Workshops
Boot Camps
Schedule a Boot Camp
Collegiate Workshops
Boot Camps
Bring a Boot Camp to your
writer's group!
Get your group's imagination in formation with one of our Novelist's Boot
Camp Creative Discipline Workshops:
1. "Unstick Yourself" -- A dozen dynamite drills from Novelist's
Boot Camp.
This workshop was
presented at RWA 2007 and takes the audience through the entire Improved
Writing Process
- from Developing a Novelist's Mindset to Revision and
Editing.
Unstick yourself—a dozen dynamite drills from Novelist’s Boot Camp
covers a “dirty dozen” of the most popular writing Drills in plotting,
character development, dialogue, action, description, revision, and other
elements of craft that will propel “stuck” writers forward. Aspiring,
newly published, and multi-published authors have all found this workshop
valuable. You can see the slides for this workshop above. This workshop
works best in a three hour time block.
2. Novelist’s
Boot Camp—Advanced tactics for the
near- and newly-published
Once you’re at the
stage where your book sells or is
about to, then the
panic sets in. Can you write the next one as well as the first? What if a
publisher wants a three-book contract? How do you pump them out
in a timely way—and
still retain the feeling of joy and creativity? What if you want to switch
genres, lines, or expand your career? This workshop expands on 10 powerful
drills from Novelist’s Boot Camp to empower near- and newly-published
authors to gain increased control, have greater confidence, make more
progress in achieving their writing goals, and have more fun—even as those
authors are challenged by newfound career demands on their time and
creativity. Practical Exercises are included. This workshop also
normally runs about
three hours.
3. The
Novelist's Boot Camp Targeted Focus Workshops.
In these intensive
workshops we "zero in" on one stage
of the
NBC improved writing process and spend a full
morning or afternoon
(about 3-4 hours) in intense, focused work. Available Targeted Focus
Workshops include:
* Invention
and Mental preparation/Mission Planning Workshop--finding your
path, inventing your comprehensive concept, making peace with the publishing
industry, and more.
* Development
Workshop--character, plot, setting, story, and
other critical
development items; developing the Master Story Summary; and more.
* Drafting
Workshop--the scene by scene, line by line workshop.
This workshop puts the Drafting
Drills from Novelist's Boot Camp to work on an individual writer's text. We
work one or two scenes very intensely.
* Revision
Workshop--This workshop teaches the
NBC Triage and
Seven Revision Passes
techniques on one or more scenes of a writer's work. For this workshop, we
assume that an author has a first draft completed.
4. The
Novelist's Boot Camp 'You asked for it' Workshop.
In this workshop we
use Drills from Novelist's Boot
Camp to attack those
issues a group wishes to focus on. In
other words, this is an
NBC Workshop
specifically tailored
to your group's needs. In these
we can go beyond the
NBC goal of completing a novel to
address issues such as
mission essential promotion, writing/life balance, etiquette for authors,
publishing options, and so on. This
workshop requires collaboration prior to presentation.
If
you have an interest in one or more of the
workshops and would
like more information or a more detailed outline of a workshop, please
contact us.
Collegiate
Workshops
Every semester, I present craft of fiction classes
at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn,
Illinois as part of the college's Continuing Education Department's Arts
Enrichment Program. I hold these workshops in the evenings. Each workshop runs about three hours.
To
attend, you must register with the college. The Continuing
Education Department's FAQ tells you how.
TO REGISTER:
Call the College of DuPage (630) 942-2377; have the course code
(see column to the right) and your Social Security number ready. You
can pay for your classes by American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, or check.
