Tag Archives: conferences

Join me this week!

Hey! I’ve got two awesome events this week, and I hope you’ll join me:

Meet SIX local authors!

Even if you couldn’t come for the murder mystery dinner, we do have fun FREE events tomorrow:

6 PM – 7 PM
Meet & greet with authors Annette Lyon, Heather B. Moore, Sarah M. Eden, Jordan McCollum, Lisa Mangum, & Josi S. Kilpack

And, oh yeah, this will be your first chance to get a print copy of my next book!

Northampton House
198 W 300 N
American Fork, Utah

And then . . .

Hone your writing craft!

I’ll also be teaching THIS SATURDAY at a FREE writers conference. YES, FREE!

Saturday, October 24
Writers Building Community Conference, presented by the United Authors Association with the Springville Library
Classes 9 AM – 4:30 PM
Author signing 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM

I’ll be teaching on approaching POV problems through character voice (and “voice” versa).

Read more & register!

And yes, I will have copies of my new novel there, too (unless I sell out first!).

Springville Public Library
45 South Main Street
Springville, UT 84663

All about character arcs!

This last weekend, I taught a class on character arcs at the LDStorymakers Writers’ Conference. I was really pleased with how it went!

Today I’m sharing the presentation itself as well as links to all the articles I referenced in my presentation. So, here we go!

The Presentation

via Prezi


I’ve left it so that you can zoom in/out on whatever you’d like. (Sorry, no sound effects 😉 .)

The References

A lot of the presentation came from my series on character arcs:

My character arcs series is also available as a free PDF! (More free writing guides.)

Other awesome references:

Alicia Rasley’s articles on character arcs:

Blog posts on Michael Hauge’s classes:

These are the articles I referenced directly, but I studied a lot of great information on character arcs. I’ll be sharing more about character arcs later this week on my newsletter—be sure to join for the latest news & writing resources!

With a brand new baby, attending a conference is always a challenge. My husband was wonderful enough to take care of her at home until after my presentations, and then I took her after that.

JR and baby at conf
Baby’s first writers’ conference! (She was 5.5 weeks.)

It’s always so good to hang out with “my people”: writers!

What do you think? What’s your favorite part of writers’ conferences? Were you at Storymakers? What was your favorite part?

Photo credits: Character arcs—Riccardo Romano

LDStorymakers Writers’ Conference 2013

I think I’ve forgotten to share this here (though I’ve mentioned it a couple times on my email newsletter), but I’m presenting at the LDStorymakers Conference May 10 and 11!

LDStorymakers

My class will be in the advanced craft track, on Character arcs:

All Dressed up with Nowhere to Grow: Character Arcs in Fiction

You can have the greatest plot in the world but for a character to truly resonate with readers, s/he should change and grow over the course of the story. This workshop will explore the ins and outs of discovering and showing your characters’ growth from beginning to end. Developing your characters’ internal journey will give you more powerful characters—and more powerful fiction.

There will also be some awesome agents, editors and authors there—including a keynote address by NYT best-selling author Anne Perry. There will be keynote-only tickets as well.

For attendees, there’s also a Show Your Love contest—mention the conference and the contest on your blog for a chance to win some fun prizes, including VIP seats at dinner with those editors and agents.

This will be my 5th Storymakers Conference. If you’ve never been to a writers’ conference, let me tell you: the opportunity just to socialize with people who really get you and what it means to be a writer is worth it (especially since Storymakers is really affordable for a full writers’ conference!). The connections I’ve made from this conference are absolutely invaluable—I have literally hundreds of friends because I’ve attended this conference. And not in a misusing-the-word-literally way, either.

So if you’ll be in town, go! And especially to my class. I mean Anne Perry’s keynote. I mean—yeah.

How have you benefited from writers’ conferences? Come share!

Getting resourceful

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Writing resources

While we like to hear stories about prodigies and untaught geniuses who magical write perfectly poetic prose (and always on the first draft!), the reality is that for pretty much everyone, writing takes a lot of practice, effort, time—and learning.

Writing resources are really important in that learning process. Everything from craft books to conferences can help us improve our writing craft (not to mention learning about the the business side of publishing). From the mechanics of writing to story-level technique, writing resources can help us every step of the way.

And yet sometimes, it’s still hard for us to take that help—for me, it’s often either the expense (of money and time—I’d rather be writing!), or debating whether I really need to work on that area (answer: probably). Can’t I figure this out on my own? Shouldn’t I?

Maybe, maybe not. No, a critique group or a class can’t teach you how to write—at least not if you’re not willing to listen and learn and try new things, and apply them in your writing. But finding those new things to try, identifying your weaknesses and finding ways to improve them all take a lot longer (and may not be as effective) if we don’t seek that outside help.

So this week, we’ll be looking at writing resources, and how they’ve helped us learn and grow as writers!

What writing resources have helped you in your writing journey? (If you’re interested in joining the series with a guest post, I still have openings!)

Photo by Fabrice Clerc