Online Workshop Details
TO SIGN UP, PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW.
LIMIT OF ABOUT 12 WRITERS PER WORKSHOP. This limit of 12 writers allows the instructor(s) to give each writer more personal attention.
Structure of every workshop:
— Each week for six weeks video lectures will be available for the writer to listen and watch in their own time. (Video lectures will be about 10 or so minutes long each and there will be about six or so of them per week depending on topic.)
— Each week will include an assignment which will need to be sent as an attached file within five days. We will work personally with each writer or book designer, and send the assignments back to each person before the end of the week. (The assignments are not mandatory, but suggested to get the most out of each workshop.)
— Then each week we will record a short (5 minutes or so) video talking in general (never giving names) about the assignment for everyone in the class to watch. Then the following week’s assignment and lecture will be available.
— Each new video will be released on the same day of the week as the first one for six weeks. So if the workshop starts on Monday, the new weekly video session will be released every Monday.
Workshops are all SIX WEEKS LONG.
Cost of online workshops is $300.00 each. (Payment instructions at the bottom of the page below.)
The workshops will have a distinctive web site. The website will have FAQ and comments sections for discussions and other areas of interest for each workshop. About one week before each workshop I will contact each writer signed up and get them a password to the class location.
NO REFUNDS. However, your money can be moved to a different workshop down the road if you have schedule or health problems. We will work with you.
My e-mail address for these workshops is dean@wmgpublishingworkshops.com. Please put only WORKSHOPS in the subject line. Or if I do not respond, e-mail me at my address of dean@deanwesleysmith.com. I try to respond fairly quickly, meaning within the same day.
Workshop Descriptions
NEW!
DESIGNING PROFESSIONAL E-BOOKS (new workshop starting January 2014)
When the electronic book revolution started, publishers and indie writers just uploaded word files and hoped they looked all right. There wasn’t much else that anyone could be done. But now after four years, it is possible to design professional-looking electronic books and upload them in ways that they will hold formatting. From lead-ins, decorative headers, professional title pages, and so much more. It’s all possible these days.
Now your electronic books can look as good as your paper books.
This workshop will cover electronic book cover design (from how to design for thumbnail to how to use varied sizes and create Audio covers for audio editions). The course will teach you in detail how to design electronic books, how to hold formatting, and where all the different elements of a book belong. Including what files to upload and when covers need to be added and how.
Now your electronic books can easily look like they were done by professional book designers. Taught by Allyson Longueira and Dean Wesley Smith.
With the addition of this workshop, we now have three design workshops taught by Dean Wesley Smith, former publisher of Pulphouse Publishing and Allyson Longueira, a professional book designer with a master’s degree in design. Covers, Interiors, and E-Book Design. All three workshops work well together.
NEW!
CHARACTER VOICE AND SETTING (new workshop starting January 2014)
If you want to learn how to get down inside character’s heads and stay there, this is the workshop for you. And if critiques tell you your setting is thin, this is the workshop for you.
An intense craft workshop that will help you learn how to develop memorable characters, memorable settings, and learn how to write multiple characters that can be told apart. Gain control over your own characters and learn the techniques that make a character and the setting they are in come alive to a reader.
This workshop was taught for six years here on the coast, but now has moved online.
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Regular Ongoing workshops…
PROMOTION (Making More Money On Your Writing)
For indie writers and traditional writers alike, this workshop teaches you the sane ways to promote your work and remain a writer at the same time. Just as the Pitches and Blurb Workshop teaches you how to write sales copy for backs of books and blurbs and so much more, this workshop will teach you how to write different kinds of promotion copy.
The online promotions workshop is amazing, since we also added in a bunch of things we learned in the Advanced Master Class. The online promotions workshop will teach you how to sell to readers, how to get major trade reviews, how to sell to bookstores and let the know your books even exist. It will help you know when to promote, when to write the next book, and we hope help you understand when to use social media and when not to bother.
The assignments will help you gain the skills to do all this, from writing Advanced Reader Copies back cover sales information to doing letters to readers and so much more, including how to use all the wonderful programs the ABA has to offer. If you have been afraid of promotion, or only using Twitter and Facebook to do it and your sales are very low, this online promotions workshop will help you learn how to do so much more while still having a ton of time to write the next book.
