In This Section
Drawing from his personal experience as a full-time essayist, short story writer,
and novelist, Terry Sanville will discuss the various opportunities and challenges
in writing short stories in this informative session. He will also touch on the potential
role these play in developing your story telling chops, and the multitude of sources
each of us has access to for a variety of story ideas. A robust Q&A period will be
provided as well.
From fast-paced thrillers to contemplative literary novels and everything in between,
readers need to connect to your characters to create a page-turning story. Emotion
is the thread that binds readers to your characters’ experience. This session, led
by Author and Editor Jordan Rosenfeld, will help you use sensory cues, powerful imagery,
character demonstration and other tools to evoke the emotion that hooks readers and
creates deep, compelling characters.
In this engaging session, best-selling author Sheila Roberts will offer tips on story
structure which keeps the plot moving and how it relates to character development.
She’ll talk about how to turn your idea into a story with a developed plot, characters,
and conflict. In addition, Sheila will offer a check list for authors to refer to
as they develop their story, and share strategies that have helped her along her writing
journey which includes penning 50+ books under various names.
Your submission’s success is dependent on whether or not you are able to capture an
agent’s or editor’s attention in the early pages with compelling writing…all while
not showing any common red flags that will lead to them quickly hitting the delete
key and moving on. Join Random House author Mark Parsons as he discusses the things
you want to do—and not do—in your novel’s first chapters. He’ll share over a dozen
specific do’s and don’ts, and discuss the overall goal of your novel’s opening pages—regardless
of genre or age range—and ways you can accomplish this goal. Mark will also take questions
on writing craft, publishing, and any aspect of navigating the agent/editor/publisher
paradigm. So…come with questions!
No matter how beautiful your cover or how wonderful your story, you only have about
twenty seconds between the time a reader finds your book and decides whether topurchase
it. Award-winning author Eldonna Edwards will help you test your opening and offer
ways to improve it. She will also discuss how to deliver on the promise you made on
that critical first page. (Please send your opening paragraph to eldonna@gmail.com
for consideration.)