RMFW Highlights
The RMFW Conference was this past weekend, and Oh My Gosh was it amazing. There were great sessions, new writing friends, and plenty of geeking out. I feel inspired by all the wonderful people I met and writerly things I learned. Here were my favorite sessions and key takeaways:
Author’s Guide to Social Media: An etiquette guide to social media and how-to on leveraging your online presence. Ultimately, be kind, lift up your people, and geek out. We watched Amanda Palmer’s TED talk about connecting with people and her challenge to ask “How do you let people pay for music” instead of “How do you make people pay for music.” We then watched Erika Napoletano’s TED talk about how polarization can be an asset and the difference between honesty and bats$#t crazy (bonus, she’s seriously hilarious). Great job, Bree!
Plotting Your Novel Using a Dynamic Grid: A brilliant way to map your novel using poster board and color-coded sticky notes. Each character and subplot (and for me, clue) gets a different colored post-it so you can see when they’ve been off-screen too long. This seems like a great tool for a half-pantser/half-plotter like me to ensure my novel is structured to maximize conflict.
First Sale Panel: This was a panel of five authors whose first book was published this year. It was so fun to share in their enthusiasm for their stories and hear their (very different) routes to publication. That is a huge accomplishment and I wish them all congratulations!
Plot Structure and Pushing Your Characters: Fractals and novel-writing, what’s not to love? Hannah Bowman (Literary Agent at Liza Dawson) gave a presentation about using fractals to optimize your plot and subsequent subplots. Every story has three things: Premise, Conflict Development, and Climax. But these three things also exist in every Act, Part, Chapter, and Scene. There were graphs within graphs and, being a math nerd at heart, I totally soaked it up.
Become a Clue Master: How to Plant Clues: There are different types of clues: witness clues, forensic-type clues, psychologic clues, etc. Even the absence of a clue can be a clue! And the most important clues should be the most subtle, camouflaged by red herrings. Really, mystery writing is a game with the reader; you want to win, to surprise the reader with whodunit, but you have to play fair.
But with all these new writing techniques to try out, the most important thing is to write. So, back to it!
What I’m reading: Ascendant by Rebecca Taylor (I heard her speak at RMFW and got excited to read her story!)
What I’m listening to: Ellie Goulding – Halcyon
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