PACING YOUR STORY (Keeping Your Story Moving)
Ever wonder how a writer makes you stay up all night reading? And sometimes when the story doesn’t really hold you? This workshop teaches you the tricks and skills that will keep your story moving at the pace you want it to move.
From writing slow family scenes to fast action scenes, you will gain the control of the reader that you always wondered about. This will cover a vast amount of information and writing techniques. From short stories to novels and series novels, this class covers everything you will need to know about how to keep a story moving and the readers turning pages.
CLIFFHANGERS
How to keep a reader reading from chapter to chapter and from scene to scene. There are many ways besides the standard “hero hanging from a cliff” that the name of the technique is named after. In fact, there are six major cliffhangers and each week in this course will cover another way to keep your readers hooked into your stories. It will also cover how to speed up your stories and even understand when a scene or chapter should end. Understanding how to use the major cliffhanger techniques will jump your sales and keep readers coming back to your work.
PITCHES AND BLURBS
Maybe the most important workshop we do. This workshop will teach you how to write great ad copy for your stories and novels. Name value, then covers, then ad copy are the top three things readers look at before sampling your book. This course will teach you how to write ad copy for electronic sales, for cover letters to editors, for catalog copy to bookstores, and also back cover copy for your books. This skill that takes time to learn and this workshop will get you on the road to selling more books and stories.
GENRE STRUCTURE
Writers seldom know what genre they write in. Every wonder why your book isn’t selling well? Maybe it’s because you put your book on the wrong electronic shelf. Not only will this workshop teach you how to identify genres, but also will teach you the structure of all the major genres. That way if you decide to write a story or a novel in a certain genre, you will understand what you need to do.
This workshop goes down inside the structure of each genre and many subgenres. You will understand genre when you finish this workshop.
OPENINGS
Readers, if they make it through your cover and your ad copy, they open your book and sample your story or novel. And if you don’t know how to open a story, no reader or editor will buy it. There are ways to write openings of stories that will grab the reader and this course will teach you that. Also, every time you start a new chapter or a new section, you must grab the reader and keep them reading with the opening.
This course will teach you how to do that and work with you on the tricks and writing techniques of professional fiction writers.
ESSENTIALS OF A FICTION WRITING CAREER
This will cover all the basics of being a fiction writer, from how to make money, how indie publishing works in this new world for writers, and six craft exercises to get each person to a certain place in their writing career. The exercises will help each writer understand where they are strong and where they need work to sell more stories and books. Also, this will help writers understand the role of traditional publishing in this modern world as well as how to combine the two. If you ever wanted to be a professional fiction writer, this is the course that will show you how to get to that goal and what you need to work on.
If you are just coming into publishing, this is the course to start with.
FROM IDEA TO STORY
How to generate ideas for stories and then how to turn the ideas into solid stories. Professional writers never wait for the muse. We know how to take anything and make it into a story. This workshop will get you over all the fears of starting and give you an entire bag of tools and tricks to take almost nothing and turn it into a story that sells. From basic opening tricks to story structure, this will cover it all. And there is a lot to cover.
HOW TO PLOT YOUR NOVEL
Everything you might think you need and a ton more about how to plot a novel, from idea to finished plot. Includes such topics as plot threads, viewpoints, pacing, and a ton more. This will take you from an idea to a full novel outline and teach you how to do it any time you want without fear.
It also covers outlining and different methods of using outlines and how to use them and when not to use them.
WORLD BUILDING
How to make the worlds in your fiction seem real, including how to build science fiction worlds, mystery worlds, fantasy worlds and so much more. And how to present the worlds in a way that readers can follow them without huge information dumps.
Hundreds of tricks and details about how to put a world together and make it real in any genre.
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We also have three design workshops taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Allyson Longueira, a professional book designer with a master’s degree in design.
BOOK COVER DESIGN
Everything you need to know about book cover design, from basic layout to fonts and which fonts work together. This will include how to design covers for both electronic and print books, including spines and back covers. Make your books look professional.
INTERIOR BOOK DESIGN
Everything you need to know about designing an interior of a book from basic front page layout to fonts and which fonts work together and which fonts are good for reading. You will learn margins, leading, running headers, masters for page counts, and so much more. This class is for the interior of print books. Make your books look professional.
