Using the Programme Guide of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON III, which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared!
Panelists:
Howard A Jones: Award-winning fantasy author
Jenny Rae Rappaport: author of short fiction
Mary Turzillo: prolific poet, award-winning author
Michael Swanwick: Hugo, Nebula, and Locus author of short stories, novels, and essays
AC Wise: prolific author
Howard A Jones:
- in a short story, everything is known and plotted out; in a longer piece, you have to scaffold to get to the end and it takes a long time.
- you have to be in love with your characters.
- in a short piece, the villain isn’t well defined. Even there, you have to find what your character wants and KEEP it from them.
- in a long story, I can do whatever I want to do.
- finding your way in that “whatever I want” is what makes the story happen.
- I’m an outliner rather than a pantster – but do both. Whatever works. Write your way through to the mountain.
- use the old with completely new, like TODAY’S episodic television.
- I ask myself, “Am I going to enjoy working with the characters.
- keep the important stuff, then change whatever I want to, though be consistent. I can EXPAND the story.
- in DESERT OF SOULS, I took Arabian Nights fantasies, that sort of worked. Then I asked if [something else] would work if I just slide it in. It did.
- sometimes, I get a surprise!
Jenny Rae Rappaport:
- sometimes you CAN feel what the characters want to do.
- every secondary character is a hero in their own life!
- return to your work often.
- if it’s NOT working, rewrite it.
- when reading slush, I try an see what makes the story go.
- a pantster DISCOVERS the story, plotting kills the story.
- I don’t personal have to “like” my characters.
- there ARE no rules about changing a short story into a novel.
- your story HAS to have a finish. How is the problem solved? Resolutions change the character.
- the reader needs to know everything that happens.
- research makes the story richer
Mary Turzillo:
- every secondary character is a hero in their own life!
- return to your work often.
- if it’s NOT working, rewrite it.
- when reading slush, I try an see what makes the story go.
- a pantster DISCOVERS the story, plotting kills the story.
- I don’t personal have to “like” my characters.
- there ARE no rules about changing a short story into a novel.
- your story HAS to have a finish. How is the problem solved? Resolutions change the character.
- the reader needs to know everything that happens.
- research makes the story richer
Mary Turzillo:
- if you have a short story and want to make it longer, expand PAST the climax.
- you can also add a subplot.
- try to make her lovable, weak on the villain, in trouble every ten pages – that what makes it a PAGE-TURNER.
- give up when I hit a brick wall???
- every writer works in different ways.
- “red line of death” is somewhere in the middle of the title [I’d never heard the phrase before, so I poked around and found this: “…a top sci-fi magazine editor…puts a red line on the manuscript at the moment where he or she loses interest in the story. Because it’s focused on losing instead of catching a reader, this sort of exercise makes it easier for a piece with solid writing to do well vs. one with a distinctive action hook.” (https://alphawritersworkshop.org/beginnings/)
- a likeable character with undeserved misfortune…HOWEVER: “walking is controlled falling”.
- our story is in another universe.
- Poems are ads for short stories; short stories are ads for novels; novels externally…
- Anne McCaffery [in her Dragonriders of Pern series] started with short stories and ended up with numerous novels with few discrepancies. She kept what was in the short stories.
- Jeff Landis said, “I don’t sell exclusive rights for two years. The editors seem to be fair.”
- a novel has to be RICH. That richness is what it needs to BE a novel.
Michael Swanwick:
- fix-up novels never get respect.
- it can take as much time to write a short story as a novel, but short stories go away and novels stay with it.
- when you consider expanding a short story, you get an idea of how long it “should” be.
- a novel 100,000 words (20 chapters, 5000 words per chapter; but a short story has a “certain SHAPE”. It could be a first chapter or an inspiration for a novel.
- in a novel, you can explain what’s happening and WHY. You can’t in a short story.
- a short story about time travel; plopped it in the middle of a novel – then changed it all until it WORKS.
- The Gardner Dozois Slush Pile Anecdote: https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/in-memoriam-gardner-dozois/
- EXPAND YOUR STORY, regardless of the method – meticulous, pantster, daydreamer…
- cut stories out of your novel. “The Man That Melted” – cut out, reworked with different stories; like the character who lives in one, dies in the other.
- how does your editor FEEL about you?
- THE ENDING AND EVERY WORD HAS TO BE USEFUL
AC Wise:
- when you see “what characters want to do”, ask yourself: is this a trick?
- you can insert more details to make is seem “real”.
- if you already have a published story [in that “universe”] where do you pick up?
- in a short story, you create a “tone”, in a novel, the character is CHANGED.
- when you expand a story, you have to change it – but how MANT changes do you make?
I’ve underlined above which comments left an impression on me – now all I need to do is study them and apply them!
Program Schedule: https://discon3.org/schedule/
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY860vAI2izm2g2mUgxzT14fGVmoGh66B51g&usqp=CAU
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