Our Chapter offers online workshops and classes that vary in length and are conducted via e-mail loops. With convenient member and non-member pricing, our classes are open to anyone who wants to participate. The deadline to register for all classes is the 28th of the preceding month, unless otherwise noted. (All $$ fees below are in USD.)

POLICY: All payments, whether snail mail or Paypal, must be received by the registration deadline. No refunds will be offered. However, if you wish to cancel your workshop registration and you notify us at least 45 days prior to the start date of the workshop, your payment may be applied to a future Elements workshop of your choice. To inquire, please contact our Workshop Coordinator at workshops@elementsofrwa.com.

NOTE: Please turn off your spam filter. Otherwise, it may delay or prevent receiving an invitation to join the online workshop. If you have any questions or have not received an e-mail invitation to join the online workshop within a week prior to the start date of your class, please contact the Workshop Coordinator at workshops@elementsofrwa.com

2010.

January    February   March    April   May    June

July    August   September    October    November   December

2011

January    February   March    April   May    June

July    August   September    October    November   December

2010 Workshops

September
Dirty Little Secrets of Character Development
by Keena Kincaid
September 6 - 30
REGISTRATION ENDS Sept. 1

Description:
Do you know the secret to character development?
“The Dirty Little Secrets of Character Development” is an interactive workshop that leads participants through fun, inventive exercises that will help them root out their characters' deep, dark secrets and desires, as well as show how to use these secrets to further plot, conflict and—of course—the romance.

During the course, we’ll cover:
… Why we keep secrets
… Types of secrets
… How secrets affect and change us
… How secrets are exposed
… Repercussions
… Secrets of character development

We’ll also uncover:
… 3 Cs of character development
… Character
… Conscience
… Choices

Through discussion and exercises, participants will:
… Gain insight into how secrets affect character at the deepest level;
… Understand how these secrets reveal themselves through words and actions even if the character never confesses; and
… Learn how to use this knowledge to propel the plot forward in a logical, engaging manner.

Bio:
Keena Kincaid is the author of three historical romances with The Wild Rose Press.
While growing up on a farm slightly to the left of nowhere in Ohio, she learned early that a well-told tale would get her out of trouble quicker than any admission of guilt. She studied history, English and philosophy at Wittenberg University, concentrated on medieval history in graduate school at Miami University in Oxford, OH, and keeps up with academic research and thought as a member of the Medieval Academy of America.
After honing her writing skills as a newspaper reporter and editor, she switched to public relations and began writing fiction. Career honors include writing awards for feature writing from Society of Professional Journalists, Gannett newspapers and the Associated Press.

When not working or writing romance, Keena regales her niece and nephews with stories of quick-thinking ladies, mathematically challenged knights, and ill-mannered dragons that chew with their mouths opened.
You can find Keena at http://www.keenakincaid.com, Facebook and MySpace.

Elements Member $15, Non-member $25; Limited to 20 participants.

To register for this workshop click here.

October
Plotting for Un-Dummies
by Raquel Rodriguez
October 4 - 29
Description:
Have problems with opening hooks, sagging middles, weak conflict, or tying up lose ends? What about just getting motivated to start that book? Plotting For Un-Dummies is an intensive workshop filled with guidance, help, advice, and suggestions. Learn how to plot and follow a simple outline without stifling your creativity, beef up your Hero, or develop your kick-ass Heroine. We will discuss the difference between a complex plot and a convoluted one, and how to clarify problems, how to stay on track, the importance of a strong Goal, Motivation, and Conflict (GMC), and writing your synopsis the easy way.

Elements Member $15, Non-member $25

To register for this workshop click here.

November
The 5 P's of Self-Promotions: Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance
by John Foxjohn
November 8 - 12, 2010
REGISTRATION ENDS Nov. 4

Elements Member $6, Non-member $10

Description:
John Foxjohn, known as the king of self-promotions, presents this interactive class. He delves into inexpensive or free ways to promote the author and books. The class includes internet marketing and getting TV and radio interviews, as well as how to create media releases.

