PREVIOUS CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Wordcrafters 2015
Workshop & Class Descriptions
Improv Your Fiction Writing
There’s a reason that so many talented writers and performers have comedy improv backgrounds – improv teaches the art of thinking outside your own brain. This session will help you apply improv techniques such as “Don’t think, do” and “Yes, and…” to your writing. Putting these games and exercises into action will help you become funnier, more creative, and more flexible. – Jasheway
One Brain Storming
Need some fun (and funny) ways to generate new ideas for your next fiction project? This workshop will provide you the tools to let all the voices in your head chime in and help you out of your comedy rut. From Journalistic Association Lists to Illogical Comparisons, the exercises you learn here will keep your brain on its toes for years to come. – Jasheway
Character Building
We’ll share tips for creating credible, fascinating characters who will move your story forward. This discussion will include building back-stories, motivations and descriptions for your main characters–so everything they do makes sense, even in the most twisted of plots. – O’Brien
Suspense Scenes Can Be Murder
A lesson in how to ramp up the thrills and chills of your suspense scenes. This is not just for thriller authors either. Every book needs to be suspenseful in one way or another. We’ll talk about ways to set up pivotal scenes for maximum tension, pacing, and heart-pounding reader involvement. – O’Brien
From Idea to Finished Book
You’ve got a great idea for a novel, but how do you develop it? A discussion on building an idea, random note-taking, creating characters and conflict, outlining–gulp–actually starting your book! – O’Brien
Story Structure: How to Figure It Out as You Write
E.L. Doctorow famously said, ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ During this talk, we will discuss approaches for writing stories without an outline in mind—or without even knowing what’s coming on the next page. You can see what “the whole trip” can look like if you allow yourself to discover the story as you go, including how to begin fiction without an ending in mind, how to let the character lead you through scenes, how to unearth the plot, how to know you’ve hit and dead-end and, importantly, how to find your way back to the road. – Gershow
The Art of the Unlikable Character
Does a protagonist have to be nice or sweet or good-hearted in order to carry a story? From Ahab to Humbert to Tess, the answer is a resounding ‘no.’ But how do you write about selfish or nasty or obsessive or morally compromised characters without turning off readers? To root for a protagonist, a reader needs to build affinity or sympathy to him or her. Is this possible when your hero is meanto his mother or neglectful to her child or likes to kick puppies for fun?In this talk, we will cull through some of the jerks, misanthropes and liars of contemporary fiction to examine how unlikable characters can and do function effectively and engagingly as protagonists. – Gershow
Beyond Stereotypes: Creating Characters Readers Can’t Forget
Get ready to create unforgettable characters! In order to craft a memorable character, every writer must know and understand that character’s wants and needs, likes and dislikes, secrets and motivations. But how do you put all that onto the page? You’ll learn self-discovery exercises to help you understand your character and cinematic techniques to bring that character to life. – Clare
Where’s the Camera? – Nuts & Bolts of Point of View
What does Point of View mean and how do you use it correctly? Some writers understand Point of View (POV) or Viewpoint without any trouble, while other writers struggle. Learn the meaning of Point of view in the novel or memoir, the advantages and limitations of different POVs and how to correctly write in the first, third or other POV. Discover best practices for switching POV in multiple viewpoint stories and learn what readers expect from stories told from more than one viewpoint. – Clare
What Makes a Good YA Novel?
YA (Young Adult) novels are a hot ticket these days, but there’s more to writing one than simply inserting a teen-aged protagonist. This session will help you define what a YA novel is and is not. You’ll look at themes, characters, story lines, and other elements crucial to writing a successful YA novel. – Clare
Does Your Story Have Good Bones? – Structure Basics
Whether represented by a story arc, a three-act structure, a mythical journey or a stick figure of a person, every story needs an underlying structure to hold it together. Without structure, or bones, a story can quickly turn into a directionless blob. The “bones” of a story relate to an event that trigger’s the plot’s rising action to a climax and resolution. Explore the roles that different points in a story play and learn to apply them to your own work. – Clare
Writing Short Stories: In Search of the Single Effect
Edgar Allan Poe was right when he told Nathaniel Hawthorne that the “the single effect” is the secret weapon of the successful short story writer. Come learn about the single effect and apply it in-class to new work in this hands-on, pens-out session. –Holder
Saving the Cat on the Hero’s Journey
Structure—what it is and how to find it. We’ll talk about various popular systems for structuring your novel or short story such as Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” beat sheet and Christopher Vogler’s “Hero’s Journey.” File cards, charts, software—do they work, and should you use them? Isn’t it better just to let the story unfold as you write it? And is the structure the same as the plot? You have questions, let’s find answers together as we stalk the wild narrative. – Holder
Show Don’t Tell
All writers are told this, but what does it mean, and how do you do it? Bring work that has received this comment or come with a blank page (or screen) and we’ll explore techniques to give our work more immediacy and presence. – Holder
Finding Your Voice: The All Important First Page
From the first page it’s imperative to establish voice and set the tone. Finding one’s voice is at the heart of all good fiction. It establishes all that will follow, and in so much, when you step through that door, the power and importance of a book’s first page is in its ability to set tone, voice, and establish character and place. – Tsukiyama
The Lesser Angel: Fictional Time & Place
