Writing adult fiction or nonfiction? Whether it’s romance, thrillers, or prescriptive nonfiction, each genre comes with its own challenges and advantages. Here, you’ll learn how to best leverage your position for marketplace success–and our agents and editors are here to help you every step of the way.
Twisting Tropes to Amplify Your Voice–Brooding YA Hero(‘s creator, Carrie Ann DiRisio)
In this class, author and creator of BroodingYAHero, Carrie Ann DiRisio will guide you through a unique way to add creativity to your writing. Tropes, (for example, the evil stepmother, or “friends to lovers” are the building blocks of stories. Using too many of them could produce a boring story, but with just the right blend of tropes and your own personal creativity, you’ll create a tale that engages the reader! Learn: the difference between common and problematic tropes, how to subvert, deconstruct, and avert tropes, and gain examples of works that used tropes to their advantage. Carrie will explain how knowing the tropes associated with the brooding hero allowed her to create the parody character adored by thousands, and the way she uses tropes as tools in her writing.
Nonfiction Basics–Amanda Shih, editor
Do you have an amazing personal story, expert knowledge, or creative talents you want to share with the world? With so much information out there for fiction authors, it can be tough to get detailed advice on what it takes to make a nonfiction project stand out. This class will walk you through the basics: What qualifies as nonfiction? (It’s not all memoirs and big-issue books!) How does a nonfiction proposal differ from a fiction submission? And platform, platform, platform: Why does it matter, and how can you build yours? We’ll demystify this wide-ranging genre, and give you the tools you need to create the kind of nonfiction project agents and editors will be excited to pursue.
Finding The Narrative In Your Nonfiction–Erik Hane, Headwater Literary Management
The serious nonfiction books we love most are of course full of facts, research, and insight. But the difference between a good topic and a great book lies in not just the information, but the writing. It’s one thing to present a bunch of worthwhile thoughts to a reader, and quite another to bring these thoughts and this research to life in way that resonates and engages. The key to this is narrative, the backbone of the story you’re trying to tell, and fostering it throughout your nonfiction writing is a crucial step in keeping a reader’s attention. In this course, we’ll discuss issues related to creating and sustaining narrative in nonfiction. How do you find where your story is, or where it starts? How do you decide when and how to disperse your research and information? When do tangents and asides distract from your story, and when do they provide critical layering to your argument? The course will aim to prove that narrative is not only the main thrust of great nonfiction writing, but is also the foundation from which all other elements in a book are built.
Writing Villains Readers Love To Hate–Stacey Graham, 3 Seas Literary Agency
Who’s your favorite villain? Caroline Bingley? Mrs. Danvers? Evil queens? The bad guy (or girl) is necessary to promote conflict and move the story forward so why are they often one of the least-developed characters? We’ll explore wickedness in literature and if these characters are just misunderstood or really nasty. Learn why every hero needs a dark spot and how writers can move past stereotypical bullies in their manuscripts and flesh out what makes them diabolical in this fun and fast-paced workshop!
Trendsetter, Not Trendy: How To Find Your Niche and Build a Lasting Career in Romance or Women’s fiction–Quressa Robinson, The Nelson Agency
Patience is definitely a virtue where publishing is concerned. In this class we will discuss the emerging trends in women’s fiction and romance, as well as the tried-and-true staples of the genre. We will also discuss what to do if you find yourself with a novel that is on the downward end of a trend, how to fight the urge to jump into a trend because it seems a faster way to publication, and how to make what you know/are passionate about into a career-building niche and platform. Some genres to consider: fantasy romance, psychological suspense, family/domestic stories, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. Some authors to consider: Amanda Bouchet, Jeannie Lin, Sonali Dev, Lianne Moriarty, Alice Clayton, Brenda Jenkins, and Ruth Ware.
#OwnVoices–How To Write What You Know For A Commercial Audience–Quressa Robinson, The Nelson Agency
In OwnVoices–How to write what you know for a commercial audience, we will briefly discuss the changing landscape of creative media overall–Insecure, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Pitch, Queen Sugar, the upcoming adaptation of In the Country We Love, and Jane the Virgin on the TV side of things. But will specifically focus on trade publishing, which can often feel slow to adapt to developing demographics. A closer look at some select titles from ownvoices authors–The Sympathizer, Everything I Never Told You, The Mothers, Behold the Dreamers, Everything, Everything, The Hate You Give, American Street, Homegoing, Awkward Black Girl, Don’t Touch My Hair, In the Country We Love–will help us further evaluate what an ownvoices author needs to successfully reach a wide commercial audience and breakout of niche categories based on race or sexual orientation. Some questions to consider:
What do these stories have in common?
What sets them apart?
How has each author developed their platform?
How did the publisher/agent/editor position the title for librarians, booksellers, and readers?
Were all the titles successful? In what ways?
How were they able to find their audience?
What can you do to maintain the authenticity of your story and voice, while striving to reach a wide audience?
How can you position yourself to agents/editors to overcome unconscious biases?
High Concept–What It Is, And How It Helps You Sell Your Work
You may have heard rumors that editors, now, are looking for fewer works–but those that are “high concept.” What does it mean to be high concept–and how can you make your work fit this description? Better still, how can having a high concept work help you in every stage, from pitching agents, to pitching editors, to pitching acquisitions boards, to better placement in the bookstores and better book sales?
Like high concept works, Jennifer’s class is short, packed with information, and to the point.
The First Three Chapters–Hannah VanVels, Corvisiero Literary Agency (Live-Recorded)
So you’ve decided to try to get your book traditionally published. You’ve done the research. You have a great draft, a great synopsis, and you’re ready to start shopping your manuscript. You have extensive notes on complex worldbuilding, character backstories, maps you’ve sketched out, notebooks full of additional content.
How do you decide what makes it onto the page? How do you set up your story, giving just enough information about the world you’ve created without bogging down your reader with information dumps? How do you balance relaying background information to situate your reader with moving your story along?
The first three chapters are often the chapters that an author edits and revises the most, and for good reason. Often you only have the first three chapters to grab your reader before they start to glaze over—or worse, move on. We’ll take a look at introducing setting without overwhelming your readers, introducing characters that your readers will invest in right off the bat, and starting your plot at the right moment in the story in both standalone novels and series.