Bio:
Best-selling author John Foxjohn epitomizes the phrase “been there—done that.” Whether consciously or unconsciously, maybe one of the first authors he followed contributed to this.
Many years ago, John became afflicted with a disease he calls “readaholism.” His addiction to reading led him to Louis L’Amour, and even today, he continues to reread books by this author.
Louis L’Amour had a diverse background before he began to write and John followed that path—born and raised in the rural East Texas town of Nacogdoches, he quit high school and joined the Army at seventeen. Viet Nam veteran, Army Airborne Ranger, policeman and homicide detective, retired teacher and coach, and now he is a multi-published author.

Although John writes an entirely different genre than Louis L’Amour, he followed the author’s path by using his diverse background and meticulous research. Although John’s novels are fictional, many readers believe they are true stories.

Like his favorite author, John creates characters that readers love and root for—not cardboard cutouts. John says, “Normal people have faults and strengths—they make mistakes and need to overcome them and other obstacles thrown in their path. People judge others by how they handle adversity. That’s how I attempt to create characters.”

If you have read John’s novels, you know that he is successful.

John hasn’t yet reached the huge success of Louis L’Amour, but I wouldn’t bet against him.
John is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Elements of Romance, Kiss of Death, Lethal Ladies, Sisters-in-Crime, East Texas Writers Guild, League of Texas Writers, and more online writing groups than he can count. He is a full time writer and speaker and lives in Lufkin, Texas, but travels extensively across the U.S.

To register for this workshop click here.

December

2011 Workshops

January 2011

Story Structure
by Larry Brooks

January 10 - Feb 4  
REGISTRATION ENDS January 5th

Description:
This four week series will outline five stages of story planning: 1: Story planning versus organic story growth; 2: "Ideation" -- the growth of an idea into a story; 3. The fleshing out of the four basic story elements at the pre-manuscript stage; 4. Translating the plan into story structure; 5: growing your beat sheet into an outline and then into a manuscript. This workshop introduces the notion of "story engineering" as a development and writing process, covering each of the requisite bases required to write a publishable novel, without the need to write a series of multiple drafts that seek to do the same thing. This process can yeild a draft that is a polish away from final, rather than something that requires restructuring and a complete narrative rewrite.

Bio:
Larry Brooks is a bestselling novelist and experienced writing instructor.  He has published five novels, including a USA Today bestseller and a Publisher's Weekly starred review Editor's Choice and "Best of 2004" selection.  He is the creator of Storyfix.com, one of the fastest growing online resources for writers of fiction and those who love them.  His new book, "Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing" will be published by Writers Digest Books in February 2011.

Non-members $25; Elements Member $15  

REGISTRATION ENDS January 5th

To register for this workshop, click here.

February 2011

Walking the Tightrope
How to Juggle Family, Career, Writing and Life in General and Keep your Creativity and Sanity Intact.
by Mary O'Gara, Ph.D.

February 7 - 18
REGISTRATION ENDS February 2nd

Description:
Multi-tasking is your strength–when it doesn’t overwhelm you. So how many goals can you handle without stressing out? And how do you know what to do next and what not to do at all? Writers do thrive on paradox. It’s the essence of creativity. And we make more decisions per computer-hour than most people make in a month. So how do you have a great writing year and still fulfill at least the important parts of all the other roles that make your life work? And how do you sort through all the self-help ideas to find the ones that work for you in your life with your style of living?  WALKING THE TIGHTROPE is a simple, flexible, adaptable process for finding your personal priorities, taking responsibility for your commitments, setting your own standards, and learning when (and how) to say “No!” The lessons include simple tools you can use every day to make your life easier–and they also include simple ideas to help make your own life choices easier. The ideas are simple because, frankly, life is not. The workshop offers a smorgasbord of ideas so you can sample and test, and ultimately choose and use, the ones that fit your life–and return to the smorgasbord for more as life changes. The smorgasbord focuses on simple methods you can log in your journal or in document files on any computer. Mary will provide simple files and references for those of you who want to explore her topics in depth. The workshop goes beyond time management to life management because the important victories are the personal and internal choices that allow us to work with the lives we live and fulfill our visions for ourselves.

