We are thrilled to present you with a fully fleshed out agenda for this year’s in-person event: The 2023 Writer Unboxed UnConference, which will be held in Salem, MA, from 11/6/23-11/10/23!
Please note that morning sessions will be held in the ballroom at the Salem Waterfront Hotel, and afternoon sessions will split into two tracks, with sessions in either the hotel or the historic House of the Seven Gables. “It’s so hard to choose between UnConference sessions!” is something we’ve often heard in the past. This year, we’ve tried to make your choice easier: Track 1 sessions [T1] are geared more toward first-draft issues, and Track 2 sessions [T2] for later drafts. That said, attendees are free to take whichever session appeals the most.
Sign up for the 2023 Writer Unboxed UnConference today, on Eventbrite!
MONDAY
11/6/23
Registration
12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Scrivener Office Hours, with Gwen Hernandez
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Need help with Scrivener? Have a burning question about setting it up for you latest project, adding the fun bells and whistles, using it to support your process, or exporting your manuscript? Whatever your Scrivener question, visit the author of Scrivener For Dummies, Gwen Hernandez, during the hours of 3-5 to find answers. Feel free to bring your laptop for personalized assistance!
Genre Meetup / Cocktail Hour (cash bar)
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Welcome Dinner
7:00 PM
Donald Maass, WU UnConference in 2014
TUESDAY
11/7/23
Morning Pages
6:00 AM – 9:00 AMWriting. Coffee. Sometimes our morning needs are just that simple. Space for quiet writing before sessions begin provided–along with coffee.
Good Chaos: a Provocation and Invitation, with Therese Walsh
9:00 AM – 10:30 AMChaos is the root of all evil. Or is it? An opening to the ways disruption can propel character, story, and even you as a writer forward as we begin our week together.
Anger, Anguish, and Authenticity: Bring Yourself to the Page, with Donald Maass
10:30 AM – 12:30 PMThis hands-on workshop reveals a different approach to writing authentically, proceeding from personal experience directly to story situations. The key to vivid story is your own life, so bring writing materials, your story—and yourself.
[T1] Stress-test Your Brainstorms, with Greer Macallister
2:00 PM – 3:30 PMIn this workshop, Greer Macallister will talk you through how to stress-test your best ideas by putting plot and character through their paces in just a few days time. By doing this, you’ll quickly see which skeletons are worth fleshing out–and even have the bony beginnings of your first draft.
[T2] Get Emotion on the Page in a Way Your Reader Can Feel, with Susan DeFreitas
2:00 PM – 3:30 PMLearn what it takes to get emotion on the page in a way readers can feel—and in a way that makes them care about the protagonist’s story—at three levels: story structure, storytelling, and prose. You will leave with sturdy tools for creating that most magical, ephemeral effect of fiction, emotion in the reader.
[T1] Why Are Your Characters the Way They Are? Home in on Character Essentials, with Tiffany Yates Martin
4:00 PM – 5:30 PMWho your characters are, what they want, and why they do what they do is rooted in who they have been and what they have done—in other words, backstory. But backstory is not the story, and not everything that makes up a character’s past and current life outside the story is relevant to it. This session will explore how to determine which threads in the fabric of your characters’ lives are essential to your story and how to mine those areas to create rich, believable, fully fleshed, cohesive characters.
[T2] Incite Your Protagonist to Go the Distance, with Kathryn Craft
4:00 PM – 5:30 PMWhen stories flag halfway through, it’s often because the protagonist didn’t start their journey with enough fuel in the story tank. That fuel comes from a well-fed inciting incident, which can be trickier to construct than you first realize. We’ll analyze important aspects of craft that feed energy to this all-important story event and send the protagonist on his way.
Community Conversation: Your Inner Rebel Asks the Question, with Therese Ann Fowler
7:00 PMWriters are often advised to cultivate their unique voice. Yet when it comes to getting an agent or book deal, the literary culture often rewards conformity foremost. This dissonance can stifle, discourage, or even paralyze a writer. Let’s talk about how to access creative power when conventional ideals may not apply to or benefit our work.
House of the Seven Gables in autumn
WEDNESDAY
11/8/23
Morning Pages
6:00 AM – 9:00 AMWriting. Coffee. Sometimes our morning needs are just that simple. Space for quiet writing before sessions begin provided–along with coffee.
