Margie Lawson
FULL DAY WORKSHOP
BESTSELLING WRITING: STYLE, POWER, SUCCESS
By Margie Lawson
Want to hook the reader emotionally?
Want to make your scenes carry psychological power?
Want to turn your Work In Progress into a page-turner?
If so – this is the Master Class for you!
SATURDAY MORNING:
DEEP EDITING TECHNIQUES
Load your writing toolbox with psychologically-based power tools. Tools that could boost your writing toward bestseller lists. These deep editing tools include Margie’s Four Levels of Powering Up Emotion, power words, backloading, cadence boosts, emotional hits, backstory management, character-speak and character-isms, as well as scene-themed, character-themed, and emotion-themed power.
MARGIE’S TOP 20 RHETORICAL DEVICES
Learn twenty rhetorical devices—why, how, and when to use them to add the most power to your scenes. Learn which rhetorical devices compress time and expand time. Learn how to use rhetorical devices to slip multiple hits of backstory into one smooth sentence. Learn which rhetorical devices are frequently used by some NYT bestselling authors to empower their openings and turning points.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON:
THE POWER OF SUBTEXT: BODY LANGUAGE AND DIALOGUE CUES
Body Language: Avoid writing predictable, overused smiles, frowns, brows, and scowls. Learn easy and awesome options for writing fresh body language. We’ll cover facial expressions, flicker-face emotion, gestures, and proxemics.
Dialogue Cues: Dialogue Cues inform the reader how to interpret the subtext of the dialogue. Learn Margie’s six categories of dialogue cues, when to keep the subtext simple, and when to amplify to make it carry more psychological power.
VISCERAL RESPONSES: BEYOND HAMMERING HEARTS
One of the biggest challenges for writers is how to share emotion in fresh and credible ways on the page. Learn Margie’s Twelve Visceral Rules and you’ll know how to slip in the right amount of visceral emotion to make your scenes emotionally empowering.
Christie Craig
BUILD A CHARACTER, BUILD A BOOK
You’ve mastered writing, and finally have a grasp on story development, but those rejections haven’t stopped. Without a strong character to hold up your plot and prose, a book can, and probably will, fail.
Come hear Christie Craig, a proclaimed character-driven writer, do an in-depth talk about building characters.
She’ll offer tips on: how to make your characters jump off the page and into the hearts of your readers. How to make them lovable—even when they’re bad. How to plagiarize from your own life to offer richness to your scenes. Goals, flaws, fears, conflicts, plot development, setting, even dialogue, it all stems from character. Using simple techniques, she teaches how to create engaging characters one building block at a time.
After giving your brain a workout, this southern spitfire, who has received thousands of rejections, is gonna give the waning writer in you a good swift kick in the pants.
Entertain, Educate and Motivate, this is one workshop every writer will not want to miss.
Manning Wolfe
LEGAL ISSUES FOR AUTHORS
Have you ever wondered if someone could steal your manuscript? Have you ever badmouthed someone in your book and wondered if they could sue you? Have you ever wondered if it’s safe to say your character drank a Coke or a Lone Star Beer? These are the questions that Manning will cuss and discuss. She’ll also provide information on copyright, use of photos, ISBN’s, tax obligations, and more. Lots of handouts will be given to allow a more in depth study, and as a reminder of the tips she gives in her talk.
Don’t get caught with your proverbial pants down! Come out and learn the nuts and bolts of Legal Issues for Authors! Hope to see you there!
WRITING A THRILLER
Manning Wolfe will speak to the group about the method she uses for writing her legal thrillers which is useful for all thrillers.
Manning’s powerpoint presentation is an easy to follow guide for laying out the thriller in logical steps. Keeping the spine of the plot straight will be emphasized along with creation of surprises and holding tension. Manning will also provide book references. Handouts will be given to allow a more in- depth study, and as a reminder of the tips she gives in her talk.
Come out and learn the nuts and bolts of Writing the Thriller! Hope to see you there!
David Farland
HOW TO LAUNCH YOUR WRITING CAREER QUICKLY
Statistics show us that the average writer takes seven years from the time that they begin writing to the time that they begin publishing. Then it takes another seven years to go from publishing to become a bestseller. In this workshop, Dave will show you how he shaved that time down to two years.
WORLD BUILDING
The single biggest determinant whether a book or movie becomes a blockbuster bestseller is, “Does it transport your audience to another time and place?” In this workshop, Dave will teach you the keys to creating better worlds–whether you’re writing for fantasy, science fiction, historical, or mainstream.
Reavis Z. Wortham
PUSHING YOUR CHARACTERS
How far can you push your characters? Wortham’s literary agent once told him “you write juicy antagonists, and your protagonists are the kind of characters people want to meet.” So how do you put them in situations where they seem real, yet walk the edge? Have you ever wanted a fan to say, “I look forward to reading your books, because the people in them have become just like family”. Wortham has heard that and more. Join him as he helps bring your characters to life then pushes them right to the edge of your own abyss.
