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| Schedule | Chats | Sessions | Consultations | Post Conference Workshops |
2009 Conference Program: Classes & Workshops
How to Avoid the Plotless Wonder -- Goals, Conflict and Story Structure
Characters and their goals provide the basis for all plots. Lisa shows how to use a conflict grid to ferret out the diciest internal and external conflicts and turn them into a page-turning story.
Wendy Call
Self-Editors Toolkit: Improve Your Own Prose
Gain powerful tools to improve your prose at all stages of the writing process, from revising a first draft to putting the finishing touches on a nearly completed work. Examples from well known writers and an extensive handout will allow you to take home a personalized self-editing toolkit.
Rick Robbins & Gary Thompson
Writing the Poem that’s Impossible to Write
Many of us find our first ways as writers by writing what we know about, by showing and not telling — i.e. by focusing radically and physically on place or action and using presentational techniques absent of conspicuous analysis. A poem, though, is more than mere photography, and a poem’s texture can include as much of somewhere else and what we do not know as it does the familiar. Some of our progress as writers hinges, then, on whether or not we are willing to move from our known position into mystery, into a new terrain, into the poem that is impossible for us to write. We will look at powerful examples of others who do this, and we will leave time for question-and-answer.
George Shannon
Writing Lab
Whether it's the beginning of a picture book or a novel, the first page is a blend of news alert, invitation, and vital first impression. We'll study examples of the best and worst, and learn from both. We'll find ways to make the worst better and the best not so good. Come prepared to write and discuss and write some more. Bring at least one of your own first pages you'd like to improve.
Saturday 10:15 a.m. -12:15 p.m.
Phillip Margolin
How to Write a Novel in Your Spare Time
Phil is self-taught; he wrote his first five novels while practicing law full time and -- with his wife -- raising two children. He will talk about the technique he developed for writing a novel while working and raising a family.
Molly Dwyer
The Art of Dialogue: From Bare Bones to Fattened Calf
We'll explore dialogue as a means of getting beyond the blank page, using exercises and techniques that exploit conversation to capture character, atmosphere and sense of place. We'll follow the process from the bare bones of beginning through cycles of revision until we see healthy, natural meat on those bones. (emerging and intermediate writers)
Larry Cheek
The essay: window onto a mind at work
Alan Lightman writes: The ideal essay is ... an exploration, a questioning, an introspection. I want to see a mind at work, imagining, spinning, struggling to understand. If the essayist has all the answers, then he isnt struggling to grasp, and I wont either. This lecture will explain how we use the writing of an essay as a mechanism for figuring things out, bringing readers along through the process.
The Poet Writes Back / The Poet Strikes Back
Have you ever wanted to talk back to someone you love, hate, admire, or strongly disagree with? Often the best strategy is to use their own terms, their own rhetorical strategies, to argue with or persuade her, or even beat him at his own verbal games. In poetry, we can strike back by writing back, and also engage in poetic dialogue across the borders of time and culture. We will look at pairs of calls and responses--poems and the poems that reply to them--from the historic Marlowe-Raleigh pastoral dialogue, to Arnold's "Dover Beach" with Hecht's irreverent "The Dover Bitch," to Koch’s parody of W. C. Williams’s refrigerator note, "This is just to say. . . ." to Justice’s “Variations on a Text by Vallejo” and beyond. What do we say when we have the chance to talk back? Using various strategies, we will write our own reply to a poem by another poet, making use of elements of that poet's style. (Emerging and experienced writers.)
Suzanne Selfors
Wimps and Wonderkids: Meet the Heroes of the Middle Grade Novel
What kind of hero do 8-12 year olds like to read about? And, other than age, how do these heroes differ from the ones in adult novels? Using popular middle grade novels as examples, we'll explore this fun and growing genre.
Saturday 1:15 p.m. -3:15 p.m
Karen Fisher Cancelled
Time Travel
One of the most challenging aspects of telling a story is deciding where (in time) it should begin, how much to tell, and how to handle information from the past. We'll first talk about story shape and linear stories, and then discuss nonlinear techniques (flashbacks/flash-forwards, memory, dialogue, etc.) that help us to address the tricky and wonderful matter of time.
Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
Beginnings and Endings
The beginning of a book should make your reader want to finish the book. Its ending should leave the reader wanting more of your work. This class explores story to learn what makes strong beginnings and satisfying endings. A perfect starter class for the post-conference workshop My Middle Sags!
Warren Read
Finding Theme in Memoir: Moving From Interesting to Meaningful Vignettes
In memoir writing, we often begin writing about all the funny, painful and quirky things that make us who we are. While it may be entertaining in a voyeuristic way, a memoir should bring the reader on a meaningful journey worthy of contemplation and reflection. In order for that to happen, the writer needs to -- as in a physical journey -- create a map for him/herself, one that will guide him or her through the forest of his or her life. This workshop will help the writer determine the memoir's theme, pare down those many stories and focus on only those that connect to the strand upon which he or she has settled.
Oliver de la Paz
The Prose Poem
In this workshop, we will grapple with the term "Prose Poem." Often, people suggest that writing in the prose poem form is liberating, but what exactly does that mean? Does the lack of line breaks server a purpose or is it arbitrary for some prose poems? What is gained or lost with the addition of line breaks? These are some of the aesthetic ideas we will grapple with during this course as we read practitioners of the form as well as write in the "form" ourselves.
George Shannon
Writing to Be Heard: Sound and the Picture Book
No one questions that the picture book, like film, is a blending of word and image. Yet most discussions of the genre treat the picture book as if it were a silent movie. It is the writer's use of sound that makes the difference between merely sharing information and sharing the emotional experience of a story. We will explore the various ways the writer is able to embody content and meaning through rhythm and sound. It is these elements that offer both editor and illustrator the best possible direction for the visual extension of the text.
Bill Kerby
How To Break A Story
This interactive two hour session initiates the screenwriting workshop, Screenwriting: Story, Structure and Character. Workshop students will take this class as a prerequisite. This fast-paced and informative class will be fun for others too, as they work to bring the germ of a story idea to birth as a screenplay.