Literary Cleveland Archives - Gary David Gillen

Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference 2021

Introduction

They normally hold the Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. This year they presented a virtual event using Zoom between July 11, 2021, to July 25, 2021, for the Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference 2021. Over the two weeks, they presented forty-two workshops, panels, and special events. I attended two panels, one craft talk, and one workshop (which was held over two days).

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

http://www.litcleveland.org/

Summary Introduction

I attended two panels, one craft talk, and one workshop (which was held over two days). I will summarize the four events I attended in the next four sections.

Workshop with D.M. Pulley

They split this workshop into two days, Wednesday, July 14, 2021, from 4 PM to 5 PM, and Wednesday, July 21, 2021, from 4 PM to 5 PM. The topic was Writing Multiple Storylines. She taught the workshop using a PowerPoint presentation. The conference coordinator distributed a copy of the presentation to the participants after the workshop. I have noted the four most important ideas I learned in the workshop in the following paragraphs.

She talked about five structures used in multiple storyline novels and gave an example for each. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr uses a Dual Narrative Structure. It features two protagonists on the same timeline. The Girls by Emma Cline uses a Dual Timeline Structure. It features a single protagonist with an early and later timeline.

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis uses a Dual Narrative and Dual Timeline Structure. It features two protagonists each with an early and later timeline. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan uses a linked Short Story or Novella Structure. It features many characters and many timelines with linked narratives. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut uses a Gestalt Timeline. It features one protagonist with many scattered timelines. There are other examples.

Writing Exercise #1 was to describe what your story is about. Writing Exercise #2 was to figure out whose story your work is about.

She gave examples of the guideposts, transitions, and plotting from the five novels listed above.

Writing Exercise #4 was to draw a three-point plot arc for your story. Writing Exercise #4 was to storyboard your story.

D.M. Pulley is a historical mystery writer with four published novels. No One’s Home is her most recently published novel. I linked the Goodreads page to No One’s Home below.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52921754-no-one-s-home

Craft talk with Marie Vibbert

This craft talk was on Wednesday, July 14, from 7 PM to 8:30 PM. The topic was So You Wrote a Short Story-Now What? She presented her talk using a PowerPoint presentation. The conference coordinator distributed a copy of the presentation to the participants after the talk. I have noted the three most important ideas I learned in the talk in the following paragraphs.

When submitting a short story, follow the submission guidelines posted on each website of the magazine where the submission is going. Each magazine has specific requirements, if not followed will diminish the possibility of a sale. Submissions should follow the Shunn format rules linked here. https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/

She presented a live demonstration of submitting a story. She tracks her submissions at the Submission Grinder website. https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/ Each author has a password-protected account. The website is a submission tracker and a market database. The website search engine helps the author find suitable markets to submit each unique story. She submitted one of her completed but unsold stories to the Clarkesworld Magazine in the demonstration. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/

She says to expect a lot of rejections. On Submission Grinder she has tracked her submissions for the last six years. She has over 900 submissions with 73 accepted stories. The highest number of rejections for her for a story before it sold was 42. She is an accomplished author, and it was instructive to see her record of submissions.

Marie Vibbert is a science fiction short story writer. On the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (isfdb.org) she has 43 short stories listed. They published her first novel Galactic Hellcats this year. I linked the Goodreads page for Galactic Hellcats below.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53388150-galactic-hellcats

From Dream to Reality: A Panel with Four Debut Authors

They held this panel from 10 AM to 11:30 AM on Saturday, July 17, 2001. The four authors in the panel published their debut novels in early 2021. The novels were The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson, Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah, On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu, and Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter. Laura Maylene Walter was the moderator and posed questions for the panel to answer. Each author started by repeating the elevator pitch for her novel. I have included one question and answer I thought insightful from each author.

What was the most challenging part of writing your novel? E. Lily Yu answered learning Persian was necessary to complete the novel.

