Susan coaches unpublished and prize-winning writers during all stages of development from vague outline to completed manuscript. If you’re seeking a writing coach for a memoir, literary fiction, or a literary blockbuster, contact Susan to determine if your goals and her skills are a fit. In a complimentary consult, you and Susan will discuss your project and determine whether one-on-one coaching, a 2-hour consultation, or collaborative editing, is the most appropriate option for you and your goals.
Testimony form Richard Kearney, Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College who worked with Susan on his novels Sam’s Fall (1995) and Walking at Sea Level (1997), Brigid’s Well (2019)
“The inestimable Susan Sutliff Brown is a genius, and one of the finest mentors anyone could wish to have. I don’t start a novel or revise one without consulting her.”
Testimony from Martha Frankel, Founder and Director of the Woodstock Writers’ Festival and author of Hats and Eyeglasses.
“Susan Brown has a way of making writing fun. She can sort of nudge you to reach into places you never knew you wanted to explore, and then mine gold from them. Every sentence I have written in her workshops is better than it would have been without her. Hats and Eyeglasses owes so much to her deft editing and enthusiasm.”
Testimony from Balanchine ballerina, Allegra Kent and author of Once a Dancer
“Learning to write with Susan Brown is like learning to dance with Balanchine. She’s a great teacher who can discern hidden talent in her students, particularly the insecure ones. Just as Balanchine brought out the unique peculiarities of his ballerinas, Susan Brown works magic with words. She showed me how to choreograph my clauses and weed out my weaknesses.”
Comments from some of Susan’s other clients
Discounted Private Coaching Package
(recommended)
new clients 20 % discount: $2000 for 25 hours
workshop participants 40 % discount: $1500 for 25 hours
In a series of 25 coaching sessions (by Skype or phone) over three months, bring your project and your writing skills to the next level with master teacher and professional editor Susan Brown. After a complimentary consultation, if you and Dr. Brown determine a private coaching is the best option for your goals, together you will develop a plan to begin, accelerate, or reevaluate a project and establish deadlines, assignments and a meeting schedule. Based on decades of working with writers, Dr. Brown recommends a coaching package to insure continuity and progress in a project and a writer’s skills. As her clients will attest, choosing a coaching package inspires commitment to writing and an incentive to meet deadlines.
What Does a Writing Coach and Personal Editor Do?
As a college creative writing professor and coach with 40 years experience teaching, writing, editing manuscripts, preparing book proposals, and doctoring projects for submission to agents and publishers, Susan will address all literary elements of your project such as:
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Have you made the right choice between memoir and fiction to tell your personal story?
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Does your mastery of sentence variety create prose that reads like butter?
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Does your narrative (memoir or fiction) have a compelling dual plot (external and internal)?
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Have you developed a mesmerizing complex personality and compelling narrative voice for your main character (which in memoir is you).
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Does your project have a unique and timely premise?
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What is the profound and complex theme beating at the heart of your book?
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Does your opening grab the reader by the throat?
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Have you mastered three-part dialogue including internal monologue?
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Is your manuscript unified with a leitmotif?
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Have you chosen the most effective structure: frame, chronological with flashbacks, or medias res?
And that’s just in the first 15 minutes!