In an entertaining and engaging presentation and workshop, Mata Haggis-Burridge brings together lessons on character and plot structure based on experience working on storytelling projects with professional teams, alongside their own personal writing practice. They'll share the foundational points of a plot, how these are driven by character growth, and tips for making dynamic scenes. There will be plenty of examples from well-known stories to show the structures in action, and examples of tools you can use to improve your own writing.
Mata (they/he) is a writer, narrative director, and game designer with twenty-five years' industry experience. They are a professor at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) in the Netherlands. Mata’s video game writing credits include Burnout Paradise, Dying Light 2, Resident Evil: Resistance, the LGBTQ+ drama Fragments of Him, and Satisfactory 1.0. In prose fiction, they have several published short stories and a novel on submission, with more in editing stages. They specialise in supernatural horror, and post a weekly newsletter with new tiny spooky stories and writing tips (https://matahaggisburridge.substack.com/), but also write science-fiction and comedy. Alongside writing, they've been a circus performer, portrait painter, and have a PhD in cyberpunk literature.