4th Street Fantasy Write-up
Jun. 25th, 2008 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abracanabraWarning: Huge write-up ahead!
Last weekend I went to the 4th Street Fantasy convention (http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/). As part of my attempt to level up as a SFF writer, I'd decided that this was the year I should make a point of going to conventions, either writing conventions or fantasy and science fiction conventions. Finding one that was both made me happy.
I couldn't justify getting a hotel room. I live in Minneapolis. My budget is already cranky about the hotel room I'm sharing with others for CONvergence. So I used the light rail and my bike. That's when I discovered that my poor old bike's fender means it doesn't go at all easily into the designated bike rack on the light rail. I feel a bit lucky that I didn't die biking home in the dark along city streets at 1 AM. I am in favor of me not dying. I came home every night, though quite late; it still felt as if I'd been gone for a week by the end of the convention.
Lesson #1: 4th Street Fantasy Convention distorts space and time.
From Cool Idea to Story
Many of the writers on the panel write out-of-order, starting with the scenes that interest them and continuing like that until all that's left is a little connective tissue. I don't think I could work like that, but it would be interesting to try for a long short story.
Interesting technique idea: "Building" a story idea by keeping a separate notes file that is just added to gradually until it accumulates enough mass to become a story idea. I don't think I'd go so far as a new notes file for each story idea, but maybe I'll try keeping a general "things of interest" file. I could keep random news or background snippets in there for cross-matching purposes.
Try to achieve a little ambiguity in an ending to keep the reader involved. Resolve the main story, but leave some extra story to unroll in the reader's mind. Think of it as a continuing story arc that has reached a satisfying pause--but not an end.
Grinding Buttons and Pushing Axes
Keep in mind the triggering subject (hot button) and the actual subject. A successful hot button story needs both.
Beware the didactic ("This is--"). A theme needs multiple viewpoints, or it will become a lecture.
Reading list:
* Richard Hugo
* Book of Enchantment - Patricia Wrede
The Dreaded Second Draft
When taking criticism, consider that what is being criticized may really mean, not that there's a problem with that section, but that there needs to be more guidance earlier in the story so that the reader won't have unintended preconceptions about where the plot's going.
I'm not the only one who leaves the Dreaded Bracket Notes! My revision process involves marking up a printed-out manuscript by hand and then going back and making the changes. I can't count the number of times I've shaken my fist and cursed my past self for leaving directions on what to do in a section instead of actually doing it.
The Chewy Bits
This was one of the most interesting and useful panels for me. I can't entirely articulate it yet, but I know that it will make a difference in the conscious writing choices that I make.
One aspect of chewy bits is the parts that you don't notice on the first readthrough that are setting up the impact of the climax. I wonder if I will ever have or want to have fully conscious control over this. So much of this I don't even realize I'm doing as I write, until I reach the ending and say, "Oh! That's what this bit here was leading up to!"
Doing it right means that there is still something to chew on after the story is finished. To provide a final, arbitrary answer to a chewy question is to FAIL.
There is also significant overlap between the chewy bits and the shiny bits. I visualize it as the reader going, "Ooo, shiny!" They pick up the shiny thing and bite into it. Then they look startled because they're realizing it's actually quite chewy, but they're already eating it.
Strands of myth and cultural referents can be used to reinforce and strengthen hidden metaphors, making them chewy.
"Trapdoor" is a valid story structure. Set up reader expectations by reinforcing tropes, then break them. I don't think I do this much. I'm not sure if I should. Badly done, it would be significantly worse than not done at all.
Over lunch, I realized that the myth bit means I should be working some extra stuff into Tree of Life. From the working title, you can probably tell what sort of thing. Yes, I should research the myths and referents more so I can key in on them consciously. A little conversation showed me that I'm already sort of doing that--the Celtic tree of life ties in with knot and labyrinth imagery, and my spaceship's a meteor hollowed out into a labyrinth, so I should delve a little deeper into that model. Because that topic's so easy to cover....
