One-of-a-kind Workshops
“I can’t imagine a more skilled, experienced, and brilliant writing coach than Susan Brown. She is intuitive! She climbed inside my project and saw exactly what it needed, picking up nuances that had passed me by. I learned more in her intensive workshop than by reading several “how to” books on writing.”
Susan Page, Founder and Director of San Miguel Writers’ Conference, the largest and most prestigious co-cultural, bi-lingual literary gathering in the Americas where Susan will be teaching in 2025.
Secrets of the Greatest Writers Workshop
Five-Week Intensive Master Class on Zoom​
Monday evenings, March 3 to 31, 2025
Monday evenings, April 28 to May 26, 2025
Class is limited to 14
$450 (registration information below)
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​Bring your fiction and memoir writing to the next level with James Joyce scholar, editor, and writing coach, Susan Brown, PhD.
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Class from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. on zoom
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Reading Session on zoom (optional) from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m.
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Optional individual introductory meeting with Susan (before workshop)
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Optional one-hour individual consultation with Susan (during workshop)
In this market, your memoir and novel have to read like the classics. In a five-day intensive workshop with master teacher Susan Brown, PhD, take your writing project to the next level by applying the literary secrets of Western culture’s greatest authors. Dr. Brown brings decades as a college creative writing professor, writing coach, and book editor to her workshops.
What will we study?
Workshop participants will be encouraged to raise the bar on their own writing by studying the techniques of the masters for: composing and drafting; creating a compelling narrative voice using internal monologue; building unity with narrative threads, literary allusion, and leitmotif; creating magical and symbolic imagery; constructing a viable literary two-plot structure; achieving a seamless sophisticated style (that reads like butter); and accessing the most meaningful, complex, and original themes beating at the heart of your project.
Who are our Models?
We’ll be learning the secret handshakes from, among others, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Daniel Woodrell, Ernest Hemingway, Gustave Flaubert, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Mark Twain, Colum McCann, Hunter S. Thompson, Dennis Lehane, Louise Erdrich, and Jeanette Walls.
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Registration
Please contact me at susansutliffbrown@gmail.com with your name and email address, or call me to confirm there’s a space and schedule an introductory meeting so I can learn about your goals and your project. The price for the workshop is $450. To reserve a space there will be a non-refundable deposit of $75.
Write a Literary BLOCKBUSTER:
James Joyce Meets Judith Krantz
Turn your idea for a trashy beach read into a novel with profound thematic significance or a deep and meaningful manuscript into a hybrid that can also be a commercial winner.
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Or
Meets
2025 San Miguel Writers’ Conference 5-Day Post-Conference Master Class
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
February 17-21, 2025
Hotel Real de Minas $950​​
​Or a 10-Week Literary Blockbuster Zoom Workshop
Monday evenings SEPTEMBER 8th to NOVEMBER 10th, 2025
Where is the deep and meaningful novel or memoir that’s also an addictive page-turner?
With master teacher, personal editor for acclaimed fiction and memoir, and James Joyce scholar Susan Brown, PhD, study the secret handshakes of the masters and the money-makers and learn to combine the best qualities of both literary and commercial writing without sacrificing quality.
Are you the writer the world is waiting for who can merge the metaphysics of Moby Dick with the page-turning power of Jaws?
Do you have a novel that explores the eternal philosophical questions while also grabbing and holding a reader's attention? Can you produce a book that merges Moby Dick's metaphysics with the action of Jaws? Have you written a book that can replicate the emotional depth of The Scarlet Letter and inspire the record profits of Valley of the Dolls? Or a book that joins the psycho-sociological themes of Mrs. Dalloway with the page-turning suspense of The Godfather? How about merging James Joyce's psychologically complex characterization with a Stephen King plot?