MAKE YOUR WORDS COUNT
A discussion of writing voice, style, writing tight, editing, and avoiding the things that make editors cringe: How do your write believable dialogue? How do you cut 50,000 words from a 140,000-word manuscript and not miss them? What is the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer? How about writing true to your characters or location. Maybe you want to avoid the pitfalls of bad writing. Wortham discusses tips and writing techniques he’s developed over the past 30 years that include nearly 2,000 newspaper columns and magazine articles, and ten novels. Bring your pen and lots of paper….
Kristen Martin
COMING UP WITH AND EXPANDING UPON STORY IDEAS
You know you want to write a book, but how do you turn a pop of inspiration into a full-fledged story? And subsequently, how do you know if an idea has already been done before – if it’s original? In this workshop, we will delve into a number of unique brainstorming methods that will keep you motivated and yearning to write for hours on end. In-class exercises will provide time for you to create new story ideas, as well as capture and expand upon older ones that you may have tucked far away into your subconscious.
STOP DREADING OUTLINING
Whether you’re a pantser, a plotter, or fall somewhere in between, everyone can benefit from outlining, no matter how bare-bones it may seem! This interactive workshop will explore the different outlining methods and what will work best for your creative process, without emphasizing the dreaded “one size fits all approach”. The aim of this workshop is to help you design an outlining process that you’ll be excited about to keep that story flowing and plot holes at bay.
Stephen Graham Jones
WHAT IF YOUR DIALOGUE WASN’T TERRIBLE?
We all know how to speak and carry on conversation, but once we introduce tag lines and and contracts with the reader and all the pitfalls and pratfalls involved with staging a conversation on the page, writing compelling, efficient dialogue can get tricky. In here we’ll run through how to do it less wrong. There may not be a single right way, but there are a lot of problems we can identify, and some workarounds to make your dialogue in fiction less terrible. We won’t be doing any writing exercises. We might have some dialogue.
AND NOW WE COME TO THE END.
Finding that graceful gesture at the end of a piece of fiction is a talent, an instinct, and often just a lucky thing, but if you know the types of endings in play, you might find your luck will improve. In here we’ll work through those types of endings, trying to identify what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Donna M. Johnson
MEMOIR: A TWO-WAY MIRROR
The best personal narratives marry the world of events with the world of meaning. In this workshop we will explore how to deepen your work through the exploration of ideas and the referencing of outside sources. We will read and discuss work that successfully creates a narrative of ideas and utilize in-class writing prompts.
HUMOR IN PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Comedy is often defined as tragedy plus time. In this workshop we will explore how to identify comedic threads that enable us to create nuanced and layered memoir. We will look at the work of published authors as well as utilize writing prompts.
B. Alan Bourgeois
MARKETING RENEGADE STYLE
In Texas, there is an estimated 9,000 published authors. How can an author stand out and be noticed among the crowd? This award-winning session will give you creative ways to think of ways to be noticed and to get book sales. B Alan Bourgeois has done this presentation for three years and has helped hundreds of authors to think outside the box. Will you take advantage of this session?
TO PUBLISH, OR NOT TO PUBLISH? THE QUESTION IS HOW TO PUBLISH!
B Alan Bourgeois gives you an in depth look at what the true cost of publishing is. See where the money goes and the variety of options you have available to get your money’s worth when you select the route you want to publish.
Arlene Gale
THE HOW-TO BOOK: FORMULA FOR WRITING A POWERFUL AND PROFITABLE NONFICTION
Your Professional or Personal Story + Your Book = Increased Business Income. Learn how to start, accelerate, or fine-tune business growth by building a solid book writing marketing plan before a word is written. Learn what questions to ask and answer to build a powerful marketing foundation. Learn how a book becomes the credibility piece for accessing more: media, speaking, clients, and profits. Learn the biggest mistakes writers and published authors make to keep from writing sellable books. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written a book before or considered the idea to write one, this informative, hands-on, interactive presentation provides the foundation for writing a top-quality book.
HOW TO WRITE AND USE WEB-BASED BOOKS TO BUILD BUSINESS, AN E-MAIL LIST, AND A FAN BASE
How much easier would it be to market your business, next book, or special offer with your contact list? Did you know if you have thousands of connections on social media, they can be cut off or lost at any time? There is a book format to help solve these issues thanks to today’s technology. Different book formats can be used by both nonfiction and fiction writers to build an email list, fan base, and create credibility for exceeding business goals. Learn the difference between book formats: guidebooks, tip books, and “big books.” Learn the difference in word count, page count, and more. This workshop is for beginners and those with multiple books. This is an informative, hands-on, and interactive presentation.
