PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
WDC22’s Pre-Conference Workshops are the perfect opportunity to go deep on a topic with expert, hands-on guidance.
NOTE: These exclusive pre-conference workshops kick off the 2022 Writer’s Digest Annual Conference weekend on Thursday, July 28
All novels, regardless of genre, need a well-structured and engaging plot or storyline laden with suspense to keep readers turning the pages. By integrating these 13 thinking, writing, and revising tips into your writing process, you’ll write tighter, more polished novels. You’ll improve your story’s pace; create surprising, compelling characters; choose a setting that adds intrigue; write evocative prose; and develop a fresh, suspenseful plot. This workshop incorporates lecturettes, exercises, self-assessments, debriefings, and group discussions—attendees don’t simply learn what to do; they learn how to do it—and they practice putting the tactics to work.
YOU'LL LEARN
- Determine whether to use a linear or nonlinear structure, and how to integrate enhancements like bookends and flashbacks.
- Use Jane’s Plotting Roadmap to delineate your story’s plot and subplots, including adding in TRDs (plot Twists, plot Reversals, and moments of heightened Danger).
- Harness the power of setting—you’ll know how to choose settings that support your plot and theme by converting facts into atmosphere, and reveal the location without an info dump.
- Beef up your prose through action verbs and sensory details.
- Use secrets, isolation, and other specific strategies to illuminate conflict. (And you’ll know how to choose a physical, emotional, mental, and/or spiritual conflict to drive your story.)
- Assess whether your characterization aligns with your incidents. Would the people who populate your stories really do those things?
- Improve your productivity and overcome writer’s block with these tried-and-true, practical strategies.
In this full-day workshop, Jane Friedman—co-founder of The Hot Sheet, former publisher of Writer’s Digest, award-winning blogger and author of The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press, 2018)—will teach you how to be clear-eyed and strategic about developing revenue streams best suited to your personality, your writing, and your career expectations. We’ll discuss early career foundation and brand-building for freelancers who want to work for publishers or businesses, how and when freelancers can successfully market and sell their work directly to readers/consumers, and the varied income opportunities related to being a visible writer or expert in the market.
YOU'LL LEARN
- How and when early career freelancers might work for “exposure” versus cash
- Principles and techniques for building a platform, with special attention paid to lead generation
- Foundational strategies and principles for using your website, online writing (blogging), email and social media in concert with each other to develop opportunities for your career
- How to optimize your branding and messaging in an online environment, and use the language of clients or consumers to help your efforts
- The importance of relationships and community, and uncovering freelance opportunities through collaborations, partnerships, and influencers
- Methods of patronage and reader support that can support less commercial writing efforts, including crowdfunding and grants
- The critical difference between hourly work, scalable work, and passive income
- And more!