Bio:
Mary O’Gara, Ph.D., has been working on these questions with her personal clients for more than three decades. You may know her best as a professional psychic who teaches workshops on developing psychic characters or as past president of RWA’s Kiss of Death Chapter. Mary is also a Creativity Coach who has trained with Eric Maisel and with internationally known life coaches and NLP trainers. She has been leading online workshops since 1993.

Non-Members $15; Elements Members $9

REGISTRATION ENDS February 2nd

To register for this workshop, click here.

March 2011

Power of the Senses:
Enhancing Author's Voice, Characterization, and Conflict
by Bill Haggart

March 7 - 25
REGISTRATION ENDS March 2nd

Description:
Robert Penn Warren said, “The secret subject of any story is what we learn, or fail to learn, over time.”   Each of us have our own unique way of learning, and part of that style involves which senses we favor in experiencing the world—even how we write and how we love.  Everyone prefers one sense over the other four: Kinesthetic, Tactual, Auditory, and Visual. Those preferences shape a writer’s voice, brand, writing processes as well as the characters they create. How their novel's conflict and romance develops depends on how their characters learn. A writer can be trapped by their own sensory preferences or they can use it to create unique characters and believable conflict. In this interactive workshop, Participants will:
1. Identify their own sensory preferences with a short profile, discovering how sensory preferences affect their behavior.  This includes their own writing processes.  
2. Explore how sensory preferences influence a writer’s voice and Brand. 
As romance writer Virginia Kendra observes:  “This is part of author voice. Our choices of significant, specific details awaken our readers to what it is we see” —or hear, feel or do. Our choices depend in part on our preferences. We will examine the writing of well-know authors to illustrate this aspect of the author's voice, as well as developing your unique brand. 
3. Examine how sensory preferences can help a writer decide how to use the senses, actually deepening a character's POV. Julia Ross observed, “Even when a scene is deeply emotional and full of sensory input, it’s often more powerful to limit the character’s awareness to just one or two senses at a time.”   Sensory Preferences reveals these sense choices naturally, enhancing characterization. Participants will practice creating distinctive characters and deep POVs with learning styles.   
4. Learn how to differentiate Author Voice from the characters' POV. This includes all aspects of their novel, from first meet, attraction and learning to love, conflict, sexual desire and satisfaction, as well as how conflict is resolved.   
5. Explore  how sensory preferences can enhance believable conflict. Any conflict begins with the senses. Examples will demonstrate what readers know intuitively—the simplest things count. Including learning preferences can make conflicts between characters far more real and dynamic. Throughout the course, activities will be provided for writers to practice with the methods offered, including feedback from the instructor.

Bio:
Bill Haggart has been an educator for over thirty years. He has been a teacher, an educational trainer,   consultant and executive with a national training company. He now heads up his own consulting business, Insights & Innovations. He has presented to over 180,000 educators nationwide and worked with over 400 schools and   organizations. He is the creator of the Kaleidoscope Profiles, a popular learning styles inventory. He is also the author of several educational books and articles. He has been a member of RWA since 1998, as well as a terrific local group, the Sacramento Valley Rose. He has won and placed in nearly a dozen contests such as 'The Molly' and 'Suzannah' and "The Merritt" with both his contemporary, time-travel and Regency novels.  A member of the Beau Monde since 2000, Bill presented at their conference in New York in 2002 and 2006. This workshop, “The Power of the Senses; Enhancing Author's Voice, Characterization, and Conflict” has been well-received by several writing groups, including The Sacramento Valley Rose. A history major, he particularly loves the Napoleonic war period and the Regency. He began reading historical romances decades ago, and finally decided to write them, after being encouraged by Joy, his partner and heroine for the last thirty-eight years. She is also a fantastic teacher. Bill has two terrific sons, Sean and Cory. Sean is an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena\, CA. The Mars Rovers have parts created by him. Cory is a marketing and public relations consultant in Ottawa, Canada. He critiques all of his father’s manuscripts. They both are models for my heroes. The real homeowners, an Australian Shepard mix named Nikki and a feline, Kitty, also are inspirations for characters in his books.

