Good writing has to grab the reader immediately, then draw them into the world the author has created. It may seem that is just takes "talent" to accomplish this. Actually, it also takes skill. Talent can't be taught. Skill can. Mara Purl is a best-selling author. Before that, she wrote and produced a hit show radio drama for the BBC. Before that, she was a successful journalist.

She'll be presenting an interactive Flash-Fiction Session where participants are actually going to create a piece of work in 45 minutes.

Throughout the hour, we will cover:

1 - Premise -- What's your story about? What's one of your deepest beliefs as a writer? How do you get it on the page?
2 - Narrative Voice -- What do you have to say? What "voice" will say it?
3 - Story structure - Screen writing has one of the tightest kinds of structures. Map your story scene-to-scene, plot point to plot point.
4 - Dialogue - How do you make it sound real? How do you get characters to say both what they mean, and what they don't mean?
5 - Killer copy - How do you distill your story down to a 1- to 30-second "elevator speech"?