The First time I went into creating a Craft Talk was as a graduation requirement for my MFA. During the residency I would have an hour to present a talk on the writing subject of my choice to a panel of professors and my peers. No pressure.
At that point in my life I had been to all of two craft talks myself—in Portugal, presented by graduating students—and I admit, I was pretty intimidated. The two talk I had attended were fairly high brow and filled with esoteric advice that I didn’t really understand but nodded along with everyone else nonetheless.
Needless to say, I am neither highbrow nor terribly esoteric. The topic I proposed for my first craft talk was “Rolling up a Literary Character”. Using a D&D character sheet as a template, my friend Rob and I created a two sided Literary Character Sheet that participants would fill out during the workshop. I covered all the basics of character creation including backstory, details, and how to “stat out” a character so that they can have a great character arc. After three practice runs with my mom and husband, I had everything timed down to the minute with an extra ten for questions.
Since my craft talk was going to be in Kentucky, I sent copy of my power point and worksheets to my professor, and had a copy on my computer of course.
Day of I’m terrified. Sure, these people love me and have been listening to me prattle on about writing for three years. Sure, I have been speaking successfully in front of crowds forever. But does my social anxiety care about that? No. Still, in my head I know everything’s going to be fine.
Except it wasn’t.
I show up twenty minutes early and discover that my professor has printed out the handouts the wrong direction. When he goes to reprint them, his computer goes down. But it isn’t just his computer, it is the entire campus. It comes back on with five minutes to spare, but his computer is dead. No problem, we have mine. Except it’s a Mac, and now IT needs to come down and get it hooked up. We are now 8 minutes into my time and my patient crowd is staring at me.
So I say “Welcome to my craft talk on When Craft Talks go Wrong!” And we start with some group discussion on what makes a compelling character, all the while I am putting my passwords in for the IT guy over and over. 18 minutes in to my time I start the presentation by memory and we start filling in their worksheets.
Thankfully the presentation comes up before I have to explain Schrodinger’s Tension Band without a diagram and I take a huge sigh of relief. For 15 minutes. That’s when the library intercom announces “In 20 minutes the library will be closing. Please gather your things and make your way to the check out desks.”
Yeah. That intercom went off counting down every five minutes. My professor assured me that we could run over a few minutes, but still, it was every bad dream in an ’80’s comedy ever.
We wrap with those ten minutes of questions and everyone was lovely. The craft talk itself was well received, and participants were excited to play with the characters they had created. My professor suggested I keep the talk in my rotation and gave me a “definite pass, even without all of the systematic failures”.
I tell people now, if I can get through that, I can get through anything. That said, I have given many craft talks since that day and none of them have been even close to that disastrous. I still get nervous; I still make my husband sit through three or four versions to get my timing down; I still crack jokes about my social anxiety (because it’s pretty universal amongst writers and seems to reassure the participants as much as myself). After a few years of craft talks and workshops I do have some advice for both the creation process and the presentation aspects.
Choose a topic you enjoy and fits your audience.
Most of my workshops are for amateur writers so I tend to discuss topics that make writing more accessible to beginners but have enough nuance that more seasoned folks will still enjoy the hour. I’ve done my Rolling up A Character, as well as World Building, and Plot not Plod: Creating and Maintaining Narrative Tension as a Story Building trio of workshops.
Last year I gave a talk on turning historical characters into literary characters as part of a residency. It was similar to my rolling up a character, with more of a research bent, but I was able to take a lot of the same info and dump it into another presentation.
At this point I’ve talked about Story Building enough that I could almost do an hour without notes. In fact, at SquatchCon this year I’m offering a teen workshop on the subject. It’s a tool that I love and want to share with others, which should be the basic of every craft talk.
A note here: If you are submitting craft talk ideas to conferences, read their submission rules carefully. There may be specific requirements, or topical parameters that they are looking for.
Use Canva.
Canva can do everything power point can and more. Not only are you thumbing your nose at Microsoft, but the product is free and easy to use. My favorite thing about Canva is that all my projects are accessible online and I can send out links to my hosts to have ready to go when I arrive at the venue.
Everything in Canva is drag and drop so when you need to change the order of slides or information it is a breeze. There are plenty of free templates to choose as a starting place to build your presentation.
Be Prepared Enough to Be Spontaneous.
I always have a charged computer, an extension cord, and an HDMI with converters for my tech in my bag when I go to do a workshop. I also bring copies of my worksheets and handouts. But preparedness goes way beyond having the right equipment in your bag.
To this day, I still run a workshop three or four times before I take it to an audience. The first time is usually for my husband to check time and cohesion. He is my baseline participant so if he has questions or feels there is a gap in information then I can catch it early. Watching him do the activities I’ve set up gives me an idea of how much time I need to allocate.
My second run through is usually for my writing group. They are a great resource because they give feedback from the perspective of those well versed in craft already.
The third test is usually my mom and husband again. Canva has a timing tool, and I run this test like I would for the talk itself. That said, on the day of a workshop you may have an audience who is far more interested in a minor point on slide 12 than any of the big items you were planning on delving into. Knowing your topic well enough helps you to pivot.
Add a worksheet or writing activities that let your participants engage their new knowledge.
I hate sitting for an hour listening to someone speak, so I rarely ask my participants to do so. I keep my topics narrow enough to fit into the (normally) one hour time slot and still have room for two or three writing activities. When working with kids or teens, I would encourage at least 1/2 of the time be set aside for activities. For adult or mixed ages, even the ability to jot some ideas down can keep the participants engaged. I figure the best way to learn to write is to actually write!
And finally: Roll with things.
Nothing is ever going to go perfectly as planned. Sometimes someone realizes that your class wasn’t what they were expecting (or they are in the wrong room) and they leave part way through. Sometimes your tech glitches and you have to start your group on a writing activity early while you fix it. Sometimes people don’t show up at all and you give a workshop to three people, or the event coordinators are shoving more chairs into the room because 20 more than expected wandered in. The important thing to remember is that in general, people who show up to learn something are excited to be there and will catch their vibe from you. If you are chill, they likely will be too. The goal is for everyone to be having a good time.
Caveat here-I generally offer workshops and talks at free events or SquatchCon which is around $20 a ticket. If someone is spending $$$ on an event they may have higher expectations and want fireworks or historical demonstrations or something so keep that in mind and try to match your content standards with other presenters.
As I’m finishing this up I want to make it clear that nowhere in the amateur writer’s secret handbook does it require anyone to offer Craft talks or workshops. Most people will never be called upon to chat about elements of world building for an hour to a crowd of three/thirty/three hundred. However, many residencies or academic programs do ask their participants to provide this kind of programming, and honestly it is a good way to get your name out in the community.
I am a teacher at heart and love encouraging fledgling and experienced writers alike to dig deeper into the nuts and bolts of what makes our stories better. It’s why I write my Overthinkings each week, and why I get up in front of whomever comes out to my events; I want everyone to feel empowered enough to get their ideas onto the page.
Writing Activity: Think up a short list of things you might want to do a workshop on!
Examples: Plants on the Page-incorporating flora into world building. Yodeling and why Characters should do it. Deconstructing the Plot Map-Why traditional tension models are outdated and the Post Modernists had it right all along. (Okay, obviously I don’t ACTUALLY endorse any post modernists.)
Mamasquatch the Writer 
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