You know you're reading a great mystery novel when you're up at three in the morning, unable to put it down. When you finally get to sleep, the characters go romping around in your dreams. You get to the final page and smack yourself in the head because the solution is a complete surprise, and yet so obvious in retrospect. So how do you write a great mystery? This workshop demystifies the art and artifice, and gets down to the nuts and bolts of writing a killer mystery novel.

In this hands-on Master Class, best-selling novelist (and conference favourite!) Jack Whyte will guide writers through a number of sure-fire means to increase tension in your manuscript. But there is a catch you have to earn your way into this class.

The parameters aspiring attendees must write a 3-page scene, which must include the following key elements:

• a street
• two people
• a long weekend

The scene must be three pages, double spaced. (At 10 words to a line, 25 lines to a page, this is 750 words maximum.) Submit the scene by email to contest@siwc.ca by September 15, 2007. All submitted scenes will be forwarded to Jack Whyte and he will select 15 writers to join his Master Class. (All writers who submit will be notified by September 22 , 2007 as to the status of their entry.) Those writers awarded a place in the class will be given directions regarding registration upon acceptance. Attendees are to bring a copy of their submitted scenes to class. Jack Whyte will chose one of the scenes to use as a template for demonstrating the means to increase tension in a scene.

Class is limited to 15 registrants.

Some novels make you feel like you've lived in them. How is that effect achieved? Looking beyond mere scene setting, agent Don Maass's hands-on workshop will demonstrate the many techniques that create a deeply dimensional fictional world. Bring a novel-in-progress and writing materials. For advanced fiction writers.

Hit the Writer's block wall lately? Agent Cricket Pechstein Freeman has seen it all before. Bring your pen and paper and let Cricket show you ways to limber up your imagination, stretch your creativity, and exercise your muse through your own writing. Learn devices to make your muse tap dance, your prose sing, and to get you out of the writer's dismal swamp when you find yourself in the quagmire. Be prepared for fun – and writer's cramp!

"The Next Level" is an innovative workshop, developed by novelist/editor Barbara Rogan, for writers who've completed a draft of a novel or body of short stories and now want to edit their work to the next level. Most writers see revision not only as a commercial necessity, but also an intrinsic part of the creative process — "That initial writing just seems to me the hard place I have to get to in order to go on and have fun with the story," Raymond Carver wrote. Often, though, we're too close to our work to see it objectively. By breaking the process down into a series of separate edits, each focused tightly on a different aspect of the work, "The Next Level" promotes the clarity of vision necessary for revision. The focus in this hands-on workshop will be on editing for point of view, characterization, and dialogue. Participants are encouraged to bring their own work to the class -- be ready to take your work to the next level!