When YA authors, Susan Dennard (Something Strange & Deadly), Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass), Kat Zhang (What’s Left Of Me), and Erin Bowman (Taken) announced they were going on tour, I knew right away I’d be there. Luckily, the tour stopped close to home and I’ve been following these authors for a year, so it was exciting to know I’d be able to support them when they came to my area. But I didn’t even get to the best part.

What separates their tour from the rest are the free writing workshops they are giving in addition to the signings. You can read all about it and see if they’re coming to a city near you here.

During the workshop, attendees were instructed to participate in a number of writing exercises. One 5-minute prompt led to everyone picking between a key, a flashlight, and a flame and writing whatever came to mind. Another exercise involved attendees writing with background music. It was so much fun sitting back and listening to the stories that were written by the young writers at the roundtable as well as from the authors. I especially loved seeing how the tone of the stories written to the music were the same but the stories themselves were completely different. It never ceases to amaze me what goes on in everyone’s minds after hearing the same piece of music.

I also couldn’t help but smile to myself in my seat because writing with a time limit just reminded me of a #BAMFWordBattle. At one point in between writing exercises, Sarah mentioned that when she first started writing, it wasn’t easy coming up with ideas. And look at her now. Congrats Sarah! 🙂 During the last writing prompt, Susan opened up her work for critique which reminded me that I have to characterize my settings when I jump back into revisions this month …that among other things I have to do before sending my ms off to my CP. I can’t wait to kill these last few rounds of revisions! I can’t wait!

Anyway, a Q&A followed and attendees were given a binder full of information along with signed bookmarks and a book each from BEA. I sat out on the latter – I got more than enough books at BEA and still have sore shoulders to remind me of this fact. Plus, I was on the older end of the spectrum among the attendees so it was more fun sitting back and watching the younger writers’ eyes light up as the books were passed around. So sweet! Really, it’s a gift in itself just being around other writers since writing is usually so solitary. As the workshop came to a close, I found myself reading the contents of the binder and got a kick out of two of the settings being named “Susanica” and “Erindale.” The little things. 🙂

Photo Credit: Young Authors Give Back Tumblr

Here are some tips you’ll take away from the workshop:

* The longer a description and the more details you share, the more you promise.

* One thing your protagonist should have is flaws. Real flaws. Being clumsy or bad at math isn’t a flaw. Those are fake flaws. But being impatient, or scared of X-thing, or hotheaded-those are flaws. Flaws provide great opportunity for plot points because they can lead to mistakes and ultimately to character growth.

* In regards to description and backstory, the key is to always try to incorporate these things within the scene’s actions. A character should never simply lay out how someone looks. The features should appear before you as the character interacts with the person.

This was such an inspirational and motivating experience. I highly recommend you attend a workshop if they’re coming to a city near you. Registration is here. Whether or not you are able to attend, I also highly recommend visiting the blog that all four authors contribute to, Publishing Crawl. Just go ahead and make it your home page because you’ll be on it all the time.

Thank you so much Susan Dennard, Sarah J. Maas, Kat Zhang, and Erin Bowman for putting together such an awesome workshop! Good luck with the rest of the tour! See you when you come back to the area!