Panels and Workshops

James Abbate

Freelance Editing: How should writers know when to seek freelance editing and whether they are pursuing traditional or self-publishing? This class discusses which services to choose for your work, and why it could be make or break when it comes to landing agents, editors, and ultimately, a publishing contract. 

 

Meredith Bernstein

What Keeps an Agent Engaged in a Project: Will your hook and your enthusiasm keep your agent fired up about representing your work? 

Latest Trends in Fiction & Non-Fiction: Find out what’s selling and why.

 

Sue Brown-Moore

Write from the Heart: Creating stories that resonate emotionally isn’t about grand gestures or dramatic plot twists. It’s about writing from a place of authenticity and vulnerability, allowing your characters to feel as real to readers as they do to you. In this insightful workshop, we’ll explore how to tap into your own emotions and experiences to craft stories that genuinely connect with readers. I’ll share my favorite techniques to help you:

• Embrace emotional authenticity and weave it into your character-driven fiction

• Draw from personal experiences to create relatable, compelling characters

• Write story arcs that evoke powerful emotions and imprint unforgettable moments

• Infuse your writing with genuine emotion, connecting readers in a way that transcends the words on the page

The 8-Scene Setup (workshop): Drafting a tight, cohesive plot arc on the first try can be as simple as planning eight key story moments. (Yes, really!) Join development editor and romance author coach Sue Brown-Moore for The 8-Scene Story Setup Workshop. In this 90-minute masterclass, you’ll learn the shortcut framework that will simplify your plotting process so you can sidestep some of the most common plotting pitfalls.

The first 60 minutes will break down the strategic story structure, character traits, and scene flow that anchor your story’s plot using deconstructed examples from the romantic comedy movie The Proposal. During the final 30 minutes, Sue will answer questions about the 8 Scene Story Setup method and her unique plot planning techniques that make writing complex stories feel approachable.

The 8-Scene Story Setup will guide your hero through their full transformation growth arc so you can spotlight every powerful moment in their on-page character journey. 

 

Michael Carr

Edit Yourself into Print—Giving your work a professional polish: Otherwise compelling stories can stumble over clumsy prose or repetitive sentence structure. Learn how to add a sophisticated touch to your writing and how to clean up your work to show competence to agents and editors. In addition, we will talk about how to identify flaws in our own writing, when to use beta readers, and ideas for shoring up structural weaknesses. 

How to Hook an Agent—From the query letter through the opening pages: An agent must sift through hundreds, even thousands of queries. Learn what makes an effective query letter and how to write a compelling opening for your sample pages. We will discuss how to write a grabby opening while avoiding the dreaded white room and its evil twin, the cliffhanger.

 

Lori Culwell

Websites for Authors—The Who, What, When, Where and How: What goes on an author website? Do you need a website for each book? What’s the best platform for an author site? All these questions and more will be answered in this session! 

Compare Analysis—What to Compare Before Releasing Your Book Title: Teaches authors how to do competitive analysis on Amazon so they are better informed on decisions ranging from cover art to book description to marketing angles. Always know your competition! 

How to Market a Book: Covers all the steps that go into marketing a book, from when to start to how to build your email list to how to get reviews and everything in between. Based on the bestselling book! 

 

Laurie Dennison

Scene Structure (workshop): Scenes are the building blocks of long fiction. Learn how to structure ones that engage your readers and keep them turning pages. Explore how character goals and motivations intersect with plot elements, the art of balancing action with exposition, and ways to increase the stakes and build tension.

Strengthening Your Character’s Voice: Agents say they look for manuscripts with a strong voice, but what does that mean? Learn what “voice” is and take a dive into how character development affects the voice of a manuscript, from the drafting stage to revisions. 

 

Sam Hiyate

Query to Sell: Sending a query letter is like applying for a job. You have to sell your book in one short, perfect letter, that an agent or publisher wants to read. It’s harder than you might think. Bring your query letter draft for critique, and Sam will help ensure your query strategy is solid. Come prepared to learn how to write concise query letters that will leave publishers and agents wanting more. 

Sell Your Book with Comps: You’ve heard the term “comp titles” but don’t understand them. Why compare your work to already published work when you want your work to be unique and stand out? The goal of a great pitch is to make your work memorable and compelling. And the easiest way is to use editors and agents language of comparables to position your work in the market. Once we know where your book fits among existing works, it’s easier to see it published, and to succeed. Come with examples you might compare your work to, so we can finesse a pitch that will elevate your work and get editors and agents fighting over you. 

 

Michael Jamin

How to Tell a Great Story: As a professional television writer, Michael Jamin has to write between 13 and 22 stories per year. Multiply that by 28 years and TV writers become very experienced at telling stories. In this lecture, Michael will share the process that professional television writers use to “break” stories, and how that process can be applied to writing novels, short-stories, stage plays, biographies and memoirs.