PROFESSIONAL E-BOOK DESIGN
(See listing at the top)
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Workshop Schedule
Each workshop is 6 weeks long and is limited to 12 writers
Again, it will take you about four hours per week to do each of these. These are the starting dates of upcoming workshops. All have openings at the moment.
Class #19… Jan 6th … Character Voice/Setting
Class #20… Jan 6th … Ideas to Story
Class #21… Jan 7th … Essentials of Publishing
Class #22… Jan 7th … Plot Your Novel
Class #E-1… Jan 8th … Designing Electronic Books
Class #23… Jan 8th … Designing Book Covers
Class #24… Jan 9th … Designing Book Interiors
Class #25… Jan 10th … Promotions
Class #26… Feb 3rd … Character Voice/Setting
Class #27… Feb 3rd … Pacing Your Stories
Class #28… Feb 4th … Cliffhangers
Class #29… Feb 4th … Openings
Class #E-2… Feb 5th … Designing Electronic Books
Class #30… Feb 5th … Genre Structure
Class #31… Feb 6th … Pitches and Blurbs
Class #32… Feb 7th … World Building
Class #33… Mar 3rd … Promotion
Class #34… Mar 3rd … Ideas to Story
Class #35… Mar 4th … Plot Your Novel
Class #E-3… Mar 5th … Designing Electronic Books
Class #36… Mar 5th … Designing Book Covers
Class #37… Mar 6th … Designing Book Interiors
Class #38… Mar 7th … Character Voice/Setting
Class #39… Apr 7th … Essentials of Publishing
Class #40… Apr 7th … Pacing Your Stories
Class #41… Apr 8th … Cliffhangers
Class #42… Apr 8th … Openings
Class #43… Apr 9th … Genre Structure
Class #44… Apr 10th … Pitches and Blurbs
Class #45… Apr 11th … World Building
HOW TO SIGN UP
Step One: In an e-mail or snail mail letter, answer the following questions. Please number each answer.
- Full Name
- e-mail address
Step Two: Also in the letter include the following:
1. Pick the workshop number and name of the workshop you are signing up for.
(You can sign up for more than one if you like. We had a number of people do that and they seemed to do fine. In fact, we had one great writer who did five at one time, but I would not suggest that. (grin))
2. List an alternate workshop or date in case the workshop is full by the time you get signed up. I will e-mail you if that is the case to work out a solution. (That has seldom happened in the last seven months, so no real worries about that.)
Step Three:
1. Send answers to: dean@wmgpublishingworkshops.com with the subject header WORKSHOP only in the subject line. Or mail to WMG Publishing Online Workshops, PO Box 479 Lincoln City, OR 97367
2. Send full payment of $300 for each workshop. Payment can be sent by check to the above address or by Paypal to Dean@deanwesleysmith.com. Checks should be made out to WMG Publishing and please put the workshop number and workshop name on the check.
(If a workshop is full and you have paid for it, I will refund your money, so no worry there either.)
Dean – how about a short online workshop on the ins and outs of createspace and print distribution? I have about 3 novels under an old and cold pen name and another under a more recent (but almost as cold) pen name, plus enought related shorts for a themed collection under my current pen name plus, soon, three connected novellas under it. If not a workshop, how about a how to up for sale as an ebook? (Apologies if you’ve done such an ebook already, and please hit me with the link
)
Okay, almost 5am. Hopefully can set aside my insomnia and manage 1.5 hours of sleep before the alarm goes off. (Please pardon any typos, eyeglasses are in the bedroom.)
flutterby, heavens, by the time I wrote it, even at my ability to stay parked in a chair for hours, the silly book would be out of date because they would have changed things so much. Maybe in a year after we have leveled into a new normal. We just did a new “Think Like a Publisher” workshop last month and wow was it different in a ton of ways from the first one we did 18 months before. Stunning how fast stuff is moving.
But thanks for thinking I could do it justice.
True, it’s a fast moving train.
Hi Dean – these workshops sound great. After the course, do students still have access to the videos to refresh their memories?
Sasha,
The writers attending will have access to everything for the six weeks, plus the other few weeks until the next one starts. We’ve set these up every two months, so basically access for two months. I will be encouraging people to take notes and will have other aspects of the course to send at the end as well that will help with everything, such as outlines and lists and such that are talked about as the course goes on.
Thanks, Dean, that’s good to know.
