DATE: May 11, 2012 - May 14, 2012
CONTACT: Benjamin Scott
LOCATION/TIME: West Sussex, England
When: 11th - 14th May 2012 (Friday afternoon through Monday morning)
Where: Dunford House, Nr Midhurst, West Sussex
Writers in Residence: Marcus Sedgwick and Lee Weatherly. Plus an Editor (TBC).
Programme:
This year we have a bumper weekend planned with the retreat lasting from Friday afternoon through to Monday morning.
Arrive on Friday for a casual dinner and an evening of relaxing with your peers. After dinner, Bekki Hill will be setting the creative mood for the weekend and helping us to get to know each other a little better! We’ll be cultivating our brains to be more creative and work on our pitching skills into the bargain.
On Saturday morning Marcus Sedgwick will be revealing his thoughts about how to tackle a first draft and how to stay motivated until that first draft is finished. He has a host of tools and tricks to keep a writer from reaching for the revolver when the first draft starts becoming hard work. This is followed in the afternoon by Lee Weatherly’s workshop exploring Second Book Syndrome, with a mix of exercises and discussion to look at making friends with our muses again when struck by the writer's block, stress and panic over deadlines that comes with a second book.
On Sunday morning, Marcus Sedgwick will be revealing “The Secret of Plotting”. Marcus will be sharing his thoughts on how to find and recognise endings for your story, how to foreshadow and how to structure your plot not only to propel your story onto its inevitable (but unexpected) ending, but also to make it easier to keep your novel on track. In the afternoon, we have a fun packed session with Lee Weatherly looking at self-editing and how to trim your work and what to trim, in order to keep things tight and pacy. “Have you heard the saying 'Kill your darlings'?” she says, “Be afraid, darlings, be very afraid!”
Commissioning Fiction editor Helen Boyle will talk about Templar Fiction, a growing imprint of Templar Publishing. She will discuss their list, what they publish, why they publish it, what they’re looking for and how to submit from chapter books to young adult books. Helen is also the editor of tBkmag, a quarterly book magazine for readers aged 8-13, and will talk about the children's market in general and current publishing trends and genres.
There will also be a limited number of one-to-one appointments with Lee or the TBA editor – these will be dealt with after registration has closed to allow as many of the retreat participants who want to sign up to have a chance of getting a one-to-one. There will also be a small number of one-to-one coaching sessions.
Cost: The cost for two full days and three nights of great food, beautiful surroundings, lodging and a productive social ambience is £280 per person for SCBWI members (£320 for non-members).
Places are limited. For more information visit:
http://britishscbwi.jimdo.com/events/scbwi-retreat/