The Emotional Arc – Tere Michaels
In this workshop, we’ll drill down into the different facets of your characters’ emotional arc and how it is both the spine (structure) and heart (feelings) of your story.
Your Can’t Copyright Tropes but You Can Make Them Your Own – Tere Michaels
First, we need to work out why certain tropes attract readers and what their expectations are. Then this workshop will discuss subverting tropes and reinventing approaches, without losing emotional buy-in from the reader.
Hero’s Journey for Lovers – Tere Michaels
In this workshop, we’ll talk about the structure of the romantic journey (based on the Hero’s Journey framework) and how it is the bones of a solid relationship story.
Take Your Characters From Flat to Fabulous: Creating Characters Your Readers Will Love – Cynthia Owens
We will cover:
The basics—vital statistics, names, age, voice, and the character interview.
The Place They Call Home—the space and how to define what it means to the character,
This is the Moment – Backstory—Using the 5 Ws—Who, What, Where, When and Why—of an incident or incidents that most significantly affected the character.
Who’s Talking Now? Dialogue—how dialogue and dialect can define a character.
Body Language—how your character’s body can show what he’s feeling, and what he might want to hide.
But Why Do They Do It?—how idiosyncrasies and odd habits shape your characters.
Clothes Make the Man—or Woman!—How a person’s dress reveals who they are.
Action and Reaction—How a character’s actions and others’ reactions to them reveal character.
What Matters Most?—How the things your characters care about the most can shape them.
The Supporting Cast – Secondary Characters
Those Who Forget History: Using Backstory to Enhance Your Novel – Cynthia Owens
We will cover:
What is Backstory?
Flashbacks and How to Use Them,
The Five Ws of Backstory—Who, What, Where, When and Why—of a character’s past.
Prologues—how to use a prologue to provide backstory.
Dialogue—how to manipulate your readers by using a character’s dialogue to hint at backstory.
Weaving—how to weave backstory into your story.
Inner Thought—revealing your character’s backstory through inner thought.
What Do They Want?—how your character’s backstory can affect his goals.
The New Way to Plot: Using backstory to plot your novel
Contemporary Romance and the Romantic-Comedy: There’s a Difference? – Beth Henderson
That doesn’t mean characters in romantic comedy don’t have problems similar to those in contemporary romance. It’s that the situations and the things that result from the way they handle things are different. The dialog shifts.
Make Villains Memorable – Mary Marvella
Learn how to make your villain the best he/she can be!
Prequeling: Harvesting Backstory for Further Tales – Beth Henderson
Sure, these could be spin-offs. I’ve done my share of spin-offs, which bump a previously secondary character into the role of main character. Recently, though, I discovered yet another avenue to travel down. The PREQUEL.
The Postproduction Outline: Keeping Pantsers and Plantsers Alert to What’s Happened and What Needs to Happen Yet! – Beth Henderson
Recently, I tried something different. A Postproduction outline. I created it when I was past the middle part but still a ways to go to hit the conclusion.
Wait, What?! Writing Killer Plot Twists – Cynthia Owens
As readers, we all love to get into a good book with great characters and an engrossing plot line. We also like to guess what’s going to happen. But what we love most of all are those moments when you’re bowled over by some totally unexpected that you didn’t see coming, yet when you read it, it makes complete sense.