Does where we live define who we are? You better believe it does! As Eudora Welty said, “Place is one of the lesser angels that watch over the racing hand of fiction…” Creating a strong sense of time and place provides the spiritual foundation essential to how your characters see the world. Time and place work to enrich your story, while providing a home in which your characters live and breathe. – Tsukiyama
How the Reader Breaks What You Write
The cognitive interpretation of text is where the rubber hits the road in the reader-writer relationship. The brain doesn’t change just because the writer is writing and the reader is reading fiction. The way we perceive patterns and interpret them determines the way we experience story. This explores how the reader interprets what you write and how you can manage and revise your text in order to accommodate the nuances of reader projection and interpretation so that the tale you’re telling is the tale the reader is experiencing. – Witchey
The Devil’s in the Details
Every professional writer knows that writing is most often more about revision than composition. We also know that when two stories are equal in the eyes of an editor, the difference between selling a story and not selling a story can be a tiny bit of missed polish. Participants will explore how to know what to keep and what to toss, how to use critiques, and methods for approaching final polish before putting your tales out in front of editors and readers. The session will include examples of the revision process from published stories. – Witchey
Patterns of Success and Patterns of Failure
Reading is a process of pattern recognition, submission to guided meditation, personal projection, and significance drawn from personal experience. Readers bring their personal, familial, community, and cultural experiences to the page. Just as the syntax of a sentence helps a reader understand meaning, a story’s culturally-specific framework supports the reader’s ability to organize the emotional and cognitive experience of story. Astute writers take advantage of recognizable structural patters of success when delivering the fictive dream to the reader. Participants will walk away with powerful tools for managing complex patterns of success and for weeding out pervasive patterns of failure. – Witchey
Creativity Is a Skill to Practice
Writers are often asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Most writers have several canned responses to this question, but the reality is that the question has merit. Creativity, whether a learned skill or something modelled for youngsters so that it becomes an unconscious skill, is a process. That process involves the application of techniques. Whether sitting down to a blank page or stuck in the muddle in the middle, never be at a loss for how to proceed again. Ideas can be made, found, evolved, combined, and adapted. Come and practice creativity skills. – Witchey
How to Find Out Anything: A Quick Guide to Research
A veteran newspaper reporter explains how to use online resources and offline shoe leather to make your writing real. – Keefer
Relating to Psyches Long Dead: Developing Characters in Historical Fiction
How are the people of the past different from us? What in their environment motivated them, and how is that different from circumstances today? What is the key to helping our audience relate to characters who think differently from us and act on beliefs that are not commonly held today? In a time when it is often difficult to understand the religious, political, and social beliefs of our own neighbors, we’ll discuss such questions and find simple answers. – Clark
Perfecting Characters with Character Flaws
Who in life sets an agenda and sticks to it without wavering? Whether antagonist or protagonist, a character is more interesting if their facade cracks from time to time. The hope that an evil-doer might be turned to do good, or fear that a hero might buckle under pressure makes them more human and the experience of reading about them a richer one. We’ll discuss how to do that without destroying their role. – Clark
What Were They Thinking? The Drama Available in History
Some extreme events in history are baffling to us because it’s difficult to imagine how those who had a role in them could think what they did was reasonable. We’ll talk about how to build historical characters and their motivations. – Clark
Opening a Conversation with Your Audience
An explorations of methods of engaging audience; when to guide them, when to play upon their expectations, and when to drop them off and allow them to come to their own conclusions. – Clark
Setting Is Character Is Setting
We see our world through multiple filters, and how we filter our world defines the world we see. Take a closer look at ways to track down setting details, and do a writing exercise on how character defines place and place defines character. – Hoffman
Mine Your Memories for Writing Gold
Story and title ideas are everywhere as you walk through life. Learn to collect story sparks and idea triggers, and how to use memory fishing in your own experience pool to catch unique shiners you can build stories around. Learn, also, to explore mindsets and perspectives other than your own to give your writing added breadth and depth. – Hoffman
Contemporary Fantasy: Find Magic in Your Own Back Yard
You can find story sparks in your own back yard, or anywhere you are. All you need is an inquiring and speculative mind, good questions, and permission to think wildly! Come to this workshop for a talk, an exercise with an object, and some brainstorming fun. – Hoffman
Craftlab and More!
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.
Lunch Connections
These informal, brownbag lunches give you an opportunity to connect with other writers at the conference. Each lunch will feature a brief chat (approximately 15 minutes), plus plenty of time to gnosh and talk. Bring your own lunch or pre-order a grab-and-go lunch on your registration. (A limited number of grab-and-go lunches will be available for sale at the conference.)
Friday: Tips & Tricks Lunch – Are you a Pantser or a Plotter? Creative Slow Burn or Fast-Acting Fuse? Early Bird or Night Owl? Each table will be themed to get folks talking about their favorite writing life tools and techniques.
Saturday: Find Your Tribe Lunch – Featuring tables designated for different genres and styles so you can meet other like-minded writers and form connections (and even writing groups!) that last long after the Wordcrafters Conference is over.
And more to come! Keynotes by Kevin O’Brien, Gail Tsukiyama, Nancy Holder, and lots more… In addition, we have great activities planned to help you get out into the world and enjoy our community.
Registration is now closed. See you in 2016!