Life, the Universe, and Everything

This weekend was the annual sci-fi/fantasy convention at BYU: Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE). It was fairly decent! For those of you who are unfamiliar with such conventions, the main thing about them is that published writers and other sorts get together on panels and discuss various topics, like how to create good monsters, character development, using languages, and so forth. This is also an important part of the bigger conventions like World Fantasy (which I attended last year in San Jose, CA).

Honestly, most of the time the panels are almost completely worthless. The better ones tend to simply confirm my opinions, and at best I at least get thinking of how to better apply basic principles. For example, the first day had a panel titled "Putting Romance into Your Fantasy." The panelists, for the most part, were actually romance writers and droned on about their genre. It was terribly boring and would have been a complete waste of time had I not thought of new ways to add conflicts to the romances in my current story. So I at least made use of it (though that was an exception, especially considering how exceptionally bad that panel was).

However, I actually got a lot of good stuff out of some of the panels and workshops this time! Dan Wells did a workshop on story structure, which I expected to be the same old stuff I've heard a hundred times now. It wasn't. He presented a seven-point system for breaking a plot down to its most basic parts, using various examples to illustrate its use in movies and books such as Star Wars, Jaws, Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, and Othello—a healthy portion of the spectrum of genres. (To give credit where credit is due, he got the idea from a Star Trek RPG Guide for creating scenarios.) He also broke plot lines down to types that I hadn't thought of before—like action, character, and romance—demonstrating how these can be interwoven to create more powerful, memorable scenes that will really hook the reader. It's mostly a bare bones deal, but it's helpful to simplify things. These were all new techniques for me, and since then I've been breaking Rise of the Colos down to its components to see where I can strengthen the story arcs and fill in any other gaps. Probably the best workshop I've ever been to. Kudos, Dan Wells.

After that, I went to a panel of military dudes talking about the military in SF. As far as panels go, I don't think I've gone to a better one. Not only was it incredibly useful information that will help me portray military better in future books, it was a pleasant reminder of the service our armed forces do for us. As a civilian who has never had any military experience, I could easily fall in with the terrible disconnect that lies between most of America and our military. It saddens me when people with no military connections—especially when it's politicians—demean the men and women who so courageously serve our country. Reminders like this make me grateful for the service those people do.

This morning I got up early (ok, ok—that only means around 8) to go to what I hoped would prove a much better version of the first panel, this one called "A Guy's Take on Romance." It was infinitely better. Basically it was what I expected the first one to be—why and what sort of conflicts arise and why they work (for men and women), problem-solving strategies, and so forth. Lee Modesitt is by far my favorite panelists ever, and I can say that fairly certainly after having seen him in several venues over the past few years. This is based more on what he says and how he says it, and not really at all on a firsthand knowledge of his work; I've only read a couple of his early books, and he's published fifty-something in his lifetime. His were also the best comments on two of the following panels on worldbuilding, though I feel that I have that part of the writing process down pretty well at this point. I'm not a master or anything, but my other skills need to catch up to bring these worlds to life.

Brandon Sanderson was the keynote speaker today, and he addressed something that is actually quite important to me. Once upon a time, I was rather ashamed of being a fantasy writer. I would tell people that I wanted to be a writer, and when they asked me what I wanted to write, it was with great reluctance that I admitted, "Just fantasy." This is unfortunately a growing trend in the SF/F genre, and if it continues, the genre will destroy itself. This is evidenced in such things as when J.K. Rowling said that she did not write fantasy. I thoroughly enjoyed Harry Potter and will not malign the author, but I have to agree with Terry Pratchett's response: "I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, hidden worlds, jumping chocolate frogs, owl mail, magic food, ghosts, broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue." As I searched the internet for the source of that quote, I ran across an article by a book critic who had picked up a Pratchett book and loved it, calling him (and rightly so) "one of the wittiest, most talented, and engaging authors currently living." The title of her article? "Terry Pratchett is not fantasy." Her reasoning? While the Discworld setting is fantasy-esque, the stories aren't. This is further evidence of the huge misconception of what makes a fantasy novel. I imagine that such a response comes from the (fairly common) perception that all fantasy is of the Dungeons & Dragons variety (which I can understand people not liking). The truth is, though, that any type of story can be fantasy: you can take a romance, a mystery, a thriller, whatever you want, and throw in some magic or other supernatural elements and it becomes fantasy. Are there stories that only work in the fantasy genre? Certainly, but those plots are not what define the genre itself. The distaste which some people have in regards to science fiction and fantasy is often one born of ignorance, and it is not a distaste that SF/F writers need adopt. Brandon teaches sci-fi and fantasy writing at BYU, which I've attended several semesters. The most important thing that I took from it that first year is the pride I now have in my work and my genre. Writing fantasy is not easy. Yes, we can make stuff up, change the rules of how the world works and all that, but that doesn't make it easy. If anything, it creates a whole new set of challenges that other writers don't have to deal with as we make readers care about these characters while also inducing a sense of wonder. It is its own art form, a craft that writers can be proud of. Is Dungeons & Dragons a part of it? Yes! And there's more! There is so much to science fiction and fantasy, and to define it using only one part of such a wonderfully diverse genre is like a blind man deciding that an elephant is like a rope because he has only bothered to feel the tail. And in the world of fantasy, we don't just have elephants, we have oliphaunts!

And that's the end of life, the universe, and everything.