Workshops

AMP UP THE TENSION is a dynamic workshop that offers authorsan opportunity to elevate their storytelling.

This immersive workshop dives into the art of craftingcompelling conflict and intense scenes in women's fiction.

Led by experienced instructor, Kim Taylor Blakemore,participants will gain valuable insights, techniques, and practical tools to amp up the tension in their writing. Through interactive discussions, real-world examples, and engaging writing exercises, authors will learn to create conflicting goals, unravel hidden secrets, unleash consequences, utilize the ticking clock, master dialogue, fine-tune prose mechanics, portray complex characters, and infuse every scene with gripping tension.

Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting yourjourney, this workshop will equip you with the skills needed to captivate readers, keep them on the edge of their seats, and leave a lasting impact.

Tell me your story in 100 words or less. Tell me it's heart, what makes it tick. Why your should write it and someone should pick it up off the shelf. In this dynamic workshop, you will work on your novel's description - the one that can serve both as the focus as your write, and the main event in your query letter. Plan on workshopping, editing, sharing, and giving feedback to others. Let's make our story description shine. Presented by Kim Taylor Blakemore

Bring your query and synopsis for feedback from the other writers in the group, then have time to revise and reshare the final, improved product. This workshop is for:

• Writers ready to submit to agents or editors
• Writers actively submitting to agents or editors
• Self-published authors looking to add a synopsis to their novel
• Self-published authors looking to hone their sales page book description

We love it. We hate it. Without it, a story is doomed. This fast-paced interactive webinar will walk you through a specific process for deep editing of scenes, paragraphs, sentences, and words. These are practical tools you can use on the fly to make your scenes shine. Please bring TWO copies of three pages of a work-in-progress.

Available as 90-minute overview or in-depth 4-week workshop

Plotter is an inexpensive, terrific, powerful, visual way to see your story beats and outline. Panster? It's got tons of flexibility. Plotter? You will be in love. Use in conjunction with brainstorming, plotting, Scrivenering, and any other way you write your stories. This workshop will demonstrate how to setup a project; create timelines, with chapters, places, and notes; and show an example of a work in progress.

Your book is done. You have an idea you want to look for an agent, that the agent will find a publisher, that the publisher will publish the book. But what are all the steps between? Who does what in publishing? What are my roles and responsibilities? What are first serial rights? Right of first refusal? What's a style sheet? Using my own experience publishing with Lake Union Publishing, Viking, and HarperCollins, and indie publishing through my own imprint, Sycamore Creek Press, I will walk you through the steps from "The End" to your book's release day.

It's our annual Plan your Creative Year workshop! Let's gather to focus our dreams into goals and those goals into tasks. We will use a handout based on The One system to get a head start on the upcoming year. Less chaos, more time to write, more time for life.

Please let me know what your group is interested in learning! I can create custom workshops on Craft of Fiction, Writing Historical Fiction, Amping the Tension, and other writing skills.