2023 Workshops

It's Midnight at SavvyAuthors in 2023

(For those who have taken my workshops before, the following will be similar in content. However, each will include a specific focus and edited lessons and handouts. Further, if you've taken a class with me before and would like to keep developing that project, you can either take this class and ask more specific questions, or elect to sign up for a coaching package.)



How to World-Build through Your Characters 

03/27/23-04/23/23


The process of world-building can go on forever. However, using character as your defining touchpoint in world creation can help to tame your creative impulses and focus them in a way that will make your world feel like a living landscape.

In this course, we’ll discuss how to think about your world-building in a way that will keep it internally consistent. Moreover, you’ll learn strategies to filter your world-building through character and the cause and effect of interaction between the people that live in your world.

Together, we can create worlds that readers won’t want to leave.


Syllabus: This is a four week course that will meet twice per week with discussion and exercises. We will cover the following topics:

• The difference between elements within and without your world
• Using causal ripples to move between character creation and world-building
• Critical questions for creating belief systems and intergroup conflict
• World-building within contemporary settings
• Layering details about your world into your manuscript

Creating Distinct Character Voices

08/07/23-09/03/23


Have you gotten feedback that all of your characters sound the same, or that your characters aren’t distinct? There’s hope!

In this workshop, we split the rendering of character into two parts: Development of character and dialogue/description. First, to craft your characters, you must explore your character as a fully-realized person, and then, you have to put that person down on the page for the readers to experience.


Syllabus: This is a four week course that will meet twice per week with discussion and exercises. We will cover the following topics:

• What is character voice?
• The difference between and purposes of various types of dialogue.
• How to layer distinct details into character personality
• How to depict detail through voice and action
• How to pace and cue dialogue
• How to use conflict to better distinguish character traits

Spinning Gold from Old Yarns: Adapting Fairy Tales and Public Domain Classics into Original Fiction

11/06/2023-12/02/2023

From well-worn fairytales to far flung fantasy, the tradition of drawing from beloved stories to create new and striking iterations has a long history. At the core of this story obsession are familiar tropes and relationship dynamics that keep us coming back to similar stories time and again.

In this class, we will break down some of these tropes and discuss various strategies for spinning your own versions of these yarns and making them golden. Furthermore, throughout the class, we look at case studies of books and occasionally visual media that employ different methods for adapting older stories into an engaging tale that will draw in readers and keep them wanting more.


Syllabus: This is a four week course that will meet roughly twice per week with discussion and exercises. We will cover the following topics:

• How often-retold stories come to “feel true”
• Ways of working with or against “narrative fidelity” in a familiar story: Reinvention, Recreation, Subversion, and Kitchen-Sink
• Making use of emotional resonances within stories from affect saturated symbols and objects
• Familiarizing yourself with major tropes used in fairytales
• Creating a coherent in-narrative world for your adaptation
• Planning your adaptation through structure, theme, and reference

 I offer both standard workshops through discussion-board venues such as SavvyAuthors as well as personalized workshops and author coaching. For the latter, please contact me with your interests, and we'll see how we can best get you on track.

Workshops and Presentations

 I've been doing workshops for some time as my means of engaging with the writing community at large. It seems like the best way for me to do so, since I'm not terribly savvy with social media and I am, let's face it, incredibly awkward in person. 

Recently, I did my first "talk" instead of a workshop. This was the Worldcrafting presentation with Central Valley Fiction Writers. We'd attempted to get together for a workshop, and I do think that world-building as a topic deserves that level of attention. However, at the time they scheduled my workshop, they couldn't garner enough interest to make it worth the students paying. I tend to agree. While I enjoy workshops, I also don't want people to pay for something that they aren't going to get something out of. 

This talk brought about my first use of Zoom for presenting, as well as my first "live" discussion of writing with other writers in a professional setting. That is, outside just chatting with my other aspiring author friends. Along with it came no small amount of impostor syndrome. I've not had as much time to write my own fiction, due to working on finishing my degree, and therefore, I felt a little like... who am I to tell other people how to think about worldbuilding? They've written books! And published them! Meanwhile, the only fiction publication I had going for me was in an anthology, with my diligent co-author, and it has since been taken from Amazon. Boo.

Regardless, I found the attendees to be engaged and very interested. They rolled with the terms I have created for understanding the parts of world-building a bit better. And afterward, we opted to, instead of doing activities like in a workshop, just talk. This was helpful in that the attendees could get a second clarification on my schema. I'm a bit abstract sometimes, and I'm glad ultimately helped them mentally encompass the differences between moves we make as writers while creating. It also allowed for the attendees to talk about parts of their projects, ask questions and get ideas, and create a bit of a wishlist for things they would like to create for authors, if they had the time or money. 

Needless to say, in spite of my anxiety regarding speaking... It worked rather well. I'd do it again. And I might consider it in lieu of creating another workshop, if I can get the audience. That's definitely in the works, the workshops. However, since Ivy and I pulled away from the RWA for all the reasons, it's harder to commit in that way. 

Upcoming, Ivy and I have planned to take the co-writing workshop and simply turn it into a book. While it was often a requested workshop, it was never one we got much interaction for. I'm not shocked. It's hard to know what to ask, unless you happen to be taking the workshop together. We figure, an e-book at maybe $5 a pop would be more worth people's hard earned (and potentially able to be written off on taxes) dollars.

Things like character development and point of view, though... Things like worldbuilding and adaptation and subverting trope... It's just more fun in a group? I understand why people tend to drop out of workshops. We're all busy. But the interaction is the reason you're paying to spend any time with me. 

I may do another post, or a static page with some handouts, for the terminology I've invented for understanding worldbuilding. Until then, I know this month's speaker is Ivy Quinn, who is, frankly, awesome. And a lot more focused than I am, let's be honest.

Check it out and sign up here:

September 10th: “Short but Sweet: How to Write Novellas Quickly and Efficiently”