Advice from New Writers
Religion is complex, not simply good or bad, and it's not likely to go away any time soon. Even the rejection of it is a character dimension. Don't just leave it out. Don't demonize it either.
I really need to keep this in mind as I write Tree of Life (http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/tag/tree+of+life). The main character is breaking the laws of his religion, committing blasphemy, because of his faith. I need to reflect that. I also have to make sure his religion informs his actions. Practically, this means that in every stressful interaction, he would refuse to narrow the other person's choices--counter-intuitive. He would always try to find option branches. This might make him unpopular with others, and sometimes make his encounters with them cause them more stress/unhappiness. I hadn't processed that consciously, so this is a key insight.
Your characters are human, too. Don't forget:
* religion beyond as a plot device
* family
* financial support
* family members that exist beyond their mother/father/brother role
Ideas
Somewhere in those last two panels, I had a couple of ideas that sunk their roots in pretty well. During talk about the different types of background and myth, the statement was made that there should be more stories based in other mythologies--like Aztec ones. There was a quick counter that people were writing them, but they mostly weren't good, and somehow my subconscious took that as a challenge. (I suspect a number of other writers will have the same reaction, and there will be a glut.) In the middle of the panel, I was sitting there scrawling a spiderweb plot diagram that ended up being an interesting mish-mash of water wars, Mayan ball games, game-as-war, human sacrifice, and sports shows. This is kind of problematic, as I'm only a few thousand words into what looks like becoming my next novel, Tree of Life, and it has all these shiny bits I want to play with too. Of course, my brain overfloweth with story ideas, and I want to write them all. Right now. I might have to adjust my schedule to allow for that. It wasn't a problem for my first two novels, but it looks like it will be in the future.
The second idea was about the structure of fan fiction, and that deserves its own post, which it shall get. (I'LL PUT THE LINK HERE)
Playing with Structure
Get a feel for it by looking for the seams and rivets, be it in good fiction, bad fiction, or successful pulp.
Structure is how you unveil things, on a macro and micro level.
Technique: Repeating sensory details can be used as hooks to mark an arc, including by changing small parts of the details.
I do not grok playing with structure. More studying of techniques is needed.
Resources:
"Story," by McKee
"Techniques of the Selling Writer"
"Making a Good Script Great"
"Understanding Comics," by Scott McCloud
"Adaptation," the movie
21st Century Storytelling AKA The Shadow Unit Panel
I left this halfway through so I didn't get spoilt for The Shadow Unit (http://www.shadowunit.org/), which sounds like an entirely kick-ass interactive cross-platform story/game/community/addiction. I'd first heard of it about a week before 4th Street, from one of my LJ friends who'd warned everybody not to look at it until they had a large block time available, or they'd get naught else done. I looked, saw she was right, and hastily averted my eyes. Now I'm hoping I can find that block of time somewhere. And when it starts up again in realtime? Yikes. ...I think I might be addicted without actually being exposed to it.
Idea
Made me think about writing that one boarding school story as a series of Twitters with occasional LJ posts. That could be fun. And it would fit around the edges, if done in realtime. But would it take away time from other projects I should be focusing on instead? Agh!
Food, Fashion, and Fornication
Great panel title.
Writing in the Negative Space
This was another panel that I found very useful and brain-bendy. Looking at the notes I've written, I may have learned the most, or at least the most technique, from this one.
Technique: Consider the unreliable narrator as an option. You can create negative space by having the narrator lie--but it's only revealed as negative space once the narrator is revealed as being unreliable.
Parallax viewpoints of the same scene can reveal bias and sketch an outline of what isn't being shown.
Technique: Stories have layers. The top layer is usually clear and explained by the main plot by the end. To get chewy bits, it's useful to have subplots written more with the absent spaces. It requires the reader to fill in some blanks. People put a higher value on what they have to figure out themselves.