Non-members $20; Elements Members $12

REGISTRATION ENDS March 2nd

To register for this workshop, click here.

April 2011

Direct Your Book! Theatrical Techniques to a Blockbuster Novel
by Leanna Renee Hieber

April 4 - 15
REGISTRATION ENDS March 30th

Description:
Crack open a whole new way to think about your fiction by using techniques inherent to actors, directors and other theatre professionals. Troubleshoot your way towards an engaging, character-rich, one-of-a-kind hit novel using a whole new mindset. Utilizing basic theatrical as well as avant-garde theatre techniques, during this two week online course, Leanna will break down the basic roles of Cinematographer, Director and Actor and ask authors to take critical looks at their manuscripts from each respective vantage point, asking the necessary questions to get effective results in setting, structure, world-building and character. These theatrical vantage points are refreshing for those armed only with writing vocabulary and craft, while the principles can be easily adapted and co-opted for a novelist’s use. The class will offer presentation, discussion and exercises that knit these two disparate yet related mediums together. Because in the end, every artistic medium is after the same goal: solid, blockbuster storytelling.

Bio:
Leanna Renee Hieber grew up in Ohio inventing ghost stories. With a theatre degree, a focus in the Victorian Era and a scholarship to London, she has adapted works of 19th Century literature for the stage and her one-act plays have been produced around the country. Her fantasy novella Dark Nest won the 2009 Prism Award for excellence in Futuristic / Fantasy / Paranormal Romance. Her debut novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, first in her Strangely Beautiful series with Dorchester, hit Barnes & Noble's Bestseller list, was named a favourite of 2009 by numerous genre review blogs and has been optioned for a musical theatre production. A  member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), Horror Writers Association (HWA) and International Thriller Writers (ITW), she’s a proud co-founder of Lady Jane's Salon Reading Series in New York. A member of the performers unions AEA, SAG and AFTRA, Leanna freelances in television. When not writing or on set, she loves a good Goth club and adventuring in New York City, where she resides with her real-life hero and beloved rescued lab rabbit Persebunny.  About Leanna as a presenter: A child of two college professors and an ardent supporter of inter-disciplinary education, teaching from all sides of her theatre, playwright and fiction background is in her blood. She has taught fiction workshops for RWA NYC, COFW Ohio, WIS-RWA Milwaukee, RWA Women’s Fiction, spoken and presented in schools around the country, written articles for the RWA NYC Keynotes newsletter and Dramatics magazine, as well as teaching theatre and adaptation workshops for the Guthrie Theatre and the International Thespian Festival.

Non-members $15; Elements Members $9

REGISTRATION ENDS March 30th

To register for this workshop, click here.

May 2011

MS Word for Writers
by Catherine Chant

May 2 - 13
REGISTRATION ENDS April 27th

Description:
This online workshop focuses on teaching you the aspects of the Word program that are most useful for fiction writers, and the subjects presented will help you streamline your on-screen tasks so you can think more about your story and less about what the computer is doing (or not doing). Included in this workshop will be lectures on proper manuscript formatting, creating headers/footers, working with page numbers, creating a pre-formatted manuscript template that can be used on all your new book projects, customizing the toolbars, understanding and customizing the Auto-Correct feature, using the Work menu, formatting the query letter, creating a template for the query, printing envelopes, printing labels for SASEs, and backing up your computer files. NOTE: This workshop is designed for BOTH Macintosh and PC users, and has been written for versions of Word from '97 to 2008.

