It's time for my belated post about this year's YANovCon.
There was a writing exercise at the beginning, lead by the author Arriel Vinson. I'd gotten there early, and so I figured I'd sit in on it. I didn't want to share anything during the workshop, because all of the other participants were kids and I didn't know if adults were meant to participate. But luckily, one other lady came - I think the mom of one of the kids. And the author asked me to share anyway (she asked every person to).
She had some fun prompts, and I turned them into a couple poems. The basic idea was to "write about a place you always go." I chose my garden for one exercise, and my Japan trip for the other.
During one of the panels, an author said that she puts together a playlist to listen to for each book she writes. That sounds cool. I kinda want to make them for my stories, but I don't know if I'd ever listen to them. Plus, there are so many moods throughout a story. You'd almost need a separate playlist for each feeling. (A fanfiction would be really easy to make a playlist for. You could just use the soundtrack from the movie or game!)
One author said that a lot of readers just skip the prologues and epilogues. Why would someone do that? There can be such important information in those! One way for a writer to get around that is just to call the prologue "Chapter 1."
I was even more shocked when they said that some people only read the dialogue in a book. How would you know half of what the book is about?
And here are a couple good points made by the authors:
To be good at something, you have to suck first. Then you can learn how to fix it.
All of the authors agreed that the efforts to break into publishing are soul-crushing (and getting worse). In response to this, Eva Des Lauriers said, "The drum of writers is in you. If it's in you, it's never gonna stop drumming."
As always, the authors' books were for sale. I wrote down a bunch of titles that I want to read. But the one I bought to get signed was "The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea." It's based off of a Korean folktale, and I think half the reason I bought it was because the cover is so beautiful.
(Though I was a bit disappointed in the character development and pacing).
I talked to some of the authors after, which is always fun.