This brought me back to thinking about Tree of Life (can you tell it's my work-in-progress?), and I realized the strength of showing the branching structures through actions not taken. I made a good start with him walking away from his regiment in the spaceport.
Somewhere around there is when I wrote, "TOO MANY IDEAS, DAMN IT!!!" in my notebook.
De Niro quote is to the point: "Real people don't emote, they try to hide emotions."
The addition of an element at the end can reveal it was absent the whole time, causing a brainburst in the reader.
Technique: Negative space can strengthen dialog and make it more realistic. Go through and take out comment-and-responses. Just cut them out entirely. Don't add transition. May end up with stronger and more realistic dialog.
Technique: Write the elephant in the room. First write the scene, mentioning everything that Cannot Be Mentioned. Speech, actions, reactions--hell, description of scenery. Then delete it all. Don't smooth the rough edges. The shape of the elephant will remain.
Technique: Shift to macro focus on one thing to show that there's something else going on (emotionally) that's not being shown.
Resources:
Megan Whalen Turner - "The Thief," "The Queen of Attolia," "The King of Attolia"
Idea
Maybe write a story where a reliable narrator is presented as unreliable? Pull a reveal and watch the readers' brains flip inside out along with the story. That could be a fun technique--it's not a story in and of itself, of course.
Stuff (Panel)
Really a grab-bag.
There was some discussion of content/entertainment metafilters (reviewers, critics) that people use, which sent my brain spinning off into the nature of social groups and communities, the danger of overfocusing vs. the danger of too much distracting diversity. I also have a note saying, "cross-browsing," but I've got no idea what that was about!
Yes, there were people there too.
I talked with people a lot. I didn't know anybody there, and I'd never attended a full con before, so I basically hurled myself at people and conversations. I didn't go splat much, though certainly it happened a time or two. I did enjoy many interesting conversations, and I met a lot of interesting people.
Other notes:
By the end, in addition to my notebook, I had notes on napkins, business cards, stationary, and red-and-white striped paper napkin rings from TGI Friday:
* Claude Shannon's book on information theory
* Lady Churchhill's Rosebud Wristlet
Note to self: remember to add a little context to the napkin when I jot down an addition to my reading list. Now I will have to read the book while trying to figure out what it was supposed to be a good example of. That should be interesting!
* ctein.com - photography by the man with one name
* a recommendation to look up Wyrd Sisters, a good cartoon adaptation of Pratchett's book, and Soul Music, by the same folks.
* www.thirdorder.org Third Order Magazine, published by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
karenthology
Everybody should register to donate bone marrow because it's much easier now. The link I wrote down doesn't work, but info's easy to find online.
I should check out Wiscon. It's quite good for writing stuff, though that's not all it does. It's in Madison on Memorial Day weekend, and though there's a more pricey buffet option, State Street also has plenty of food. (http://www.wiscon.info/)
Although I admire shiny things, I don't usually wear much jewelry, but I found out about a most interesting jeweler, Lioness (http://www.lioness.net/). Sometimes she's a muse, and sometimes she is mused by others. It's shiny stuff, and it succeeds in being chewy as well. (I sense that "chewy" has entered my writing vocabulary.) She'll also be organizing the next 4th Street. Her work reminded me a lot of some of the make/write collaborations/inspirations ofyuki_onna (and if you're interested in alternate distribution models for writers, she's doing some interesting things).
Last weekend I went to the 4th Street Fantasy convention (http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/). As part of my attempt to level up as a SFF writer, I'd decided that this was the year I should make a point of going to conventions, either writing conventions or fantasy and science fiction conventions. Finding one that was both made me happy.
I couldn't justify getting a hotel room. I live in Minneapolis. My budget is already cranky about the hotel room I'm sharing with others for CONvergence. So I used the light rail and my bike. That's when I discovered that my poor old bike's fender means it doesn't go at all easily into the designated bike rack on the light rail. I feel a bit lucky that I didn't die biking home in the dark along city streets at 1 AM. I am in favor of me not dying. I came home every night, though quite late; it still felt as if I'd been gone for a week by the end of the convention.
