Teacher Feature: Mike Krentz

Engage your readers from page one with intertwined plot lines presented through multiple points of view. Your characters can be reliable or non, but none of them knows as much as the reader, who doesn’t know the complete story either. Learn how to weave together the story lines and characters in an ever-tightening spiral to create suspense and dramatic tension that will keep the reader turning the page.

Join Muse teaching artist Mike Krentz for Weaving Multiple Plotlines and POVs to Keep Your Reader Turning the Page on Saturdays, Jul 17 and Jul 24, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm.

This two-part seminar employs examples from popular fiction authors (George RR Martin, JK Rowling, Michael Connolly, Karin Slaughter, Jayne Ann Krentz, and others) to demonstrate the techniques for crafting a novel using interrelated multiple points of view and plot threads. Structural examples will show how to segment each within a story for maximum impact, how to differentiate the various POVs by unique voices and characteristics, how to plant hooks and foreshadowing in the storylines to suggest their eventual convergence and build suspense, and how to weave plot threads together to reach a unified climax and denouement. Relevant commercial and online resources will be cited. In the second session, participants will share their own story concepts, plot outlines, and character profiles for interactive group discussion and polishing.

Mike Krentz, the ancient mariner sailing over the storm-tossed ocean of fiction writing

What do Cormac McCarthy, George RR Martin, and James Patterson have in common that Celeste Ng and Lee Child do not? Why does Alex Michaelides have nothing in common with any of them? It’s all in the plot threads, POVs, and narrative structures. You don’t need a surgeon’s skill to dissect them, or to write your own page-turning work of fiction. You just gotta know the anatomy and physiology. -Mike Krentz

Who are Mike Krentz’s favorite authors?

• John Irving, because he writes so well and creates memorable characters and settings; and delightful stories.
• Karin Slaughter, because she writes great thrillers that attack violence against women.
• Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, Riley Sager, because thrillers.
• Laura Lippman, because thrillers and Baltimore.
• Edgar Allan Poe, because Nevermore.

Read more about Mike Krentz here. Find him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Read an excerpt from his novel Dead Already here. Find him on Amazon here. Read an interview by “The Big Thrill” here. 

See a full catalog of our Summer classes, workshops, and seminars and register HERE.

***Tuition assistance and flexibility is available to all who request it, no questions asked. Just select the “I want to talk about tuition assistance” box when checking out!