Master Class Schedule 2023
Thursday, February 16, 2023, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Write and/or Adapt Your Book Into a Screenplay (from a writer who has sold scripts to every major film studio)
With Phil Beauman
The good news is that with the dozens of broadcast networks, cable TV networks, premium networks, streaming platforms, and the revitalized multi-billion dollar feature film industry, the demand for new feature film content has never been greater.
Even better news is it’s relatively easy to learn the classic screenplay model that’s used in ninety percent of both commercial mainstream and Academy Award winning films.
Whether or not we like “formulaic” movies, when film budgets can range from millions of dollars to hundreds of millions, the stakes are too high to deviate from the formula that has consistently worked in the past.
And when professional readers read through the thousands and thousands of scripts every year, once they discover that the writer doesn’t know the “magic formula,” they will often stop reading your script and move on to the next one.
This masterclass on the nuts and bolts of screenwriting structure will teach you the essential beats of feature film storytelling.
This masterclass will help you to:
- Brainstorm and create marketable feature film ideas (or help you adapt the main storyline of your novel.)
- Outline your story into what Hollywood considers the standard screenplay structure.
- Identify and differentiate your main character’s apparent desires from their deepest necessities.
- Take your character through the roughly fifteen essential steps of ‘character trajectory’ on the way to manifesting your character’s ultimate success or failure.
And give you the opportunity to ask questions from a screenwriter who started his career without an agent and had a professional writing career for thirty years (and counting).
$99
Phil Beauman began his writing career writing for “In Living Color.” He co-wrote “Don’t Be a Menace,” the first “Scary Movie,” & “Not Another Teen Movie.” He was also a writer/Supervising Producer on “The Wayans Brothers” & a Co-Creator/Co-Executive Producer of Nickelodeon’s “Cousin Skeeter.” Recently Phil Beauman Executive Produced his spec script “Soul Santa,” which was the number one rated Christmas movie on B.E.T.
Thursday, February 16, 2023, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
A Pitch Is Still A Pitch
With Katharine Sands
The pitch, now synonymous with a query, was once the province of Hollywood. It has morphed into an umbrella term meaning proposing and introducing your concept for a book; it is used universally for the loftiest and most serious projects along with the most commercial. What do we talk about when we talk about the on-page and the in-person pitch? What should you talk about? As an author, you are always going to be asked to introduce your work, share your enthusiasm for your writing, and get others excited about what is exciting to you. “What is your book about” or “Tell me about your work” means: the 15 minutes of fame is yours to shine in. Agent Katharine Sands shows you how to construct the perfect pitch.
The master class will cover the following:
- Query letters – in-person script – with a strong hook in the first two lines
- What mistakes writers make when querying agents
- Seven surefire techniques that get you requested and keep you out of the slushpile
- Hooks, selling points, and sales engines
- How to avoid “Querial Killers”: the easy-to-fix mistakes writers make when querying agents and proposing book projects.
- Use the pitch to deliver enough of the flavor of the book to whet the reader’s appetite for more
- Show how much texture and how much scope there is to the subject.
- Speak about a topic or nonfiction subject or memoir showcasing the groundbreaking, or new, focus you can encapsulate and state clearly.
- Keep calm and carry on even—if it appears the agent is getting glassy-eyed, eyeing the bar, or squirming as if her buttock or her foot has fallen asleep.
$129
Katharine Sands represents books that have a clear benefit for readers’ lives in categories of food, travel, lifestyle, beauty, wisdom, relationships, parenting, and fresh looks, which might be at issues, life challenges, or popular culture. When reading fiction, she wants to be compelled and propelled by urgent storytelling and hooked by characters. For memoirs, she likes to be transported to a world rarely observed.