Lesson #1: 4th Street Fantasy Convention distorts space and time.
From Cool Idea to Story
Many of the writers on the panel write out-of-order, starting with the scenes that interest them and continuing like that until all that's left is a little connective tissue. I don't think I could work like that, but it would be interesting to try for a long short story.
Interesting technique idea: "Building" a story idea by keeping a separate notes file that is just added to gradually until it accumulates enough mass to become a story idea. I don't think I'd go so far as a new notes file for each story idea, but maybe I'll try keeping a general "things of interest" file. I could keep random news or background snippets in there for cross-matching purposes.
Try to achieve a little ambiguity in an ending to keep the reader involved. Resolve the main story, but leave some extra story to unroll in the reader's mind. Think of it as a continuing story arc that has reached a satisfying pause--but not an end.
Grinding Buttons and Pushing Axes
Keep in mind the triggering subject (hot button) and the actual subject. A successful hot button story needs both.
Beware the didactic ("This is--"). A theme needs multiple viewpoints, or it will become a lecture.
Reading list:
* Richard Hugo
* Book of Enchantment - Patricia Wrede
The Dreaded Second Draft
When taking criticism, consider that what is being criticized may really mean, not that there's a problem with that section, but that there needs to be more guidance earlier in the story so that the reader won't have unintended preconceptions about where the plot's going.
I'm not the only one who leaves the Dreaded Bracket Notes! My revision process involves marking up a printed-out manuscript by hand and then going back and making the changes. I can't count the number of times I've shaken my fist and cursed my past self for leaving directions on what to do in a section instead of actually doing it.
The Chewy Bits
This was one of the most interesting and useful panels for me. I can't entirely articulate it yet, but I know that it will make a difference in the conscious writing choices that I make.
One aspect of chewy bits is the parts that you don't notice on the first readthrough that are setting up the impact of the climax. I wonder if I will ever have or want to have fully conscious control over this. So much of this I don't even realize I'm doing as I write, until I reach the ending and say, "Oh! That's what this bit here was leading up to!"
Doing it right means that there is still something to chew on after the story is finished. To provide a final, arbitrary answer to a chewy question is to FAIL.
There is also significant overlap between the chewy bits and the shiny bits. I visualize it as the reader going, "Ooo, shiny!" They pick up the shiny thing and bite into it. Then they look startled because they're realizing it's actually quite chewy, but they're already eating it.
Strands of myth and cultural referents can be used to reinforce and strengthen hidden metaphors, making them chewy.
"Trapdoor" is a valid story structure. Set up reader expectations by reinforcing tropes, then break them. I don't think I do this much. I'm not sure if I should. Badly done, it would be significantly worse than not done at all.
Over lunch, I realized that the myth bit means I should be working some extra stuff into Tree of Life. From the working title, you can probably tell what sort of thing. Yes, I should research the myths and referents more so I can key in on them consciously. A little conversation showed me that I'm already sort of doing that--the Celtic tree of life ties in with knot and labyrinth imagery, and my spaceship's a meteor hollowed out into a labyrinth, so I should delve a little deeper into that model. Because that topic's so easy to cover....
Advice from New Writers
Religion is complex, not simply good or bad, and it's not likely to go away any time soon. Even the rejection of it is a character dimension. Don't just leave it out. Don't demonize it either.
I really need to keep this in mind as I write Tree of Life (http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/tag/tree+of+life). The main character is breaking the laws of his religion, committing blasphemy, because of his faith. I need to reflect that. I also have to make sure his religion informs his actions. Practically, this means that in every stressful interaction, he would refuse to narrow the other person's choices--counter-intuitive. He would always try to find option branches. This might make him unpopular with others, and sometimes make his encounters with them cause them more stress/unhappiness. I hadn't processed that consciously, so this is a key insight.
