Storycrafting Sessions – Five Rivers Publishing

Storycrafting Sessions 2023

I’m very pleased to be part of Storycrafting Sessions 2023. It’s a remarkable endeavour, with lots of great panels and panelists, all tailored to make for an excellent writer’s event, and all of it free. I’m part of the Point of View session. Have a gander at the details below and sign up.

We are thrilled to announce the full schedule for our first virtual conference of 2023, Storycrafting Sessions: Drafting!

As always, this conference is 100% free and there are five exciting panels:

Full schedule

All times are in EST.

10AM – 11AM Pre-conference Discord social

Meet other participants and panelists in our special conference Discord server! We’ll also have discussion questions to get you talking about the event and the subject of drafting.

You’ll automatically get the Discord link when you sign up to attend any of the panels below.

11AM – 12PM Making the Habit: How To Build a Writing Routine

Learn how to build a writing routine that works for your life and your creative process.

Moderator Dianna Gunn

Panelists: Kellie Doherty, Sarena Ulibarri, Ashley Thompson

12:30 – 1:30PM Plotting vs Pantsing: A False Dichotomy

This panel will explore the line between plotting and pantsing, the benefits and disadvantages of each approach, and how to figure out what approach will work best for you.

Moderator Lex Vranick

Panelists: Sienna Frost, KJ Harrowick, KL Bone, Laura Nettles

2:30-3:30PM Understanding POVs: How To Choose the Right POV for a Story

Learn how to choose the right character to tell your story + how to choose between first, second, and third person POV.

Moderator Jade Benjamin

Panelists:Avery Ames, Lorina Stephens, A.P. Hawkins

4-5PM Group Dynamics: How To Write Scenes with Several Characters

Discover effective techniques for creating scenes with 5+ characters.

ModeratorCharlie Knight

Panelists:Kaki Olsen, Jenn Gott, Caitlin Marceau, Neve Maslakovic

5:30-6:30PM Nailing the Ending: How To Write a Satisfying Story Conclusion

Learn how to wrap all of your story threads up into a satisfying ending.

Moderator CM Lockhart

PanelistsBarbara A Barnett, Tanya Gold, Ari Augustine, Diana Pharaoh

6:30-7:30PM Discord afterparty!!!

Celebrate the end of the event, chat about what you’ve learned about drafting, and generally have fun with the group!

How the panels work

All panels are hosted on Zoom. The first half hour will be devoted to questions from the moderator and the second half hour will be a Q&A session with audience questions.

In order to protect both our panelists and our participants’ privacy, video and audio streaming will be limited to panelists. Questions can be asked via the chat function instead.

What it costs

Storycrafting Sessions: Drafting is 100% free. However, there’s a lot of work that goes into making one of these events happen. We also need to pay for things like new webcams, storage space, and other tools to make these conferences work.

If you want to help us continue to host these events, there are a few ways to support us:

Supporter tickets. These are Pay What You Can tickets for our panels. Anyone who buys these tickets will gain access to our Conference Companion printable workbook.
Ko-fi contributions. You can make a one-time payment right here on Ko-fi. The best part about this method is that we get to keep all of the money!
Supporting membership program. You can join our monthly subscription program to support all of our endeavors AND gain access to cool perks like voting on panel topics at future events. Other perks include access to our Weeknight Writers Pro Discord and monthly Discord workshops.

Of course, all of this is voluntary. We understand that the past couple of years have been incredibly financially difficult for a lot of people and we don’t want you to feel pressured into giving us money that could be better spent feeding your family. If you do have something to spare, though, we’ll be grateful for your contribution.

Our commitment to safety

We take our panelists’ and participants’ safety and enjoyment seriously. This means a few things:

We do not tolerate hate speech of any kind.
We do not tolerate spam. There will be designated areas for promoting your projects and sharing your social media accounts; posting this type of content outside of these areas will get you banned.
We do not tolerate harassment or invasive questions targeted at our panelists or participants.
We do not tolerate personal insults targeted at our panelists or participants.

We hold both panelists and participants to these standards. We can and will ban anyone who we consider to be endangering the safety of others, not just from this event but from all future events.

Our commitment to fun

We also want to make sure that everyone has fun during the conference! We aim to create a welcoming atmosphere in both our Discord servers and our panels.

This time around we’re hoping to have even more fun in the Discord server with planned discussion questions and activities.