LUW Summer Writers Symposium 2024

Yesterday I had a splendid time at the annual writing symposium at USU hosted by the League of Utah Writers. I'll keep my remarks brief because I don't see why I should share everything I learned with people who didn't pay the $30 fee.

First I attended Shaun Anderson's presentation "The Dark Arts: Unforgettable Villains." I saw Shaun went I went to eat on campus a couple of days before the event. We were in a class together nine years ago, but I've only talked to him a couple of times. Knowing that he was a part of this symposium and that he's been in charge of Helicon West, I thought of him as a "real" writer and myself, who's only recently started getting involved in such things, as a poser, but he admired that I'd published a full book while he hasn't yet, so that was some kind of poignant lesson about how we're too hard on ourselves or something. (He has published non-fiction pieces, like an essay about being a gay Mormon missionary that made a big impression on me when I was Mormon.) In this presentation, he suggested several questions we could use to flesh out our villains. I was struck by a perspective he shared that I'd never considered: by making a character a villain, we're asserting that they're wrong in some way, and thus making a statement about our own morality. Mind blown.

Bryan Young, who writes for Star Wars and other less important IPs, gave a presentation on "Captivating Character Creation." My favorite takeaway: we learn more about characters when they're forced to choose between two terrible options. Mind blown.

Bestselling author John D. Brown told us about how to keep readers hooked by triggering anticipation, hopes and fears, and/or puzzlement or mystery, and then delaying the payoff. It sounds simple enough, but the way he said it was more entertaining. He showed us a bunch of his Amazon reviews that said they couldn't put his book down, so he knows what he's talking about.

*Break for pizza*

Jennifer Sinor presented on "Scene, Summary, and Musing: Controlling Pace and Developing Depth in Prose." She started it the way she starts every one of her classes: by making us do breathing exercises to center ourselves and return to our bodies. This time, however, Russ Beck was presenting next door with his exceptionally loud voice, which made it difficult. She walked around barefoot while she talked, so I'd like to have a word with the anonymous creeper on Twitter who said that I'm weird for "wandering around shoeless" outside. I love Jennifer. So carefree, so compassionate, so spiritual. I hated the class I had with her as an undergraduate, but that had nothing to do with her as a person. The class I had with her in graduate school went much better. The essay I wrote in two parts, "Things That Rhyme with 'Elise,'" left an impression on her that she said she would think about for a long time. Her response to the second part still cracks me up in a sick kind of way. SPOILER ALERT:

Yeah, that makes two of us.

Where was I? Oh yeah, so then I went to another presentation by Bryan Young on "Setups, Payoffs and Endings." He mostly used movie examples in his presentations because he assumes we've seen more of the same movies than read the same books. I suggested Raiders of the Lost Ark as an example of a good ending, and then later he had a picture of the warehouse scene as the backdrop for one of his slides, so I nailed it. Key takeaway: problems with the ending are often actually problems with the beginning and the middle. And I'd already done the technique of writing the ending and then revising everything that came before so it all looks carefully planned and perfect, so it was nice to be validated in that.

Finally, I attended "Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary" by Shanan Ballam, which focused more on poetry but was still applicable to other things. ​Shanan had a stroke a couple of years ago and had to learn how to walk, talk, and write again. I'm inspired by her resilience and pleased that she continues to recover. I had two classes from her, Fiction Writing and Poetry Writing. One of them, probably Fiction, was the class I had with Shawn. As if the nostalgia factor wasn't high enough already, the notebook I used to take notes at this symposium was the one I had purchased for that class, used in that class, and then never written in again until yesterday. It still has the note in the front that she left after I wrote something that made her worry about me. I don't even remember what it was.

I had a note from my first class with Jennifer that I wish I could find because I think it was hilarious. It was something like, "Christopher - I'm not sure you understood the assignment - but you did it! 100"

There were also presentations entitled "Level Up Your Social Media," "Becoming Your Own Boss: Your Guide to Indie Publishing," and "Amazon Advertising Strategies" that I'm sure would have benefitted me because I suck at those things, but I was more interested in learning about the writing craft itself, because that's what I write for, so I'll just have to stay true to myself and face the consequences for sucking at the other bullcrap I have to do. The symposium was well worth the $30, and again, I regret that I'm just now getting involved in the local writing community and I'm going to move in a month.