Supporting characters ... sidekicks, lieutenants, minions, and the like ... can make your major characters and plot more complex. Your hero needs a best buddy or confident, a sounding board for dialogue, someone to turn to when the villain gets him down. And your villain ... lackeys are good. Learn how to abolish cardboard cutouts while preventing your second bananas from stealing the show.
In some tales the setting is as key as the heroes and villains who stride across the landscape. Some writers are able to paint their setting so well that their readers sweat in the bayou, shiver in the arctic, and gag in the swamp. We'll discuss techniques for turning your story's backdrop into a place so vibrant, mysterious, scary, or enchanting that the reader will feel a part of it ... and all without letting your prose go purple.
It isn't easy, balancing the challenges of writing with family, day jobs, and the rest of life's pitfalls and roadblocks. We'll give you ideas for managing the stress of hitting deadlines, finding time to complete that great American novel, and putting your work out there for the world to judge.
This one was sooooo popular last year that we decided to continue the discussion. Sex, death, horror, and revenge ... is there a line? And when is it okay to cross it in your manuscript? When is 'it' too much? We'll examine various 'touchy subjects,' the marketplace, and provide advice on when to tone things down or amp them up.
Mold a truly remarkable villain, a character memorable to your readers, devoid of cliches, and one who can go toe-to-toe with your protagonist. For one hour, no heroes are allowed.
Your panelists have dealt with big publishers, small press publishers, packagers, editors, and agents. They have wisdom to impart on deadlines, galleys, self-publishing, and more. They understand how advances, royalties, and reserves for returns work. They've written query letters, attended pitch sessions, schmoozed at con parties, and written work-for-hire. They've authored, edited, and critiqued. Best yet, they're willing to dish about it.
We’ve been published by major New York houses as well as small press companies and have had varying degrees of success with both. We’ll discuss the differences between writing for a large publisher versus a small one, and the advantages and disadvantages of both.
We'll teach you how to turn an ordinary hero into an extraordinary one. Spend an hour focusing solely on your main character, a good guy who doesn't necessarily have to wear a white hat. We'll tackle the villain in a later panel.
A short story isn't a miniature novel, and a good, meaty novel needs to be more complex than a tale in a magazine. Our panelists discuss how they approach different length works and what tools you need to be successful at writing the short story, novella, and novel.
This Pen's For Hire: Finding Work in Shared Worlds
Description:
There’s work to be had in the writing world if you’re willing to play with someone else’s property. Tie-in projects include books based on television shows, movies, comic books, role-playing games, computer games, and more. So where do you look? How do you land the projects? And what are the pros and cons of shared-world writing?