Begin With the End in Mind: A Backward Design Approach to Storytelling
This workshop explores how to build a strong story by starting with the ending and working backward. Participants will learn how themes, character arcs, and conflict work together to shape compelling fiction with clear direction and a satisfying climax. This session examines how to identify thematic statements, define character goals and motivations, and create supporting characters whose skills and personalities actively contribute to the plot. The workshop also explores the major types of conflict and how conflict drives suspense.
Participants will learn how to:
- Identify and articulate the main theme of a story.
- Define character goals, motivations, and internal conflicts that provide forward momentum.
- Design climaxes that resolve both the central conflict and the character’s internal arc.
- Build supporting characters whose skills, flaws, and perspectives actively shape the outcome of the story.
- Understand the major types of conflict (internal and external) and how they develop from opening scene to climax.
- Reverse-engineer plot structure by mapping key turning points backward from the ending.
Participants will learn how to build flexible story timelines that map major events from beginning to climax.
Writers will leave the session with practical strategies for organizing ideas, developing purposeful characters, and structuring stories so that theme, conflict, and character arcs remain tightly integrated from the first to final scene.
About Elise Abram
Elise Abram is an author, editor, and the founder of EMSA Publishing. Since 2015, she has helped authors through the publishing process, offering services such as editing, interior formatting, cover design, and distribution. She has published over 100 books, including 29 of her own, and edited more than 300 manuscripts, fiction and non-fiction, in a variety of genres. She is also an award-winning YA science fiction author. A former archaeologist and retired English teacher with over 25 years of experience, Elise holds an MEd in Curriculum Studies. She now channels her passion for teaching into supporting writers and working closely with authors on the craft of writing, editing, and publishing, offering practical, experience-based advice.with authors on the craft of writing, editing, and publishing, offering practical, experience-based advice.