After missing last month’s, I finally made it back to the Coffeehouse yesterday.
Peter Clines stepped in for Jonathan Maberry to run it this time, with Henry Herz providing some useful counterpoints throughout.
We had more of a free-form discussion than usual, which ranged from “What’s going on with the WGA and their agents?” to “How do I write characters of other backgrounds and ethnicities without stepping into cultural appropriation?”
Many thanks to Clines and Herz for sharing their wisdom while keeping the discussion flowing, and to Mysterious Galaxy for hosting!
My notes:
- henry: you can pants your story, but don't pants your career
- peter: know what you want to get out of it, be honest about what you want, and go for it
- in tv, producers have more power than directors; directors can change every week, but producers stay and control the story arcs
- upcoming events:
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- may 11th: san diego writers workshop
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- september: central coast writers conference
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- peter: phoenix comic fest has great writers track, con runs until midnight every night; it's next weekend, but something to think about for next year
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- early august: scbwi annual conference in LA
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- june 20-22, historical novel society, in maryland, good program
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- mythcon is in san diego this year; run by mythopoetic society
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- new york pitch fest: 4 days in june, pitching to agents and editors in manhattan
- black hare publishing: soliciting submissions for two anthologies; small press, but looks professional; drabble fiction (200 words)
- contract reviews? join the author's guild, they'll review contracts for members
- arbitration: wga takes all the people that did drafts of a movie or dialog polishes, etc and decides who gets credit for the movie
- pierce brown wrote screenplay for red rising specifically to get paid screenwriting credits via wga arbitration; more important to him than the control over the screenplay
- 95% of the time, when they option your book, they'll ask if you want to write the screenplay; they'll throw it in the trash, but they'll ask anyway, just to stave off any future tantrums
- watch the balance between plot and story; if the story finishes but the plot keeps going (moonlighting syndrome) it's going to feel flat and boring
- peter: when revising, will do a draft just for one character, following their thread all the way through; helps catch inconsistencies in appearance, name, and their story arc (did i do anything with this plot of her conflict with her boss?)
- k.m. weyland: creating character arcs
- aeon timeline: interacts with scrivener, can help visualize the timeline of your story
- henry's doing picture book writing pt 2 later this month; send first draft to him ahead of time, they'll critique it in the class; compliment to the first class, but not necessary to have taken it
- lookup robert smalls, escaped slave
