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Conference Schedule
October 12-14, 2018
FRIDAY, October 12
6:00-7:00 Registration
6:30-7:30 Cocktail reception with no-host bar
7:30-9:30 Author Talk & Signing: Fonda Lee, Advice from a Worldbuilding Junkie (& It’s Not About the Maps)
SATURDAY, October 13
9:30 – 10 am: Welcome
10:00-11:00 am – Workshop: J.C. Geiger, The Discipline of Fear
11:15-12:15 am – Workshop: Stephanie Kuehn, Never Say What You Mean
12:15-1:30 Lunch & Book Signing with J.C.Geiger and Bill Cameron
1:30-2:30 Workshop: Bill Cameron, Nerve Endings: Excavating the Hearts of Young Adult Characters at their Most Vulnerable
2:45-3:45 – Workshop: Fonda Lee, Knock ‘Em Out: How to Write Action and Fight Scenes
4:00-5:00 Martial Arts Demonstration & Talk with Matthew Lowes
500-7:30 Dinner & Writing Time–on your own
7:30-9:30 Author Talk & Signing: Stephanie Kuehn, So What? A Reflection On Miles Davis, Private Language, and the Never-Ending Search For Relevance
SUNDAY, October 14
10:00-11:30 am Young Writers Breakfast with Stephanie Kuehn (for our young writers only)
2:00-4:00 pm Author Talk & Signing at Eugene Public Library: Stephanie Kuehn, What Makes a Thriller Work?
Session Descriptions
Advice from a Worldbuilding Junkie (& It’s Not About the Maps) Worldbuilding isn’t just for science fiction and fantasy authors; no matter what genre you write, one of your goals as a writer is to immerse your reader in a specific time and place of your design. But worldbuilding can feel like an overwhelming process. How do you decide what to include and when? How do you avoid drowning your reader in detail? Fonda Lee (author of Jade City, Zeroboxer, Exo) shares her thoughts on how to create and convey a fictional world that is richly imagined and utterly convincing. — Fonda Lee
Knock ‘Em Out: How to Write Action and Fight Scenes How do you write action and fight scenes that are gripping and realistic? How do you convey the pulse-pounding experience of combat if you’re not the sort of person with experience throwing punches or firing guns? Author Fonda Lee, a black belt with fifteen years of martial arts experience, and author of Jade City, Zeroboxer and Exo, offers guidelines and tips for writing edge-of-your-seat fights that feel real. — Fonda Lee
So What? A Reflection On Miles Davis, Private Language, and the Never-Ending Search for Relevance. How a journey of personal transformation became one of professional transformation and led Stephanie Kuehn to writing later in life. — Stephanie Kuehn
Never Say What You Mean Using doubt, misdirection, and narrator unreliability as worldbuilding tools to craft an effective thriller. — Stephanie Kuehn
What Makes a Thriller Work? Let’s break down the crucial elements of a thriller and find out how the pieces fit together for maximum mind-twisting impact. — Stephanie Kuehn
Nerve Endings: Excavating the Hearts of Young Adult Characters at their Most Vulnerable The distinction between adults and teens isn’t their intelligence or their complexity, but the extent of their experience. For young adults, each new day can bring with it an overwhelming mix of excitement and fear, often turbulent and disorienting. In this fertile territory lies the foundation for powerful storytelling. Together, we’ll explore a variety of techniques for creating raw-edged, complicated characters desperate to succeed but still developing the tools they need to confront a dangerous, ever-changing world. — Bill Cameron
The Discipline of Fear The tension of an unresolved chord. The disquiet of a Goya painting. The sharp lengthening of shadow as Nosferatu enters the room. The artistic disciplines of music, visual art, and film offer writers masterful lessons on how to provoke fear and build suspense. So what is the page-turn equivalent of a jump scare? What sort of character description is as good as an oil painting? How does a writer get that reeeeeaaaally creepy violin music playing under all the right scenes? In this session, we will survey a multidisciplinary approach to the ominous, and explore techniques to bring the most thrilling elements of song, screen, and canvas to the written page. — J.C. Geiger
Martial Arts in Fiction This talk will give you an understanding of balancing fantasy versus reality and serving your story versus the inconvenient truth when depicting martial arts in your fiction. I will address common pitfalls to avoid, how fights are won and lost, and a whole bunch of useful dramatic elements to employ in your writing. As a writer with over twenty-five years of experience practicing and teaching martial arts, Matthew Lowes isable to address the use of martial arts in fiction, and to demonstrate the applications and principles involved in creating effective battles and fight scenes. — Matthew Lowes
The Craft Lab
At Wordcrafters, we’re all about the craft of writing. Good fiction is good fiction, whether it is mystery, romance, science fiction, literary, horror, experimental, or fantasy. In the Craft Lab, conference attendees will have an opportunity to sit down and meet, uninterrupted, one-on-one, with a conference presenter. You may discuss your plot, characters, pacing, problems, or review the opening page or two of your work.