ShevaCon - Panel Schedule

I'm heading out tonight for SheVaCon, which starts tomorrow in Roanoke, Virginia. I'm excited to meet people, sell and sign some books, and hang out with two of my favorite pals, Janine Spendlove and Aaron Allston.

I wanted to leave my schedule with you in case you could make it. This is a great convention with lots of great seminars to be had.

Feb 8

E-publishing how does it work - Bryan Young, Anne B Walsh, Elaine Corvidae
1:00pm-1:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Intro to graphic novel writing - Bryan Young, Elaine Corvidae
3:00pm-3:50pm Bent Mountain Room

Feb 9

How to Kill your Character - Robert West, Betty Cross, Leona Wisoker, Janine Spendlove, Gail Martin, Bryan Young, Aaron Allston, Heather E Hutsell
12:00pm-12:50pm Washington Lecture Hall

Beating Writer’s Block - Paul Dellinger, Leona Wisoker, Janine Spendlove, Betty Cross, Bryan Young, Mark Rainey, Jim Bernheimer, Heather E Hutsell
2:00pm-2:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Evolution of Weapons in Sci-Fi - Janine Spendlove, Bryan Young
3:00pm-3:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Sci-fi in Romance/Romance in Sci-fi - Janine Spendlove, Gail Martin, Bryan Young, Aaron Allston 7:00pm-7:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Feb 10

Writer’s Q & A with Janine Spendlove, Bryan Young, and Aaron Allston
11:00pm-12:50pm Washington Lecture Room

That last one might end up being my favorite. A general writing Q & A with myself, Janine, and Aaron? That's going to be gold, I tell you.

I hope to see many of you there. I'll have copies of all of my books on hand.

50+ Rules and Tips About Writing I've Collected Over the Years

I have twenty or thirty notebooks and journals filled up with snippets about writing, my plans for stories, bits of dialogue, interesting ideas, plotlines, scraps of short stories, and a dozen other things. I carry one with me at all times and it takes me a couple of months to fill one up.

One of the things I've kept in one of my notebooks was a collection of writing tips and rules that I've collected over the years in my travels. From teachers, from books, from wherever. Most of my career has been spent screenwriting, so a lot of these are most applicable to that, but I wanted to present them so they might be of use to you as well.

I've never stopped collecting these over the years and I never will.

To start the list are Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of writing. They are the first in my notebook and, I think, the most useful. I'll add a star to those I think are applicable most to screenwriting. Some of these aren't applicable to everyone in every situation, but…

Anatomy of an Opening: The End of the Affair

Instead of breaking down a scene from a movie, this time we'll break down the opening of a book. (Previously, I've done scenes from City Lights, Citizen Kane, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I've also broken down the opening to Starship Troopers.)

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is absolutely one of my favorite books. The writing is lyrical and story heart-wrenching and beautiful. Greene's style of writing is such that he always has me gripped, whether it's the beginning of the book or the end. And he shows you so much about the character in his opening lines.

So, here are the first two paragraphs from the book:
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which, to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who - when he has been seriously noted at all - has been praised for his technical ability, but d…

Anatomy of a Scene - City Lights

We're going to break down another scene this week, and it's one of my favorites in cinema history. It comes from the ending of City Lights by Charlie Chaplin, which I think is the greatest romantic comedy ever made.
It's a touching film from 1931 and I would make it mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to learn to tell a story.
The scene we're going to be breaking down comes from the very end of the film, so if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you. Go watch the film. You can rent it for $3.99 in HD on Amazon or for free on Hulu with a free trial or plus subscription. You should just buy the Blu-ray, though. You're going to want to revisit it.
For those of you familiar with the movie, or for those of you who are going to ignore my pleas to watch it and go ahead with this post anyway, I'm going to set this clip up a bit before you watch it.
City Lights tells the story of Chaplin's Tramp and how he falls in love with a blind flower …

The stories of Bryan Young

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