salvatorefalco.com

I attended the Florida Writers Association conference this weekend. It was a very good conference. Kudos to all the volunteers and faculty who worked so hard to make it a success.

Thursday was the Master Class with Margie Lawson on “Empowering Characters’ Emotions,” with an overview of her EDITS System for analyzing manuscripts. I’d taken the same class in 2007 at Murder in the Grove. Margie has refined the course since then and my previous exposure meant that I got new insights from it this time around. Even so, my brain was bursting by 5:00 and I know that I need to take both full-length on-line courses next year to really come to grips with the material.

On Friday, I started to audit a lecture on writing a synopsis for a novel, but I was too tired to pay attention. I went upstairs for a nap. When I came back down, I spotted a nametag bearing a familiar name. I said, “Dana Summers, the political cartoonist?” Indeed, it was. I grew up reading his cartoons in the Orlando Sentinel and I’m a fan of his daily strips, “The Middletons” and “Bound and Gagged.”

That afternoon, I attended James Born’s lecture on handling back story. My handling of back story improved in NHI over my first novel, but I’ve still got a lot to learn and Jim had some great pointers on when and how to introduce character and setting background.

Saturday’s highlight was another Margie Lawson class, this one an hour on writing body language and dialog cues. Buzz about the full day class had stoked interest and the crowd exceeded the room’s capacity. Tomorrow I’m going to give my latest short story a new look and apply her techniques to it.

I packed my camera but didn’t remember to take it out of the backpack until Sunday morning, so I only have two shots. Here’s me with James Born:

Sam and James Born

And here’s one of Dana Summers, Margie Lawson, and me:

Dana Summers, Margie Lawson, and me