Good to hear

Email from a former graduate student:

I learned more about story structure in that class than any writing class I've ever taken, and it's paying off. I recently got a contract with a local publisher and am looking at a summer 2013 release of my first novel. 

I make a point of emphasizing story structure in my screenwriting class, buying William Goldman's remark that screenwriting is about "structure, structure and structure." Fiction writers sometimes rebel against this since their rhetorical gifts are of no use, or even negative use, in spec script writing. I try to convince them they can learn how to tell STORIES better (no matter how they are written) by paying attention to the beginning-middle-end story paradigm at the center of most screenwriting theories. So I'm thrilled to learn when someone gets the lesson and lets me know.