I am attending RoberCon this weekend.
It’s my first virtual convention and my first time attending this event that supports the Roberson Museum and Science Center’s education and outreach programs. For the most part I stick to conventions in the Midwest because I can afford the trip (and can often minimize hotel use. So I guess this is a bright side of the pandemic. I’m Schrödinger’s author, both at home and attending a convention in Binghamton, New York at the same time.
I attended three events Saturday, all of them were more workshop than panel. The first two were on characters and character development and the last was on writing a novel in a short time frame. As a character writer, a lot of the character motivation and goal elements were not new to me, but it would have been useful to someone who struggles with this side of writing. There’s always more to learn and improvements to make, and talking with other writers or hearing about their process can improve your own.
The first workshop, Painless Novel Writing: Set Goals for Your Characters, was hosted by Jennifer D. Bokal, and we looked a lot at character motivation and goals. She wrapped up with an excellent tip about how we, as writers, should view our completed pieces. Our stories are consumable products, not offspring. Think of them as orange juice, not your babies. It makes the rejections and negative reviews less harsh.
The second workshop, Who Are These People?: Putting Character in Your Characters, was hosted by Paul Smith. We explored the use of role playing character sheets, specifically the Fate Core System, for creating a quick look at a character. This method was pretty quick and resulted in a succinct summary of your character, but didn’t include much on back story and motivation. This model could be used to quickly build a world. For people who will spend hours constructing a character before starting to write, the restricted nature of this may be very helpful. Combining these two models may work well for quickly assembling characters while ensuring the primary characters have enough depth.
My final workshop, Sprint to the Finish: Completing a Novel in a Short Time Frame, was hosted by Valerie Valdes. She covered all the big picture life stuff you need to prepare, how to work through the trouble that inevitably crops up, and tips for using writing sprints to charge through a novel at rapid pace. Most of what I write these days is done during timed sprints, and both A Familiar Story books were produced this way. My approach was a bit haphazard, especially on the second book, so it was helpful to get her “clean the house and tell your friends and family, see ya!” advice.
Workshops and panels are running 45 minutes, with follow up discussion in Discord, which is working very smoothly. I’m getting all the word nerd elements of being at a convention without having to travel or spend stupid amounts money on slow mediocre hotel food. While I’m not really getting to know folks they way I would with in person networking and socializing, this is definitely a good way to manage the experience during a pandemic.
