WorldCon Schedule
Sunday, August 15th, 2004 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniInsofar as it is now known...
Thursday 2:00pm Mind the plot holes, dear
Grant Carrington, Sharon Lee(M), Louise Marley, Tamora Pierce, Connie Willis
Give examples of various discrepancies/problems with details from any piece of SF/F and try to categorize them (examples: temporal, silly, boneheaded, etc.!) How could the story be saved?
Thursday 4:30pm Reading (0.5 hrs)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller: From Crystal Soldier
Thursday 6:00pm Cardboard Characters
Sharon Lee, Chris Moriarty, Steve Saffel(M), Laura J. Underwood
Are They Always Bad? Old-fashioned SF used to be known for
"cardboard characters, and being plot and action driven. But, having the cardboard characters wasn't necessarily only from a perceived lack of characterization skills or interest on the part of writers and authors...spending the time and effort to attempt to have more fully-fleshed out, multidimensional characters, might have led to different stories, not necessarily appreciated by the audience, or longer, more complicated stories, again, not necessarily desired by the audience. Then again, a lot of it may have been because of shortcoming and short deadlines for writers and publishing. But with all that, are there times when cardboard characters -work-, and are the right way to go?
Friday Noon Character Development for Everyone
Susan de Guardiola, Sharon Lee(M), Bill Neville, Melissa Scott
It isn't just writers who develop characters, Artists, costumers and gamers also need these skills, People who use characters in different mediums discuss how they go about it.
Friday 2:00pm Signing at Pandemonium Books Table, Dealers Room
Friday 9:00pm Friends of Liad Open House
Saturday Noon - 1:00pm SFWA Table
Saturday 9:00pm Meisha Merlin Party
Sunday 10:00am Memorable Scenes
Grant Carrington, Sharon Lee, Bradford Lyau (M), Darrell Schweitzer
Some stories have scenes which are so right they just stick in your mind. (E.g., The paleontologist being handed a cooler containing a freshly frozen dinosaur head in Swanwick's Bones of the Earth, or Hari Seldon appearing in the Time Vault, "I am Hari Seldon.") What scenes stick in your minds? What makes them so memorable?
Sunday Noon Autographing
Jack Dann, P. C. Hodgell, Mindy Klasky, Sharon Lee, David B. Mattingly, Steve Miller, Jay Sheckley, Charles Stross
Sunday 1:00pm Kaffeeklatsch
Mitchell Freedman, Nancy Kress, Sharon Lee, Lawrence Watt-Evans
Monday Noon What's in a Name?
James Alan Gardner, Katherine Kurtz, Sharon Lee, Laurie J. Marks, John McDaid (M)
How do you name your characters? This is a sweeping generalization, but naming conventions in SF tend to be conservative, at least for human characters. How many stories do we read set in distant futures or other worlds in which people have names that sound like my neighbors (two names to a customer, family name last)? This is not realistic because it assumes the continued cultural dominance of a US or Western-centered world indefinitely. The way an author handles handles says something about the assumptions underlying a story (including the root assumption that sentient creatures are individuals), while the very sound of a character's name may add to the sense of the milieu, as fantasy writers well know. How could names also include such alien possibilities as clan, hive, guild, chemicals, colors....and what else?
Looks like a Wonderful Time will be had by all!
Thursday 2:00pm Mind the plot holes, dear
Grant Carrington, Sharon Lee(M), Louise Marley, Tamora Pierce, Connie Willis
Give examples of various discrepancies/problems with details from any piece of SF/F and try to categorize them (examples: temporal, silly, boneheaded, etc.!) How could the story be saved?
Thursday 4:30pm Reading (0.5 hrs)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller: From Crystal Soldier
Thursday 6:00pm Cardboard Characters
Sharon Lee, Chris Moriarty, Steve Saffel(M), Laura J. Underwood
Are They Always Bad? Old-fashioned SF used to be known for
"cardboard characters, and being plot and action driven. But, having the cardboard characters wasn't necessarily only from a perceived lack of characterization skills or interest on the part of writers and authors...spending the time and effort to attempt to have more fully-fleshed out, multidimensional characters, might have led to different stories, not necessarily appreciated by the audience, or longer, more complicated stories, again, not necessarily desired by the audience. Then again, a lot of it may have been because of shortcoming and short deadlines for writers and publishing. But with all that, are there times when cardboard characters -work-, and are the right way to go?
Friday Noon Character Development for Everyone
Susan de Guardiola, Sharon Lee(M), Bill Neville, Melissa Scott
It isn't just writers who develop characters, Artists, costumers and gamers also need these skills, People who use characters in different mediums discuss how they go about it.
Friday 2:00pm Signing at Pandemonium Books Table, Dealers Room
Friday 9:00pm Friends of Liad Open House
Saturday Noon - 1:00pm SFWA Table
Saturday 9:00pm Meisha Merlin Party
Sunday 10:00am Memorable Scenes
Grant Carrington, Sharon Lee, Bradford Lyau (M), Darrell Schweitzer
Some stories have scenes which are so right they just stick in your mind. (E.g., The paleontologist being handed a cooler containing a freshly frozen dinosaur head in Swanwick's Bones of the Earth, or Hari Seldon appearing in the Time Vault, "I am Hari Seldon.") What scenes stick in your minds? What makes them so memorable?
Sunday Noon Autographing
Jack Dann, P. C. Hodgell, Mindy Klasky, Sharon Lee, David B. Mattingly, Steve Miller, Jay Sheckley, Charles Stross
Sunday 1:00pm Kaffeeklatsch
Mitchell Freedman, Nancy Kress, Sharon Lee, Lawrence Watt-Evans
Monday Noon What's in a Name?
James Alan Gardner, Katherine Kurtz, Sharon Lee, Laurie J. Marks, John McDaid (M)
How do you name your characters? This is a sweeping generalization, but naming conventions in SF tend to be conservative, at least for human characters. How many stories do we read set in distant futures or other worlds in which people have names that sound like my neighbors (two names to a customer, family name last)? This is not realistic because it assumes the continued cultural dominance of a US or Western-centered world indefinitely. The way an author handles handles says something about the assumptions underlying a story (including the root assumption that sentient creatures are individuals), while the very sound of a character's name may add to the sense of the milieu, as fantasy writers well know. How could names also include such alien possibilities as clan, hive, guild, chemicals, colors....and what else?
Looks like a Wonderful Time will be had by all!
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 11:44 am (UTC)Yeah.
You hadn't noticed?
I'm not sure WorldCon's the place to start, mind you, but it is right handy this year, and on the whole NESFA does Good Con (wheedle, wheedle...)
(reporting from an Undisclosed Location)
Date: 2004-08-16 05:23 am (UTC)