Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018

Introduction

The Cleveland Inkubator was held on August 4, 2018, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115.

The event was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in North East Ohio. The group sponsors writing workshops, author interviews, and a monthly group meeting mixer.

http://www.litcleveland.org/

Summary Introduction

Registration was on the second floor of the Louis Stokes Wing. Events were held on the second floor in four rooms and in the first-floor auditorium.

There were fifteen talks divided into three sessions with three workshops and two craft talks per session. A poetry reading was held during lunch at the Eastman Reading Garden. The day ended with a keynote reading and an interview with Benjamin Percy.

First Session

In the first session, I attended D. M. Pulley’s workshop on What happens after the end? Reworking and revising your first draft. She is a mystery writer who writes mysteries involving two protagonists in two storylines separated by decades but connected by the mystery. DM Pulley has published three novels The Dead Key, The Buried Book, and The Unclaimed Victim. She is working on her fourth novel now. She handed out a PowerPoint presentation on her topic. DM Pulley went over her experiences in creating the first draft of her first novel, The Dead Key.

This is the link to the Goodreads page of the Dead Key by DM Pulley.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22914448-the-dead-key

DM Pulley’s Method

DM Pulley cut over 80,000 words from the first draft of the novel including the beginning chapters where her main character Iris’s workplace was detailed. She suggests writing the first draft for you to discover what you want to write about and then write the second draft for your audience. DM Pulley has an eight-step process to create that second draft.

Step one: celebrate. Completing the first draft of a novel is an accomplishment.

Step two: wait at least two weeks or better yet a month before you start the rewrites because you need distance from your work.

Step three: Identify your audience. She paused for us to do a five-minute exercise to describe your ideal reader.

Step four: Identify the kind of story you are trying to tell. A five-minute exercise followed to describe your story in one sentence, a. k. a. the pitch.

Step five: Review of story structure including the three-act structure, outlining your first draft, tracking plot holes, using storyboards, and doing a plot check.

Step six: Character development including the hero’s journey. A five-minute exercise followed by describing the protagonist’s character arc including the beginning, obstacles, and how the protagonist is different at the ending of the story.

Step seven: Choose a rewrite strategy. You can self-edit and use beta readers and/or writing groups and/or hired editors.

Step eight: Rewrite. Each session at the conference was one and a half hours and she ran out of time here. There were 12 more slides to the presentation, so I think this PowerPoint presentation was designed to be presented in two hours.

This was a good presentation and topical for me since I recently finished the first draft of my first novel. It was useful for me to do the exercises to help me do my rewrite.

Second Session

In the second session, I attended Crafting a Killer Plot: what makes your mystery or novel a bestseller, presented by Amanda Flower.

She is a mystery writer who specializes in Amish cozy mysteries. She thinks that the elements of the plot that are necessary are; start with a bang in your first words and first page, make the reader care for your characters, raise the stakes, put in all the fields, make room for magic by looking for the surprise, create a false high, and then have a dark moment, before the climax and the resolution.

Rewrite and repeat. Her first draft is 40,000 words where she puts down the basic plot. In the second draft, she adds subplots and red herrings to build the novel to a total of 80,000 words. She suggests authors should write every day, and she is motivated by deadlines.

I thought her writing process was interesting.

This is the link to the Goodreads page of Assaulted Caramel by Amanda Flower.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33290628-assaulted-caramel

Third Session

In the third session, I attended Kevin Keating’s workshop on Chapter One: how to hook readers, agents, and editors. He presented a slide presentation that illustrated his points through still photos from movies that applied to the theme of the topic for each slide. He says that agents and editors have an eight-line rule. If they don’t read a unique voice that commands their attention in the first eight lines then they will move on to the next manuscript because they always have a pile of them to go through. So it is imperative to make sure the first page is excellent.

The presenter stated that there are three important aspects to writing, setting, character, and plot.

First, establish the setting. Don’t be vague, be precise and declare your time and location. The setting is interrelated with plot and character and is just as essential.
Characters must have a goal. The protagonist must be active and not passive. They must overcome obstacles. The obstacles can be external, internal, or psychological.
Many plots follow the hero’s journey which is the path of home, voyage, and return. The protagonist begins in their home, travels to another world, discovers the nature of that other world, and is transformed by their experiences in that other world. The protagonist is scarred in some way and returns to relay their new knowledge to the people of home.

I liked that he referenced movie tie-ins to illustrate his points on writing.

This is a link to the Goodreads page for the Natural Order of Things by Kevin Keating.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17081562-the-natural-order-of-things

Keynote Reading

The keynote reading was given by Benjamin Percy in the downstairs auditorium. It was the last activity of the conference. He read from his most recent novel, The Dark Net. He read the prologue about Hannah. She has retinitis pigmentosa and receives a science fictional augmented treatment for the disease. The rest of the novel involves the darknet, cyber-crime, and demons. He is an engaging reader who has a deep voice and his reading was dramatic and interesting.

The next part of the presentation was an interview conducted by Brad Ricca. He asked the author about his experiences in college as a literary fiction major, writing comic books, and his process for writing novels. The last part of the presentation was a Q and A with the audience. The keynote reading and an interview was a fitting end for this conference about the writing process.

This is a link to the Goodreads page for The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30971743-the-dark-net

Conclusion

I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018 and plan to attend next year. My highlights were D. M. Pulley’s eight steps for writing a second draft, Amanda Flower’s short first draft to get the plot down, Kevin Keating’s point about how critical the first eight lines are in selling a novel to agents and editors, and Benjamin Percy’s dramatic reading of the prologue to the novel named The Dark Net.

Links