Thursday, February 16, 2023, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
High-Impact Social Media for Authors
With Rusty Shelton & Paige Velasquez Budde
If you have been wondering where to start when it comes to using social media to launch your book, grow a platform and drive lead flow, this advanced workshop is the place to start. This presentation will peel back the curtain and share the most current social media strategies used to build platforms for some of the world’s leading authors and thought leaders. Long-time SFWC marketing speaker and bestselling author Rusty Shelton will be joined by Zilker Media CEO & social media expert Paige Velasquez Budde to share a 10-step roadmap that will empower attendees to leverage the latest social media strategies to grow their audience, build their list and successfully launch their book. Attendees will leave the presentation with an online brand audit and a roadmap they can follow to grow their social media platform in the years to come. This session will include stand-alone labs for TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram!
- You will learn how to:
- Build a content strategy for social media that uses less time to make a bigger impact
- Conduct an online brand audit for yourself
- Leverage the new media landscape for success through the earned, rented & owned framework
- Understand the latest trends to use TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and other social media channels more effectively to drive results
- Create the right content strategy to own the connection with your audience
This is a workshop that values the practical/actionable over the big picture and attendees will be challenged and encouraged to hit the ground running with social media. Our discussion will be applicable to both fiction and nonfiction authors. This session is for any writer who wants to go to the next level with their social media and content marketing strategy.
$150
Paige Velasquez Budde is Partner and CEO at Zilker Media, an Austin-based agency building people-driven brands. She has been featured as a speaker on people-driven marketing and led workshops for organizations such as Ernst & Young, Harvard Medical School, The University of Texas athletics, Camp Gladiator, IBPA, and Women Presidents’ Organization.
Rusty Shelton is a bestselling author, dynamic keynote speaker, and successful entrepreneur who first spoke at Harvard on the changing world of marketing and PR at the age of 23. He has focused his career on helping leaders build thought leadership focused on impact, not ego, writing three acclaimed books and speaking around the world to a variety of audiences, from YPO to Forbes. He is the Founder & Chairman of Zilker Media.
Thursday, February 16, 2023, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Killer Sentences – Transform Serviceable Sentences into Arresting Prose
With Jordan Rosenfeld
Writers get so busy nailing down characters and plots that we often forget about the humble sentence. Your story may be great, but do your sentences sing, engage, and keep the tension alive? There’s much more to revising at the sentence level than cutting a few extra words or polishing your prose. Writing great sentences involves getting to know your characters’ personalities, understanding some key linguistic concepts, and developing your style. You’ll do all of this and more in this workshop.
In this workshop, Jordan will bring over 20 years of experience to teach you how to transform serviceable sentences into arresting prose and imagery that does more than just tell a great story. We’ll learn how to convey emotion and theme with subtlety through imagery. You’ll explore a variety of writing examples to assess and shape your writing voice and pin down what it means to create a writing style. You’ll tease apart metaphor and simile, alliteration, juxtaposition, and musicality to add texture. And we’ll play with the sound of words and useful literary devices for prose that wows instead of whimpers.
This session will help you:
- Develop a strong understanding of voice and tone
- Explore the way sentence structure contributes to flow
- Learn what words and parts of speech to cut or pare back
- How to beautify your sentences through linguistic techniques
- How to add metaphor, simile, and other imagery
- The power of specificity
- The importance of strong sentence transitions and more!
Though this is a class about sentences, it’s not a boring English class—you’ll be thinking as deeply about your character and themes as you are about the words themselves.
This session is for:
- Writers who are looking to revise at the sentence level
- Anyone who wants to learn techniques to make them stronger writers
- Writers who want a story that stands out in its voice and tone
- Writers who know their sentences need work
- Writers who know their sentences need work
$119
Jordan Rosenfeld is the author of the novels Women in Red and Forged in Grace and six books on the craft of writing, most recently How to Write a Page-Turner and the bestselling Make a Scene. Her freelance articles and essays have been published in hundreds of publications, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American, and more. She teaches online classes and freelance edits manuscripts.
