Fiction writers often have a hard time writing dialogue—take it from a playwright. Let's cram as many tips and strategies for constructing good and distinct dialogue for your characters into this hour as possible.

The workshop focuses on expanding the writer's word choice.  Poets often use a few words over and over.  One way to break this pattern is to use different words--ones that have not been used.  This workshop uses an exercise to generate new poems and as a tool that the students can take with them.
For beginners.

This workshop will discuss some of the guiding principles for writing plays. The workshop includes ways to develop character, creating dialogue and generating situations for scripts. While theatre is the focus of this workshop, the skills and techniques discussed can be applied to screenwriting and other forms of performance.

This 90-minute session examines how to write, and how to pitch for publication, a nonfiction book. These are two very different skills, but are fast becoming equally important. The writing of a nonfiction book involves not only focus – the shape and organization of the subject – but the tricky task of scheduling and conducting interviews. And once all the research is done, the hard part really begins. As for selling your proposed book to an agent or publisher, that involves a lot of work, too, using different sets of muscles and skills. 

NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross TV critic David Bianculli has written nonfiction books on TV since 1992, generating hefty book proposals and lengthy interview lists in the process, talking to everyone from Mel Brooks to Ken Burns. He’ll go through the process of both writing and pitching, with tips and warnings regarding both, conduct a classroom exercise on outline organization, and leave lots of time for Q&A.

Bad news: There are business reasons for would-be journalists and non-fiction writers to turn back --- journalism jobs are scarce, publishers have trouble selling non-fiction. Good news: There are business reasons for those writers to turn to fiction. 1) Great stories have all the characteristics of fiction: character, plot, conflict. 2) Great stories have what distracted readers crave: velocity. 3) Consider Balzac, champion of realism, as a non-fiction writer of novels.

After 40 years as a journalist, I now write plays and novels. My play tells the little known story of the final years of Henri Matisse, the 2^nd most famous artist of the last century. My new novel is another little known story: the life-changing White House love affair of John F. Kennedy, the most famous President of the last century. Both exhaustively researched, both aimed at the literary and mass audience.

In this advanced level session, participants will share stories they might want to write as non-fiction, and we’ll discuss their viability as fiction.

This Workshop is designed to engage participants with contemporary poets, many of whom are writers of color, and their different strategies to generate new work.  

The Workshop will be in two parts:

#1.  Participants will look at poems in the packet and discuss the work of those poets with whom they unfamiliar.

#2.  We will use vocabulary from two or three of the poems to generate new work.

We will use poems as catalyst for new works. Poems by Bojan Louis, Gregory Pardlo, Jennifer Bartlett, Marilyn Chin, Maureen Owen, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Sally Mao Wen, and  David Rivard may be included. Participants must be prepared to read and write, write and write.

At the end of this workshop, it is my hope that participants will have created poems that they feel good about and have learned about.
For advanced poets. 

When resources are limited, content marketing is an effective way to attract readers to your books. With 1.32 billion daily users, Facebook is the world’s most widely used platform. As such, it’s a great place to find and engage with your target reader audience. For free! It can be a time-consuming proposition, but there are a lot of creative ways you can connect to potential readers for exactly zero dollars! And for those operating on a shoestring marketing budget, it’s a great place to create a foundation for your fandom.

When I was teaching at NYU, I noticed my students were starting their scripts with leisurely opening scenes. I told them: “The people who will be reading your work see a lot of scripts. If they like one and they champion it and the movie gets made and is a commercial failure, they can lose their jobs. It’s safer to turn scripts down. If yours starts slowly, they can safely turn it down without finishing it. So… you have 10 pages.” My students protested:. “The people reading our scripts used to go to film shool. They love movies. They’ll keep reading.” I asked my friend and rabbi David Brown to come to class. He once ran Fox. He also produced “Jaws,” “The Sting,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” and many more hits. “You have 5 pages,” David Brown said.

In this introductory level session, we’ll look at some obviously compelling opening paragraphs/pages of scripts/non-fiction/novels. Then participants will announce the intent of their openings and read them, and we’ll discuss their effectiveness and ways they might be stronger.  

It's a Rihanna song, a Muhammad Ali taunt, and, to my thinking, the first step in writing character. My six year old son comes up with a new character every week. His latest is a boy named Windmill Sin. Windmill Sin. I could write reams about that kid. But, no, he belongs to my son. That's his character not mine. For me, it always begins with a name. Atticus Finch, Holly Golightly, Keyser Söze, Hannibal Lector. Anyone from Dickens. The list goes on and on. So, we'll talk about names (and nicknames). We'll talk, too, about physical fact versus telling detail. The difference between a police report and a character sketch, and how they might meet on a parachuting skull or a scar shaped like a question mark. We'll talk about the bundle of desires and the hero's wound. About subjective perspective and specialized vocabulary. About panheads and slobknockers and blister bugs in pepper patches. We'll talk about Doritos and Daredevil, Hag and Tay Tay, and the art of “Naming the World.” We'll talk about my mother's red cowboy boots and my family in five knives. About why the crap in Ferris Bueller's pants pocket is so important. We'll talk about the airplane glue on my uncle's thumb, Dustin Hoffman's collection of gaits, Bogie's ear pull, and how Maurice Micklewhite learned to act by riding the London Tube. All that and a bag of “Boy Named Sue” (the only character model you'll ever need).

