Author: Sharla Yates

Strong characters reveal just enough backstory. How much should you reveal about a character’s history?

For Creative Nonfiction and Fiction Writers

A character walks into the room…and brings an entire lifetime of baggage with them. How much do readers need to know? How should the writer decide what to include out of all we know about the character’s real or invented past? Often, writers spend time writing extensive character backstory or family history that isn’t essential to the story, but we’re so close to the material, it’s difficult to narrow down the most important details, those necessary to move the story forward.

In this webinar, discover the key questions that unlock your character’s history—even if that’s you! —and learn how to use backstory strategically to power the plot and reveal information effectively to readers. We’ll take a look at prompts you can use to develop intentional backstory and learn methods of incorporating backstory into narrative, including dialogue, exposition, and flashback.

Whether you’re working on your first book or refining your approach to character, this webinar will give you practical tools to make better decisions about backstory—so you can write with clarity and confidence.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• IDENTIFY the essential questions that unlock your character’s past and reveal what truly matters to your story
• DEVELOP a clear strategy for deciding which backstory details to include—and which to leave out
• LEARN effective methods for weaving history into your narrative without stalling plot momentum
• UNDERSTAND how to use backstory strategically to drive plot forward and deepen reader connection

Through lecture, prompts, and discussion, you’ll leave with practical tools for creating intentional characters whose histories enhance rather than overwhelm your story.

This webinar is perfect for you if you’re:

• planning or drafting a new project and want to develop compelling character backstories from the start
• in the early stages of revision and realize your characters feel flat or their motivations unclear
• struggling with how much backstory to include—unsure whether you’re revealing too much, too little, or at the wrong times
• spending too much time writing character history that never makes it into the actual story
• feeling overwhelmed by everything you know about your character and need a strategy for deciding what matters
• writing fiction or memoir where character depth and motivation are essential to the narrative
• an emerging or developing writer looking to strengthen your craft fundamentals around character development
• stuck in backstory dumps and want to learn how to weave history seamlessly into your narrative

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Stephanie Dethlefs is a certified book coach and former teacher. She is the author of the middle grade novel Unspoken, and her stories, essays, and articles can be found in Tahoma Literary Review, Christian Science Monitor, Literary Mama, Flash Fiction Magazine, diyMFA, WOW-Women on Writing, and more. Through her online community, teaching, and coaching, Stephanie strives to help people with stories on their hearts get them onto the page with ease and self-compassion. She lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest. Find her on Substack at WritingFromTheGroundUp.Substack.com.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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Writers are often searching for their “voice” on the page. But in good writing, especially in memoir, writers balance multiple voices to tell their stories. 

For Creative Nonfiction and Memoir Writers

As a teacher of creative writing for the last 30 years, I have found that the goal of most emerging writers is to “find their voice.” But why is this idea of “voice” phrased in the singular? 

In this webinar, we will not only discuss the many voices within us but also talk about how the singular voice in contemporary American memoirs is a fallacy. That we live in a fractured place, with a fractured history, occupied by fractured citizens. But there is beauty in fractures. It is what memoir writers explore—the cracks and crevices of our lives. 

During the webinar, we will look at voice from many perspectives: 1) what voices get us to the page or prevent us from getting to the page; 2) how writers control voice in their writing—like Lidia Yuknavitch, Kiese Laymon, and Stephen Kuusisto; 3) analyze how multiple voices weave seamlessly through one another.  We explore our many fractured identities and how to put those identities on the page.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• ANALYZE how other writers use multiple voices in their life writing
• INTERROGATE the myth of the singular voice in American memoir
• CONSIDER the relationship between fractured identity, history, and narrative voice.
• CREATE language rules for our voices
• REFLECT on which voices enable or obstruct a writer’s ability to tell the truth

This webinar is ideal for intermediate and advanced writers who are…

• writing a memoir or deeply interested in exploring life writing
• interested in nontraditional memoirs
• eager to deepen their understanding of voice in complex, nontraditional writing

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Ira Sukrungruang is the author of the forthcoming book, Under and Up: Fatherhood and Fear in the Age of Distrust. He has published four nonfiction books: This Jade World, Buddha’s Dog & Other Meditations, Southside Buddhist, and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist; the short story collection The Melting Season; and the poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night.  Ira is the recipient of the 2022 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year in Nonfiction, 2015 American Book Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, an Arts and Letters Fellowship, and the Anita Claire Scharf Award in Poetry. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Rumpus, American Poetry Review, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. He is one of the founding editors of Sweet: A Literary Confection (sweetlit.com), and is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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When you understand the purpose of your story, you can choose the best perspective to bring it to life. 