Thursday, February 16, 2023, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Super Sleuthing: Internet Research Skills Everyone Should Know
With Geri Spieler
How do you start your research process? What words do you use to find information? Do you know how to gauge when a website is genuine? In this workshop, we will introduce the methods that combine the main topics of “Online Research Methods,” which include several methodologies to equip you with the skills and tools to prepare you to find accurate information and discern whether it is reliable.
In this session, you will learn the following:
- How to create better keyword and word-phrase
And searches using search strings
- How to avoid “Disambiguation.”
- What is the “Deep Web,” and how can it help the research process?
- How can I search anonymously?
- List of Deep Web search engines and databases.
- What is the difference between search engines, metasearch engines, directors, and portals, and how can it help my research?
- How to avoid “Filter Bubbles.”
- What are invisible Web sites, and why can’t we use them?
- Is people-search ethical? How can we use it for our purposes?
- Why should you search using more than one search engine
$99
Geri Spieler has written about the only woman who shot at a sitting US president. Using her high-level investigative skills, she got Washington to open the file of what really happened the day she shot at Pres. Ford instead of what the FBI covered up. In her breakthrough book, Housewife Assassin; The Woman Who Tried To Kill Pres. Ford, Spieler reveals the true story of that woman, Sara Jane Moore.
Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5 p.m.
Why Should I Care? Keeping Readers Invested in Your Characters and Story
With Tanya Egan Gibson
You care deeply about your novel, short stories, memoir, or narrative nonfiction—the characters you’ve fleshed out, killed off, and revised countless times; the plot, over which you labored for three years; the detailed setting, which you’ve researched through a hundred books and websites. But what about your readers? Why should they care? How do you make sure that something that is swoon-worthy to you doesn’t hit readers as just, well, “Meh.”
Tanya reveals how to re-read your own manuscript like a stranger, how to weed out “the boring parts” (everyone has them, promise), how to use beta readers to your best advantage, and why an inability to pitch a book succinctly might be more than a “pitch problem”—all in the service of teaching you how to keep your readers invested in a truly engaging manuscript.
This session will teach you to:
- Learn why your mind makes links between plot points that are not actually causal and how to rewrite your manuscript so that actions truly catalyze other actions, making the plot flow in a way that engages the reader.
- Understand how and why a character who feels likable and interesting to you could read as unlikeable and/or boring to your target reader–and learn how to bring out your character’s best.
- Catalyze true emotional responses from your readers so that they are getting “the feels” that you’re intending them to have.
- Think about your manuscript like an editor who is willing to make cuts (even to your “darlings”) that make the overall work more compelling.
- Use “I can’t figure out how to pitch this” and “My topic is too complicated for a query letter” problems as clues to why readers might not care about your book the way you’d like.
This hands-on session will include:
- Discussions of participants’ own works in progress (excerpts and summaries).
- Writing prompts for participants from which participants will produce short responses as examples of compelling action and characterization.
- Examples (created by the instructor) of un-compelling passages with exercises that allow participants to edit them into pieces that are compelling.
You not only will learn to look at your own manuscript with different eyes as a reader would, but you’ll even find that this process of “re-seeing” it this way is both freeing and fun. (That’s why editors love what they do.) By the end of this session, you will understand how to translate what you value about your manuscript into writing that makes your reader care deeply, too.
$125
Tanya Egan Gibson is a freelance editor, writing coach, and the author of the novel How to Buy a Love of Reading. Her short fiction for adults and young adults has been published in Carve and Cicada and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has written for magazines such as The Writer, Parents, and Writer’s Digest, including an article, “10 Things Your Editor Might Not Tell You—But Should.” [email protected]
Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5 p.m.
Edit Yourself into Print – Giving Your Work a Professional Polish
With Michael Carr
There are few industries more competitive than traditional publishing, and a typical literary agent receives thousands of queries a year. Many aspiring writers invest in freelance editors to stand out from this crowd, but a dedicated, hardworking writer can master important aspects of craft and forgo more expensive options.
Michael Carr is an agent with more than twelve years of experience and has a reputation for working closely with his writers to produce clean, polished manuscripts ready for submission. He will discuss techniques for creating manuscripts with enough polish to rise above the slush pile.
