Western Reserve Writers Conference
Introduction
I attended the 36th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on April 27, 2019. They held the Conference at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the William N. Skirball writer’s center at the branch. It was a one-day event with an introduction, a keynote speaker, three breakout sessions and one first page critique panel.
This is the link to the Cuyahoga County Library.
https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/
This is the link to the writer’s center at the library branch.
https://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Services/William-N-Skirball-Writers-Center.aspx
Summary
Saturday, April 27th at 9:30 AM
Welcome and Conference Overview
Deanna R. Adams is the conference coordinator and Laurie Kincer is the librarian in charge of the writer’s center.
Laurie explained how the library was set up, where the three meeting rooms were located, and about the door prizes available at 4 PM. Deanna gave an inspiring quote to the attendees. “This is the first day in the rest of your writing lives.” Deanna introduced the keynote speaker, David Giffels.
They held the welcome and conference overview in the meeting room A/B/C with about 150 attendees.
Saturday, April 27th at 9:40 AM
Keynote Speaker: On writing when you think you have no ideas.
The keynote speaker was David Giffels. He is the writer in residence at the writing center.
David is the author of five books, a magazine author, and a professor of English at Akron University. He began his writing career as a columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal where he wrote three columns a week, every week.
He related three anecdotes about times he thought he had no ideas. On clean out your refrigerator day one time, he went to an Akron University fraternity and came up with a humorous story involving the student he encountered there. One December he walked in downtown Akron. The only place open had an appropriate Christmas display in the windows. It was an Adult store. He asked the clerk if the display was ironic and David wrote a column about his experience. The day of the big East Coast Blackout of 2003, he knew he couldn’t do a big perspective story, so he went out in the street. He found that people chose to make order out of the chaos and wrote a column on that.
The bottom line is to go out into the world to find ideas. Ideas don’t come to us, we get to them.
He talked about the writing prompts he gives to his students at Akron University.
Writing is a transaction from the writer to the reader. The writer gets ideas from the world, mixes the ideas in the writer’s mind, and returns the written word to the world.
Link to his website.
They held the talk in the meeting room A/B/C with about 150 attendees.
Saturday, April 27th at 10:30 AM
Breakout Session
Kiss, Marry, Kill: How to create compelling characters, a presentation by Bree Barton
First drafts are character drafts. The writer must figure out who they are, what they want, and what they’ll do to get it. She divided her presentation into six sections with writing exercises attached to help writers understand their characters.
- Put some flesh on their bones–Give your characters a job interview. Exercise: Haters gonna hate. What does your character hate?
- Give them secrets–Exercise: What secret is your character keeping?
- Free their natural voice–Each character needs a unique voice. Exercise: Finish this statement. I wish you would give me…
- Shut them up–Exercise: cut dialog so the reader can fill in the gaps.
- Describe–Exercise: Describe your characters.
- Hats off to you–Exercise: write a scene between two characters who do not meet in the story. It will help to understand the characters.
We did the first three exercises but did not do the other three because of limited time. The techniques were useful for learning about characters.
Link to her website.
They held the talk in the Writer’s Center Meeting Room with 54 attendees. Every seat was full.
Saturday, April 27th at 3:00 PM
Breakout Session
The Art of the Short Story, a presentation by Scott Lax
Scott started with a Q and A session first so he could cover questions attendees had as he progressed through the presentation. Then he explained his path to writing. He stressed that every writer has to find their own journey. Take your route to become a writer by your way, however it works for you. He was a salesman who at 39 decided to do what he had always wanted to do, be a writer. He wrote a novel, wrote a memoir, wrote a screenplay, and many short stories. Then he became a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art by teaching writing. A short story has story truth, and a memoir has happening truth, that is the difference.
There are three structural elements of a short story.
- Unity of action. Place the story in a single space.
- Unity of time. The story should take place over a short period of time.
- Unity of plot. The story has an organization of events
The story’s conflict comes from something; characters, internal struggle, society, or nature. Start the conflict at once. Set your characters into motion. Create conflict through dialog. Give each of your characters different scripts and motivations. You make short stories with scenes. State the conflict. No time for exposition, get to the point. The climax is when the tension is highest. Objects have emotions, be sure to add them into your stories. Don’t give too much explanation to the reader, be sure to write for smart people.
Link to his website.
They held the talk in the Writer’s Center Meeting Room with 45 attendees.
Recommendation – Conclusion
The Western Reserve Writers Conference was well run, diverse in the presentations offered, and informative. At 4 PM they gave out door prizes. They drew ticket 159 which I had, and I took my choice of prizes. I chose a signed copy of Dawn by J. Thorn and Zak Bohannon. I missed J. Thorn’s presentation, but I have seen him talk before at science fiction conventions, so I wanted to check out his book. My Star of the Con was Bree Barton. Her presentation was fun, the exercises were useful, and I liked her personality. I plan to attend this event next year.
This is a link for the Goodreads page for Dawn, the door prize I won at the conference.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35007716-dawn
Links
I attended the 34th annual Western Reserve Writers Conference on September 23, 2017. I could not attend last year. This is a link to my review of the 2017 conference.
The most recent SF conference I attended was Cleveland ConCoction 2019 at 600 North Aurora Road Aurora, Ohio at the Bertram Inn and Conference Center from March 1 to 3, 2019. This is a link to my conference recap.