Bio:
Catherine Chant is an award-winning writer from New England. She is a PRO member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), and a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). A graduate of Boston College, she worked for fifteen years at her alma mater as a computing & communications consultant and now provides freelance web editing and design services to other writers and clients such as BC's Lynch School of Education. Her short fiction and non-fiction work has appeared in RWA newsletters, CharacterS, SchoolArts, MetroKids, Twilight Times and Apollos Lyre. Her young adult time travel romance WISHING YOU WERE HERE was a finalist in the 2008 Golden Heart® awards. She is currently working a new young adult novel.

Non-membesr $15; Elements Members $9

REGISTRATION ENDS April 27th

To register for this workshop, click here.

June 2011

To be scheduled

July 2011

No workshop

August 2011

Deep POV
by Camy Tang

August 1 - 12
REGISTRATION ENDS July 27th

Description:
Want to rivet your reader to the page? Want to make your writing richer emotionally? Want your characters to be more vivid? Learn ways to draw the reader into the mind, body, and soul of your characters through deep point of view techniques. By the end of the class you’ll have: 
1) Ways to strengthen the emotional writing and draw the reader deeper into the character’s point of view.
2) An understanding of the structural elements of a scene to help you know when and how to add deep-POV emotions.
3) Tips for how to tweak wording in order to deepen point of view on a minute level, which contributes to a richer point of view for the manuscript as a whole.
4) A finely honed radar for spotting “Telling” and shallow POV through exercises and feedback on your own writing. 
This two week workshop will consist of lessons, homework, and fun exercises for you to see lots of deep and shallow POV examples. You’ll learn lots of simple techniques to help you deepen your character’s point of view!

Bio:
Camy Tang writes romance with a kick of wasabi. Out now is her chick lit Sushi series (Sushi for One?, Only Uni, and Single Sashimi) and her romantic suspense, Deadly Intent. Originally from Hawaii, she worked as a biologist for 9 years, but now she is a staff worker for her San Jose church youth group and leads a worship team for Sunday service. She also runs the Story Sensei fiction critique service, which specializes in book doctoring. On her blog, she gives away Christian novels and ponders frivolous things. Visit her website at http://www.camytang.com/.

Non-members $15; Elements Members $9

REGISTRATION ENDS July 27th

To register for this workshop, click here.

September 2011

Ergonomics
by Dale Mayer

September   12 - 30
REGISTRATION ENDS September 7th

Description?
If you've ever endured the agony of neck strain or overuse of your mouse hand (and who hasn't?),don't miss this class. The world of a writer is unique. Many people laugh when you say you’re a hard-working writer—to them it’s an oxymoron.  Everyone has this idea that writers sit at home with a cup of coffee, write for an hour or two, and produce huge money-making bestselling novels. Everyone has a good giggle over the concept—except for writers. Many long hours are spent in front of a computer in a world that is more isolated than most other jobs. Keeping healthy requires paying attention to several different aspects of this working lifestyle.  This class focuses on the information to help you to understand proper ergonomics for writers, the problems associated with incorrect ergonomics, and ways to avoid getting into trouble.  Catch the problems before they go bad.

Bio:
Freelance writer Dale Mayer is published in nonfiction on topics ranging from resume writing to the mortgage industry. Her latest contract is on gardening. A single mother of four, she successfully manages her full-time writing career around parental responsibilities and still squeezes in time to write new manuscripts each year. Her manuscripts have earned awards in the Emily and several other contests. Dale is currently working on another taut psychological suspense with romance and paranormal elements and has just completed a YA in the same genre. Learn more about her at www.dalemayer.com.

Non-members $20; Elements Members $12"

REGISTRATION ENDS September 7th

To register for this workshop, click here.

October 2011

To be scheduled

November 2011

To be scheduled

December 2011