For All Writers

Whether writing fiction, memoir, or poetry, understanding point of view/POV is essential to clear, compelling writing. One of the most complex craft tools available to writers, point of view is frequently a source of frustration and confusion. Point of view in story is so much more than your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-person pronoun choice. Point of view depends on a story’s purpose, the perspective that a character (or narrator/author) inhabits, and the emotional distance that the point of view has from both character and story. To top it off, ‘point of view’ and ‘perspective’ also mean ‘opinion,’ which is not at all what they mean in creative writing. 

Even if you’re confident in your current point of view choice for your work-in-progress, when you inevitably find yourself stuck in a scene, an exercise in changing the point of view can reveal new aspects of the scene and subject, creating deeper and more compelling stories and poems. 

This webinar balances craft instruction on the three primary points of view (and their subsets) with opportunities to practice playing with less familiar choices and distances to see how they impact your scene.

Bring a short scene you’re working on or stuck in if you’d like to use that for practice, but that’s not required to participate in the exercises.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• LEARN the three major point-of-view options and their subsets
• EXPLORE how psychic/emotional distance impacts point of view
• VIEW examples of a variety of point-of-view strategies
• DISCUSS the pros and cons of different point-of-view choices
• PRACTICE applying various point-of-view choices to a sample scene

This webinar is ideal for writers…

• Are overwhelmed by the enormity of point of view
• Are curious about how point of view can deepen their writing
• Want to experiment with unfamiliar points of view
• Consistently use only one point of view in their work and want to broaden their tools
• Frequently receive feedback that they’ve “changed point of view” or are “head-hopping” and don’t know how to fix that

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Laraine Herring’s memoir, A Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravens, was released in 2021 from Regal House. She’s the editor of the anthology Becoming Real: Women Reclaim the Power of the Imagined through Speculative Nonfiction (Pact Press, 2024), and a trilogy of writing books from Shambhala, including Writing Begins with the Breath: Embodying Your Authentic Voice. She’s a retired professor of creative writing and psychology, and has worked with writers for thirty years. She’s also an illustrator and a grief counselor, and creator of The Grief Forest: a book about what we don’t talk about. She founded the online ‘zine Hags on Fire, a place for women to share stories about menopause, and co-designed The Imaginal Memoir Cave immersion program with Gayle Brandeis. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Tiferet, The Rumpus, The Manifest-Station, and many more places. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Counseling Psychology, and lives in the mountains of northern Arizona with many cats.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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“Sometimes it’s not enough simply to peer intently into your own soul. Sometimes you have to look out the window and see the world in all its complicated glory.” ~ Philip Gerard, The Art of Creative Research: A Field Guide for Writers.

For Creative Nonfiction and Fiction Writers

For many writers, “research” got separated from our creative impulses sometime in high school. We associate sources and quotes with credibility rather than inspiration. We assume that poets, essayists, and novelists operate purely from their muse, that it’s only imagination that produces art. 

But research is an important but often overlooked collaborator and powerful tool in the writing process. Even in this squishy age of “truthiness” and “fake news,” writers can enhance their fictional narratives, poetic images, and personal stories with chosen facts, carefully uncovered and discovered.

In this webinar, we will examine how writers such as Anthony Doerr, Sabrina Imbler, Adam Hochschild, Sandra Tsing Loh, Hilary Mantel, Robert Pinsky, Sarah Vowell and Ellen Austin-Li use “creative research” in their work, and to what effect. We’ll discuss the ways “fact” can help you reach your truth — whether you’re writing historical fiction about the 18th century or trying to accurately capture a hazy family memory — and how to make facts and data come alive on the page.