Your characters are human, too. Don't forget:
* religion beyond as a plot device
* family
* financial support
* family members that exist beyond their mother/father/brother role
Ideas
Somewhere in those last two panels, I had a couple of ideas that sunk their roots in pretty well. During talk about the different types of background and myth, the statement was made that there should be more stories based in other mythologies--like Aztec ones. There was a quick counter that people were writing them, but they mostly weren't good, and somehow my subconscious took that as a challenge. (I suspect a number of other writers will have the same reaction, and there will be a glut.) In the middle of the panel, I was sitting there scrawling a spiderweb plot diagram that ended up being an interesting mish-mash of water wars, Mayan ball games, game-as-war, human sacrifice, and sports shows. This is kind of problematic, as I'm only a few thousand words into what looks like becoming my next novel, Tree of Life, and it has all these shiny bits I want to play with too. Of course, my brain overfloweth with story ideas, and I want to write them all. Right now. I might have to adjust my schedule to allow for that. It wasn't a problem for my first two novels, but it looks like it will be in the future.
The second idea was about the structure of fan fiction, and that deserves its own post, which it shall get. (I'LL PUT THE LINK HERE)
Playing with Structure
Get a feel for it by looking for the seams and rivets, be it in good fiction, bad fiction, or successful pulp.
Structure is how you unveil things, on a macro and micro level.
Technique: Repeating sensory details can be used as hooks to mark an arc, including by changing small parts of the details.
I do not grok playing with structure. More studying of techniques is needed.
Resources:
"Story," by McKee
"Techniques of the Selling Writer"
"Making a Good Script Great"
"Understanding Comics," by Scott McCloud
"Adaptation," the movie
21st Century Storytelling AKA The Shadow Unit Panel
I left this halfway through so I didn't get spoilt for The Shadow Unit (http://www.shadowunit.org/), which sounds like an entirely kick-ass interactive cross-platform story/game/community/addiction. I'd first heard of it about a week before 4th Street, from one of my LJ friends who'd warned everybody not to look at it until they had a large block time available, or they'd get naught else done. I looked, saw she was right, and hastily averted my eyes. Now I'm hoping I can find that block of time somewhere. And when it starts up again in realtime? Yikes. ...I think I might be addicted without actually being exposed to it.
Idea
Made me think about writing that one boarding school story as a series of Twitters with occasional LJ posts. That could be fun. And it would fit around the edges, if done in realtime. But would it take away time from other projects I should be focusing on instead? Agh!
Food, Fashion, and Fornication
Great panel title.
Writing in the Negative Space
This was another panel that I found very useful and brain-bendy. Looking at the notes I've written, I may have learned the most, or at least the most technique, from this one.
Technique: Consider the unreliable narrator as an option. You can create negative space by having the narrator lie--but it's only revealed as negative space once the narrator is revealed as being unreliable.
Parallax viewpoints of the same scene can reveal bias and sketch an outline of what isn't being shown.
Technique: Stories have layers. The top layer is usually clear and explained by the main plot by the end. To get chewy bits, it's useful to have subplots written more with the absent spaces. It requires the reader to fill in some blanks. People put a higher value on what they have to figure out themselves.
This brought me back to thinking about Tree of Life (can you tell it's my work-in-progress?), and I realized the strength of showing the branching structures through actions not taken. I made a good start with him walking away from his regiment in the spaceport.
Somewhere around there is when I wrote, "TOO MANY IDEAS, DAMN IT!!!" in my notebook.
De Niro quote is to the point: "Real people don't emote, they try to hide emotions."
The addition of an element at the end can reveal it was absent the whole time, causing a brainburst in the reader.
Technique: Negative space can strengthen dialog and make it more realistic. Go through and take out comment-and-responses. Just cut them out entirely. Don't add transition. May end up with stronger and more realistic dialog.
