Courses
Each of these 90-minute workshops is packed with practical tips and hands-on learning activities.
To schedule a workshop or presentation, contact me.
GENERAL FICTION
Research Basics: Finding the Facts to Support Your Fiction
You’ve heard this advice before: “Write what you know.” But what if your fiction takes you places you’ve never been to before? Although there’s no substitute for personal experience, with a little research you can write convincingly about almost anything that takes place almost anywhere. Here’s how to get started on a fact-finding mission for your work of fiction.
Coming to Your Senses
Whether you’re working in creative nonfiction, memoir or fiction, infusing your prose with sensory details – sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures – is the key to breathing life into your writing. After studying examples from well-known authors and a variety of writing genres, you’ll learn how to harvest sensory impressions from your environment and incorporate them into your writing.
NONFICTION
Three Essential Questions Every Nonfiction Book Proposal Must Answer
“So what?” “Who cares?” “Who are you?” Learn how to prepare a winning proposal by answering three key questions that convey the essential information you need to include in a successful nonfiction book proposal. These three questions will help you write an overview of your book, identify your target audience, conduct a thorough market analysis of competing books and showcase your credentials. You’ll also find out how to package your nonfiction book proposal the professional way.
Six Steps to a Killer Query
From that crucial first sentence to the sources that must be include at the end, learn the art and craft of writing a successful query letter to sell your magazine article and book ideas.
The Magazine Feature Article: From Concept to Query.
In this intensive, two-part, session, you’ll learn from a magazine editor and freelance writer how to shape and sell an idea for a newspaper or magazine feature article. In session one, you’ll brainstorm ideas with others, tailor your idea to a target publication and find appropriate sources for your article. In session two, you’ll learn how to write an irresistible query letter that gets results. Workshop limited to 12 participants. Pre-registration (and a little pre-workshop homework) required.
How to Think Like a Magazine Editor and Get Published.
Breaking into magazine writing is much easier once you understand what's going on inside a magazine editor's mind. In this hands-on workshop, in which you become an editor of Metropolis magazine, you'll learn how to find and focus magazine article ideas and pitch them to real editors like a pro.
Destination: Publication – Seven Trade Secrets for Selling Your Travel Stories.
In this hands-on workshop by a veteran magazine editor and staff writer, you’ll discover the secrets for getting an editor to say ‘Yes!’ to your pitches for destination travel stories.