Explain your experience of the agent side of publishing. Nancy Johnson answered the key was an excellent query letter. She used the phase Hook-Book-Cook to describe what you need in your query. The Hook is your elevator pitch; the Book is a brief summary of your book (only add your most interesting points), and the Cook is adding any works published and workshops attended.

Explain how you write a novel with a day job, and how do you keep your motivation up? Laura Maylene Walter answered she gets up before work to write, she takes unpaid weeks off work to write. She doesn’t have kids, so that helps. Her goal is 1000 words per day, or she uses a time goal like a certain number of words per half hour.

What surprises you about the writing and publication business? Eman Quotah answered pay attention to the small successes you achieve. A handwritten card from a beta reader can be the best validation you can receive. Don’t get caught up in other writers’ successes.

Eyes of the Editor: A Panel with Four Editors

They held this panel from 7 PM to 8:30 PM on Wednesday, July 21, 2021. The four editors on the panel were Angela Kim (Berkley, romance), Kate Napolitano (Dey Street, non-fiction), Nadxieli Nieto (Flatiron Books, cross-genre), and Shannon Jamison-Vazquez (Little, Brown, mystery/thriller/suspense). The moderator was Brandi Larson. After the panelists introduced themselves, the moderator posed questions to the panel. I have included one question and answer I thought insightful from each editor.

What is your impression of someone trying to get a job in publishing today? Kate Napolitano answered that publishing is an apprenticeship industry. Earning an MFA is not the only way to get in.

What is a must-have for a query (fiction) or a proposal (Non-fiction)? Nadxieli Nieto answered that for commercial fiction, understand your placement in the marketplace and the relation of your work to the current trends.

What are the hot trends? Shannon Jamison-Vazquez answered you can’t write to trends. The most important thing is to use your voice. That is what is unique about you and will sell your novel.

What do you look for in the opening paragraphs? Angela Kim answered momentum is important. Don’t put too much info in at once. Be active with witty dialog. Use an active voice and a distinctive voice.

Before the panel, attendees volunteered to send in the first paragraphs of their novels. They picked six author paragraphs at random, and the panel read and discussed each.

The panel ended with final thoughts and advice.

Conclusion

I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator Writing Conference 2021 and plan to attend in person in 2022. My highlights were D.M. Pulley’s Writing Multiple Stories Workshop and Marie Vibbert’s talk about submitting short stories. I thought using Zoom worked well. At the in-person conference, you must pick one of four talks in three different time slots on the Saturday of the conference. Being spread over two weeks enabled me to pick the talks that I wanted to see. I appreciated the flexibility but will like to go back to the in-person conference next year.

Links

I attended the Cleveland Inkubator on August 4, 2018, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. Literary Cleveland sponsored the event. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio. I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator and plan to attend next year.

Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018

They held the Cleveland Inkubator on July 29, 2017, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. Literary Cleveland sponsored the event. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio. I enjoyed the programs that I attended at the Cleveland Inkubator and plan to attend next year.

Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference

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

Cleveland Inkubator Writer’s Conference 2018

I also attended the Marcon Conference from May 11 to May 13, 2018, at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, Ohio. It is an SF conference, while Inkubator is a literary conference. My review of Marcon is linked below.

Marcon Conference 2018

Winter Fiction Fest

Winter Fiction Fest 2017

Introduction

The Winter Fiction Fest was held on February 18, 2017, at Loganberry Books in Cleveland, Ohio.

http://www.loganberrybooks.com/

This is a link to the Literary Cleveland Website.

http://www.litcleveland.org/

Summary – Conference Set-Up

The events started with an interview. Susan Petrone interviewed the author, Mary Doria Russell.

Next, three different workshops were offered. Conference participants picked one workshop to attend. After the first workshop was completed, the Conference participants chose one of the other two workshops to attend.

The three workshops were as follows:

A: Beyond Motive, Means and Opportunity: How to Plot Your Mystery with Casey Daniels and Shelly Costa.

