8:00a – 8:30a Lobby Check In/Registration
8:30a – 9:15a Auditorium
Introduction/ Keynote Address: Hallie Ephron
New York Times bestselling author Hallie Ephron will be the keynote speaker at the sixth annual Southwest Washington Writers Conference. The well-known speaker and teacher will also conduct workshops and participate in a panel during the conference.
WORKSHOP I 9:30a – 10:45a
Room 107 Craft
Setting the Scene: How to create an authentic sense of place– Midge Raymond
Place plays an important role in any story, from offering insight into characters to creating a mood. This workshop will help you get a sense of the where in your writing, from researching places to incorporating details and dialogue. We’ll look at classic and contemporary examples of how writers use setting to flesh out stories—and a variety of writing prompts will teach you how to pay attention to place in your work.
Three key points:
1. Learn how to portray setting, including researching places
2. Writing exercises to put lessons into practice
3. Tips & examples to highlight how to set a scene
Room 108 Marketing
How to Sell Your First 50-100 Books (in One Week or Less) – Veronika Noize
Are you a brand new author with a new book out (or have a book that is coming out soon)? Or do you have a book that’s been languishing undiscovered on Amazon, or gathering dust sitting unsold in boxes in your garage?
It’s time to sell that book, and this info-packed class will show you how by revealing:
• 3 great strategies for selling your first 50+ books fast, including the nitty-gritty details
• The ONE THING you must have in place to sell your book now (that you probably don’t
have yet)
• The surprising reason people will buy your book (that you never saw coming)
Room 110 Craft
Sharpen Your Wit: Using Humor to Enhance Storytelling – Tiffany Pitts
This class will look at different ways humor can be used to deepen storytelling. We’ll break down comedic timing and see how it is used to build/relieve tension within scenes creating interest and grip the reader. We’ll look at ways it can be used to develop characters from one-dimensional names into complex heroes and villains.
We’ll also find ways comedy can be created out of perspective (or lack thereof) and conflict. Lastly, we’ll discuss how humor can be used to effectively mask intent, throw red herrings or telegraph the truth to your reader without them being aware of it.
After the lecture, we will put these ideas into practice with a writing/sharing exercise designed to help improve improvisational thinking skills.
Things Attendees Will Learn:
1. Resources and materials to study comedic timing.
2. Ways humor can effectively enhance plot and story.
3. Exercises to increase improvisational thinking skills.
Room 111 Craft
Viewpoint – What’s the Big Deal? – Hallie Ephron
Point of view — you don’t even know what it is until you start trying to write fiction. Then the questions start. Whose story is this? First person or third? Can I use omniscient? What about multiple points of view? How to handle point-of-view shifts? Does it matter if the viewpoint slip-slides? How does POV relate to narrative voice? This workshop explores answers to all these questions and more.
Topics include:
- – POV options
- – Viewpoint and voice
- – How viewpoint changes the story and determines what the reader knows
- – Deciding where you want the “camera” to tell your story – close or at a distance; fixed or flexible; one viewpoint or several
- – Managing multiple viewpoints
- – Sliding viewpoint and head-hopping: How to get viewpoint under control (and recognize when it’s not)
- – When and how to deepen viewpoint
WORKSHOP II 11:00a – 12:15p
Room 107 Craft
Say Anything: How to Write Great Dialogue – Midge Raymond
From portraying character to moving the plot forward, dialogue works hard in any story—and writers often need to work just as hard to create authentic, realistic voices in their prose. In this workshop, we’ll study examples of good dialogue and discuss how and why these work, and we’ll go over tips for how to write engaging conversations, with writing exercises that will reinforce the major tenets of effective dialogue.
Three key points:
1. Hands-on writing exercises
2. Examples and tips from successful authors
3. DOs and DON’Ts for writing dialogue
Room 108 Marketing
New Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Authors – Veronika Noize
Have you noticed that just showing up on social media is not enough to attract fans and sell books? Yet some writers are totally rocking it–so why not you?
In this powerful masterclass tailored for authors, you’ll learn:
• why social media marketing needs a plan—and what it looks like
• how to get a little more famous while spending less time and effort on social
• a social media marketing blueprint to swipe and use now
Room 110 Business
Writing for Newspapers: Publication Credits and a Little Income – Julie Zander
As the news industry changes, more editors rely on freelance writers to fill the blank pages in their newspapers. Sometimes editors assign news or feature stories to freelancers; other times they suggest stories and pursue them. The Chronicle works with a half dozen freelance columnists, too, whose opinion pieces grace the editorial pages. How do you write for newspapers? Why would you do it? How can it benefit you as a writer? Where do you find stories? How does newspaper writing differ from other writing? We’ll leave plenty of time to address these questions and any others posed by participants in this workshop.
Room 111 Craft
Rookie mistakes in writing fiction: How to spot them in your own work – Hallie Ephron
It’s all too easy to turn off a reader in the first few pages of your manuscript or hook them with a great beginning only to lose them with a flabby middle. Or disappoint them with an unearned ending. From idea, to execution, to the final polish, this workshop explores best practices and potholes to avoid.
