Guest Speakers

Workshop Title: Screenplay or Novel – How Each Can Benefit from the Other

Could your story become stronger by rewriting it in a different form? Whether you’ve written a screenplay or a novel, exploring the same narrative in the opposite medium can offer a fresh perspective and reveal new possibilities.

This session examines how adapting a screenplay into a novel—or a novel into a screenplay—can improve your work while also creating another way to promote your narrative. By viewing the story through the enforced economy of film or the expanded, more demanding exposition of a novel, writers can reintroduce themselves to their work, gain greater objectivity, and see their story with fresh eyes.

Attendees will explore how weak or bland characters in a screenplay can be reborn and gain new dimensions through the greater demands of a novel, while tiresome exposition in a novel can become more focused, more powerfully condensed, or even eliminated when adapted for the screen. The session highlights the many benefits that can come from working within the limitations and strengths of another storytelling medium.

Todd’s Bio:

Todd Ramsay worked as a film editor for more than forty years and cut over 30 feature films. His editing credits can be found on IMDb. During his career, he worked with and learned from some of the best in the business.

Upon retiring, he began writing screenplays and optioned several. He had always wanted to write novels before he got into film, and when he wrote a novel from his screenplay, he became hooked on the benefits. He has done this with three neo-westerns (from before the term even existed) and is getting ready to publish the first from a screenplay that has won several awards, called Iron Animals, and which was on WeScreenplay’s Red List at one point.

Website: https://toddramsayauthor.com

Meeting on Saturday, September 19, 2026
Breakfast begins at 8:30 am
The general meeting begins at 9:15 am
Hodel’s at 5917 Knudsen Dr, Bakersfield

Workshop Title: How to Create Characters Readers Care About

Readers don’t fall in love with perfect characters—they root for characters they care about. Discover the emotional building blocks that turn ordinary characters into unforgettable ones in this practical workshop for fiction writers.

In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore the emotional building blocks that create sympathetic, memorable characters. We’ll look beyond personality traits and discover how a character’s actions, emotional wounds, fears, mistaken beliefs, self-protective behaviors, wants, needs, and growth work together to create someone readers understand, care about, and remember after the story ends.

We’ll examine examples from well-known stories, discuss why certain characters capture our hearts, and learn a practical framework that you can immediately apply to your own writing.

Whether you’re creating your first character or developing an existing one, you’ll come away with the tools to build characters that readers will care about and root for, and a simple character-development framework you can use in every story you write.

Jennette’s Bio:

Jennette is an author who loves helping other authors. She began indie publishing in 2010 and has since published 20 books in both romance fiction and nonfiction. Along the way, she has helped hundreds of authors prepare the files needed to publish their books and navigate the indie publishing process.

She is also the author of Book Formatting for Self Publishers, now in its second edition, and creates writing tools, workbooks, and publishing resources designed to make the writing and publishing journey feel less overwhelming.

Author Website: https://www.jennettegreen.com
Publishing Services: https://www.selfpublishingnerd.com
Etsy Writing Tools: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PlotAndPublishStudio
Substack: https://plotandpublishstudio.substack.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plotandpublishstudio

Meeting on Saturday, July 18, 2026
Breakfast begins at 8:30 am
The general meeting begins at 9:15 am
Hodel’s at 5917 Knudsen Dr, Bakersfield