SCBWI Southern New England ENCORE 2008, 15 November
On Saturday, November 15, SCBWI in Southern New England will host ENCORE 2008, a day of four workshops from recent regional conferences. If you missed any of these workshops, this is your chance to catch up and hone your storytelling and marketing skills.
For this event, SCBWI New England is teaming with the Alliance for the Study and Teaching of Adolescent Literature (ASTAL) at Rhode Island College in Providence. The registration fee of $50 includes a buffet lunch.
For information and a simple registration form, download this PDF file, print it, fill it out, and mail it in. Additional information on the workshops and presenters is below. The registration deadline is 3 November.
All attendees at Southern New England SCBWI's ENCORE 2008 will be able to attend all four of these workshops.
Act 1: Punch Up Your Plotting (one hour)
Having trouble with plotting? J. L. Bell will offer some principles and tricks for getting around plot roadblocks. He will cover troubleshooting, rules for finding solutions to the nastiest plot problems, and tips on presenting your plot in the most exciting way.
J. L. Bell has edited books for major publishers and individual authors for over fifteen years, working on two New York Times bestsellers and a National Book Award winner. For young readers, he has written the book Soap Science, historical articles, and short stories. He is also an Assistant Regional Advisor for NE-SCBWI. His websites are Boston 1775 and Oz and Ends.
Act 2: Characters That Leap Off the Page (one hour)
What to do with wooden characters? Great stories come alive with great characters. Mark Peter Hughes will share some secrets to creating realistic, interesting characters and provide a number of easy exercises that spark the imagination.
Mark Peter Hughes formed a rock band after being kicked out of eighth grade music class for throwing a spitball. His new novel, Lemonade Mouth, is a Top 10 BookSense Pick and has been nominated as a 2008 ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. He is also the author of the acclaimed I am the Wallpaper. A faculty member at the Rhode Island College/ASTAL Writing Institute, Mark also appeared at the 2007 NE-SCBWI Encore Workshops Event in Salem, NH and was guest author at the NE-SCBWI 2008 Whispering Pines Retreat.
Act 3: Writing an Excellent Query Letter (one hour)
Padma Venkatraman will discuss skills required by those who wish to market their work to agents or directly to editors. Participants will receive samples of less-than-adequate query letters to critique, as well as an example a good query letter. Padma will also touch on the art of writing synopses.
Padma T. Venkatraman is the author of several highly acclaimed books. Her debut YA novel, Climbing the Stairs (Penguin, May 2008) is a Booklinks Best New Books for the Classroom selection, an ALA/YALSA Best Books 2008 Nominee, and has received starred reviews in several institutional review journals, a Publishers Weekly Flying Starts highlight and a Booksense Notable citation. She has also written over 100 magazine articles, including, "The Power of Peace," published in Faces, which won the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for nonfiction.
Act 4: Pitch and Package (two hours)
Sarah Shumway, Editor at Dutton Children's Books, will offer insider information about how and why she turns a submission into an acquisition. She will discuss effective ways to pitch and package your submissions to best represent the work and convince an editor the project will succeed in the marketplace.
Sarah Shumway is an Editor at Dutton Children's Books, a hardcover trade imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. Sarah's list includes both fiction and non-fiction for the full range of ages. She is most interested in contemporary, humorous young adult and upper-middle grade fiction, and the occasional historical or inspirational fiction. Her favorite picture book manuscripts are always character-driven.
Illustration from "Gunther the Underwater Elephant"