In the class we will learn how to:
- Identify writing strengths and weaknesses
- Write effective dialogue
- Manage tension
- Master POV
- Write compelling villains and other secondary characters
- Build effective work habits for long-term success
Many books by aspiring writers stumble out of the gate with slow or ineffective openings. Others struggle with clumsy prose or repetitive sentence structure, bogging down otherwise compelling stories. Learn how to add a sophisticated touch to your writing and how to clean up your writing to show competence to agents and editors. In addition, we will talk about how to identify flaws in our own writing, when to use beta readers and ideas for shoring up structural weaknesses.
$99
Michael Carr is a literary agent representing writers in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, mystery and suspense, science fiction and fantasy, women’s fiction, memoir, YA, and middle grade. Michael speaks Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, and before joining Veritas had professions as diverse as programming simulators for nuclear submarines and owning an inn in Vermont.
Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5 p.m.
The Art of Crafting Memorable Soundbites that Sell Books & Create Opportunities
With Joey Garcia
An author might only have two to three minutes on commercial radio or TV to establish their expertise, reveal the heart of their book, and convince the audience to purchase it. It’s actually enough time—if the author has mastered the art of the soundbite. A sound bite is a vivid, specific, 8-second comment that grabs attention and makes a point. And, while a sound bite often sounds spontaneous, the juiciest ones are crafted, polished, and practiced long before the interview. The right soundbite can go viral on social media, help an author create better book promotion videos, or make an author a go-to media or podcast source creating more exciting opportunities—and this master class will teach you exactly how to craft compelling soundbites that benefit your book and platform.
You will learn:
- Why focusing on sound bites is smarter than using talking points.
- The way pros craft sound bites that sizzle.
- How to establish your subject matter expertise in a sound bite.
- How sound bites can help you shape the way the media and others tell your story.
- The surprising ways that sound bites can build your platform and following.
Joey Garcia, a media professional regularly featured on air at network television stations in the Top 20 Market, will provide supportive feedback as you craft soundbite related to your book or book-in-progress. This master class will cover other aspects of media training, including media etiquette. Nonfiction and fiction authors or authors-to-be will benefit from this course which is applicable to the hybrid, self-publishing, and traditional publishing paths.
$99
Joey Garcia coaches authors and authors-to-be on effective strategies to boost their books and platforms. Her clients have been featured in Ms. Magazine, CNN.com, The Tamron Hall Show, and on the TODAY Show parenting blog, among others. Joey is the author of When Your Heart Breaks, It’s Opening to Love. She’s been interviewed by HuffPost, USA Today, Deutsche Welle, KVIE public television, and Global Woman TV Sweden. Her award-winning essays, poetry, and short stories have been published on KQED public radio, Hypertext, the Brevity blog, Mslexia, Calyx, and Hippocampus magazine. In 2018, Joey launched The Belize Writers Conference and established the first literary fellowship for a Belizean writer in the country’s history. She manages the book marketing track for the San Francisco Writers Conference. Find her client success stories on the SFWC blog or at www.joeygarcia.com
Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5 p.m.
Pitches with Pictures: The Graphic Novel Proposal
With Maeve MacLysaght
Graphic novels are a perfect blend of art and words, both working in harmony to tell a story unique to the format. But every graphic novel started as a pitch, words on paper that sold the creator’s vision. How do you craft this pitch? How many words, how much art? This workshop will demystify the pitch packet and its elements, discuss how traditional publishers are changing the comics scene, and offer an opportunity for workshopping your pitch.
This session will help you:
- Craft a pitch packet with all the necessary elements to appeal to trade and comics publishers
- Write like a graphic novelist and understand how that differs from novel or nonfiction writing
- How to think about the balance between words and pictures to convey your story
- Understand the difference between Trade and comics publishers and which is best for your pitch
- Making a graphic novel takes a village. Identify your strengths and what collaborators you might need
- Understand the basics of collaborator agreements
This session is for:
- Writers, artists, and teams ready to pitch their work to publishers
- Writers or artists wondering how to find a partner and whether one is required for submission
- Novelists interested in how graphic novels come together
- Anyone with a graphic novel idea brewing!