Hone Your (Character’s) Voice, with Susan DeFreitas
9:00 AM – 10:50 AMIn this workshop, author, editor, and book coach Susan DeFreitas will lead you through a succession of exercises designed to unlock the mysteries of voice in fiction—and clarify what it is that makes each of our POV characters unique, at the level of diction, syntax, and storytelling. You will leave with iterative techniques designed to make your writing feel unique, personal, and alive on the page—and an understanding of the key role this plays in capturing readers’ attention.
Heart: Make Your Story Memorable, with Donald Maass
11:00 AM – 12:30 PMThis hands-on workshop explores the factors that cause readers—and agents and editors—to connect with your story. Develop the story moments that matter the most: insights that transform, inner truths found, crossroads than change everything, and more.
[T1] Spread Your Story’s Impact, with Kathryn Craft
2:00 PM – 3:30 PMYour story may have profound importance for your protagonist, but consider why your reader should care. With each additional character affected, your story will feel more important. In this hands-on session, we’ll look at ways to generate story movement by making the protagonist’s personal consequences into public stakes.
[T2] Reinvent Your Writer’s Toolbox, with Heather Webb
2:00 PM – 3:30 PMYou’ve written novels before but this book is trying to kill you. Every time you approach it, you flounder. Maybe it’s the words, maybe it’s the characters, maybe it’s the structure, but something is very wrong. You’re beginning to wonder if you’re broken. It isn’t broken and neither are you. It’s all about evolving your process. Heather Webb will help you test the tools in your writer’s toolbox and discuss how to build new tools that you may need to finish your novel-in-progress.
[T1] Anatomy of the Novel: Create a Novel Blueprint in 4 (Mostly Easy) Steps, with Susan DeFreitas
4:00 PM – 5:30 PMThree-act structure, Story Grid, Save the Cat, The Hero’s Journey—with so many different structures out there, which one should you pick? In this workshop, Susan shares her novel blueprint process, which honors the essential spirit of all of these structures while allowing for maximum creativity on the part of the author. You will leave with the Anatomy of the Novel workbook, which you can use to create a sturdy, moving, marketable structure for your WIP.
[T2] Rescue Your Novel’s Sagging Middle, with Tiffany Yates Martin
4:00 PM – 5:30 PMWhen a manuscript loses its momentum, generally the issue is one of several culprits: The plot has lost its cohesion, the characters aren’t progressing on their arcs, the story stakes have deflated, or tension and suspense have lagged. These problems are almost always fixable. This session will offer techniques for diagnosing what may be derailing a story, and specific, actionable ways to get things back on track.
Community Conversation: Process Therapy, with Gwen Hernandez
7:00 PMAre You Should’ing On Your Process? Consider how you listen to and lean into your creative instinct. During this community conversation guided by author Gwen Hernandez, we’ll discuss the ways we write, including the wide range of choices between Plotter and Pantser, as we help you discover your unique approach to creating a story.
Fort Pickering (Winter Island) Lighthouse, Salem, MA
THURSDAY
11/9/23
Morning Pages
6:00 AM – 8:30 AMWriting. Coffee. Sometimes our morning needs are just that simple. Space for quiet writing before sessions begin provided–along with coffee.
Your Story is Our Story: Create a Universal World, with Donald Maass
8:30 AM – 10:00 AMEven in stories set in times, places and/or cultures far from our own, there are elements that cause us to see ourselves in a story world. In this hands-on workshop, discover what those elements are and how to use them.
Analyze Like an Editor + Live Edits! with Tiffany Yates Martin
10:00 AM – 12:30 PMAnalyzing other people’s stories allows you to see and evaluate only what’s there and what may need strengthening or further developing—a crucial skill for writing and editing your own work. This session offers specific techniques to deepen your mastery of story craft and make you a stronger, more skilled editor and writer—without ever touching the keyboard. *** Immediately following will be
LIVE EDITS
Using pages of participants’ WIPs, we’ll discuss what’s coming across on the page, whether it’s effective and serving the story, and how to address areas where it might not be. This hands-on approach allows authors to see how to edit and revise their own writing by assessing others’ work, and to witness techniques in action.
[T1] Character Arc = Character Complexity: Develop Depth and Nuance, with Susan DeFreitas
2:00 PM – 3:30 PMIn this workshop, you’ll explore one of the most vital components of your protagonist’s complexity–their character arc. By digging into the backstory that underlies their arc, revealing the protagonist in the process of being challenged to grow and change, and, ultimately, dramatizing them in the midst of a genuine transformation, you can create a powerful sense of depth and nuance in the character who matters most in your novel, the protagonist.
