My Gen Con 2015 Schedule!

Heading south to Indianapolis in early August. First time at Gen Con and the Writers' Symposium. Love to hear from anyone who's recently been there.

Thursday

11am SEM1577110 - Business of Writing: Early Stage Writing Career—What to Expect.
12pm WKS1578865 - Writer's Craft: Tension on Every Page.
2pm SEM1577060 - Writer's Craft: When to Show, When to Tell.
3pm SEM1577160 - Character Craft: Where to Start When Creating Characters.
4pm WKS1577161 - Writer's Craft: Badass Badguys.
5pm SEM1577116 - Business of Writing: Pitching Your Project.
8pm BGM1575255 - Twilight Imperium.

Friday

9am SEM1578842 - Writer's Craft: Plot Structure – Building the Foundation to a Page-Turning Story.
10am SEM1578843 - Writer's Craft: The Hero’s Journey – Creating a Character Driven Story.
11am SEM1577121 - Writer's Craft: Dialogue & Dialogue Tags.
12pm SEM1577074 - Writer's Craft: Description Through Dialogue.
1pm  SEM1573811 - Getting Started in the Gaming Industry.
4pm WKS1578848 - Writer's Craft: Characterization.
5pm WKS1578849 - Writer's Craft: Plotting.
6pm SEM1577080 - Writer's Craft: Epiphanies & Defining Moments.
7pm NMN1573743 - 3D Game of Thrones Board game.

Saturday

9am SEM1577084 - Character Craft 101.
10am SEM1577086 - Character Craft: Character Voice.
1pm SEM1577092 - Writer's Craft: Sustaining the Tension in Novels.
3pm SEM1578856 - Writer's Craft: Magic and the Modern World.
4pm WKS1578886 - Writer's Craft: Advanced Characterization.

Sunday

10am True Dungeon – Into The Underdark.
12pm True Dungeon – The Sable Gauntlet.

Spirit Quest - Post-Chimera Edit Report

I received the edit of my novel Spirit Quest from Chimera. Reading through the detailed write-up, I’ll admit to being overwhelmed. It’s hard to receive critiques, but it’s exactly what I needed at this point in the process. I had circulated the manuscript to a few Alpha readers and I got some solid feedback, but not what I needed. This edit not only pointed out several significant issues with the story, it gave me the direction I need to move towards to fix the problem.

So what do I need to fix? At this point, I’m looking at the 10,000 foot view and not at the text level (dialogue, passive sentences, repetitive sentence structure, etc).

[ ] Clean up the various POV and re-write from Marc’s POV. I’ve used 4 POVs in my story. It’s Marc’s story and I need to focus on that. That’s about 15,000 words of wiggle room I now have. I can find creative ways to add all that information from those other POVs into Marc’s knowledge pool. Focusing on Marc will help me find his voice and not have it watered down by other POVs.

[ ] Strip out the dream sequences

[ ] Clean up Marc’s inner turmoil and introspection. Cut back on a few of the repetitions throughout the book. Demonstrate a steady growth of his character. I tend to have Marc slip back into his bad habits/qualities. His anger isn’t focused and seems to get thrown around all the time without proper definition, so make it something people can sympathize with. That 15,000 word wiggle room should allow me to add a few more chapters focused on Marc and the progression of his magic.

That should keep me busy for a few months...