Dean,
just wanting to let you know how much the Pitches & Blurbs workshop opened my eyes to this topic. After listening to your explanations something inside of me just clicked and everything fell into place. Like a major AHA effect.
I AM HAVING A BLAST redoing all my existing blurbs and all the back cover copy for the upcoming print versions.
(Sorry for shouting, but there is no other way to say this)
Thanks for the workshop.
Thanks for “shouting” Lassal (no, really!). I was really torn between which ones to take. I’ve narrowed them down to two: blurbs and how to plot, only now I can’t figure out which is more important of *those* two! LOL!
Blurbs I just suck at. It always seems like I am giving way too much information, and when I cut back, I don’t give enough. Totally lost.
Plotting…torn on this one too. You’d think after putting out 17 short stories I’d be an ace, but no. I’m half plotter, half panster, and get bogged down two thirds into the novel (switching from shorts to novels seem to require a different mindset.)
I am guessing the “plotting” course is more important for me since I can always go back and change blurbs in a published book. Not so easy with plots!
Hi Dean – on the interior workshop, will it be using MS Word or Pages i.e. normal desktop software OR/ will it be using InDesign or other specialist software?
Thanks, Joanna
InDesign, since anyone can get it for about $45 for a month. It’s the best. But design features are design features. But we will be using InDesign.
Dean, could you go into more detail as to how InDesign is used in conjunction with the covers workshop? Can a participant do the workshop without access to InDesign?
Jim, I took both cover and interiors and loved the courses. I also wondered if I could do the course without using InDesign and the answer is Yes, I Could. Once I understood how InDesign worked (layers & font tweaking) I replicated the same covers I created in InDesign in Adobe Photoshop Elements and in Scribus (free software similiar to InDesign). In the end, I could not tell the difference between the pdf files created in each program. Hope this helps.
They are!
Did I say Dean’s courses were excellent?
Thanks, DJ. Much appreciated and glad they worked to give you the book design no matter the program used.
Hi Dean,
Is the Idea to Story workshop suitable for a total beginner?
Sure is, Yoni. It will help you a ton, I promise.
Hi Dean!
I am in the Openings workshop and would also like to saddle up for one of these two courses: Cliffhangers or Idea to Story.
Which one do you think I should pair with Openings?
I DO intend to take the Plotting course, the World Building course and the Genre course in a couple of months.
Your thoughts would help on which one to take with Openings.
I appreciate you imput and…Thanks in advance,
jax
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Jax, Since Cliffhangers talks about part of the hook that is required to keep a reader reading and Openings talks about the other half of that hook, they are a natural fit. (grin) Just e-mail me if you have more questions.
As of April 15th 2013, I have attended every workshop and lecture Kris and Dean have put out so far.
The order I went through was the following (the ones with /’s are the ones I took simultaneously):
1. Openings
2. Idea to Story / Essentials / Cliffhangers
3. Genre Structure / Pitches and Blurbs / the first three lectures (Heinlein’s Rules, Read like a Writer, Short Story Writing: The Basics)
4. Covers / Interiors / Plot / World Building / the other two lectures (Carving out Time, Writer’s Block).
That being said, which ones do I recommend?
).
All of them. Not sorry about a single cent or minute I spent. Only sorry that I didn’t take more of them simultaneously from the get-go. I have completed fifty assignments, I have hundreds of handwritten notes, I do not regret a single crossed t on them.
When it comes to the descriptions up there: Trust them. They are one-hundred-percent-spot-on-accurate, no hype or exaggerated claims. Ideas to Story, Openings, Cliffhangers and Essentials alone have given me the skill level to make my first professional sale. Though, cynical as I am, I will believe it when the check clears (Hi Kris!
The lectures will give you the basic Kris and Dean perspective. Those you pay once for and can get into again and again for refreshers. As an absolute beginner, start here. The Short Story lecture is also used for the Short Story Workshop on the Oregon coast. I sat together with a dozen professional writers on the floor of Stephanie Writt’s office to watch this (the second time I’ve seen it and I still ended up with three pages of notes!). Heinlein’s rules is such a good motivational lecture that $75 becomes a career investment. Also if you are a lit major or have ever even been spoken to by an English teacher, please consider taking Read like a Writer.
The workshops will be six weeks, with the first five weeks ending in an assignment.
Beginning writers will want to take: Ideas to Story, Openings and Essentials. Also consider taking Cliffhangers in tandem with Openings, since those two concepts flow into each other. They are the most awesome basic training your money and time can buy.
