GenCon 2015
Intro
GenCon had been highly recommended to me by the principals
at Writing Excuses, specifically Howard Tayler, Dan Wells and Mary Robinette
Kowal (authors all), but not as the mega gaming convention that it is -- not in
my case, leastways -- but for the Writer's Symposium.
GenCon has been growing every year as the premiere gaming
focused convention in the country, some 60,000 attendees strong at the
Convention Center in Indianapolis. There is also a much smaller contingent of
writer-wannabes. Some of these writers-in-development also love to game; or to
write gaming adjuncts. There are whole novels set in Dungeons and Dragons land
or in the card realms of Magic the Gathering. But here I know not what I speak
of. I know more about the couple hundred who go to hear authors share their
wisdom with us, mostly for free -- or more accurately "at no additional
charge". (GenCon is fairly cheap as these things go, a full four day pass
was just $88.00 -- but a fair portion of activities have add-on costs.)
But let's get back to the authors -- or in this case, the
teachers. (I was quite happy when, one day on the dealers floor, Howard
introduced me and 3 fellow Writing Excuses Retreat alumna as "some of my
students.") There were names whom we may not have heard of like Josh Vogt,
to some of the biggest names in the SFF genre such as Patrick Rothfuss and
Terry Brooks (yes, for those of you as aged as I am that is Terry Brooks author
of The Sword of Shannara. Turns out he's a very nice and insightful person and
not the devil incarnate that some of us thought he must be to dare imitate our
favorite J.R.R. Tolkien back in 1977. By the way, MTV is bringing Mr. Brooks' book
The Elfstones of Shannara to the small screen in January 2016. I'm reading my
personally autographed copy now.)
First Panel: Let's Get Emotional
The first panel I attended was on "Eliciting Emotional
Response". And for the most part the sessions were the typical panel
format: one moderator and 3 or 4 panelists. The moderator would spark the
conversation for the first 30-40 minutes and then the audience would ask a few
questions for another 10 or 15 minutes. John Helfers, Editor/Publisher
moderated this first session. Gregory Wilson was one panelist, among other
things he runs speculatesf.com, a podcast, with Brad Beaulieu, something I
hadn't been aware of but that I plan to check out.
Here are some tidbits from this Thursday morning at 11
session:
1)
Beware the "audience insertion
character" -- you may try to use a generic anyman character to get at your
readers emotions but you will often be better served by creating a character
that the reader wants to be, or wants to love -- or that is interesting (example:
The Talented Mr. Ripley)
2)
Create 3-D villains -- they are easier to hate
and possible to empathize with
3)
Readers love SFF worlds, but in the end the
"dongle of flarnovar" is not what they ultimately care about.
4)
Useful characters run toward the sound of gunfire.
5)
Conflict among an ensemble cast can be fun.
(Notice during the weekend, those of you who game, the people interacting at
your role playing table.)
6)
The second Pirates of the Caribbean movie is
less good than the first in part because Jack Sparrow is more caricature than
character -- he's hard to connect to (a bit of a counterpoint to the
watch-out-for-the-audience-identification-character above).
7)
Use voodoo: hurt/help the reader by hurting or
helping the characters.
8)
Need highs and lows -- lulls in emotions allow
the reader to recover a bit and then attain new levels: action, action, action
(or emotion, emotion, emotion) tends to desensitize
9)
Movie recommendation: "Run, Lola, Run"
10)
Someone quoted Chuck Wendig: "Treat humor
seriously"
11)
The cake is gone and I didn't get to eat it
either
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