Just stand at attention and call him Sergeant Card.

Orson Scott Card, science fiction best-selling author, will host two workshops, including his Literary Boot Camp, next week at UVSC.

The Literary Boot Camp, along with Uncle Orson's Writing Class, will focus on increasing writing skills for writers of types of fiction from novels to playwrights.

"The workshops will be a super intense learning experience," program coordinator Annalee Strub said. "It will involve discussions and idea sessions to help both new and experienced writers."

The main difference between the two classes is that Uncle Orson's Writing Class is a discussion- and lecture-based series, while Literary Boot Camp involves a lot more writing and peer critique, Strub said.

"Orson Scott Card has worked with all types of fiction genres," Strub said. "No matter if you want to compose a play or write a novel, you will get a lot of out of his workshops."

Strub said Literary Boot Camp applicants registered in June and included the first page of a short story: "[Card] read them and judged by that."

Card said in an e-mail the first thing he looked for when deciding who to admit to the Literary Boot Camp was if the writer needed the things he teaches.

"If I'm looking at a professional quality manuscript, then they might enjoy the Boot Camp, but it would not be worth the price of admission," Card said.

He said he accepted those who needed to improve style and characterization, "but who already knew how to write paragraphs and sentences that flow and tell a clear, coherent story."

After he read all of the entries, Card said he ranked the applicants that would benefit from Boot Camp in order of their preparedness. If some couldn't come, he would move down the list until the spots were filled.

Card said one way to narrow down the list of candidates is to make the tuition high enough to separate the serious writers from the dabblers.

"It's like 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,'" Card said. "Anybody who is serious enough to take a week away from family and day job and spend $700 plus living expenses and transportation is going to ... really try to improve the way they write."

Strub said this year 35 to 40 people applied to the Literary Boot Camp, and Card accepted 16. So far, about 40 people have signed up for Uncle Orson's Writing Class.

Registration for Uncle Orson's Writing Class is $175. Application and registration for Literary Boot Camp was in June.

Copyright Brigham Young University 9 Aug 2007