Advanced writers will pick and choose, but I would bet you could learn something from all of them.
Tips on taking some of those simultaneously:
- Craft workshop assignments you can bang out fast (Openings, Pitches, and so forth).
- Cliffhangers is pretty research-heavy. Essentials has one nasty reading assignment for week 2, requiring you to have read eight NYT bestsellers of the last ten years, four of which you liked, four of which you didn’t like. Completely worth it though and assignments are optional.
- Covers and Interiors require that you get InDesign. And I would recommend that you spent $25 at lynda.com to get the basic training in the program. You can do without. I did without. But I also shouted an un-Christian amount of cusswords at my computer screen, when I did the assignments.
- Yes, you can take more than one and still have a day job and a life. Figure five hours per workshop and week. If you have a brutal day job, don’t take a workshop on a Monday and you will have all weekend to do the assignments. In fact just doing one workshop was waaaay too slow for me. I just kept looking forward to it, way too much.
Hope this comment was of some help. Feel free to ask me in a comment if anything was unclear.
Thanks, Eric. Very, very much appreciated.
I have 2 books and 2 short stories out in gay romance, and have been told that I really should make it to GayRomLit or some other writer/publisher/fan convention. And I considered it. Last week, I followed my writing friends and their wild partying over FB. They cavorted at GRL and there were classes to take, and they autographed their books and it all looked so official and fun. I felt like a Jewish kid at Christmas.
Yet, the money I’d have spent on airfare, hotel, a new writer admission, and booze was much better spent taking a Strengths and Openings seminar here. I, too, look forward to Thursdays. There is so much to learn. Those fun shindigs can wait until I can justify their cost by having enough work out there, and that will happen faster if I target my weak points. I’d lie if I said the assignments are easy. Even screwing something up is rewarding, though, because looking at a way in which I made a mess shows me what I need to work on.
Hanging out here has been good for my writing morale. I can do 3k words, and yes it’s an effort, but it’s easier than it used to be. The only downside, I guess, is being tempted to redraft everything I haven’t sent out yet. It’s hard to leave well enough alone.
How friendly are these courses for people at the extreme end of panster-dom? I’ve run into numerous courses where I can’t use the material because it’s too tied to the assumption I’m outlining.
Totally friendly. In fact, since that’s how I write, off into the dark, I tend to assume that others do that as well. (grin)
Hi Dean,
While I have lots of short-story publications, I have not yet started a novel (hope to do so this summer). After Clarion, the Cambridge SF Workshop, and my various stories, I feel reasonably confident about my “pure writing” skills and how to improve them, but the business- and design-end workshops — pitches & blurbs, covers, and interiors — are topics about which I know zilch.
So: Given that I don’t have a novel or even a novel outline at this point, would any of these three workshops be better to put off until I do have one? (I’m imagining an assignment like “Do X task for your current novel”.)
Cheers,
Ken
Ken, you’d be fine on all three, actually, since if you are selling anything indie, either short stories, collections, or novels, you need to know how to design covers and interiors and do pitches. You get through those three, which are tough, but don’t take a vast amount of time per week, it will kill all fear of ever indie publishing.
See all the covers I did and put up in the recent post. Those are all short stories I put into trade paper form. With blurbs. (grin)
Hi Dean,
I’m thinking about taking the book cover design course. Loved Idea to Story but this one has me very nervous. Do you need any special computer software, etc.? I want to develop some of those stories I came up with in your class and try my hand at indie publishing within the next six months.
Thanks,
Jill
Jill, yes, you will need InDesign for the covers workshop. We help with some of InDesign, but mostly you’ll have to pick it up on your own through tutorials such as Lynda.com as you go along. Many, many have done it and it works great. But it is a stressful few weeks in the middle of the workshop. (grin)
You can Adobe InDesign for a subscription of about $20 per month if you only get it and nothing else. And Lynda.com is $25 per month and you would only need to be on it for a month or so while the workshop is going on.
The key is once you have it, you will feel free to do any covers you want for any books you want. That’s the fun.
Thanks Dean. Hmm. A stressful few weeks in the middle of the workshop. Now I have to figure out just how stressed I want to be during my time away from college students.
I am really excited about the Character Voice and Setting workshop being available online, and plan to take it come January.