Narrativity, part 2
Saturday started out much like Friday, a blur of Reg and occasional consuite. I'd caught a bit of "The Point of View Game" Friday evening, which was fun, and I caught bits of "The Chewy Bits" this morning, which was interesting even if I didn't quite see how to apply it. At some point C was kind enough to mind Reg for me while I grabbed coffee/alcohol (it's always five o'clock somewhere) with some nifty people.
And then was the "Competence Porn" panel, which I caught all of because I was on it.
That was fun; it's been a while since I've done panels much, and I can prattle on about the joys of watching competent characters be good at stuff at the drop of a hat. It was interesting that there didn't seem to be many people there who don't like that sort of thing; the focus was mainly on how to do it well, not whether one should do it at all.
I think it was around this point that Steve and I looked at each other and realized the con was being a success. Overall, people really seemed to be having fun. By mid-day Saturday, we were already talking about doing it again.
I missed most of the next couple panels (which is a pity; I would've liked to have caught "How Do You Keep Growing?" especially), but I did catch some of "There's More To This Story", which covered some of the same ground as "The Chewy Bits" but from a different angle. It was good to see some non-writing readers participating just as enthusiastically as us writer-types. The final take-away was that you can't force or even encourage your readers to read deeper, but you may be able to inspire them to do so.
Somewhere around there I broke down the reg table so the hotel could set up a wedding bar outside our space, which sounds like a disaster waiting to happen but was actually fine. The wedding guests were only there for a couple hours, and they weren't freaked out by writers (we look harmless...). The hotel had, you guessed it, no problem with moving one of the tables into our little alcove so I could keep program books and restaurant guides and such available.
After dinner (Was that the consuite again? Really, really blurred.), I did manage to attend most of "The Pre-Joycean Fellowship Recruitment Panel". Which, as I understand it (and Google may explain it better than I), is all about the idea that the divide between entertaining fun fiction and Great Literature is just silly; books can be both fun and important, and readers can read for enjoyment or enlightenment or both, and it's all good. Which is an idea I've long held myself, so obviously the PJF is a movement that makes sense.
After panels ended, the music circle geared up in the panel room again, and looked to be as good if not better than the previous night; I even caught bits of a couple songs I could mumble along to. The consuite was sparse, again, although again the few people who were there late were the sort you're glad to hang out with. It was around then that I realized I hadn't actually had a proper meal for a couple of days now, and if I hadn't, that meant my consuite person probably hadn't either. So I determined to order us a pizza, which involved figuring out a place to order from, and then an epic saga of telecom frustration as my cell phone chose that moment (when I was exhausted and low on blood sugar) to refuse to actually make a call. Fortunately J's was willing to work, and after a second call from the pizza place in which I explained that no, the driver shouldn't call the room, he should call this phone number just like I'd told them five minutes ago, they finally agreed to bring us pizza. Which was good, though not as fantabulistic as the price should have indicated. But it was there and hot and not running faster than we were, which was really all I was asking of the world at that point.
Sunday morning began with "Setting By Any Other Name", which Steve had so-thoughtfully put me on. ;-> Though actually, IIRC I was up in plenty of time to sit in the consuite poking at spreadsheets for a while before it started. And then I went and helped prattle about the difference between setting and worldbuilding. I don't think we really came to a consensus; one person posited that setting is the stuff you can research, worldbuilding is the stuff you have to make up, which is a definition I really like but don't entirely agree with. I used the difference between contemporary and sf/f several times for illustration, which is kind of hypocritical given the amount of worldbuilding I've put into my contemporary spy stuff. But anyway we had fun.
I had to step out of the "Craft Q & A" because, as is always the case with these things, I had so little in common with anybody else's described process or problems that I started to feel like an alien who barely spoke the language. This is in no way the fault of the panel; this is SOP for me with this type of discussion, and in fact the panel was a rousing success, so much so that it was requested again for next year, possibly a couple times over.
I missed the next couple of panels because I was doing things like helping arrange for the gradual shut-down of the consuite, and checking with the hotel that it was, yep, no problem if we wanted to hang out in the rooms for the rest of the evening. (We only had the space booked until 7pm, but they weren't going to be setting up the next thing until the next morning anyway, so we had full clearance to party on. I *really* like the Crowne Plaza.)
I did make it back for The Different Panel, which after voting and some debate ended up being "Villains: Who They Are, What They Do, How to Make A Good One". Which basically boils down to the same way you make any good character: give them sound motivations and goals, and recognize that from their pov, they're the good guy. I wasn't processing at my best by that point, but I think there was some discussion about the difference between a villain and an antagonist, too. Anyway, it was cool.
And then we did closing ceremonies, in which I forgot to thank several people because there were so many wonderful people to thank. Seriously, not only did our attendees rock on the smarts and participation level, there was also no shortage of willing hands whenever anything needed to be done. I really couldn't have asked for better folks to be part of our inaugural year.
Thanks to a very smart suggestion, we split up the thanks and the feedback portions. Quite a lot of people stuck around for the feedback, which was mostly positive, and the suggestions for improvement were all sensible things that we should be able to do. And there were many suggestions for additional things we could add on or try, some more feasible than others, but we'll be looking into all of them.
And since we had the space for the rest of the night, the party didn't stop there.
I think dinner was consuite leftovers, which was fine because there were lots of them. (My stomach had clearly gone into con mode for the weekend, and was not entirely at home to proper food anyway.) The musicians had apparently worn themselves out, so instead of a music circle, people congregated in the consuite. And that's when I got my payoff for all the hard work, because there were many clusters of cool people to talk to, and conversation wandering over all sorts of topics from smoffing to writing to whoknowswhat, and, yes, a die-hard group of eight or ten or so of us who weren't going to stop having fun just because it was late.
And then the marmot jokes started.
You know it's a good con when you're sitting around a table with a bunch of folks you mostly didn't know three days ago, and you're laughing so hard you can't breathe. And then the conversation drifts serious, and you're touched to the heart. And then it drifts to the thinky side, and something clicks for you in a way that it never clicked before. And then it drifts silly, and suddenly you're in danger of going to the ER for laughter-induced asphyxia again.
That's what I did all this for. And that's what I got Sunday night.
This entry was originally posted at https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/205646.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.