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 […]
Take your essays to the next level. This workshop is for writers who have a good understanding of what a personal essay is, are open to exploring further the many forms a personal essay can take, and are already working seriously in the genre. The focus will be participants’ writing, supplemented with assigned readings. Participants […]
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 […]
Inspiration, accountability, and the tools you need to get your essays out into the world! Join us for five months of craft lessons, workshops, editor visits, and personal editorial feedback! This small and inclusive class meets weekly, alternating between live Zoom sessions and asynchronous lessons, with the goal of creating an intimate, writer-based community of […]
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 […]