$99
Maeve MacLysaght is an agent with Copps Literary Services. She represents BIPOC, Queer, and marginalized creators writing commercial genre fiction across MG, YA, Adult, and Graphic Novels. Her particular weaknesses are genre-blending SFF, horror, and anything with murder or making out (ideally both).
Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5 p.m.
20 Ways to Promote Your Writing Career
With Bruce Wawrzyniak
Whether you’re an indie writer or signed with a major publisher, it will always be incumbent upon you to lead the efforts to promote your art – your book(s), your poetry, yourself, and everything in between. Hiring a publicist is helpful, but is that in your budget? Even if it is, you still need to be active in getting the word out about all that you have done and are doing. After all, social media cannot be the only attempt at a promotional “strategy.” At this master class, a longtime publicist who has worked with writer clients from San Francisco to Tampa will teach you twenty different methods you can do – yourself – to promote what you’re doing, whether you’ve had something published yet or not.
Just some of what this session will include:
- Social media and the you-can’t-be-all-things-to-all-people mindset
- Why taking the “build it and they will come” approach leads to a dead end
- Using outcomes from one promotional strategy as part of another
- How the “that’s a show!” episode of “Seinfeld” (when Jerry and George were writing the pilot) helps give you ideas
- Learning how to craft a pitch that will generate interest for people to interview you
Perhaps best of all, the overwhelming majority of the actions taught in this master class can be implemented with little to no cost! And you don’t have to wait to put them into action, meaning that you’ll walk away having learned tactics you can implement immediately! The DIY approach is common, but if you’re going to go that route, it’s best to arm yourself with methods that you can activate instead of wondering, guessing, or Googling – none of which will mean that you’ve landed upon something that has been used successfully. Attending this class shouldn’t be based on what stage you’re at in your writing career. Registering for “20 Ways to Promote Your Writing Career” should be based on how hungry you are to get more notice for you and what you’re doing.
$109
Bruce Wawrzyniak has run Now Hear This, Inc. since 2004. A publicist who has worked with clients nationwide, he has gotten results for individuals from authors to actors to filmmakers to recording artists to entrepreneurs to small business owners. His career includes working for a National Hockey League team and in the Olympic Movement. He also has been podcasting every week since February 2014 and is a national speaker.
$109
Sunday, February 19, 2023, 2-5 p.m.
Crafting Masterful Setting and Character Description
With C.S. Lakin
Hands down, coming up with compelling, purposeful, and sensory-rich descriptions of setting and characters in fiction is perhaps the hardest challenge for writers. So often descriptions are flat, boring, and unhelpful in revealing character, setting the proper mood, and advancing the plot. The key is POV.
If you struggle with writing masterful description, attend this master class, where your eyes will be opened to the many ways you can craft description strategically and transport your readers to the world of your story in a magnificent way.
Here are some of the important things you will learn:
- What the “rules” are for showing description in POV and what you should never do
- How to infuse mood, mind-set, and motivation of character into your descriptions
- How to know when and where to drop in description into a scene
- How to determine how much description is enough or too much
- The many ways to infer and indirectly reveal character through description
In this workshop we’ll examine work across genres from best-selling authors and analyze what works and what doesn’t.Bring some pages of your current work in progress and be ready to put these techniques to work (and, if you like, share with the class). These insights will surely take your writing to a higher level!
C. S. Lakin is a award-winning author of more than 30 books (fiction and nonfiction), blogger, writing coach, and book copyeditor. She critiques more than 200 manuscripts a year and teaches online courses and master classes at her online school, Writing for Life Workshops (cslakin.teachable.com). She also teaches boot camps and at writers’ conferences around the US and is the fiction track coordinator of the San Francisco Writers’ Conference.
$149