We’ll look at preparing a research plan for your own projects, balancing research and writing time, and how not to get lost in the research. We’ll also go over research and reporting tools and skills, including interviewing, fieldwork, and using archives.

In this webinar, you will:

• DISCOVER the many ways in which research can be used in creative writing
• LEARN about research methods and techniques
• EXPLORE how research can be applied to their own projects
• UNDERSTAND how to integrate facts seamlessly into narrative without overwhelming voice, scene, or momentum
• DEVELOP a flexible research plan tailored to your genre, project stage, and writing goals

This webinar is ideal for writers who:

• wonder how to navigate fact versus fiction
• are curious about how to integrate research into their projects
• want their work to feel grounded, credible, and vivid
• feel intimidated by research but suspect it could strengthen their writing
• are working on projects that require accuracy without sacrificing imagination

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Ethan Gilsdorf is a writer, teacher, performer, and a huge nerd. He is the author of the award-winning memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. His work appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wired, Salon, O the Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, Brevity, Electric Literature, Poetry, and The Southern Review, among other publications, and is named “Notable” by The Best American Essays. 


Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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You have the raw materials of a story or the start of an idea. But how can you turn information into artful narrative? By exploring the craft of the literary list, you’ll find the moments of surprise and epiphany that turn bare facts into powerful art.

For Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, & Poetry

Unexpected juxtapositions create meaning. Unusual sequences. Well-framed themes. In writers like Tracy K. Smith, Sonya Huber, Pablo Neruda, and Christina Sharpe, we discover—and can learn from—the power of deliberately chosen details and masterfully constructed themes.

Just as a puzzle becomes a picture, it’s the connections and the order of information that transform moments into a compelling narrative. In this webinar, we’ll examine how Pablo Neruda’s poetry collection Odes to Common Things proves the power of the list as a starting place for a story and see how poems that begin as seemingly simple declarations evolve into compelling narratives. 

We’ll learn from the masters. We’ll practice artful list building. We’ll explore, as well, the child’s dot-to-dot puzzle and how its emphasis on dots, lines, and color can help us frame our works in progress. 

Prepare to write briefly to prompts. Prepare to discover epiphanies. Prepare for a process that is not just fruitful but fun. Beth will close by sharing the process she used to write Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story, which draws on fact, memory, and imagination—on dots, and lines, and color.

In this webinar, you will:

• ENJOY the clever evolution of Neruda’s poems
• EXPLORE the power of lists in the making of stories, prose and poems
• LEARN to convert stodgy facts into interesting scenes
• GAIN insights into the literary fulcrum and cascade (and what, precisely, those are)
• PURSUE the elevated ending in your own writing
• LEARN how Beth Kephart developed a constellation of dots to create the hybrid novel based on her family history

This webinar is ideal for writers who:

• having compiled or discovered facts, wish to advance the story
• wishing to write intimate memoir, poetry or fiction
• begin with lists, or writers who have eschewed them
• wishing to have more fun with the process

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

National Book Award finalist Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of some forty books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher, a paper artist, and the author of the popular Substack, The Hush and the Howl. My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera was a finalist in the 2025 Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award. Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story was a Silver Medalist in the North American Book Awards (historical fiction). “Conversations with Women in Blue” won the 2025 Creative Nonfiction Prize from The Porch.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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Essays on writing craft and the writing life are a great opportunity for you to get noticed—and published.

For All Writers | Included in the Season Pass

This may sound kind of meta (and it is), but writing about writing is a prime way for emerging and experienced writers to get published, build platform, develop their voice, and join the literary communities they’d like to be part of. 

In this 75-minute live webinar, Andrea, an editor at The Brevity Blog, will take you through the steps of how to write powerful, thoughtful, and fun essays using published examples from The Brevity Blog and other key literary outlets as a hands-on guide.

Attendees will reflect on who they are as a writer, what they write, and what they’ve learned about writing and themselves. Andrea will present the wide range of potential topics for these essays and review the key elements and craft that help published pieces succeed and connect with readers. Considering your earlier reflection, you’ll brainstorm ideas for essays you can write and how to approach them. 

