Friday, October 27, 2017

Caught My Fancy Friday: Midwest Storymakers Conference, Part II

I take pages and pages of notes at every writing conference I attend. Mostly, I don't look at them again. But it helps me learn.

I've had a few weeks to digest what I learned at the conference--in classes and out--and here's the short version:
  • Indie publishing just might be the wave of the future.
    • Writing to market can be lucrative.
    • It's so FAST. Write, revise, publish, make some moolah. Wow! 
    • I still don't think it's for me, but it was fascinating to learn about it from successful indie authors.
  • Tropes are okay. Readers of certain genres like and expect tropes. Good writers use tropes to their advantage instead of dismissing them.
  • I love critiquing Regency manuscripts, even though I've never written one and don't enjoy many of them besides Georgette Heyer. 
  • I really wish I had had the change to take Gregg Luke's class on poisons BEFORE I researched, wrote, and revised my novel about a poisoner at Peter the Great's court. It would have saved me a lot of time!
  • Now I kind of want to write murder mysteries, now that I have the low-down on all the best poisons.
  • There are patterns to writing successful romance. Don't laugh! I don't read or write strictly romance, but I love romance side plots, and I've never thought much about them. Victorine Leiske's class opened my eyes. 
  • She talked about avoiding insta-love, which is a problem in YA. She says it happens when characters build physical intimacy without matching emotional intimacy. She suggests making a list of their secrets and revelations from smallest (I hate onions) to largest (I can't get over my last lover) and let the characters leak them to each other in ascending order. Genius, right?
  • Writers are really, really, really nice; anxious to share what they've learned; and pretty much always riddled by self-doubt.

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