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miniconsuffrage · 6 years

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writing 101 with james roberts and flint dille: tfcon panel notes

(yes it has been a month. i forgot.)

it has to be a habit, write every day for 20 minutes (hooray for cliches)

there are many fewer gatekeepers now, that’s good and bad. nobody has the story of ‘i started as an intern and worked my way up’, you have to do interesting things (flint)

read/watch to get better, interrogate why you like the things you like (james)

use beta readers, get constructive criticism!

you should be able trace your progress, and see that you’re better at certain things than you used to be. if you can that’s a good sign (james)

you pick the characters you follow as the writer but it can be good to have other characters come in and help the reader self-reflect. are these good people? why do we dislike certain characters? (james)

"don’t dent the batmobile" when you’re writing things that have to do with people’s childhoods it helps to start with something familiar and be careful not trash everything people liked originally (flint)

with writing you have to do all the steps but you don’t have to do them in order (writing/outlining etc–you can write without an outline but that will come in at some point, probably in the second draft)

(flint talking about g1) ‘the characters are dictated by hasbro, but nothing comes with that. they give you a dumpster character and his name is dumpsterfire but that’s it’

some characters come to fill a hole but if you want them to stick you need to think about what makes them different than a pre-existing character, it doesn’t have to be really scientific, there just needs to be something

making the bridge between amateur (fanfic) to professional: the people you’re pitching to don’t want to know how you’re going to fix things/patch up a continuity error only 3 people noticed. you should know how the characters will change and what the effect will be (james)

keeping the characters straight spatially : sometimes you draw little pictures. some people use toys. alex milne drew pictures of the set (swerve’s, etc)

you have a story/character bibles ‘but at the end of the day they don’t really matter’. nothing is ever 100% done. it’s fluid. ‘it’s better to get things out there, fill the plot hole later’ (flint)

when it comes to foreshadowing a lot of the magic comes in writing it (figuring out how to seed things, solving problems you didn’t know you had). you can’t always figure everything out beforehand (james)

with the digital landscape it’s easier to get your stuff out there but it’s harder to be noticed. that’s what fan bases are for, and it starts with 5 people (flint)

keeping characters consistent: have a checklist of things you have to show about the character, attitudes, fears, catchphrases, etc (flint)

characters are revealed by what they do proactively or how they react to things (james)

when you’re writing a novel you can describe a room for 30 pages because people expect reading a novel to take a long time. tv people expect to go fast, comics are kind of a middle ground between those two things. ‘i’ve read scott mccloud’s books five times and i still don’t understand it’ -flint

you have to figure out who you are/what you’re good at, and how to compensate for what you’re not

maybe there’s a rule out there that a good transformers story wouldn’t work if it was taken out of transformers? but if you’re working on a project and you have a story you want to tell and it gels with the kind of story you’re writing, you should go ahead with it, not necessarily save it for other things (the weeping angels could have been a whole movie unrelated to doctor who)

what would it feel like to be a transformer? why do you have to hide as a beetle? because humans are dangerous, and that colors the whole world you’re building

james is like me and also finds it hard to write and concentrate while listening to things

if you want to write g1, listen to any 80s arena rock. start with real stan bush albums and go from there

bonus: from ian james corlett in the voice acting 101 panel, to someone who considers themself a writer and voice actor:

‘[getting an agent and going to studios] is one model of doing things. i asked you about a youtube channel, because if what you care about is getting your work out there, the old nike slogan is good: just do it, just get it out there. and later you can use that as your portfolio for when you are attempting to go professional’

#james roberts #flint dille #maccadam #transformers more than meets the eye #lost light #tfcon chicago #they had some really good things to say i hope someone posts the video someday....

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