Preliminary Schedule
At the Stockholm Writers Festival, we offer craft and business breakouts, events, intensives, inspirational panels and so much more! All aimed at helping writers up their game regardless of genre or experience level. This is a preliminary schedule for SWF25. It will change and expand so watch this space or sign up to our newsletter.
We’ll publish the full schedule before ticketing goes live in March!
Friday Intensives
Five steps to creating an airtight plot: Wrestling your characters and ideas into a strong, cohesive, propulsive story can get overwhelming, especially when you get “lost in the forest,” so deep in the woods you can’t see daylight—or the way out. Maybe all those ideas swirling in your head get muddled together and you can’t figure out what’s intrinsic to the story, or what goes where. Maybe you just lose steam and are thinking of abandoning the project altogether. But the five simple, straightforward steps laid out in this course will give you a solid, actionable road map for your story.
Getting started or finishing that novel: In this interactive session, discover how to generate and develop ideas like a professional writer. Start from the beginning: Learn how to create log lines that capture the essence of your story and build from there. Understand the steps for constructing a solid narrative structure and avoid the common pitfalls that derail too many stories. This workshop is for writers struggling to transform ideas into a novel or for complete beginners looking to start a project from scratch. (Limit 25 writers)
Crowdfunding - fund your book and build your audience: A comprehensive session designed for authors who want to understand how to use crowdfunding as a tool not just for funding their book, but for building a committed audience. This workshop will focus on actionable strategies to develop a compelling campaign, attract backers, and leverage your campaign to successfully launch your book into the world. We’ll cover how to plan campaigns, craft compelling pitches, and turn backers into long-term supporters and loyal readers.
Saturday and Sunday Breakouts
Train your editor brain: The best way an author can improve their editing skills—and their own writing—is by learning to analyze and evaluate other people’s stories. This session offers specific techniques for developing and deepening your knowledge of story craft that you can practice every day, by doing things you’re already doing—reading books and watching movies and television—but shifting your focus from simple enjoyment to objective analysis of how the storytellers elicit reaction and engage their audience. A fun, lively presentation that teaches one of the most valuable skills an author can master.
What causes writer's block (and most importantly) how to fix it:
"Writer's Block" is often used as a catch-all term to mean "anything that stops us from writing". But we believe there's something very specific that causes writers block – and there's a way to fix it. It starts from understanding that writers aren't just writers. We're editors, too. And when both these "sides" of our brain compete, we get stuck. Come along to this session for tips on how to unlock your creativity.
Seamlessly weave in backstory without losing your readers: Your characters don’t just spring to life fully formed at the beginning of your story. Ideally, if you’ve developed them fully, they are real, three-dimensional people with complex backstories and experiences that have shaped who they are at your story’s “point A,” and inform the journey they take in your manuscript. Yet how can you fluidly weave all that depth and complexity into your story without stalling pace and story momentum by getting bogged down in info dumps, flashbacks, or just too much exposition? In this breakout, authors will learn practical techniques for developing and revealing who your characters were and are without slowing down the story of where they’re going.
Literary strip tease - secrets, twists, and reveals: Pulling off a successful reveal is a tricky tightrope act between giving readers enough information to feel invested and holding back enough to keep them hooked. It's the striptease of literature: show too much and you lose all the excitement and buildup. Too little and nobody cares. Balancing these considerations often relies on three key elements: knowing what and how much to keep as a reveal, when to reveal it, and how to unspool the hidden information for maximum suspense and impact. Learn how to determine what to conceal and what to reveal, and when, and how to do it most effectively.
Settings as characters: Plot. Character. Setting. All of these are important when crafting an engaging story. Question: But how can you make these elements work overtime? Answer: By super charging your settings. In this session, we're going to look at how you can turn your settings into characters in and of themselves, and explore how they can work with your characterization, your conflict, and your plot to elevate your story. Making it unputdownable to readers.
Building and engaging your community - crafting newsletters that get opened: Unlike social media, where algorithm changes can affect visibility, newsletters reach subscribers' inboxes directly, ensuring that content is seen by those who are most interested. In this session, authors will learn how to authentically build and engage with their community by leveraging newsletters and consistent reader engagement. This session will highlight key strategies for crafting compelling newsletters, driving reader interaction, and the tools they can use to foster long-term relationships with their audience.
Genre breakouts
Historical Fiction
Memoir
Fantasy
Childrens
Poetry
Events
Literary Idol: At SWF18—our very first year—we debuted this event. Now we’ve made it a regular feature. What is it? A fun (yet respectful) gameshow-style happening where the first page of an anonymous manuscript is read to our expert panel of agents and editors. Judges indicate when they would stop reading and give constructive critique.
Buttonhole the Expert: One of the highlights of SWF, this is an event that gives every guest the opportunity to talk to faculty in small group formats. When the (world famous) SWF cowbell rings, everyone rises and heads to another expert’s table and we begin again for a total of three rounds. Kinda like speed dating, but not at all romantic, and for writers.
Agent one-on-one meetings
For those ready for feedback, these meetings can be purchased with our agents. You’ll get ten minutes to present your idea and get constructive comments back.
Panels
So many paths to published: Librarian. Epidemiologist. Advice columnist for girls. Our faculty have come from a diverse set of experiences to travel the path to published. In this conversation moderated by Paul Rapacioli, learn the turns each of our faculty members have taken to arrive where they are today.
What it really takes to land and keep your agent: For many writers, landing an agent is their ultimate goal. But what does it really take to attract and sustain a writer-agent relationship? In this conversation, we delve into one first-time authors experience. Spoiler alert: the manuscript she pitched to obtain the agent wasn’t the one that ultimately landed her a two-book deal with Machete.
Contest
Each year we announce the rules of a micro fiction contest. The winner is announced on the final day of SWF and can take home the bragging rights and a trophy from this year’s festival.