In-person workshop space is limited to ensure adequate room for social distancing. You will be asked at registration to choose the workshops you'd like to attend. As spots run out, choices will be limited. See the course descriptions below. You can attend only one workshop per time slot, but all workshops will be recorded and available to attendees after the conference. 

Story Arc / Plotting : Visually Planning Your Story

Instructor: Bernadette Marie
Description: A trip is always better when you have a road map, and a story isn’t much different. In this workshop we will walk through different visual methods of plotting, from brain dumps to plotting graphs, that will help you plan out your next manuscript. We will also dive into tropes and story arcs that you will want to include in your work, depending on your genre. 

Let's Make Marketing Fun!

Instructor: LS Hawker
Description: All you want to do is write. But in order to keep writing, you need to sell books, and your inner toddler stomps its feet at the idea—what fun is that? Quit resisting that rugrat—use it! If you make marketing fun, you’ll appease the kid inside, sell more books, and even find yourself looking forward to these tasks. 

Applying Film Techniques to Writing: Writing Sentences that Feel

Instructor: Steven Dunn
Description: Sentence shares the same etymological roots as sentiment, as sentient, as sensual. From the Latin sentire—to “perceive, feel, know.” Physically and emotionally. A teacher told me that as a writer you have a choice to write a sentence that describes a drowning, or to write a sentence that feels like drowning. How do you get your writing to cling to readers’ nervous systems? Can you make a reader feel like they want to vomit by using these phonemes repeatedly: /g/ /k/ /t/?  We’ll cover the basics of a few strategies that will help our sentences feel like what they’re describing by looking at movement, texture, and sound. 

Business Organization and Contracts for Self-Publishers

Instructor: Jon Tandler
Description: Jon will address entity formation and the differences between limited liability companies and corporations; organizing and maintaining single owner LLCs and corporations; publishers liability insurance; and in the copyright/contracts area, copyright creation and registration; contracts with third parties such as photographers and editors; and general information on permissions and clearances including as to life story rights.  

Revising Efficiently: Some Techniques to Save Time

Instructor: Rachel Weaver
Description: You’ve been writing furiously for months (or years) and that glorious day comes when you write the last sentence. You’ve finished your first draft, you go out to celebrate, the next day comes and you begin to wonder, now what?  Often what follows is many years of inefficient cutting and pasting, rewriting and moving around and moving back. It’s easy to get caught in addressing surface problems rather than evaluating the backbone of the story from a crafting standpoint. In this class, we will discuss solid techniques to make your revisions as efficient and effective as possible. 

Creative Therapy

Instructor: Todd Mitchell
Description: Anyone who has seriously pursued writing knows that the road to writing success is full of failure, disappointment, rejection, and struggle. Craft knowledge and understanding markets are important, but the most important thing for writing success is perseverance. You can't improve and publish if you don't stick with it. The question is, how do you persevere, especially when things get difficult? 

Character Bacchanalia

Instructor: Cindy Skaggs
Description: The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the god of wine and festivals, and while we'll neither drink nor spill wine in this in-person workshop, we will celebrate characters and character development through a series of conversations and writing prompts designed to build authentic characters with a life beyond the page who feel real, have an organic (true) purpose in the story, move the main character or conflict, and take your writing (fiction and creative nonfiction) to the next level. Hands-on activity follows the presentation, so be sure to bring writing materials. 

How to Conduct and Manage Research for Fiction and Nonfiction

Instructor: Teresa Funke
Description: Whether you’re writing nonfiction, fiction, or memoir, research will be part of your process. We’ll discuss how to plan out your research; how to use and find primary sources; how to approach and rely on expert sources and little-known resources; how to conduct research trips; how to use books, movies, and plays from your time period to inform your writing; how to organize your research and drafts; and, mostly importantly, how to know when it’s time to stop researching and start writing.