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Conference Schedule 2019

Conference Schedule 2019

Friday, February 22, 2019, 10:15 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.

In Search of the Inciting Incident: Novel Plot and Structure with Matthew Salesses

Date(s): Friday, February 22, 2019, 10:15 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
Location: Heritage, University Club (view map)
Type(s): Presentation
Genre and Form(s): Fiction, Mixed Genre, Novels
Tags: Structure, Plot, Composition

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About the Session

Have a great idea for a novel but don't know how to start it? Stuck in the middle of novel-drafting and stalling out? Much of writing a novel through to its end is about what is set up by its premise. A novel, a great writer once said, is a structural machine. That structure begins at the beginning. Agents and editors want to see the first 50 pages of the novel for a reason--a lot has to happen in those 50 pages to sustain a book-length work of fiction. What exactly makes an inciting incident, though? Exploring that question will help the writer set the groundwork for a novel.

Meet the Presenter(s)

Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference 2019 Faculty Matthew Salesses


Matthew Salesses

Matthew Salesses is the author of the novel The Hundred-Year Flood (Little A/Amazon Publishing), an Amazon Bestseller, Best Book of September, and Kindle First pick; an Adoptive Families Best Book of 2015; a Millions Most Anticipated of 2015; a Thought Catalog Essential Contemporary Book by an Asian American Writer; and a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker, among others. Forthcoming are a new novel, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear (Little A, 2020), and a collection of essays, Own Story (Little A, 2021). His previous books and chapbooks include I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms), Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity (Thought Catalog Books), and The Last Repatriate (Nouvella). Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers in 2015. Matthew is an Assistant Professor of English at Coe College and teaches in the Low-residency MFA Program at Ashland University.


Learn more about Matthew Salesses