[T2] Point Beyond the End: Consider Your Story’s Resonance, with Kathryn Craft
2:00 PM – 3:30 PMWe’ll identify the structural elements that contribute to a satisfying ending so you can make sure that your project delivers—and continues to resonate once the back cover is closed. After all, when recommending a story, you may well have said, “This story starts slow but hang in there, it all comes together in the end.” But who would purchase the book if told, “You’ll love this—it starts with a bang then fizzles out altogether”?
[T1] Action! Learn Powerful Storytelling Techniques from the World of Film, with Desmond Hall
4:00 PM – 5:30 PMThe movie world offers numerous techniques for powerful storytelling, and Desmond Hall has picked up many of them over the years, from working with the great director/screenwriter Spike Lee, and to taking classes with late director Mike Nichols and screenwriting guru, Robert McKee. During this session, he’ll share some of these techniques and lead a discussion about ways writers can integrate methods from the world of film into the novel-writing process.
[T2] Bring Characters to Life on the Page, with Tiffany Yates Martin
4:00 PM – 5:30 PMIt’s not an exaggeration to suggest that every detail in your story can be used intentionally to create and convey character. In this session we’ll explore how you can use every preference, behavior, action, reaction, thought, habit, interaction, etc., as a deliberate brushstroke in painting a memorable portrait of characters who spring off the page with texture, depth, and dimension.
Community Conversation: Book Therapy, with Desmond Hall and Heather Webb
7:00 PMBook Therapy has become a staple of UnCon. Bring your troubled plot points, characters, structure considerations, etc., and let’s troubleshoot them as a group.
fall foliage in Salem, MA
FRIDAY
11/10/23
Morning Pages
6:00 AM – 9:00 AMWriting. Coffee. Sometimes our morning needs are just that simple. Space for quiet writing before sessions begin provided–along with coffee.
Pleasure > Discipline: Center Your Creative Practice, with Susan DeFreitas
9:00 AM – 10:00 AMExplode the myth of discipline in writing and explore the revolutionary, transformative power of centering pleasure in your creative practice. Drawing from her own work as a writer and a book coach, as well as the latest findings in the neuroscience of habit formation, Susan’s final presentation for the UnConference will leave you equipped and galvanized to take your writing practice to the next level.
Write With the Freedom of Mastery, with Donald Maass
10:00 AM – 11:30 AMHas your fire for your fiction faded over time? This hands-on workshop will inspire you to write like you are at the peak of your mastery: all skills honed, nothing left to prove, total freedom yours. You are writing now for yourself alone, and so what will you do with it? We’ll explore tales illuminating eternal mysteries, the essential human condition, what no one has ever said before, and more.
Catch It as You Can: Center Now, Produce Later, with Therese Walsh
11:30 AMSuggestions for how to sort though notes and hit the ground running after the event has ended.
Know Your “Why” and Your “Enough,” with Tiffany Yates Martin
1:30 PM – 2:30 PMChoosing the writing life can mean facing uncertainty, self-doubt, setbacks, the vagaries of the marketplace, low pay, and daunting odds. It’s a career path where often the creator is the person with the least amount of control over its trajectory. Yet we can still create fulfilling, meaningful writing careers despite all these challenges by defining two key elements of our creative lives: What drives us to do it at the most foundational level, and what constitutes “success” for ourselves in our writing. Join this discussion to help you define these two core aspects of your creative path so you can build and sustain joy and satisfaction in your writing career—no matter what shape it may take—throughout your life.
Remember the Power of You, with Donald Maass
2:45 PM – 4:30 PMConferences are inspiring but facing the keyboard afterward can be deflating. It may seem there is too much to do and too little confidence with which to do it. This workshop empowers you to use what you’ve learned this week every time you sit down to type, and to make every page the best you will ever write. Impossible? Not if every page and story moment belongs to you. The more it does, without barriers or fear, the more your story can belong to all of us.
Hold Tight to That Thing We Do, with Therese Walsh
4:30 PMClosing thoughts
After Party, with Your Dancing Shoes
8:00 PM – 11:59 PM
Learn more, and sign up for the 2023 Writer Unboxed UnConference today, on Eventbrite!
House of the Seven Gables at night