Topics include:

• How to know when you’re boring the audience/ reader

• The crucial technique for unpacking the details of a story

• Starting with a logline

• Writing organically vs writing from an outline

• Why story structure doesn’t mean “predictable”

• The key moment that dramatic writing always leads to

• 3 movies that will illuminate your writing process

Creating Memorable Characters—Lessons from a Hollywood screenwriter: Michael Jamin, 28-year screenwriter, will share his process of creating compelling characters that can be applied to novels, short stories, stage plays, etc.

Topics include:

• Why creating the “best” character to send on a journey is the wrong approach

• How to adapt characters from real life

• The various functions of characters

• Which come first: story or character

• The myth of the anti-hero

Mining Your Life for Stories: Authors need to do three things: Create interesting characters, come up with a story for those characters, then figure out how best to unpack the details of that story. Even for the most experienced writers, this can be a daunting task. When we steal from our own lives, we don’t need to create the characters or the story. This allows us to focus on one thing: How best to tell that story. In this lecture, Emmy nominated screenwriter Michael Jamin shares:

• Creating the character of “you”

• The Paradox of Vulnerability

• Two questions authors must answer to tell a compelling story

• How to “find” the story

• Building a scaffolding for your story

• Treating the subjects that your characters are based on fairly

• The obligation every author has to their reader

• Raising the stakes of your story

 

Tavia Kowalchuk

How to Pinpoint and Describe Your Target Audience (workshop): Charge up your laptops and log on to strong Wi-Fi, we’re going on a cyber treasure hunt for book readers! In this workshop, I will walk you through the steps to research, pinpoint, and describe the readership for your book, so that you can craft the best possible pitch when submitting your manuscript. You will learn how to bucket your readership into discrete groups; how to quantify, describe, and demonstrate those groups in a way agents and acquiring editors will immediately understand; and how to align and integrate yourself as an author brand into those audiences.

TikTok, or Not to TikTok: Social media can be a ton of fun and a sales driver—or, it can be a confusing and distracting minefield. In this session, I will walk writers through the current social media landscape best practices as an author, how, when, and why to cultivate an audience, and more.

 

LaSheera Lee

Am I Ready for Traditional Publishing: The class will discuss factors and considerations when seeking to have your work traditionally published. 

The Art of Querying: Does the thought of querying cause you to cringe? Are you stuck on what to write to impress an agent or editor? Well, this course is for you. We converse about how to take the cringe out of querying to make your work shine like a diamond. 

 

Connie Mableson

Legal Landmines™—Using Material Written by Someone Else—Copyright Infringement and Fair Use: Non-fiction writers commonly use excerpts of text, studies, books, and other source materials in their manuscript. Using source materials from someone else (i.e. photographs or illustrations) may be copyright infringement if you have not obtained written permission to use such materials. This seminar will explain the basics of copyright law, fair use, and written permissions and will provide guidance (including worksheet forms and samples of licenses to use by the writer) on when the writer needs to obtain a license or if she can rely on “fair use”. Issues surrounding paraphrasing will also be discussed. Time will be allowed for your questions. 

Legal Landmines™—Writing About Real People: Non-fiction and memoir writers commonly write about real people. Writing about real people comes with risks, primarily from two (2) areas of the law—defamation and invasion of privacy. Get the answers to:

• When should I use the real name or a fake name of a person I am portraying, and will this mitigate risk?

• What can I say about a person before it becomes defamatory or an invasion of privacy?

• Will a pen name help?

• Will I be protected from defamation if I use “alleged” or “It has been reported” or “in my opinion”?

• Do I need to get a depiction release from each person I mention?

• And MORE

Legal Landmines™—Legal Protection for Fictional Characters: A character is a person, animal, or even an inanimate object that is used to portray the content of a dramatic work. A character has a tangible existence in the world created by the author. To the author, her characters are real and form the basis for the story.  Without characters, there is no story. So how are characters protected under the law? Why does the James Bond character enjoy so much protection? What sorts of things should an author keep in mind when developing characters? The court cases are confusing. Attempting to determine the legal status of characters can be a baffling problem. This seminar will provide guidelines for authors to imbue their fictional characters with as much legal protection as the law will allow, in a variety of mediums. Time will be allowed for your questions. 

 

Rhonda Penders

Where Does the Story Start: In this Interactive session, attendees are encouraged to bring 1 or 2 pages (double spaced) for the presenter to read aloud for an agent critique. The activity shows what an editor looks for when they review a query. No one is required to volunteer pages to attend the workshop and not all who bring pages will have them critiqued. 

