Moorcroft
Many novels have a love story at their heart and romantic fiction regularly outsells other genres, appealing to women and men of all ages. On this course you’ll be helped to decide where in the genre your book fits – chick lit? Romantic suspense? Category romance? Romantic comedy?
Morning and afternoon tutorials will cover:
o To plan or not to plan (premise and idea, outlines)
o Hero and heroine - putting the right ones together and creating sizzle
o And how to keep them apart
o Why know the backstory?
o What do you need to research?
o Where the story begins
o Conflicts
o Technique: characterisation, motivation, dialogue, viewpoint, tenses, flashbacks, imagery, plotting, voice, vivid verbs, settings
o Emotion
o Sex? When? And how?
o Goodies, baddies and others
o Is you middle nice and tight?
o What’s the ending?
o Audience and markets
o How to pitch to editors and agents: manuscript, synopsis and covering letter; making contacts
In between, we’ll pick our retreats in the fabulous surroundings – and write.
At the end of the day, we’ll meet to discuss and critique our day’s work. Students will have the opportunity for one-to-ones with me during the week.
Before the course: you’ll be invited to send me two pages of your work – either the opening of your novel, hero and heroine’s first meeting, or their first kiss – to give me the flavour of your writing and an idea of where you’re heading.
What you’ll need: yourself, your imagination and your laptop or other favourite writing device.
I can’t wait! If you fancy writing time with other writers and some focused tuition (not to mention the Italian vino), booking details, prices and more information are at http://arteumbria.com/. The course is already filling up (but if it fills quickly, you never know, they might ask me to do two!)
 Also available for booking now is the Festival of Romance, taking place in Bedford, England, 16th to 18th November 2012. I'm going to be taking one of the Saturday workshops, 2.15-4.30pm Writing Romantic Novels, at Bedford Central Library, or you can come and meet me at the Festival Ball on the Friday evening at Bedford Corn Exchange or the Rock Star Party at Bedford Rock, 5.30-7.00pm.
You'll see that there's a link at the foot of this newsletter to enable you to share it with friends and soon I'm going to start a promotion where if somebody subscribes to the newsletter on your recommendation, you'll be entitled to a free download of one of my books. But first I have to work out how to do it ...
Best wishes,
Sue
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