I am extremely honored and excited to work with SavvyAuthors for the third year running! This year, I have 6 exciting workshops that I’ll be hosting with them. There will be more informaiton and links to each as we get closer to their starting date.
January 9-January 15 “Teens Say the Damndest Things”
Capturing the voice of characters is difficult on its own, but it’s even harder when you’re writing for a different generation. Writing Young Adult works allows us to connect to our younger selves and relive the aches and pains of growing up. But what we said (and even did) as young adults isn’t always in tune with what actual young adults do today. After all, many people in older generations never would have dreamed of cursing, and now teens do it all the time. Writing in the voice of a YA character means taking the time to learn how they speak, and not just in choice of words. This workshop will explore the voice of teen and young adult characters, including dialect, vernacular, and all things rhetoric (like code switching).
March 6-March 12 “The Mystery of Setting”
It’s no unknown fact that setting can be its own character. Many books, movies, and other forms of entertainment have used the setting to create both emotion and movement in a plot. But creating the character of your setting isn’t always easy, and the genre you’re writing in can greatly affect how your setting plays out. When crafting a mystery, you can use the setting to mirror character actions and set the perfect tone for your carefully crafted case. This workshop will explore how setting is used in mystery stories and why it’s so effective.
May 29-June 4 “Meet-Cute Your Romance Trope”
Tropes and cliches are useful tools you can use to help craft your story. But you can also break them to create a fresh breath of air in an otherwise stale plot. The romance genre has one of the most extensive lists of tropes around, and a collective of readers ready to defend them with everything they’ve got. In this workshop, we’ll explore the main romance tropes around and how you can use them in your story. We’ll also examine ways you can steer away from tropes and cliches without upsetting fans too much.
July 31-August 6 “Know as You Go”
Being a panster isn’t always easy. But if planning everything ahead of time isn’t your thing, then you’ll need to put methods in place to help you stay organized while you write. While you don’t need to plan your plot and characters out before you get started, you do need to keep track of characters, information, and plot points as you go. Even if you are a planner, having a good, working organization system you can edit as you go can help speed the writing process along. This workshop will help you create an effective record-keeping method that works for you.
September 18-October 8 “Comprehensive Worldbuilding – The Whole World View”
Throughout this 3-week workshop, writers will learn the ins and outs of worldbuilding and how to properly integrate information into their story.
Week one will focus on macro-worldbuilding: how the world is shaped, what political powers are in play, and how religion and technology appear in the world.
Week two will focus on micro-worldbuilding: how culture develops within different parts of the world, what sorts of economic policies are around, and how certain historical events have impacted the modern world.
Week three will focus on how to use this world building knowledge to better serve your plot, characters, and overall writing.
By the end of this workshop, writers should have a well-developed world to create in, or at least have the tools and knowledge to build one in the future.
November 27-December 3 “Bury the Lead: Effective Ways to Hide Clues Without Hiding Them”
Learn how to create a fictional case that readers won’t be able to solve!
Anna Denisch 