Workshops...

Thrilling fiction takes readers to the edge of their seats.
Horror fiction dares to push them off.  Rather than simply
giving you a lesson in "suspense," in Horror Unbound:
Pushing Your Reader Off the Ledge Michael Arnzen takes it one step further, encouraging writers to flaunt the creative license that our genre gives us to generate a deeper sense of dread, if not over-the-top panic. This is not so much a workshop in how to help you, as it is a short course in making your reader feel the emotion of helplessness — that swimmy sense of panic we get when the floor drops out and we feel that gut-lurching sensation that something very, very bad is about to happen.

Arnzen – a four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author and professor of Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University – will help you let go of what is holding you (and perhaps your reader) back, by putting more thrills into your thriller, and more danger into your dread. This session will feature a group discussion of genre techniques and an analysis of examples, followed by an in class writing exercise and collective workshop. Visit him online at his official author website.

Horror Unbound:

Pushing Your Reader Off the Ledge

         Instructor: Michael A. Arnzen

Four Color Fear:

Writing Comics and Graphic Novels

Instructor: Jonathan Maberry

Terror in Verse:

The Art of Dark Poetry

Instructor: Christopher Conlon

What is dark poetry? Join Stoker Award-winning editor and poet Christopher Conlon for an investigation into the traditions of terror in verse, coupled with workshop exercises to help you develop your own morbid metaphors and startling stanzas.

Christopher Conlon is best-known as the editor of the Stoker Award-winning He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson. He is the author of four books of poems, including the recent Starkweather Dreams; two collections of stories; and a Stoker-nominated novel, Midnight on Mourn Street, which he has recently adapted for the stage. His newest editing project is A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock. Conlon lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, where for the past ten years he has hosted a popular poetry reading series. Visit him online at his official author website.

Story Structure for Screenwriters (and Authors)

Instructor: Alexandra Sokoloff

In this workshop you'll learn how to use techniques of film writing such as:

· the High Concept Premise

· the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure

· the Storyboard Grid

· the Index Card Method of Plotting

as well as tricks of film pacing and suspense, character arc and drive, visual storytelling, and building image systems — to structure and color your script or novel for maximum emotional impact, unbearable suspense and riveting pacing, no matter what genre you're writing in.

You'll start to create your own personalized workbook of genre tricks tailored to you own brand of storytelling and a collage book to build visual image systems. And the emphasis on premise is invaluable for crafting that all-important pitch.

Whether you're just starting to develop a story or rewriting for maximum impact, this workshop can help make the process successful, easy, and fun.

Alexandra Sokoloff is a screenwriter who has sold original suspense and thriller scripts and adapted novels for numerous Hollywood studios, for producers such as Michael Bay, Laura Ziskin, David Heyman, and Neal Moritz. Her adaptation of Sabine Deitmer's psychological thriller Cold Kisses was filmed in Germany.

Alex's debut ghost novel, The Harrowing, was nominated for an Anthony Award and a Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel.  Her supernatural thrillers The Price and The Unseen are now out from St. Martin’s Press, with Book of Shadows and a paranormal suspense for Silhouette Nocturne coming out in 2010.  Alex recently won the International Thriller Writers Thriller Award for Best Short Fiction of the year for her short story, “The Edge of Seventeen”, in The Darker Mask.

Alex has served on the Board of Directors of the WGA, the screenwriters' union, and the Board of Directors of Mystery Writers of America, and is the founder of WriterAction.com, an online community and resource center of 2000+ professional screenwriters. 

Visit her official author website and her internationally acclaimed blog on Screenwriting Tricks for Authors.

High-Tech Marketing Strategies for the Low-Tech Writer

Instructor: Matt Schwartz

Matt Schwartz, creator of Shocklines.com and VP of Digital Marketing for Random House Publishing Group, will provide you a crash-course in effective ways of marketing your book – and yourself – using the latest digital tools while staying on a tight budget. From widgets to websites to blogs to social networking, you will receive a crash course in the best ways to take advantage of all the tools you've heard about — and a guide to the best tools that remain the industry's best kept secrets.

Matt Schwartz is the Vice President of Digital Marketing and Strategy for Random House Publishing Group. He has spent more than 13 years working in the publishing industry with a focus on e-commerce, online merchandising, and online marketing, both viral and traditional. In addition to having been editorial director for BarnesandNoble.com and director of online marketing for Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, he also was the creator of the ‘90s popular genre portal HorrorNet.com and was the owner of Shocklines.com, one of the world’s largest bookstores devoted to genre fiction.

And Now for the Real Horror:

Publishing Contracts 101

Instructors: Leslie S. Klinger and Donald Maass

This informative workshop will alert you to the key issues in typical publishing contracts. Leslie S. Klinger, attorney/writer, and Donald Maass, agent/writer, discuss what opportunities and pitfalls should (and shouldn’t) be the subject of your negotiations. Invaluable information for the new writer signing that first book deal to the seasoned professional renegotiating a new one!

More like master classes than workshops, Stoker Weekend 2011 brings you a series of intensive, two-hour courses presented by master craftsmen (and women). Each workshop will be held in a comfortable 84-seat amphitheater with multi-media capabilities in the hotel’s lower level.

Unlike previous conventions, attendance in our workshops is included with your conference registration, with no added fees. Seating is limited, and attendance is first come/first served.

Registration is REQUIRED. Please email workshops@stokerweekend2011.org to register. Kindly note that you must first be a paid convention attendee to sign up for one of our workshops.

Les Klinger

Donald Maass

Leslie S. Klinger is considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. He is the editor of the three-volume set The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, published by W.W. Norton in 2004 and 2005. The first two volumes, The Complete Short Stories, won the Edgar™, the highest award of the Mystery Writers of America, for “Best Critical/Biographical” work in 2005 and were short-listed for every other major mystery award. The third volume, The Novels was nominated for an Edgar™ and a Quill™ award as well as every other major mystery award. In 2008, The New Annotated Dracula was published by W. W. Norton to critical acclaim. His current project is The Annotated Sandman for DC Comics, due out in 2012. He is also co-editing a collection of classic essays on Sherlock Holmes with New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King, to be published later this year.

Klinger is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and served as the Series Editor for the Manuscript Series of The Baker Street Irregulars; he is currently the Series Editor for the BSI’s History Series. He served three terms as Chapter President of the SoCal Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and on its National Board. He is also a member of the Horror Writers Association. He lectures frequently on Holmes, Dracula, and their worlds, including frequent panels at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, BoucherCon, World Horror Convention, VampireCon, and Comic-Con, and he teaches regular courses on Holmes and Dracula at UCLA Extension. His introductions and essays have appeared in numerous books, graphic novels, academic journals, newspapers, and Playboy Magazine; he also reviews books for the Los Angeles Times.

Les and his wife Sharon have five adult children and live in Malibu with their dog and three cats. Klinger’s day job is a practice in Westwood specializing in tax, estate planning, and business law. Visit his official author website.

A literary agent in New York, Donald Maass's agency sells more than 150 novels every year to major publishers in the U.S. and overseas. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004) and The Fire in Fiction (2009). He is a past president of the Association of Authors' Representatives, Inc.