Struggling to stay on track with your writing goals? SavvyAuthors' Accountability Group is a supportive group designed to help writers stay consistent, overcome procrastination, and make real progress on their projects.

We will focus on:

• Goal Setting & Check-Ins: Set writing goals and track your progress.
• Weekly Accountability Check-ins: Share wins, challenges, and next steps.
• Encouragement & Support: Connect with like-minded writers to stay motivated.

Whether you’re drafting a novel, editing a manuscript, or just trying to write more regularly, this group will keep you accountable and inspired. Join us and turn your writing dreams into reality!

Are you seeking a coach and mentor who listens? Doesn't squash your writing style? And who provides positive, constructive feedback to meet your goals?

As a certified coach with a background in education and over a decade of working with writers, my goal is to offer you an individualized mentoring/coaching program to help guide you through the writing and publishing process. No part of your writing process is too small or too large for us to tackle together.

We will work as a team on the writing goals that you wish to accomplish during the three-month program.

I am as comfortable working with new writers as with those who have multiple publishing credits. I also read and write across multiple genres and have worked with writers who write fantasy, science fiction, mystery, historical fiction, horror, romance, etc.

The direction of the mentoring and coaching is founded on the goals you wish to accomplish. I am flexible, if the needs arises, in changing the mentoring and coaching to suit your needs and wants. You should come willing and able to work on your writing and be prepared for honest feedback.

Your personalized mentoring/coaching program can include, but is not limited to:

• Unlimited access via email for brainstorming, coaching, specific questions and regular check-ins,
• Regular private online chats in the Savvy Authors chatroom, by phone or Skype (schedule and time to be mutually agreed on). NOTE: Most are weekly and from 30-60 minutes.
• Reviews of your notes, outline and draft or revised manuscript with feedback targeted to take you to the next step with your story, tailored to your current goals,
• A writing schedule to complete your draft or edits with prompts to remind you of deadlines and regular check-ins to help keep you on track,
• Mini-lessons, articles, resources and recommended reading as appropriate,
• Includes coaching on the pitch and the synopsis,
• Discuss and brainstorm path options for your writing career.

This program is not a workshop or class but those elements may be present at the discretion of the mentor based on the needs of the students. Students should be prepared to engage in regular discussion with the mentor in order to get the best out of this experience.

Enrollment is limited to five (5) students so I can give the attention needed to each writer.

Stories and novels are built from scenes. A scene is a contained segment of your story in which the characters engage in actions related to the story goal. Scenes have beginnings, middles, and ends, and rising and failing emotional arcs.

In this workshop, we will explore the many different kinds of scenes, analyze their structure, and discover ways to increase emotional tension, character conflict, and flow.

As any successful character knows, when planning to commit murder or heist something, be it jewels, bearer bonds, secret documents or lift a pet or person (not like weightlifting but as in kidnapping), you need to what needs to be done. Particularly if the ideal result is not only escaping scot-free but set up a patsy to take the heat.

That’s what this workshop focus on – both having a plan reduced to the steps it takes to pull it off, why it’s necessary to do (though if the character is a spy, they were ordered to do so), the getaway, and prior to the execution of the plan (the pulling it off), why your main character or professional thief or professional or amateur murderer is doing it. Whether it’s the ghost hovering over it body wondering, “what did I do to deserve this?” or the thief discovering there’s too much heat on what they’ve made off with to unload it immediately, there is a backstory that led to this moment.

Does it need to play out on the page? Sometimes. But if it doesn’t, the backstory serves as the reason there’s a body or an open and empty safe. And the sleuth, be they professional or amateur, will need to unearth what led to this crime. The why, the how, the where, the when and have it all shrouded in red herrings and misdirections that aren’t obvious for most of the story.

And they all lie in that specific backstory that led to the plan that led to pulling the job off.

Join me for four weeks of finding characters who might have done it but might not have done it, and why they could have but didn’t do it. It’s the planning that helps the miscreant do the job, but also why they needed to do it (to their mind), and the elements the sleuth will uncover that leads to an arrest . . . unless they don’t because the perpetrator needs to go free. Particularly if they are a spy and it’s just part of the job.

This is more about the perp’s reasons and plans than the sleuth, even if the sleuth is the main character. You need to the why and the how that leads to the 9-1-1 call, or covering up the crime, to sending the investigating forces off in the wrong direction.

Sound like fun? Then be at the virtual workshop door when it swings open!

Do you want to keep your reader guessing, wondering what will happen next, and keep them
turning the pages? You can do it, with a little help from the trail of breadcrumbs known as
foreshadowing.

The Trail of Breadcrumbs: Foreshadowing Your Story, is a four-week workshop that helps
authors carefully drop hints into their stories that will make your readers say, “Of course! Why
didn’t I notice that coming?”

The workshop will cover:

• Lesson One – What is Foreshadowing?
• Lesson Two – Foreshadowing Tools
• Lesson Three –Direct Foreshadowing
• Lesson Four – Indirect Foreshadowing
• Lesson Five – Event Foreshadowing
• Lesson Six – Purposeful Foreshadowing
• Lesson Seven – Prologues
• Lesson Eight – Chekhov’s Gun.

