Presentation this Saturday in Bountiful, UT

ByJohn Brown

League of Utah Writers Northern Area Spring Conference

I’ll be presenting this Saturday at this conference that will be held at the Bountiful Art Center, 745 S. Main Street, Bountiful, UT 84010. I grew up in Bountiful, and so this is a special treat for me to go back.

COST: Free for League of Utah Writers Members.   $25 for non-members. More info at http://www.luwriters.org/.

  • 8:30     Registration-
  • 9:00     Jennifer Nielsen- Psychology of Characterization- understanding your characters psychologically
  • 10:00   John Brown-   Secrets of Story Structure
  • 11:00   John Brown-   How to Get and Develop Killer Ideas
  • 12:00   Lunch- El Matador
  • 1:00     Margot Hovley- The Nuts and Bolts of Writing
  • 2:00     Marion Jensen- Using Social Media in Every Step of the Writing Process
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    New Workshop: How to Write a Story that Rocks

    ByJohn Brown

    Folks, the first tentative schedule for Life, The Universe, & Everything (LTUE) has been set. For the past few years I’ve been teaching a 2-3 hour workshop called “The 3 Things You Must Learn To Write Killer Stories.” I think I must have taught it over 15 times in different venues. Hundreds have attended and said they loved it.

    However, this year I’m going to be doing something different. I’m developing a new two-hour workshop called “How to Write a Story that Rocks.”

    I’ll be teaching it Thursday evening, February 11th from 5 PM – 7 PM at LTUE at BYU. It’s FREE and open to all.

    What I found was that a lot of new aspiring authors get lost in mountains of rules. But great storytelling isn’t about rules. They try to form stories with word counts, chapters, and weird plot diagrams. But stories aren’t about those things. They have a hard time knowing what to write next because they don’t understand how story works. In fact, some don’t know how to start at all. They just flounder in their piles of zing. Finally, even if they can get a bullet outline, they have a hard time turning that into a scene.

    So what we’re going to do in this workshop is this.

    1. I’m going to bring in some ideas for character, setting, and problem. We’re not going to generate from scratch as we’ve done in the past because I want to get to the next steps.
    2. Then I’m going to teach you how to go from idea to outline–we’re going to do it together, and you’re going to learn exactly how to know what comes next 
    3. Then we’ll go from outline step to scene sketch.
    4. Then from scene sketch to draft.
    5. At every step I’ll be pointing out key story development concepts and principles

    When we finish, you should be able to:

    1. Identify the essential story objectives and story development questions–get these right and the rest doesn’t really matter. This will include the HANDFUL of key things you need to worry about and develop with character and plot.
    2. Develop more likeable and interesting characters
    3. Develop more powerful story concepts (call it premise, problem, situation, whatever). Once you get this the story writes a lot of itself.
    4. Explain the real Story Cycle. Not Campbell’s mumbo-jumbo hero’s journey. Not the three, five, seven, nine acts. Not Freytag’s diagram. Story.
    5. Explain what it means to “move a story forward,” “increase the stakes and tension,” “complicate the plot,” “complicate the motive” and how that’s done using surprise, conflict, motive, and problem. Included in this are “turns,” “rugpulls,” and “reversals.”
    6. Use the Story Cycle concepts to generate a story bullet outline and take a bullet step idea and turn it into a scene.
    7. Explain the creative principles that help you generate stories more easily.

    Larry Correia will be there as well. So I’m expecting this to be a very helpful workshop. I’m going to do all I can to make it as good or better than the first.

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  • See You at LTUE on Friday

    ByJohn Brown

    My schedule has changed. You can see the updates below. As I said before, LTUE is one of the best writing conferences around. There are going to be quite a few authors there sharing tips on craft and the business of writing. BTW, it’s NOT going to be held in the Wilkinson Center as it has been in the past, but in the Conference Center on the NORTH side of campus. See map below. Find the full schedule here.

    Romance vs. Story with Romantic Elements: Injecting romance into saving the world

    • Panel 
    • John Brown (Moderator),  Ami Chopine, Stacy Whitman, Lynn Kurland
    • FRIDAY: 12 pm – 1 pm

    Plotstorming from Character: In some cases the plot of a book drives the characters. However, characters that instead drive the plot can make for a more compelling story. In this hour, we focus on how to grow your plot from your main characters.

    • Presentation
    • Paul Genesse (I want to hear what Paul has to say; I think this will be interesting)
    • FRIDAY: 3 PM – 4 PM

    How to Get and Develop Killer Story Ideas

    • Workshop 
    • John Brown & Larry Correia (oh, yeah–it’s the dynamic duo)
    • FRIDAY: 6 PM – 7 PM

    Lessons on Story from THE HUNGER GAMES (and let me tell you, there are a lot of good lessons)

    • Presentation
    • John Brown
    • FRIDAY: 7 PM – 8 PM

    Click the map to see details

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  • Utah events this week

    ByJohn Brown

    Just a reminder. I’ll be meeting the public and chatting about my book in Utah this week. David Farland and Larry Correia will there as well. It’s a three-for-one deal.

