- All six sessions are offered together. Individual presentations not available for registration.
- Attend the online presentations on Sept. 28 and/or view the recordings at a later date. Recordings available through Dec. 31st.
- Presented on Zoom.
- Download > Sat Sept 28 Schedule <
All times are Pacific Time
9:00am - Social Media for Authors with Susannah Greenberg: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so many more platforms are out there for authors to choose from. How do you choose among them? How do you get started? Susannah Greenberg, President of Susannah Greenberg Public Relations, will discuss why social media is important for authors; how to select the right platform for you and your project; and easy, actionable steps to get started.
10:15am - Who Ate Grandma? Using Family Mythology to Write Fiction with Lindsay Wong: In this session, attendees will learn when to draw on personal memory and family lore to craft compelling fiction. We will discuss how one’s cultural mythology and understanding of kinship can shape a narrative and examine the risks of writing about intergenerational trauma, secret-keeping, and truth-telling. Afterwards, perhaps some will be brave enough to unbury family skeletons!
11:30am - Revising with Focus-The Thesis of the Story with Meg Eden Kuyatt: Once you've written a draft, it can be difficult to figure out where to go next. A range of people will provide feedback, but who is right? How do you go about discerning what to edit and what to keep the same? To effectively edit, it’s critical to identify a manuscript’s underlying argument—it’s heart. In this session, we’ll discuss the “thesis statement” approach to editing, looking at examples of novels’ “thesis statements,” as well as providing exercises to help you identify and hone in on your book’s thesis. The focus will be on novels, but principles can be applied to poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction.
[Lunch Break]
1:00pm - Pitching Your Book: Redesign Your Pitch to Adapt to Any Audience with Pam Sheppard: A good, layered pitch is the final alignment of your premise, your comparables, your ideal consumer, and the market trends. Every conversation you will have about your book will be a pitch, and you will need more than just a logline or 'Elevator Pitch.' In this session, writers can identify, arrange, and rearrange the central assets of their project for a strong approach to a number of different media or marketing options. Learn about building strategies for approaching libraries, media, press kits, pitching interviews, podcasts, social media posts, book page and back cover descriptions. Key points include identifying ways to assess market trends for how your book can be relevant and discoverable and identify your unique value assets that respond to those trends and create an adaptable pitch.
2:15pm - Be Your Own Story Consultant with James Wallace: What is a Story Consultant? For beginning screenwriters and novelists, understanding the art of storytelling can be daunting. This session will unwind the complexities of storytelling and explain why mystical “script doctors”are hired to weave and layer storylines to create more compelling stories. In this session, newer writers will learn steps to channel their inner story consultant. we'll walk through the three-act structure, identify keys elements, and discuss a number of tools to help. Attendees will learn how character development impacts the storyline and how to weave a compelling protagonist/antagonist relationship.
3:30pm - Writing Humor and Other Terrifying Things with Andrew Buckley: Writing humor can be one of the most challenging things for a writer. This session explores the art of humor, its subjectivity as an art form, the various forms of humor, and provides tools to weave humor into story for character and plot development purposes. This interactive presentation will also address the boundaries of political correctness, provide guidance on fearlessly writing humor, and emphasize the importance of laughter in our daily lives.