Topics include:
- Nailing the basics
- Openings to avoid
- Turning tells into shows
- Saving yourself from the blah’s
- Harnessing voice
- Friends and enemies: Adverbs and adjectives vs. verbs
- Tricks and tips for effective dialogue
- Shaping story structure
12:15p – 1:15p Lobby LUNCH Pick-Up – then choose to join a panel discussion.
PANELS 12:30p – 1:15p
Room 107 The Writing Craft
Room 110 The Marketers
Local bestselling indie author Kyle Pratt will host the marketing panel discussion. On that panel will be New York Times bestselling author Hallie Ephron, award-winning Marketing Coach Ronnie Noize, and bestselling indie author Traci Hilton.
See page 7 of the program for more information on the panels and presenters.
WORKSHOP III 1:30p – 2:45p
Room 107 Poetry
The objects of our lives – Claudia Castro Luna
Poems are portals that transport us out of the ordinary moment to discover new emotional terrain, an amplitude of feeling.
How can we, as writers, hone the ability to make our poems lead others into that magical terrain? We’ll examine how everyday objects can be all we need to craft the poems we want to read.
Room 108 Marketing
How to Launch your Book – Jill Williamson
Whether you’re a traditionally published author or an indie, if you have a book coming out, you want to launch it well. Having published over twenty books, I’ve developed a checklist of what to do and when. Every book isn’t the same, however, and not every book launch requires the same formula for success. In this class we’ll go over this checklist while you make your own. We’ll discuss how the list can be modified for different scenarios, depending on whether the book is a stand-alone, the first in a new series, a middle book, or the last book in a series. We will also talk about the difference between launching a traditional book and an indie book, and how to continually evaluate your launch process.
Room 110 Craft
Finding Your Voice – Andrea Culletto
Whether you write blog posts, novels or nonfiction, good writing requires a consistent, authentic voice. Effectively developing and refining that voice, however, can be tricky. Many struggle to cultivate their own unique voice and wind up mimicking other writers whose work they enjoy, usually with poor results. This course will help you find your voice and learn to use it for enhanced writing and an enriched reader experience.
Room 111 Craft
Consciousness and Memory – Jordan Hartt
A person at a grocery store isn’t just at the store. They are also thinking about their past, their future, their finances, their joys, their worries—they bring their lives onto Aisle 6 while searching for the best price on Barilla pasta. Our characters are the same way. But how, and when, do we move, as writers, from our characters’ exterior lives to their interior lives? How do the environments that surround our characters influence their consciousness, and how to our characters bring their own histories, thought, and memories to their surrounding environments? In this workshop, these are the questions we’ll ask and answer. Using texts from such writers as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Hemingway, and others, we’ll explore how to move from a character’s present moment into their consciousness and memories, and back—learning, in other words, how to create characters who live exactly the way we as humans live every day.
WORKSHOP IV 3:00p – 4:15p
Room 107 Marketing
Everyday Book Marketing: Book promotion to fit into your regularly scheduled life – Midge Raymond
With so many marketing opportunities available, book promotion can seem overwhelming. Learn how to develop strategies that fit in with your life, whether you have ten minutes a day or two hours a day, from creating an author website to planning events to engaging on social media.
Three key points:
1. How to make book marketing manageable (when you need to keep writing)
2. Tips for website basics, social media, and event planning
3. “Think outside the book” ideas for unique book promotion
Room 108 Marketing
How to Grow and Engage your Author Newsletter – Traci Hilton
Active newsletters are key to selling books to readers and publishers. This workshop will teach how to establish the newsletter, how to reach subscribers, and how to engage them in your content to grow community around your work.
Room 110 Craft
Memoir 101 – Andrea Culletto
You have a story to tell – but how do you translate the complex realities of your life into a cohesive story that readers will enjoy? In Memoir Writing 101 you’ll learn how to draw from your vast array of life experiences and weave a tale that is engaging, entertaining, and educational. It’s time to share your story.
Room 111 Craft
Viewpoint – What’s the Big Deal? – Hallie Ephron
Point of view — you don’t even know what it is until you start trying to write fiction. Then the questions start. Whose story is this? First person or third? Can I use omniscient? What about multiple points of view? How to handle point-of-view shifts? Does it matter if the viewpoint slip-slides? How does POV relate to narrative voice? This workshop explores answers to all these questions and more.
Topics include:
- – POV options
- – Viewpoint and voice
- – How viewpoint changes the story and determines what the reader knows
- – Deciding where you want the “camera” to tell your story – close or at a distance; fixed or flexible; one viewpoint or several
- – Managing multiple viewpoints
- – Sliding viewpoint and head-hopping: How to get viewpoint under control (and recognize when it’s not)
- – When and how to deepen viewpoint
4:15p – 5:00p Auditorium Final Words
Jordan Hartt – Writing and Community
Christine Fossett (Executive Director at Centralia College Foundation) – Community and College
Pat Thompson – Thank you!
