Ad Astra: Day Three

[lone_pyramid]

Panels attended today:

*Bullying: The Next Generation, which I mostly went to for professional reasons. I got a few germs of ideas that might evolve into something with a little research (and diligence on my part, which is never a guarantee)

*a reading by Robert J. Sawyer from Red Planet Blues (he is an excellent reader and presenter, and I am

Comments

[lone_pyramid]

There was much fun to be had.

I like "The Future: Not What it Used to Be" and another one I've already forgotten. ;) But I've extinguished my indulgence fund for the next little while, what with this weekend and the upcoming summer and all.

I'd assumed that "save the cat" meant that you're not allowed to kill animals in stories, but that's not the reference. I wasn't entirely clear, but it's either that you can demonstrate the protagonist's heroism and/or likeability by having him "save the cat" in the first chapter, thereby establishing him as a "good guy" early on, or it can be used to give a somewhat sympathetic side to an unwise unlikeable character because, if your story's going to last more than one book, you need to not entirely hate the antagonist; something about him needs to be at least relatable/somewhat sympathetic, so that the reader can tolerate his (or her, I suppose) presence until he gets his comeuppance at the end. This particular book's "rules" have something to do with certain milestones a story has to reach and by what approximate time they should be reached, though they didn't get into details about what these milestones are.

The panel itself was about how writing has guidelines and you should learn then and use them before you try breaking them. Some were no-brainers, like not switching POVs within the same scene. Some I'd heard before, like not over-using adverbs (I'm still working on that one!). Some I disagreed with, like the idea that 'said' is an invisible word and that it should be the predominant descriptor for dialogue (it drives me nuts when authors use 'said' a bunch of times in a row; it's not invisible, darnit!).

[december21st]

Yes, my indulgence fund is tapped dry as well.

The panel sounds very interesting. I looked up your con's web site; about half of the content seemed directed at aspiring writers -- apropos for a literary con.

[lone_pyramid]

Yeah, for people serious about writing and getting published, there were quite a few panels available to help them. We hit a few for interest's sake (though I have a vague notion that it would be really, really cool to be a published author, I just can't think of an idea involved enough to go 250+ pages). Fanfic is writing too, after all!

Jim Butcher said he used to attend cons and go and take notes at writing panels. So I suppose there's hope.

(There is a thunderstorm, and yet I can see bits and pieces of clear sky. It's pretty cool.)