Hints, clues and suggestions to make this your best writing weekend ever.

Good formatting not only keeps your screenplay out of the garbage, it helps you tell your story more clearly, directly, and visually. Learn the current industry standard.

How to write great combat scenes - from duels to battles.

What are the characteristics of the best in Romance Writing? Hear hints from the experts.

Best-selling author Bob Mayer will discuss types of outlines along with techniques for efficiently developing the strongest possible story.  From the exciting opening that grabs the reader through the escalating conflict to the climactic scene and ending with the resolution - the entire structure of the novel will be covered with emphasis on hooks, building suspense, and having satisfying endings.

Tips on the ways you can improve your work from the inside.

Interested in tackling the world of non-fiction writing for children? Learn about breaking in and what it takes to stay in the game from an author who walks both ends of the fiction/non-fiction tightrope.

Writing book-length biography (and auto-biography, too!). Learn the similarities and differences between writing biography and other forms of non-fiction.

Promotion and public relations can spell the difference between success and oblivion. An examination of strategies for using various media to obtain valuable free publicity.

Want to write a mystery? Listen to the experts talk about their favourite recipes for concocting the best.

How much of a writer’s life should show up in the pages of their stories? Join the author of Gemma, Singing Songs and Porcupine, to explore the idea of using your own story as a starting place for fiction. Learn how to let your life influence your work. Prepare to write! (Part Two of the workshop will run Saturday.)

What does it take to make a thriller? Join this best-selling group to look at the brains, the guts and the heart of thriller-writing – and selling it once it’s written.

Learn how to get your poetry out of the wilderness and into publication.

Everybody knows that there is a magical and mystical ingredient in the recipe for a successful book – an unidentifiable something that makes readers flock to buy hardcover copies of anything some writers write, while preferring to put off reading the works of other writers until they appear in paperback. In this workshop, author Jack Whyte will focus on his understanding of those magical and mystical ingredients, exposing the reality of the recipe for success, and how any writer can perfect it, given the will to work at it.

Plan to be a contemporary writer? It’s all about the blog. Dip your toe into the waters of web logs and discover the value of social networking for writers.

What are the essentials of beginning a novel? A look at where ideas come from, how to get them down on paper and into a final draft.Writing tips and inspirational encouragement from a mistress of mystery.

Learn from agent Donald Maass how to construct the perfect antagonist.

Fantasy writing for children. Join this acclaimed writer-illustrator for a glimpse into the world of writing make-believe.

Dialogue, the multi-edged sword in a novelist's bag of tricks, hands down beats all the other techniques for the writing of living and breathing prose.  Dialogue can never "tell," it can only "show."  And what does it show?  Motivation, wit, humor, despair, anger, love, hate, and -- most of all -- personality!  Revising dialogue until every line sings is the most fun you'll have writing.  Blow a joke in your first draft, and have 'em howling by the end of your revisions.  Master dialogue and you're well on your way to mastering the craft of writing.

Interested in writing for the screen? How do you get your start in Canada? What about the US market – and further abroad? Have your questions answered by the members of this knowledgeable panel, experienced in making movies in domestic and foreign markets.

Join this swashbuckling author (and actor) for his thoughts on how to cut to the chase in action books for adults and teens.

How the Surrey Rainwriters made this form of publishing work for them.

Rewriting is a part of the game in all genres. Join this best-selling romance novelist to see how to make it work for you.

Write an effective query letter, a coherent synopsis, and a gripping opening chapter that will make an agent ask for more, more, more.

Writing from the inside out comes from what lies beneath the surface; from your heart and your memory. Join Shelley Harrison Rae and learn how to banish the critical voice that whispers in your ear and give yourself permission to write whatever wants to be written. Find the creative confidence to produce believable characters with real emotions in an authentic world.

The inside scoop on rejection - and how to avoid it - from the point of view of an agent, a book reviewer (who also writes books!) and a pair of editors.

An exploration of the ways and means to build yourself a non-fiction writing career – from those who have done it for themselves.

Tag-team? Even-Steven? He said, she said? An examination of the nuances and necessities of collaborative writing.

Join this long-time SiWC favourite and international best-seller as she takes a close look at focus in novel-writing.

A peek into the secrets behind best-selling speculative fiction from the weavers of alternate reality – and one guy who really buys into it.