B: Turning History into Fiction with DM Pulley

C: Science Fiction: Not just for kids anymore! With Geoffrey Landis and Mary Turzillo

Everyone attended the interview first. There was about 30 people at the conference.

Summary – Interview

Mary Doria Russell has published six novels. The first two were science fiction and the other four were historical fiction. Her latest novel is called Epitaph. It details the events at the O. K. Corral.

She gets her ideas from reading biography books. She then researches her subject and looks for the moment that works as a novel. When she hears the voices, then she begins to write. Sometimes the research works like saving Italian Jews in World War II (A Thread of Grace), the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference (Dreamers of the Day), the early life of Doc Holliday (Doc), and the events at the O. K. Corral (Epitaph). Sometimes it doesn’t work like when she researched the relationship between Edgar Allen Poe and Sarah Elmira Royster. Another that didn’t work was Abe Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln.

She is currently researching a novel about the 1913 Copper Country strike in Michigan that will be called Unremembered Lives. Questions went to the audience at that point. Someone asked about agents. She has used the same agency for all her work, but she has had a dozen editors for her six novels. The novels were all published by Random House, but since she takes years to research and write each book, she has never had an editor start and finish any of her books. She doesn’t believe in outlines.

Summary – Science Fiction

I went to the C Workshop first. Nine people attended this session.

Mary had the flu so she skyped into the conference. First was a review of the subgenres of Science Fiction and Fantasy. What makes it SF or F is a speculative element. Talked about the markets and the tradition that SF and F writers start in the short fiction magazine route. Two websites that help in finding markets are ralan.com and duotrope.com. Stories have five elements including people, prose, plot, particulars, and prose.

A characterization handout was given, which encourages the writer to ask questions about the main protagonist. Another handout on character traits found at http://www.fiction-writers-mentor.com/list-of-character-traits/ Plot makes the character interact with the world. The inciting event shatters the main character’s place in the world. The plot is about the main character’s failures in trying to solve problems.

Three possible premises are What If, If Only, and If This Goes On. The last part of the workshop was a brainstorming session about the premise. We went with If This Goes On. It started with global warming and ended with The Waterlords of Cleveland. I should have taken a picture of the brainstorming whiteboard.

Summary – Mystery

I finished the Conference at the A Workshop. About 20 people at this session.

They presented a slideshow presentation and took turns explaining each slide. Most mysteries follow the conventions in one of these subgenres; cozy, police procedural, medical/legal thriller, suspense, romantic suspense, thriller, historical mystery, PI, Noir, Forensic, or YA. Setting is where the mystery starts. Your sleuth may be a member of law enforcement, have ties to law enforcement, or is an amateur. Make it matter, raise the stakes. The victim has secrets. There is an apparent reason and a real reason for the murder. The killer must be a worthy opponent of the sleuth. Everyone in the story must be s suspect. The plot is the search for the truth. In most stories, but not all, the reader discovers the clues as the sleuth discovers the clues. The solution of the crime must be surprising, plausible, and satisfying. The last twenty pages must have a resolution.

Conclusion

In review, I felt that all the authors presented their subjects with expertise, knowledge, and humor. I am glad that I attended the conference. I wish that I had been able to observe the workshop I missed. But the two workshops I attended were excellent. I am sure that it was just as informative as the others. I am looking forward to attending other events that are sponsored by Literary Cleveland in the future.

Links

A similar Conference to the Winter Fiction Fest 2017 was the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2016. Winter Fiction Fest is sponsored by Literary Cleveland while the Cuyahoga County Public Library sponsors a similar event called the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2016.

This is my recap for the Western Reserve Writers Conference 2016 on September 24, 2016. It was located at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library at the new William N. Skirball writer’s center which is located at the branch. It was a one-day event with an introduction, a keynote speaker, three breakout sessions, and one Q & A panel.

Western Reserve Writers Conference