During the Reading & Signing Event, guests will have the opportunity to hear the works of the talented authors, Amy Tan, Colum McCann, and Eloisa James. Guests are welcome to enjoy light hors d'oeuvre, wine, and beer. After the reading, the authors will sign copies of their work.

Marketing doesn’t have to be daunting. In this fun, fast-paced session, a marketing professional will demystify what it means to have an author brand, how it’s much more than a logo and web presence, and why it’s foundationally important to do the thinking behind what you want to stand for. We'll discuss how to apply archetypes to define your unique brand and the components of an author's brand framework. We'll also romp through some real-life examples to show the importance of consistency in visual branding. 

Every writer has personal obsessions, whether they realize it or not. Repeated metaphors, images, conflicts, etc. can all go in to making a poet's distinct body of work; however, it's also important to be aware and in control of personal cliches. In this class we will examine the obsessions of a few published writers, and will try to identify our own obsessions. We will use a series of exercises that help the writer play, experiment, and push past the boundaries of what they are used to writing. As Robert Frost said: “All metaphor breaks down somewhere. That is the beauty of it. It is touch and go with the metaphor, and until you have lived with it long enough you don’t know when it is going. You don’t know how much you can get out of it and when it will cease to yield. It is a very living thing. It is as life itself.” Students are encouraged to prepare original 3-5 poems. Early or rough drafts are OK -- these will be used as part of a writing exercise, and will not be shared or workshopped in class. Preferably, poems should be accessible on a laptop. Laptops are recommend.

Comics have become so ubiquitous and so fashionable that it can be easy to  overlook what it (or should it be “they?”) actually is (or, maybe, “are”). In this workshop we will look at the components that make up comics and how they work together to create a unique, and deceptively complex, reading experience. Then we’ll talk about how to use that knowledge to tell the story you want to tell.

When a story is slow, we sometimes think we need to make more things happen, but, really, what we need to do, is make more promises. Suspense equals worry, and it occurs in the quiet space between the promise of something dreadful (or wonderful) and its arrival (or failure to arrive). We'll talk about creating characters we care about and putting them in trouble. We'll talk about the closed door, Nolan's bug, Hitchcock's bomb, and Gorey's alphabet. About abstract adjectives, telling details, protecting the unknown (even as we reveal it), and why King calls horror "the art of disappointment." We'll talk, too, about deemphasizing the climax and sustaining apprehension beyond the last word. About getting under the reader's skin. About the story balloon (the pop, the fart, and, worst of all, the pinhole leak). About Creepypasta and The Dog’s Lick. We’ll talk about broken sharks, dented helmets, waxpaper boats, Sebastian Shaw, and that half-smile at the end of Psycho. Plus: cold duck, Giger’s Big Chap, and three ways to fire a rubber band.

It’s essential to understand what your competitors are doing and how they are engaging with their audience. Interaction is key when trying to attract readers, so watching the people who have had proven successes with book promotion is key to developing your own goals and objectives. While it might be tempting for you to focus on building your brand, it’s even more important to determine how they are approaching the market. Knowing what they are doing and where they are playing online – platforms they most frequently use, marketing tactics they employ, content of their messaging, degree of audience engagement– can make a big difference when you are creating a strategy to build your own audience and business.

The rising popularity of podcasts has created a new golden age of audio drama. But the way these dramas are delivered and consumed – on demand, through headphones, and when you’re walking, driving, or cleaning the living room – has turned this old medium into something new. In this workshop we’ll talk about the limitations and opportunities created by telling a story only using sound, and how to take advantage of those when developing your story and writing your script.

This workshop is aimed at intermediate or advanced writers of chapter books and novels for young people. In this workshop, we will collectively examine middle grade and YA novels that have historically done injustice to marginalized communities – as well as texts that have sought to represent our diverse worlds with greater sensitivity, solidarity, and accuracy. Simultaneously, this workshop will take the perspective that writing for young people is less about “teaching a good lesson” and more “telling a good story” – and that in fact, telling good stories involves representing our communities in all their rich diversity.

Writers will be asked to bring a “first page” of writing for young people, without their names on it. We will workshop these first pages aloud – gathering collective input on their openings, voice, world building and representation. We will also discuss practical matters such as querying agents, understanding market trends and seeking publication.

For intermediate and advanced writers.

Description coming soon.

Many authors find, counterintuitively, that plot is the most challenging part of creating fiction: it’s easy to make up the people, but hard to figure out what to do with them.  This is true even though plot is the most elemental part of storytelling, the thing we use when we relay gossip to our friends, tell our partners about our day, or explain the world to our children. This session will help writers find the tools they need to create compelling plot, exploring the mechanics of action.  We’ll examine how to build sympathy for characters and suspense about what’s going to happen to them next.  We’ll also find the connecting points between character, voice, and plot, and consider the way these crucial elements of fiction relate to one another.