Muse & the Marketplace 2018

What makes certain fiction so gripping? What gives it the power to keep a reader up at night, and to put a book down reluctantly, like parting with a beloved friend? In this session, using brief passages from great novels and stories as models, we'll go beyond basic understandings of dramatic conflict to look into some of the additional ingredients that go into gripping fiction, such as micro-tension, shadow description, and the secrets to creating a riveting point of view character. We'll make distinctions between mystery, suspense, and dramatic irony, and discuss how these informational scenarios interact with point of view to keep the pages turning. A combination of discussion and brief, dynamic writing exercises will give fiction writers a better grasp on the tools they need to make their stories harder to put down—and more likely to be published and widely read.

Most writers have great verbal skills. They became writers because they fell in love with reading books. Reading can elicit an array of sensory perceptions but what great writing does most powerfully is make us see. It's the mind's "eye" that engages when we read.
Joseph Conrad once said, "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see." As Conrad rightfully suggests, writers are equal parts visual artists.
Language that paints a picture deepens the reader's emotional response because we are hardwired to respond emotionally to images. It's no accident that so much of our great literature has been adapted into films, plays, comics and other visual art forms. In this lecture we will look at the synergy between the mind and the eye and how the devices visual artists use to create pictures can be employed by the writer to great effect.

Have you ever dreamed of writing fiction full-time? Indie publishing is a viable path to pursuing your dream career. From English teacher and curriculum specialist to author of medieval romance, Cecelia fully embraced the indie publishing community and, six months after publishing her first book, she left a 20-year education career and replaced her income as a romance author. Learn the steps she took to get there with a focus on launching a book for success. Cecelia also co-owns an influencer marketing network and brings that unique perspective of digital marketing into the book world. With practical tips on harnessing the power of numbers and author collaboration to position a new book into a crowded marketplace, Cecelia shares the resources which helped her fulfill a life-long goal, to write fiction full-time.

Social media marketing allows us to find influencers and create communities. However, as we all know it is time consuming and a labor-intensive activity. This session will present new and established digital tools that can help make the process of managing online marketing easier and more effective. After testing many tools, Burke will present the ones that are most helpful to authors and publishers alike. In a "show-and-tell" session, we'll review tools that help find influencers and discussions, create visual content and data, collaborate with teams, measure engagement and more.

To change the world, first you've got to make people care. Now more than ever before in our lifetimes, the personal is political—and so is art. Our lives, and our art, contain within them the strands of social justice issues and moments that testify to an urgent need for social change. More and more writers of both fiction and nonfiction are creating impactful stories that dramatize the past and move us to think differently about the present and the future. But how do such narratives begin? How does the writing become than just polemical? How do you balance characters and argument? And what strategies do writers use in researching and shaping their work? In this session we'll look at many published examples of works both short and long that speak powerfully about social justice. We'll also do writing exercises to help you identify issues you're passionate about and get you started on the path of turning them into story. Attendees will leave with a list of suggested further reading in multiple genres and on multiple social justice issues.