June 15 – The Scoop: Using Television Techniques to Craft a Killer Novel with Hank Phillippi Ryan

Here’s what you need to produce a successful television story: Develop memorable characters. Build suspense. Show conflict. Tell a compelling story. Find justice. Here’s what you need to become a successful television journalist: Never miss your deadlines. Create a brilliant and flawless product every time. Be completely devoted to your job. Here’s the scoopWhat you need to write a successful novel–in any genre!– are exactly the same things!  Hank Phillippi Ryan’s won 30 Emmy awards for her investigative reporting…and the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha and Anthony awards for her crime fiction. How? She’ll will divulge the tricks of the TV news trade—and give you a top ten list to help you make your book the best it can be.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC affiliate. She’s won 32 EMMYs, 12 Edward R. Murrow awards and dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. A bestselling author of six mystery novels, Ryan has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and for THE OTHER WOMAN, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a “master at crafting suspenseful mysteries” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.” Her newest thriller, THE WRONG GIRL, has the extraordinary honor of winning the 2013 Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel! A six-week Boston Globe bestseller, it is also an Anthony and Daphne Award nominee, a Patriot Ledger bestseller, and was dubbed “Another winner” in a Booklist starred review and “Stellar” by Library Journal.  She’s a founding teacher at Mystery Writers of America University and 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime. Watch for her next novel, TRUTH BE TOLD, on October 7, 2014. Visit her online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @hank_phillippi and Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage.

May 18 – Developing Romance Characters and Conflict Using Myers-Briggs Personality Type

Want to learn a new method for crafting well-rounded romance protagonists? And for using the differences between your protagonists’ personalities to drive your story’s conflict, and avoid having contrived plots push around your characters? This workshop will give you an overview of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a psychometric tool designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions, and will explore how to use MBTI to craft romance characters with individual personalities. We’ll also practice using MBTI insights about our protagonists to develop character-driven conflict.

In preparation for this workshop, you might want to check out one of the online MBTI-like questionnaires—complete one to find out your own personality type, or take it on behalf of a character you have in mind, to find out hers/his.

You can find sample questionnaires online at:

http://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

http://personality-testing.info/tests/JUNG.php

Jackie C. Horne (INTJ) has held a myriad of book-related jobs, including typesetter, children’s book editor, English professor, book reviewer, blogger, and independent scholar. She is the author of several books and many scholarly articles about children’s literature, and blogs online at Romance Novels for Feminists (www.romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.com).  She is currently in the midst of writing her second historical romance.