I'm listening to the Michael Hauge workshop "From Identity to Essence" right now and it is AMAZING (a perk of spending half your weekend burning CDs is that you get to listen to them first.) It talks about the Identity being how the character sees himself and the essence is him stripped down to who he really is (I need to listen to the essence part again, because I'm not very clear on that.) And you know the question I've been asking myself about WHY the hero and heroine fall in love, what they see in each other? It's the essence that they see in each other. Everyone else in the story (save maybe the best friend) sees the identity, but only the hero or heroine sees the essence of the other person.

Anyway, it's really great.

Another good one is Suzanne Brockmann's "Cast of 1000s." Even if you don't write connected books, which I don't, it's a great look at types of characters and purposes of characters in novels. And she's such a knowledgeable speaker!

Christie Ridgeways "Bait and Hook" workshop is really good, too, a very layered look at opening chapters. There are two other first chapter workshops, but I liked this one best. Very thorough.

Robin Perini's "Layering Complexity" workshop set off a lightbulb for me when I was listening to it, but for the life of me, now I can't remember what it was. Some of the detail she goes into gives me hives (I don't even have a how-to book) but it's a pretty good workshop.

Which ones have you listened to that you've liked?

I'm playing hooky from SARA tonight - too stressed. My darling darling husband is dropping off the CDs for me, since I busted tail to burn them, and he works on that side of town.