Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Writer's Conference Recap

I'm sitting here waiting for Dan to get home so we can go get some wings (and the biggest Blue Moon Cleats has to offer- it's been that kind of day), so I figured I might as well finally do a blog post about the writer's conference I went to this past Saturday. I'm sure you've all been waiting anxiously to hear how it went, right? Right??

Well, anyway, I did learn some pretty interesting things. I also learned some not-so-interesting things, things that made me want to rip my hair out and cry no, no, NO!! But I digress.

The first session my sis in law and I chose to go to was called "Increasing Suspense In Your Novel". The speaker was interesting and made some good points, but a lot of it was common sense kind of stuff, like the fact that the resolution to the main conflict in your story should not be obvious. Duh. If readers know how the book is going to end, why would they bother turning the pages? He basically walked through writing a book from beginning to end, talking about how to introduce anxiety right in your opening scene (I'd like to think I accomplished this), create likable but flawed characters (again, I think my characters achieve this), keep raising the stakes and build disasters, aka "wind up a ticking clock", and make sure you have lots of conflict, conflict, conflict. I hope I achieved this part- is there enough conflict in my story? Is it a page-turner?? Ugh.

One thing he said I really liked- and I know I need to work on this- he suggested: "Make your words become 'invisible'- let your reader 'see' the story unfolding in front of them." I like that.

The second session was the one that had me pulling my hair out. This one was called "How to Win Over an Agent or Publisher". Ok, now, you all know I've been doing a lot of homework on this topic. Like, a LOT. I follow tons of agents' blogs & twitter feeds, and I read at least three different query critique sites weekly; my own query was heavily critiqued on one. Well, the lecturer seemed to be studying some different techniques, because pretty much everything she said went against the stuff I've researched. I'm not going to get into it too much (lest I start ripping out more hair from the memory), but suffice to say I'm just going to ignore everything she told us- from the way to create a query letter, to the way she suggested finding an agent. No, no, NO. I don't think a whole lot of people in this lecture were at the querying point, but I still feel almost guilty for not shouting out the different resources I've found. I mean, I don't have an agent yet myself, so who do I think I am, right?

The third session, "Amp it Up! Adding Drama to Stories" was by far my favorite session of the day. The speaker was great- funny, engaging, totally interesting. Even though some of the information was similar to the Suspense session, the way she lectured was completely different. She's published a mystery series (among a ton of other stuff, including YA!) and used examples from her own books to actually show us how to accomplish some of the points she was making. She made the point that even your title can be important to adding drama to your story, and asked if any of us had a complete book with a title yet. She wanted the group to try to discern what the book was about by the title alone. So I shyly raised my hand, mainly because I really think In My Mind's Eye is a great title. The first impulse was that it might be a memoir, but the second person hit it almost on the nose, asking if it was about a psychic. I said close, it's about a girl who starts having visions when she meets her soul mate. The speaker loved it, said it would definitely intrigue people who are into that sort of thing. So, yay. I hope she's right!!

So, in conclusion, am I glad I went? Was it worthwhile? For the most part, definitely yes. Would I do to another one? Welllll...I think we'll see what happens with In My Mind's Eye and go from there.

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