Romance Writers of America was in New York this year.  The hub of publishing.  It was an awesome conference, and I was lucky enough to be invited to speak.  This year, I delivered a Reader's Digest version of the workshop that Laura Baker and I developed, Discovering Story Magic using the movie, Good Will Hunting as a template.  Discovering Story Magic is a three-step method for creating a story they can't refuse.  The story is created from the characters up.

Now, I'm the first to admit--and those of you who read my blog know--I plan my books.  The great thing about Discovering Story Magic (DSM) is that it can be used after-the-fact to revise and fine-tune your book. I'm not going to go into the entire workshop here.  There are packets available on the Discovering Story Magic website--100-page packets that analyze several different movies using DSM.  However, today, I thought I'd provide a chart that compares several plotting methods as well as a link to the presenatation I gave at RWA in New York (especially for those who wanted the Self-Image worksheet).

Well, I attended the Romance Writers of America National Conference in Orlando, Florida the last week of July. I was lucky enough to be chosen to present a workshop with my fellow writer and three-time Golden Heart Finalist, Claire Cavanaugh. Our topic was Inside Scoop: Analyzing Openings as an Agent, Bookseller and Reader, Then Problem Solve as a Writer.  (presentation, handout and support material are below).  Somewhere between 200 and 250 people attended, and we didn't scare anyone off, so it seemed to be a success.

In this workshop, we used small examples of openings from Orson Scott Card, Nora Roberts w/a J.D. Robb, Jayne Ann Krentz, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dean Koontz, Mary Kay Andrews, Gregory Maguire, and Deanna Raybourn. Then, several amazing writers submitted their openings and we analyzed them for strengths and weaknesses.

One of the most interesting aspects of the workshop was a survey we took of agents, readers and booksellers.