The Business Side of Writing: This workshop discusses the business side of writing. You signed a contract which is a legally binding instrument. Do you know what you are signing? Do you know what tax obligations you have regarding your book sales? This is a workshop designed to open the writer’s eyes to the other side of writing—it’s not just about writing the book and selling it. 

Spotlight on Small Presses—Are they still relevant and why should you publish with one: Publishing in the last 10 years has changed dramatically. This workshop provides an open forum for talking about the pros and cons of both traditional publishing and self-publishing. We will discuss the various ways an author can be published in today’s world. 

 

Randall Platt

How Long Are You Planning on Living—Exploring the Excuses Why We Aren’t Writing: You have this voice inside you screaming to get out. You have to write. So, why aren’t you? How many excuses can you come up with? The list goes from here to sundown. Let’s examine why you are making excuses and how to keep them at bay. 

Type & Stereotype—How to Etch a Character: So what if you can’t draw? You’re a writer, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do all you can to etch the best character you can. Don’t let your characters fall into the pit of stereotypes. With fun exercises, we first create stereotypes and frankly discuss why we think that way. How do we keep our own preconceived and maybe even biased opinions about certain types away from the characters we create? Can we, should we, create characters outside our own experience? Finally, we will then re-create our stereotyped characters, making them real, unforgettable and unique.

 

James Rollins

Writing the Next Blockbuster Thriller: Learn the tools to create characters that leap off the page and plots that sizzle. Join James for an entertaining look at how stories affect readers at a primal level and how to harness that power for your own writing.

Turning Science into Fiction: Whether writing science fiction or a modern scientific thriller, learn how to fold science into your stories to craft a riveting, enlightening story. Utilizing time-tested research methods and literary tools, any writer can become a master of scientific intrigue. 

 

Amanda Skenandore

Voices on the Page—Crafting Dynamic Dialogue in Fiction: Dialogue is the heartbeat of fiction, bringing characters to life and propelling the story forward. In this workshop, you’ll learn the secrets to crafting authentic, engaging dialogue that captivates readers and reveals the depths of your characters. We’ll explore techniques for creating distinct voices, using subtext to add layers of meaning, and effectively balancing dialogue with narrative. Through examples, discussions, and practical exercises, you’ll gain the tools to write dialogue that crackles with energy, deepens characterization, and keeps readers turning the pages. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned writer, this workshop will help you take your dialogue skills to the next level and create stories that truly resonate. 

The Art and Craft of Historical Storytelling: Rudyard Kipling said, “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” This workshop explores the elements of historical fiction that resonate with modern readers, whether you’re writing a meticulously researched war saga or blending history with magic in a fanciful retelling. We’ll discuss the common pitfalls authors face, the responsibility they have to both the historical record and the reader, and effective research techniques. Through discussion and hands-on exercise, you’ll gain the tools to recreate the past vividly on the page and craft a compelling, unforgettable story. 

 

Bruce Wawrzyniak

How to Partner with a Publicist: In this session, attendees will get answers to questions such as “Am I even ready for a publicist?” and “Where do I find a publicist?” while also learning not only what a publicist actually does, but, do’s and don’ts when it comes to working with a publicist, what elements to consider when evaluating a publicist that you’re considering hiring, managing your expectations in having a publicist working for you, what a publisher will (and won’t) do as it relates to publicity that you might be expecting them to just do for you rather than hiring a publicist, benefits of having a publicist working for you, and even how publicists get paid for their services. You’ll also hear firsthand examples that relate to what can help you get ahead versus what could be a detriment to the author/publicist relationship. Learn how to get the most out of partnering with a publicist to put yourself in the best possible position for you and your written works to succeed. 

Promotional Tactics for DIY Authors—What Too Many Learn the Hard Way (or not at all): Pulling back the curtain on tips and tricks relative to what you think a publisher should or will do for you in promoting your work. Attendees will come away with all the knowledge of the instructor’s nuggets gathered over the years working with clients—lessons you need to know. Bruce will share the ease in placing your book in stores for events at places like Barnes & Noble. He will also teach the attendees how to interest people in something they wrote and walk through pursuing book reviews. And yes, there’s even more. 

Power of Podcasting—Enhance Your Brand & Expand Your Reach: Everyone has a podcast these days, right? Believe it or not, no. Most who start, quickly stop. In this session, attendees will learn the intangibles and the needs to start, succeed, and to last in podcasting. Is podcasting right for you? What can having your own show do for you as a writer? What are the common mistakes that people make when starting up a podcast that you can avoid so you don’t “podfade” and shut yours down before it even hits one year? Is it expensive to do your own podcast? Is there money to be made in podcasting? Attend this session and get all of these questions answered (and bring your own inquiries) so you can do more than just be present on social media.