February 17, 2012 - 9am to 4pm (1-hour lunch break)

The Friday workshops are intended for a more intensive learning and writing experience. Choose one of three six-hour workshop options. Workshops are limited to 25 students and cost $55. Please indicate a first and second choice on the registration form. Priority will be given to Saturday conference attendees through January 31st. Those registering only for a Friday workshop will be placed on a waiting list. On February 1st, if space is available, registrations will be processed from the waiting list in order of the date they were received, and the participants will be notified.

1. Sharpen Your Storytelling Skills - Ray Rhamey

The focus is fiction craft issues with 5 writing exercises (2 exercises also in Ray’s 2nd Saturday workshop). Free writing ebook provided before conference. 

• Writing for effect
• Story as a river
• Start with kitty-cats in action
• Six vital story ingredients
• It takes story questions to turn pages
• Making it experiential to characterize
• Describing a point-of-view character
• How to deliver the sound of dialogue
• When to tell, how to show
• Adverbs: Good? Bad? Yes.

Storytelling: after lecture and exercises, members write the opening page of a story (scenario provided) to read aloud for class critique. 

Link to more detailed description.
 

2. Quick Fixes for Fantastic Fiction and Moving Memoir - Elizabeth Lyon

Many writers are surprised to learn that quick-fix techniques can produce amazing and instant improvements in style, structure, and characterization. While some revision requires elbow grease and agonizing hours, this workshop focuses on maximum results for minimum effort. 

Improving style can be lots of fun. After using a reach-and-riff technique, you’ll learn how to make the tumblers roll until they lock onto the best lexicon for a particular passage or character. We’ll also use the 4-letter word D-I-E-T to turn flabby prose into smart and elegant writing. 

An in-class exercise will give you a “cheat sheet” to check structure on every page of your book or to pre-plan new works. Scenes composed of goal-directed action and sequels of emotional reactions to events are two fundamental structures. When does a scene deserve development, or to be dumped? How do you tuck emotions into action? What keeps the reader on the hook?

The engine of all successful stories is characterization, presenting authentic characters striving to fill their needs and resolve meaningful questions. We’ll apply a list of ways to transform cardboard cutouts of characters (or the author in memoir) into breathing, living characters that readers will care about. 

Materials for hands-on exercises provided.  

• how to get buy-in
• how to interview
• how to manage the politics of family and community
• how to economically publish the finished project, and 
• where to look for help.