Schedule

TIME

8:45-9:30am

Doors open

9:30 – 10:20am

Erica Bauermeister

10:30 – 11:20am

DL Fowler

Fostering Intimacy

Wayne Ude

Characterization and Character Change

Bob Balmer

Mining Your Life for Laughter

11:30 – 12:20pm

AC Fuller

Online Marketing Skills for the Modern Writer

Wayne Ude

Beginning, Middle, Ending: Structuring a Novel

Ryan Petty

Retire Write

12:20 – 1:00pm

Lunch

1:00 – 1:50pm

Corbin Lewars

Publishing 101

Jerry Guarino

How to Write Flash Fiction

AC Fuller

Keeping Your Reader Hungry:
Creating Suspense Within Scenes and Novels

2:00 – 2:50pm

Corbin Lewars

Five Most Common Flaws

Jennifer Haupt

Three Keys to Unlocking Your Story

Cathy Warner

Scene Essentials

3:00 – 3:50pm

Connie Connally

Ringing True: Creating Emotional Impact in Stories

Wendy Kendall & Avis Adams

A Dialogue About Dialogue

Joseph Ponepinto

A Writer Walks Into a Bar: Writing Effective Humor

4:00 – 4:30

Closing remarks

10:30-11:20

Fowler

Fostering Intimacy

Regardless of genre, every writer’s job is to transport readers directly into their inner world. Fostering Intimacy goes beyond plotting and characterization. Based on the highly rated Psychology of Stories series, this session unpacks proven techniques for drawing readers in and holding them tight to the heartbeat of your story.

Ude

Characterization and Character Change

Many readers would agree that plot and character are the most essential elements in a story or novel. Events in a plot alter character; in turn, changes in a character alter the plot. We're going to look at one half of that partnership: methods of creating character and character change.

Balmer

Mining your Life for Laughter

Workshop attendees will examine how writers transmute personal incidents into humor. We will look at structure as a means to convey humor. Then, to follow James Thurber’s adage-- “Humor is chaos remembered in tranquility”, we will sift through our lives for stories, anecdotes and incidents to guild with humor.

11:30-12:20

Fuller

Online Marketing Skills for the Modern Writer

Writers are now more empowered than ever to market their own books. But techniques are changing rapidly and many authors are confused and overwhelmed by the options. In this class, A.C. Fuller will walk attendees through the modern landscape of online marketing.

Ude

Beginning, Middle, and End: Structuring a Novel

 A quick trip through building an opening which will intrigue readers; complicating things in the middle (the largest part of a novel); and wrapping things up bit by bit in the conclusion.

Petty

Retire Write

An informal workshop on how to think about the rest of your life as a writer. Many of us, middle-aged and older, feel we have the disadvantage of a late start on the writing career we longed for. This workshop challenges participants to think again, to look with new eyes.

1:00-1:50

Lewars

Publishing 101

Whether you have an article, short story or entire manuscript, navigating how and where to publish it can be daunting. How do you find magazines and journals for your stories? Do you need an agent to publish a book? What is a pitch versus a query? These questions and more.

Guarino

How to Write Flash Fiction

This session will focus on the essential elements of flash fiction, normally stories between 300 and 1000 words. Length alone does not make a good flash fiction story. It must be a complete story, with beginning, middle and ending, as well as a conflict that gets resolved.

Fuller

Keeping Your Reader Hungry: Creating Suspense Within Scenes and Novels

In this class, A.C. Fuller will talk about how to keep readers turning the pages by creating suspense. Though especially useful for mystery and thriller writers, the techniques discussed will be applicable to all types of novelists and even non-action writers.

2:00-2:50

Lewars

Five Most Common Flaws

With nearly twenty years of experience as a developmental editor, Corbin has learned that almost all manuscripts and stories have these have flaws: lack of theme, troublesome arcs, problematic point of view, redundancy (and the opposite), and poor pacing. We will cover tips on how to avoid these flaws.

Haupt

Three Keys to Unlocking your Story

These three elements of structure--premise, designing principle, and thematic through-line will help build a strong foundation for your story. (And make writing it more fun!)

Warner

Scene Essentials

Scenes are the heart of stories, the vivid events and images that expand time, heighten the senses, and engage a reader in both fiction and nonfiction. We’ll explore the elements and uses of scene, including dialogue, through discussion and examples, and learn how to apply them in our writing.

3:00-3:50

Connally

Ringing True: Creating Emotional Impact in Stories                           

We'll focus on sharpening emotional impact in our fiction and narrative non-fiction. Using discussion, exercises and examples from literature, we'll explore how to -- create tone through evocative imagery -- write internal monologue, the language of the heart --convey emotion in a character's actions and reactions.

Kendall & Adams

A Dialogue About Dialogue

Effective dialogue is real conversation, only better. It reveals who your characters are while bypassing the mundane, sometimes tedious and awed components of everyday conversation in the real world. Great dialogue moves the story along and can be an integral tool for managing the pacing of scenes.

Ponepinto

A Writer Walks Into a Bar: Writing Effective Humor

Humor is perhaps the most difficult genre of literature to write successfully, particularly since its success depends on a specific, physical reaction from the reader—namely, laughter. This session will look at a variety of humor genres, and how successful authors have mined them for literary success.