Technique: Write the elephant in the room. First write the scene, mentioning everything that Cannot Be Mentioned. Speech, actions, reactions--hell, description of scenery. Then delete it all. Don't smooth the rough edges. The shape of the elephant will remain.
Technique: Shift to macro focus on one thing to show that there's something else going on (emotionally) that's not being shown.
Resources:
Megan Whalen Turner - "The Thief," "The Queen of Attolia," "The King of Attolia"
Idea
Maybe write a story where a reliable narrator is presented as unreliable? Pull a reveal and watch the readers' brains flip inside out along with the story. That could be a fun technique--it's not a story in and of itself, of course.
Stuff (Panel)
Really a grab-bag.
There was some discussion of content/entertainment metafilters (reviewers, critics) that people use, which sent my brain spinning off into the nature of social groups and communities, the danger of overfocusing vs. the danger of too much distracting diversity. I also have a note saying, "cross-browsing," but I've got no idea what that was about!
Yes, there were people there too.
I talked with people a lot. I didn't know anybody there, and I'd never attended a full con before, so I basically hurled myself at people and conversations. I didn't go splat much, though certainly it happened a time or two. I did enjoy many interesting conversations, and I met a lot of interesting people.
Other notes:
By the end, in addition to my notebook, I had notes on napkins, business cards, stationary, and red-and-white striped paper napkin rings from TGI Friday:
* Claude Shannon's book on information theory
* Lady Churchhill's Rosebud Wristlet
Note to self: remember to add a little context to the napkin when I jot down an addition to my reading list. Now I will have to read the book while trying to figure out what it was supposed to be a good example of. That should be interesting!
* ctein.com - photography by the man with one name
* a recommendation to look up Wyrd Sisters, a good cartoon adaptation of Pratchett's book, and Soul Music, by the same folks.
* www.thirdorder.org Third Order Magazine, published by
karenthologyEverybody should register to donate bone marrow because it's much easier now. The link I wrote down doesn't work, but info's easy to find online.
I should check out Wiscon. It's quite good for writing stuff, though that's not all it does. It's in Madison on Memorial Day weekend, and though there's a more pricey buffet option, State Street also has plenty of food. (http://www.wiscon.info/)
Although I admire shiny things, I don't usually wear much jewelry, but I found out about a most interesting jeweler, Lioness (http://www.lioness.net/). Sometimes she's a muse, and sometimes she is mused by others. It's shiny stuff, and it succeeds in being chewy as well. (I sense that "chewy" has entered my writing vocabulary.) She'll also be organizing the next 4th Street. Her work reminded me a lot of some of the make/write collaborations/inspirations of
yuki_onna (and if you're interested in alternate distribution models for writers, she's doing some interesting things).![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
OT: Photo stuff
Date: 2008-06-25 10:42 pm (UTC)It's Lyght's 'Changeling,' here. Can't seem to get the old account going.
Seems for once I'm going to a wedding where I'm not the only photo-competent one. :)
...Since I'm going to be carrying *something,* anyway, I was wondering if I should tote my Mamiya along, for any group shots and the like, since the happy couple have talented friends in this regard, but I have the stuff. (Especially if anyone's got a decent tripod: all I have is too big for convenient airport travel, and I'll be tired enough as it is, but if I carry little else, I can bring a passable medium-format 'Wedding' rig with me, nice big negatives and a powerful flash and all: No leaf shutter, sadly, so outdoor fill might take some arranging, but hey. Budget. :) )
Thought I'd throw out the mention, though. I had a bit of a sideline in wedding photography, once. (sure sign of masochism on some level I'd rather not contemplate though it may be. :) )
Anyway, maybe drop L a note, if that sounds like a good or useful idea. If colour film is desired, that may take advance notice these days. :)
Re: OT: Photo stuff
Date: 2008-06-26 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-25 10:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-26 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-26 03:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-26 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-26 02:50 pm (UTC)No quotes from friends, no old friends, no new friends, no dinner party narratives.
hmm
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-26 03:05 pm (UTC)