Narrative Nonfiction and Fiction Workshop

Literary agent and editor extraordinaire, Toni Lopopolo will help you craft your personal narrative into a marketable book. Toni recently asked top New York editors what they look for in a memoir manuscript and what they are publishing. Using their hot button demands, Toni has created a new writing workshop to help focus and fine-tune your personal story.

A former executive editor at Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, Toni knows what it takes to get a book published. Her highly successful “Tea with Toni” workshops are bringing area writers up to competitive speed in fiction and narrative nonfiction. Toni’s methods are strong yet constructive—meant to help you master the skills necessary to become a successful published author.

In the Memoir Workshop you’ll learn:

• How to create a distinctive voice
• Fiction techniques that make memoir intriguing and engrossing
• The art of detachment
• The elements that give a story universal appeal
• How to orchestrate story, characters, events.
• How to narrow the lens to achieve focus for today’s readers.
• If your memoir should be fictionalized
• If your memoir measures up to what’s published today
• What to include or leave out
• How to edit for interest and drama

…plus a reading list of classic memoirs and the best of new releases.

Workshop limited to six writers who must submit the first five pages of their first chapter before acceptance.

This is a unique opportunity to learn from literary agent and professional editor, who will teach the steps necessary to improve the quality of your writing skills and techniques. This development takes place in a small group of dedicated active writers who can survive and prosper from an intensive training session.

If you really want your work critically analyzed and get the tough love needed to polish the manuscript for publication, this is unique opportunity to get ahead of the game.

You will raise the quality of your writing, learn where your story really starts, learn to identify “habit” words and how to kill them, discover the right point of view (POV) to tell the story, learn to break the story into scenes, learn to listen to your own work and keep yourself as an author out of the work, discover how to develop a voice appropriate to the novel at hand, get rid of “hack” habits, as well as learn the reality of the book publishing market as it exists today.

Workshop limited to six writers
Writers must submit the first five pages of their first chapter before acceptance.

Sundays, 1 pm in Santa Barbara
Cost: $265 for 4 Sunday sessions
Location: Private home in Santa Barbara, CA
November 11, 21, December 2 & 9

If the dates above don’t work for you, contact Toni. For further information please email Toni or phone/text (215) 353-1151.