Event 2012.
May. 28th, 2012 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombat posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
writercon_ukOh dear! So much for group members at the event keeping those of you who weren't able to be there up to date... I apologise on behalf of everyone.
The only excuse is that we were busy 'doing things'.
The Ramada Hotel in Coventry now knows us pretty well - and upgraded almost all of us from basic rooms to the slightly more up-market ones that have their own wee sitting area.
They also coped with the request for us to be able to watch Eurovision as a group - reserving the TV end of the bar for us so that we could all sit and snark and cheer/jeer as the acts required, whilst drinking assorted beverages, many of them of an alcoholic nature. I have discovered that I rather like Martini after-eight cocktails!
But this is looking past the main part of the event...
I return to Saturday morning
ningloreth gave us a fascinating talk on how to make banners for our stories. This included how to get the right sizes to fit journals, archives etc.; how to use tone and colour to pull a single banner together, or to provide a theme or thread tying together all the chapter headings for a particular story; how to blend the elements together... and including how to do this with a much simple programme than Photoshop. I am really quite tempted to have a go for myself.
Then I did an hour on the subject of writing sex scenes - I plan to put the whole talk here during this week. I think it went well - and I managed to produce the longest period of silence I think I have ever encountered at any WriterConUK get-together when I gave them a handout containing five examples of different styles, and different scenarios and asked them to read!
At the end of my talk the chairperson asked if there were any questions. This elicited the question of the weekend frommiso_no_tsuki; "That was good for me. How was it for you?" :)
As usual there was plenty of time for general chit-chat - put 21 fans/geeks together and the talk, and quips, flows thick and fast. This remained true over lunch - where my personal geeky T-shirt was looked at closely by a number of the others - this is the original. This met with my favourite comment of the weekend from Colonel K "So that's why one doesn't simply walk into Mordor..."
First afternoon session wasspeakr2customrs talking about character death scenes - the whys and hows of writing them, the different roles they play within stories, and so on. Again the whole talk will be posted, and there will be a podcast, too. It certainly had an effect on me - I have been considering the deaths in the book I was reading, and a couple of fics, going 'Mook? Red-shirt? Victim? Hero?'
Afternoon tea break came with home-made biscuits - worthy of note I feel. Thengillo spoke on the subject of plagiarism - when is something plagiarism? Why does it matter?
And then came the chance to put some of what we had learn over the rest of the day into action... On the Friday night everyone gets a 'raffle ticket' - which is used to assign them to a random group for the quiz. Now we were to return to those three groups to write three scenes - one each. A Bad!Romance scene, a Bad!Sex scene, and a Bad!Death scene. For reasons I can't quite remember - although I am sure someone will be able to explain - and I'm sure it had something to do with S2C - the three were to form a trilogy called Cake on the Nile.
I was in the Bad!Death group - we had won the quiz and so we drank our prize bottle of bubbly as we worked. And we had action dolls! And paper cut out figures! (Quizzlings is an absolute whizz at making those.) The three will be posted over this week too - hopefully in the right order but, to be honest, it wouldn't make much difference. It would be funniest, though, if you had read the talks first.
Then there was the legendary WriterConUk raffle - from which I emerged with the 'Bad Elf Porn' book which I will speak of more on my own journal - with the full history. I think it might well become an annual raffle prize!
So then to dinner, set out in our conference room especially for us, followed by the aforementioned Eurovision evening. And some of us sat up until the wee small hours in the break-out area after that...
And I will finish there for now - much fun had, things learnt - and the report still to come from when we actually shared what we had learnt with each other on Sunday morning.
The only excuse is that we were busy 'doing things'.
The Ramada Hotel in Coventry now knows us pretty well - and upgraded almost all of us from basic rooms to the slightly more up-market ones that have their own wee sitting area.
They also coped with the request for us to be able to watch Eurovision as a group - reserving the TV end of the bar for us so that we could all sit and snark and cheer/jeer as the acts required, whilst drinking assorted beverages, many of them of an alcoholic nature. I have discovered that I rather like Martini after-eight cocktails!
But this is looking past the main part of the event...
I return to Saturday morning
ningloreth gave us a fascinating talk on how to make banners for our stories. This included how to get the right sizes to fit journals, archives etc.; how to use tone and colour to pull a single banner together, or to provide a theme or thread tying together all the chapter headings for a particular story; how to blend the elements together... and including how to do this with a much simple programme than Photoshop. I am really quite tempted to have a go for myself.Then I did an hour on the subject of writing sex scenes - I plan to put the whole talk here during this week. I think it went well - and I managed to produce the longest period of silence I think I have ever encountered at any WriterConUK get-together when I gave them a handout containing five examples of different styles, and different scenarios and asked them to read!
At the end of my talk the chairperson asked if there were any questions. This elicited the question of the weekend from
miso_no_tsuki; "That was good for me. How was it for you?" :)As usual there was plenty of time for general chit-chat - put 21 fans/geeks together and the talk, and quips, flows thick and fast. This remained true over lunch - where my personal geeky T-shirt was looked at closely by a number of the others - this is the original. This met with my favourite comment of the weekend from Colonel K "So that's why one doesn't simply walk into Mordor..."
First afternoon session was
speakr2customrs talking about character death scenes - the whys and hows of writing them, the different roles they play within stories, and so on. Again the whole talk will be posted, and there will be a podcast, too. It certainly had an effect on me - I have been considering the deaths in the book I was reading, and a couple of fics, going 'Mook? Red-shirt? Victim? Hero?'Afternoon tea break came with home-made biscuits - worthy of note I feel. Then
gillo spoke on the subject of plagiarism - when is something plagiarism? Why does it matter?And then came the chance to put some of what we had learn over the rest of the day into action... On the Friday night everyone gets a 'raffle ticket' - which is used to assign them to a random group for the quiz. Now we were to return to those three groups to write three scenes - one each. A Bad!Romance scene, a Bad!Sex scene, and a Bad!Death scene. For reasons I can't quite remember - although I am sure someone will be able to explain - and I'm sure it had something to do with S2C - the three were to form a trilogy called Cake on the Nile.
I was in the Bad!Death group - we had won the quiz and so we drank our prize bottle of bubbly as we worked. And we had action dolls! And paper cut out figures! (Quizzlings is an absolute whizz at making those.) The three will be posted over this week too - hopefully in the right order but, to be honest, it wouldn't make much difference. It would be funniest, though, if you had read the talks first.
Then there was the legendary WriterConUk raffle - from which I emerged with the 'Bad Elf Porn' book which I will speak of more on my own journal - with the full history. I think it might well become an annual raffle prize!
So then to dinner, set out in our conference room especially for us, followed by the aforementioned Eurovision evening. And some of us sat up until the wee small hours in the break-out area after that...
And I will finish there for now - much fun had, things learnt - and the report still to come from when we actually shared what we had learnt with each other on Sunday morning.
