February 21 Writer’s Workshop: Book Writing Coach Karen Bacellar helps us “Find the Shape of Your Story: A Blueprint for Novel Planning”

When: Saturday, February 21, 2026 from Noon to 1:30pm

Where: 208 Queen Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314

Buy your ticket: shapeofyourstory.eventbrite.com

• 90-minute in-person seminar: $125
• $99 for writing group members: Click here to send us an email and we’ll give the code
• Capped at 20 writers

This 90-minute seminar introduces writers to a structured but flexible way of thinking about planning or revising a novel. Drawing on Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Book method, the session offers a crash-course overview of the 14 key questions that help writers move from a big, often unwieldy idea to being ready to write page one.

Rather than focusing on writing exercises or prescriptive rules, the seminar presents the Blueprint as a way of thinking about story development. Each step builds on the one before it, helping writers understand how questions of purpose, audience, character, plot, and structure work together to shape a coherent novel.

The goal of the session is not to complete the Blueprint, but to give writers a feel for this approach to story development. By walking through all 14 steps at a high level and in sequence, the seminar shows how the method works and why the questions build on one another. Writers will leave with a clearer sense of whether this framework resonates with how they think and work, and with an understanding of how it can be used both at the beginning of a project and as a tool for untangling an existing manuscript.

The final portion of the seminar includes dedicated Q&A, with time for writers to briefly workshop the core point or question driving their book.

This seminar is suited for writers who are developing a new project as well as writers with a draft or partial manuscript that feels unwieldy and could benefit from a clearer underlying structure.

Writers who attend the seminar will receive 20% off any of my coaching services should they wish to continue working with this method.

Questions? Click here to send Karen an email.

About Book Coach Karen Bacellar Book

Karen Bacellar is a book coach, writer, and communications strategist who helps speculative fiction authors transform big ideas into structured, emotionally resonant novels. Through her business, Cinematic Book Coaching, she guides writers from creative overwhelm to clarity, offering strategic support that blends story craft with vision.

A former filmmaker, her short film Gaslight Grail won Best Short Film at the Chicago Horror Film Festival, and her story Tess/Gunther was a quarter-finalist in the Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Competition. She attended the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon in 2024 and 2025 and was named a Luso-American Fellowship finalist in 2025.

Karen is currently working on Cantora, a novel set in Salazar’s Portugal, and Listening for Ghosts, a novella exploring memory, grief, and the long arc of personal reckoning. She holds degrees from University College London and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Born in Brazil and raised in New England, she now lives in Virginia.