You’ll take away a template to follow when writing about writing, a list of potential outlets with detailed descriptions and tips for submitting, and links to strong essay examples published in the outlets

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• DISCOVER what writing about writing means and the impact these essays have
• FIND potential essay topics that mine your own writing experience 
• EXPLORE key elements to writing an engaging and insightful essay about writing craft, writing process and your writing life
• LEARN why and how writing about writing leads to publication, builds platform, and grows your writing community.
• RECEIVE a list of potential outlets to target with your essays, along with specific examples
• LEARN how to develop and (when required) submit a pitch for your essay

This webinar is ideal for emerging and experienced writers who…

• want  to get published, gain readers, and get noticed
• have a longer work published or in process who want to build their platform and create awareness for their project
• want to engage with and create a literary community
• want to write about their art and writing process to establish and share their expertise
• want to support and spread the word about their work as teacher, editor, or publisher
• want to provoke thought on a writing topic or raise a call to action

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Andrea A. Firth is an essayist, editor and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s an Editor at The Brevity Blog, cofounder of Diablo Writers’ Workshop, and has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California. Andrea has taught dozens of courses on a wide range of creative writing topics, including how to submit and get published in literary magazines and commercial outlets. Her writing focus is personal essay, which she writes about in her Substack newsletter Everything Essay! 

Andrea was a finalist for The Missouri Review’s 2021 Perkoff Prize in creative nonfiction, and her work has appeared in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Allium, Please See Me, Motherwell, The Coachella Review among others. Andrea leads a free, monthly co-working session called Submit It Now! at Chill Subs, and hopes you will join her there.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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Most newsletter advice focuses on platform choice, schedules, and metrics. This webinar starts with a more important question: why you want a newsletter at all—and how to build one that actually fits you.

For All Writers & Creatives | Included in the Season Pass

We all want two things: 1) time and creative focus to write, and 2) for the work we’ve poured ourselves into to land with the right reader and matter to them as much as it matters to us. One of the best ways to find and connect with those people is an email newsletter—but the process of making a newsletter can suck away our creative time.

Email newsletters are one of the most powerful, versatile, and human tools you have for finding readers and keeping them close. (We know this to be true because every build-your-author-platform article ever written since the dawn of the internet has said very clearly: YOU MUST HAVE AN EMAIL LIST.) 

And yet, you may not be sure how to begin, what your newsletter should look like, or why the emails you promised yourself (and your subscribers) you’d send every other week haven’t gone out in two years. It’s frustrating and confusing, and most of the advice out there is an endless list of growth hacks and one-size-fits-all templates. None of which, ironically, actually fits you.

This 90-minute session invites you to see the newsletter not as a task to manage or a list to grow, but as a durable creative practice that supports your writing life, your career, and your sense of connection over the long haul. We’ll explore why newsletters matter, why they remain powerful even in a noisy digital landscape, and how getting clear on your “why” makes every later decision—frequency, format, platform, etc.—simpler and more sustainable.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• CLARIFY what a newsletter is actually for—and what it is not
• LEARN the major newsletter “shapes”
• EXPLORE real-world examples of successful newsletters across genres and approaches
• DISCOVER why newsletters outperform social media in trust, engagement, and longevity—and why “owning your assets” is crucial
• LEARN how to build audience on a believable, sustainable timeline
• RETHINK newsletters as creative acts—extensions of your voice, obsessions, and service to your ideal readers

This webinar is ideal for writers and Creatives who…

• feel overwhelmed or frustrated by conflicting advice about author platforms
• want a newsletter that feels personal, sustainable, and human—not performative
• have started (and stopped) a newsletter that felt like a chore rather than a choice
• know they “should” have a newsletter but don’t know what they’d actually write … or why anyone would want to read it
• want clarity and direction more than tactics and trends

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Stephen Knezovich is a marketing strategist who works with writers, artists, and arts nonprofits. He is the co-founder of the literary magazine Short Reads, the marketing director and co-founder of Ascender Book Services, the marketing strategist for Off Assignment, a collage artist, and the curator of two email newsletters: Read This and Gluu. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two kids.

Stephen’s philosophy is simple: marketing should be creative, personal, human—and sustainable.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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