Using Video with Your Fiction Writing Journey is a hands-on workshop designed to help fiction
writers harness the power of video to build their author brand, connect with readers, and bring
their stories to life. With the rise of social media, book trailers, and AI-powered tools, video has
become one of the most effective ways for authors to showcase their creativity and reach a wider
audience.

This workshop will introduce you to simple, accessible video tools (including AI-based
platforms) and guide you through practical projects that translate your words into compelling
visuals. By the end, you’ll not only understand how to create professional-looking video content,
but you’ll also walk away with a collection of video assets ready to use in your writing career.

You might not have a bad story — you might just have a weak beginning.

This five-week intensive focuses on the most decisive real estate in fiction: the first page.
Readers, agents, and editors make a call within a few paragraphs, long before a story has the
chance to prove itself. Through close reading of opening pages by Meg Wolitzer, Jhumpa Lahiri,
Lorrie Moore and others, we will examine how writers create voice, stakes, orientation, and
narrative pull immediately — and then apply those methods to your own openings through
guided exercises and workshop critique.

By the end of the course, you will have rebuilt your opening so that it does what a first page must
do: compel the reader to turn the next one.

Beginner writers all suffer the same challenges: passive characters, uneven pacing, meandering plot and the dreaded “Happy People in Happyland.” Readers crave active protagonists, characters who chase their goals and drive the story forward with the choices they make in the face of adversity. Non-stop action can be just as boring as a story where nothing happens. Finding that balance between action and reaction is the key to writing a character driven story that’s full of delicious page turning tension.

In this workshop, we’ll delve into scene structure and how understanding the cause-and-effect trajectory of your character’s journey not only strengthens your novel’s conflict and internal story logic, but also means richer, more three-dimensional characters. Whether you’re a discovery writer letting your characters take the reins or hardcore plotter writing to narrative goalposts, you’ll find that understanding scene structure can be a key part of your prep process, the secret to better flashlight drafting, a gut check to guide your revision, or a tool for diagnosing story issues and beating writer’s block.

Some think that tropes are formulaic elements or cliches, but actually, tropes are the building blocks of a story, and a better knowledge of them can help you construct a more compelling story and market your book to the readers who most want to read it.

In this workshop, we will:

• Define tropes.
• Identify and discuss some common tropes.
• Explore how to use tropes to build a story.
• Use tropes to develop a marketing plan.

Many writers in publishing have made their way from the world of fan fiction, either as readers or writers. What does fan fiction get right – why does it hold so much attention and what can writers learn from its creation, its tropes, its emotional power and its passion?

We will take a journey through the differences between fan fic and “published” works, the differences between tropes here and tropes there, and also what the secret ingredient is that can make your writing pop directly into the hearts and minds of readers.

What is it really like to be an athlete? How does the atmosphere in the locker room affect the players? What things should you understand when writing sports romance?

There are specific things a writer must do (and NOT do) when writing sports romance. This workshop will help put you on the right path!

• Lesson One: Pick the right sport for you and research it.
• Lesson Two: How much should you focus on the sport itself?
• Lesson Three: Understand the lives of the players.
• Lesson Four: Capturing the unique atmosphere of a locker room.
• Lesson Five: Things you can’t do.
• BONUS: Reading list

This is a brief overview of the material in this workshop. Some take place before you start with more during the process. The workshop is geared toward both inexperienced and more advanced writers. NOTE: There are homework assignments included in this class.

This 4-week workshop is for everyone who is working on a long-form work of prose, particularly novels & memoir, but also useful for writers of short stories and essays.

We will take a deep dive into how to self-edit your work, covering everything from developmental to line edits and exploring different editing techniques to find those that suit you best.

Requirements: You should have at least a few chapters of a novel/memoir or a number of stories/essays you can work on. A complete project (or close to completion) would be ideal.

Outline:

• Overview of editing techniques & the big picture: developmental edits I — structure
• Developmental edits II — character
• Developmental edits III — setting
• Zooming in: line edits

Fairy tale retellings are very popular for a reason. They use tropes and characters that we're familiar with. For instance, the Cinderella story is a common one across cultures and centuries. Learn how to use these familiar and beloved characters in stories and give them a different twist.

• Fairy tales, mythology and archetypes – why we love retellings.
• How to brainstorm twists for your fairy tale worlds.
• Writing a story that's the same, but different. Keeping familiar elements while adding your own ideas.
• Backstories of some well-known tales – they didn’t all start out the way you think!
• Giving your story the fairy tale flavor even if it's not faithful to the original story
• Fairy tale inspired – you can use the idea as a starting point for your own story without having to stick to the original tale.

Is it possible to tell a compelling story in 100 words or less? Absolutely! Microfiction, short stories that are told in 100 words or less, employs editing skills as much as writing, picking the right word, the right moments, and the right punctuation to tell a story as quickly as possible.

In this course, we will explore the elements of microfiction and how to become comfortable with creating these bite-sized wonders yourself, for submission to journals and contests around the world!

Our Pitchfest is still your next best chance to land that perfect agent or (and) sell your book to the publisher of your dreams! We open up the SavvyAuthor’s site for three fun-filled and exciting days where you post your pitch on our blog to a bevy of agents and editors.

Not sure what Pitchfest is? Check out our information page and our FAQ.

Still have questions?

Contact Us!