Enrich your story with moments from your characters' past. Characters have a history just as real people do. A character’s past provides motivation, making them believable and emotionally sympathetic. By using backstory, we give readers valuable insight into their lives. But how do we write effective backstory and where in our stories do we put […]
Make your fiction — and your non-fiction — come alive by incorporating gripping facts about what the world was really like when your story takes place! During the first four sessions, this class will cover and answer participants' questions about (1) how to perform research at many of the DC area's unique resources, including the […]
Investigate your family trees! Historian/biographer Ken Ackerman shows the nuts and bolts of investigating our family trees, going back generations. He will describe how to use archives, interviews, internet sources, family records, and memories and piece together a multigenerational story. The class is perfect for memoirists, biographers, or people interested to learn where they came […]
Grab your reader’s attention from page one! Learn how to grab your reader’s attention from the first page of your short story, novel, or personal essay! Many editors and agents never read more than a few hundred words of any submission or query, so having a compelling and well-crafted first page is critical to getting […]
Let's make the people you’re writing about in your fiction and non-fiction feel as real on the page as they do in life! Do you have trouble making the people you’re writing about in your fiction and non-fiction feel as real on the page as they do in life? In this two-session course, we’ll tackle […]
What every writer needs to know about the legal netherworld of contracts and copyrights that control our business. Most writers understandably cringe at the legal and technical jargon of book, magazine, option, and other contracts they need to sell their work. And copyrights can be downright scary. Ken Ackerman has navigated these waters often in […]
