Verna Dreisbach moderates this author, agent, and editor panel on the state of the romance market, current trends, and insider tips for success.

Address the driving idea behind your story - the one sentence answer to 'what is it about?' and how to create a story, character development, dramatic scenes, etc., which tell what the story is and make it powerful. 

Dialogue can make or break any writing project. How do you know it's any good? Learn to see good dialogue on the page as well as hear it in your head. Come prepared to write in class.

The session will define how setting, meaning, time, place, and characters’ appearances can enhance or hinder those other two legs of the tripod of fiction writing, plot and character. Attendees are asked to bring samples of their work which they are brave enough to permit to be discussed publicly. Patrick Taylor encourages attendees to read How Not Write A Novel by S Newman and H. Mittlemark.

An overview of the current film market: trends, writing opportunities and more. Writer Jeff Arch, agent Ken Sherman, and MGM executive Luke Ryan share their insight with the help of moderator Chuck Sambuchino.

Have you always dreamed of writing your memoir or novel but were never sure where to start? Do you have a half-finished masterpiece stuffed into the back of a desk drawer? Still stuck on that not quite fabulous first line? Enlist today. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Today. Fall in and step to as Ivan Coyote runs you through a series of exercises designed to build up your first line muscles, train yourself to capture those fleeting late night epiphanies, and practice bullying yourself into believing.

John Gardner has said that "our deepest sense of character comes from symbolic association." What does that mean on the ground for a writer in the throes of inventing a novel?
 

Every day we intuit things about the people we meet, but how do we know what we know about strangers? What makes you trust or distrust a person? What makes a situation feel awkward or anxious? How do you sort out what it is your subconscious mind is picking up on every day and give those kinds of details to the characters in your fiction?  Join Billie Livingston in a discussion of not only how to unearth the details but how to steal them to make compelling fiction.

Join Arthur Slade as he discusses how to mix fantasy or horror elements into novels that have an otherwise realistic setting. How much do you put in? At what point will the reader have enough grounding to “believe” the fantasy? The discussion will touch on dark fantasy, steampunk, and the quirky world of surrealistic fantasy.

You've got a fantastic idea for a novel. Great characters, a killer plot. But where do you start? Editors, agents and readers usually know within the first page or two whether a story's going to work for them. That's how long you've got to sell your novel. This workshop will focus on seducing your reader with a dynamic first line, first paragraph, first page. Workshop participants are welcome to bring the first paragraph of their work in progress for critique and discussion as time permits.

Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Jay Lake talks about worldbuilding from the point of view of the genre that defined the process. How do you make a world make sense? When  does the lone telling detail tell all, and when do you need to know the economic and social nitty gritty? How to balance rigor with hand-waving, and make your reader *believe.* The discussion is from a genre perspective, but the techniques apply to any variety of fiction.

Jack Whyte discusses the challenges, pitfalls, and satisfaction in writing a successful memoir.

You’ve written your novel. Now what? New York Times Bestselling Author and renowned writing instructor Robert Dugoni will teach you what you need to understand and master to write a query letter that catches an agent’s interest and a synopsis that forces her to ask to see your first three chapters.  Discuss the most common mistakes new novelists make and techniques to correct those mistakes so that the query and synopsis become tools, rather than an obstacle, to getting your novel published.

How to make readers see what you want them to see--and hide what you don't want them to see just yet.  The character telling the story controls it; you control _them_. Diana Gabaldon will tell you how.

Most writers have a haphazard approach to revision. In this class, a systematic method for revising your manuscript, from the first draft to the polish, will be laid out in detail. You'll learn the "ultimate revision checklist" and the key questions to ask about every aspect of your novel.

Learn  international and diverse ways to get your poetry read, heard and experienced. Poets have copyrights to share and sell their poems in many formats:  postcards, anthologies, books, contests, magazines, CD’s and radio broadcast, DWD’s and cable TV, websites, chapbooks, blogs and more.  Learn formats, then research for publication. Bring your sample for Q&A time.

Learn about what your options are and how you can use the internet to sell your stories and articles. Opportunities are freely available if you know where to find them. In this workshop, you'll learn about selling your content through e-readers, online sites, blogs, article databases and what your options are for making your content available in print form. Author and publisher Crystal Stranaghan will help you understand the tools that are available to you, and highlight the key ways that you can use these tools to build your publishing platform—without hindering your chances at being picked up by a traditional publisher!