CHARACTER BUILDING: Action Figures

Bestsellers start with fascinating people. Boost your writing process and anchor your career at any stage with a new characterization method that jumpstarts drafting, crafting, revision, and pitching. Go beyond looks, persona, and boilerplate traits so you can bust your ruts and build the perfect cast to dazzle your readers. This session includes:

·        skill-builders to intensify language, stakes, and emotion for your readers.

·        battle-tested solutions for common traps, crutches, and habits.

·        a dynamic story-planning strategy effective for plotters and pantsers.

·        exercises to help you upgrade stories in any genre.

In this deep-dive morning session, we’ll take your fictional folks to the next level with a simple, powerful technique that will strengthen your people, your plots, your hooks, and your voice. Whether you like to wing it or bring it, you’ll leave this workshop with a new set of practical, language-based tools to populate your pages and lay the foundations of unforgettable genre fiction.

FIND YOUR GAME FACE

This hands-on workshop on presence and platform will teach you how to identify a personal archetype to embody your brand and launch your projects in the genre marketplace. In this session you’ll learn to:

·        evoke story patterns that protect and project your professionalism.

·        harness the power of personal goals and a public platform, on- and offline.

·         tailor your message to open doors and attract the right kind of attention.

·        cultivate a healthy A-gang to minimize headaches and boost promo.

A strategic authorial presence can be a game changer for your career. This class will show you how to groom and broadcast your unique appeal, so you become your own best advertisement

SELLING STORIES (Optional Evening Session – additional fee required)

Does your marketing copy earn its keep? This session tackles the wild, woolly world of blurbs and explore the way a high concept premise can anchor a project before and during the writing process. We’ll drill down into the challenges of summarizing your story’s strongest selling point. We’ll unpack the knack of crafting a clear hook, a free prize, and boiling a project into a logline that closes the sale, before and after publication.

SMALL GROUP BREAKFAST (Optional Morning Session – additional fee required)

Get all of your marketing questions answered in this small group breakfast discussion with Damon. Space is very limited for this option, and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. The cost of breakfast at the Four Points by Sheraton on-site restaurant is not included with the registration fee.