What’s Included
2 1/2 Hours of Live Instruction on Zoom by Jill Chamberlain
A focused, information-dense seminar built around Jill’s foundational story lecture
Featured Interview with Novelist Jessica Jiji
A conversation with Jessica Jiji about how she uses the Nutshell Technique as her own structuring method. Jessica is the author of Sweet Dates in Basra and Diamonds Take Forever (HarperCollins), and How to Judge a Book By Its Lover (Stone Tiger Books).
Seminar Video Playback
Participants will have access to the seminar recording for 12 months.
Worksheets
Handouts of key story concepts and Nutshell Technique worksheets you can type directly into.
Nutshell Technique
Learn a clear framework for not only identifying structural problems but how to fix them.
Overview
Most novelists are not failing at prose. They’re failing at story.
This seminar introduces the core principles of the Nutshell Technique®, a story diagnostic used by professional screenwriters and increasingly sought out by novelists who want their work to feel emotionally satisfying, not just well written.
This seminar is not about studying novels as literature. It’s about understanding the underlying story engine: the same engine that makes films, episodic television, plays, and novels fulfilling.
This live Zoom seminar also includes a featured interview with novelist Jessica Jiji, who will discuss how she uses the Nutshell Technique as her own repeatable structuring method.
The Nutshell Technique addresses an extremely common but rarely named problem in which a writer has built a situation instead of a fully functioning story.
Prose, voice, and interiority can disguise this problem for hundreds of pages. This seminar shows you how to recognize it — and correct it — before you invest years in a story that doesn’t work.
What You’ll Learn
- The difference between a story and a situation, and why readers feel the gap
- How it is that 99% of writers (including novelists) are unknowingly writing what Jill calls Fat Tootsie
- The core structural elements that make stories emotionally complete, regardless of medium
- Why “beautiful writing” can’t compensate for missing story architecture
- How to apply this diagnostic directly to your own novel-in-progress
Who This Seminar Is For
- Novelists who sense something is missing but can’t diagnose what
- Novelists who want a story structure method that they can use every time
- Writers whose books are praised for voice or concept but feel unsatisfying as stories
- Screenwriters or program alumni branching into novels who want a structural reset
- Writers tired of revision notes that say “raise the stakes” or “deepen character” without explaining how
Featured Interview: Novelist Jessica Jiji
Jessica is an accomplished novelist and the author of Sweet Dates in Basra and Diamonds Take Forever, both published in English by HarperCollins and in Italian by Newton Compton. She is also the author of How to Judge a Book By Its Lover, published by Stone Tiger Books. Her novels have won the Palm Tamar Award and the Indies Today Best Humor Award. As a screenwriter, she won the Gold Prize in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards.
Below is a short interview with Jessica about what the Nutshell Technique helped her understand about novel structure, how it transformed a project she’d struggled with for over a decade, and why she now often writes a screenplay first and then adapts it into a novel.
JILL: You’re an accomplished novelist. What made you feel that the Nutshell Technique applied to novels, not just screenplays?
JESSICA: Novels and screenplays both require good storytelling. The main difference is that novels have more words, but that doesn’t mean you need a more complicated process. For me, the Nutshell Technique has the virtue of being simple and profound. It’s easy to execute, but the result has depth.
It also clarified something fundamental: the difference between a situation and a story. Before studying the Nutshell Technique, I often had a strong concept, but not always the actual shape of the story. Without that shape, you’re just getting “this happened, then this happened, then this happened.” A story needs to be “this happened, therefore that happened.”
JILL: Before you found the Nutshell Technique, what was missing for you in structuring a novel?
JESSICA: It was like I’d been walking around with blurry vision and didn’t know it, and the Nutshell Technique was a pair of glasses that suddenly snapped everything into focus.
I don’t think I fully understood that a story has one main character with one central flaw. Once I did, everything became much clearer. I also had trouble managing the material — the world, the timeline, the pacing. I knew other structure concepts, but the Nutshell Technique helped me see the story much more clearly and understand what actually belonged.
JILL: What changed for you once you started using it?
JESSICA: I had one story I’d been working on for more than ten years. Everyone loved the concept, but nobody liked the execution. What I was missing was the shape of the story. After learning the Nutshell Technique, I rewrote it, and that became the script that won the Gold Prize in the PAGE Awards.
It also saves enormous amounts of time. With novels especially, you can go tens of thousands of words in the wrong direction before realizing the story isn’t working. The Nutshell Technique helps you catch those problems much earlier.
JILL: You now often write the screenplay first and then adapt it into a novel. Why?
JESSICA: Because it’s a great life hack. First I build the story through the Nutshell Technique. Then I write the beat sheet, then the script, and then I turn that into a novel. By that point, the story is already working. I’m no longer trying to discover the structure while also writing prose.
When I adapt the script into a novel, I get to do the fun part: adding the prose, the thoughts, the description, the texture. But the story structure is already there. That process has been transformative to me as both a novelist and a screenwriter.
To learn more about Jessica Jiji and her work, visit jessicajiji.com.