This workshop will show you why you want to be that writer and how to begin. We will open by answering the question, why aren’t contemporary prize-winning, critically acclaimed, literary novels also mega-blockbusters (i.e. selling 20 million copies plus)? Then we answer the question, is it possible? The answer is yes, but the last time it happened was seventy years ago when two canonized literary novels each sold more than 20 million copies — Catcher in the Rye and Lolita, both published in the 1950s. Both writers achieved what Dr. Brown will guide you to attempt in this workshop: transcendence of the artificial and fathomless polarity between commercial writing and profound and stunning literary fiction.
Take the challenge: write a thought-provoking literary novel that’s also a page-turner. Combine the goals of serious literature (thematic depth and high level craft) with the bestselling formulas of the mega-blockbusters and commercial genres (romance, sci-fi, historical fiction, horror, fantasy, etc.). For many of you this may mean revising an existing project. With models, prompts, exercises, and feedback sessions, James Joyce scholar Susan Brown — who is also a lover of trash lit — will guide you to begin a new project or revise your existing novel into what readers really want: a prize-winning and meaningful novel that’s also an addictive read.​​
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Concepts and Techniques Addressed in the Workshop
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How to construct any project in layers–scene by scene—not beginning to end–saving months, even years
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How to integrate both sides of your brain for writing
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How to draft using Hemingway’s “one true sentence”
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How to unify your book with narrative threads and a leitmotif
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How to create charismatic characters using internal dialogue
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How to find the universal theme beating at the heart of your story
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How to construct utilitarian but engaging 3-part dialogue
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How to make each paragraph read like butter
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How to brushstroke a minor character
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How to write a sex scene that won’t make a reader gag or yawn
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How to craft an opening with eight essential moving parts
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How to keep the reader glued to a narrative with cliff-hangers
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Optional Reading and Feedback Sessions
The goal of a workshop is to form a community where every writer feels safe to take risks, where all efforts are respected, and where each writer’s stunning growth and success represent the group’s collective achievement.
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Choosing from a list of assignments, workshop members will share up to three pages of a workshop assignment or three pages of new (or substantially revised) material from their larger work-in-progress. Polish is not possible in the time frame. We all recognize these pieces as experiments and drafts as students practice applying the literary and commercial techniques discussed in the workshop session.
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To insure a safe reading environment and encourage risk-taking, feedback will be limited to Dr. Brown’s constructive commentary.
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With teaching as the goal, Susan will explain what and why elements of piece are successful and–where useful as a learning tool for the group–offer an analysis of how to increase the depth and improve the quality of a draft. Students learn from observing what does and doesn’t work and hearing an instructor’s solutions. Other writers will recognize, for example, that the narrative voice isn’t consistent. Using the student’s sample, a professional teacher can explain–with care and encouragement–how to resolve that gap.
Contact Susan with any questions at 941-855-0444 or susansutliffbrown@gmail.com
Register for The Post-Conference Literary BLOCKBUSTER San Miguel Workshop
Register here: https://sanmiguelwritersconference.org/registration-program/the-literary-blockbuster/
Learn more about the famous week-long San Miguel Writers’ Conference​​
Register for the Literary BLOCKBUSTER Zoom Workshop
Please contact me at susansutliffbrown@gmail.com with your name and email address, or call me to confirm there’s a space and schedule an introductory meeting so I can learn about your goals and your project. The price for the workshop is $625. To reserve a space there will be a non-refundable deposit of $75.
San Miguel Workshop Format
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MORNINGS
10 to 1:00 | Interactive Workshops
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Using models from the world’s greatest writers–and the trashiest, Susan will introduce literary concepts such as interior monologue and commercial concepts such as plot triggers. See below the partial list of concepts and techniques that will be addressed in the workshop.
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Responding to prompts and exercises, students will practice applying these concepts in a scene from their own work-in-progress.
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Susan will offer students a variety of assignments from which to choose for the evening’s optional reading and feedback session.
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AFTERNOONS
1:00 to 5:00 | Relax over lunch, work on your assignment for the evening feedback session.
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EVENINGS
5:00 to 7:00 | Optional Reading and Feedback Sessions
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