What is the difference between writing in your own world and writing in someone else’s world? What are the pitfalls to avoid? How do you make sure you get the characters right? Where can you stretch your literary legs and where do you need to hold back? And how do you get the IP owners to choose you to write for them?
With 21.45% of the US population falling into the Baby Boomer category (with another 19.71% being Gen X), readers are increasingly looking for more mature characters in books and movies. Some writers are meeting the demand with heros in their 40s and 50s, but can we go further? Faster? Older? What are the pitfalls and limitations of writing characters beyond the traditionally accepted age groups in SF/F? Better yet, what is the potential?
Should readers like every character? What about every narrator or protagonist? In this panel, authors who have written unlikable narrators will discuss how the unsympathetic and unappealing nature of their characters serve their narrative.
Narrative design is often misunderstood as being a synonym for game writing, but good narrative design combines the tools of storytelling, game design, and narrative strategy to help bring a game to life. This panel brings together narrative designers to talk about the ways that narrative systems deliver, shape, and change storytelling – and how their own work in this field has evolved and grown over time.
Today’s readers actually love a shorter read! And novellas are most easily translated to movies. Then why are novellas pushed to the back of publishing house lists, and relegated to the sidelines with minimum distribution? These novella writers and publishers reflect on what could be a booming business and what writers may consider going forward.
When the writing is strong, the world building is interesting, and the characters are compelling, readers want more. They want to spend time with the same characters on new journeys without losing the wonder which first drew them in. Authors discuss how to maintain consistent publishing schedules while meeting, maintaining, and set new expectations with their readers.
Fantasy and Science Fiction have always drawn elements from their sister genre Horror, from the zombie-like White Walkers of George R.R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE to the psychological horror in space of S.A. Barnes’s DEAD SILENCE. This panel would explore this dark mix of genres, including how to write it and providing great examples for everyone’s reading lists.
When do you need a picture, and when do you need a thousand words—and when do you need both? How have comics shaped popular narrative themes and readers’ habits? Join us as artists and writers discuss how sequential art elevates storytelling.
This panel will bring together speculative fiction writers who use their craft to illustrate how public systems (the school, prison, and healthcare systems) have failed BIPOC and poor people, and brilliantly reimagine what living in a people-centered society could look like.
Read more about System Failure: How Afro-Futurism, Fantasy, and Horror Help Us REIMAGINE Society
Few of us produce perfect first drafts. How does one go about revising a novel-length project? Our panelists share the tools and techniques in their kits for turning a rough draft into a polished, cohesive work.