    Thursday,
    October 22
    6 pm – 8 pm    		  Book signing and release party Logan, UT Borders
    1050 N Main St.
    Suite B-2
    Logan, UT 84341
    435-787-0678
    Friday,
    October 23
    4 pm – 6 pm    		 Book signing and release party Orem, UT Barnes & Noble
    330 East 1300 South
    Orem, UT 84058
    801-229-1611
    Saturday,
    October 24
    12 pm – 2 pm    		 Book signing and release party Layton, UT Barnes & Noble
    Layton Market Center
    1780 North Woodland Park Drive
    Layton, UT 84041
    801-773-9973
    Saturday,
    October 24
    3 pm – 5 pm    		 Book signing and release party West Jordan, UT Barnes & Noble
    Jordan Landing
    7157 Plaza Center Drive
    West Jordan, UT 84084
    801-282-1324
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  • Vote for Servant of a Dark God, American Idol Style

    ByJohn Brown

    The Legend Award

    I was informed today that Servant of a Dark God is on the Longlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy and the Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut. I believe this means the Rapture is close at hand, folks. Or maybe it just means Cthulhu has taken over the North Pole. In either event, Hunger, Sugar, Talen, Hogan, Nettle, Legs, River, the Mother (and the kick butt Hag’s Teeth) can win an award for general awesomeness. They can because voting is open to the public.

    Kind of Like American Idol

    You may ask: Is this like getting the Nobel peace prize? No. You have to have actually done something like take out a group of speedy Somali pirates or write a fantasy novel. These awards are not given out as scratch away prizes at McDonalds (you can get them at Wendy’s). This is an award given to:

    • A full length novel published for the first time in the English language during the year of nomination (2009)
    • Traditional, Heroic, Epic, or High Fantasy and/or in the spirit of David Gemmell’s own work

    The nominees were submitted by editors working within a commercial genre fiction publisher (kind of like Hollywood week at American Idol). All the nominations are then put on the award’s Longlist.  The public then votes for their favorite on the list. The poll opened December 26, 2009. Voting on the Longlist will close March 31, 2010. You’ll notice it is indeed a looong list. But you don’t have to have read all the novels. You just vote.

    The top 5 novels with the most votes will be put on the award “Shortlist.” Then in April the public voting for the winner out of those five will begin, open to all.  See, American Idol, except you can’t vote two gajillion times for the same girl/guy just because of the her/his drool inducing factor. 

    How to Vote

    1. View the list of Legend nominees here: http://gemmellaward.ning.com/page/legend-1
    2. Cast your vote by hovering over the Legend menu item as shown below; you’ll see a red Vote link; click it and select the book you want to vote forGemmellLegendAwardVoting
    3. View the list of Morningstar nominees here: http://gemmellaward.com/page/morningstar-1
    4. Cast your vote by hovering over the Morningstar menu item and clicking the red Vote link.

    Who is David Gemmell?

    David Gemmell was a British writer of heroic fantasy. I’ve pasted two of his covers below. You can read more about him here.

     

    For those of you interested in LDS authors, nominate SERVANT for the Whitney

    Now that you’ve done your part to restore world order in the fantasy genre, if you’re interested in LDS authors/fiction, you can also nominate the Sugar, Talen, Hunger and the gang for The Whitney Award.

    This is an award for novels by LDS authors. It works in the opposite way of the Legend award. In this one, the public nominates novels by LDS authors they like. Then a “panel of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others” vote on the nominations. Of course, because I’m one of those Carrier Monkeys of Evil Mormons (a future post, folks), Servant of a Dark God is eligible.

    To nominate Servant of a Dark God go here: http://www.whitneyawards.com/nominations.php 

    Whew.  Be happy. I’ll keep you updated to let you know if SERVANT makes the short list for either of these.

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  • Idaho Librarians

    ByJohn Brown

    Just got back from the Idaho Librarian conference in Soda Springs.

    • Had a wonderful time. Got to meet a lot of great people. I just love librarians.
    • Organizer Cindy Erickson was so very gracious. She even promised to take my wife and girls huckleberry hunting. Not only does she reference books, she references the sweet harvest spots!!
    • Drank my first bottle of Hooper Springs sparkling water–naturally carbonated mineral water. It wasn’t too bad at first, but I can still taste the minerals seven hours later 🙂
    • Borders from Logan came up and sold a whole bunch of my books. The sales manager was very positive about the new corporate management. I hope things go well for the bookstore.
    • Locked myself out of my car. But I have a solution now, thanks to one of the librarians (how do they know so much?), that will never ever ever ever fail. I will never be in that situation again. No, I’m not talking about a magnet key box somewhere.
    • Told myself I am getting a camera to take to these things next week. That’s it. I want pictures of all these fine folks.
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3 Comments

  1. Hi John,

    This is Chris. I’m a friend of Kendra’s. I spoke with you briefly at LTUE. I was at today’s workshop, sitting in the back against the pole (goatee and long hair). I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your presentations, not only for the information but you are so entertaining to boot!

    Thank you for coming.

    Chris Miller

  2. Chris,

    So glad to hear that. I had a great time. Wish I could have stayed longer and chatted more with everyone.

  3. John,

    I was there at your workshop and enjoyed it a lot. I’ve had a lot of fun going back through my favorite movies and books to identify the story elements which leave me salivating. You did a fantastic job. I really appreciate your insights and that cult-leader personality of yours.

    Thanks a lot!

    Taylor Finch

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