9:30 - 11 a.m.
A Cheat Sheet for Playing God: World-building for Any Medium
World-building is one of the critical skills in science fiction and fantasy. Every sprawling multi-volume fantasy and space opera epic on the shelves depends greatly on an epic backdrop, a universe full of possibilities for wonder and terror. But having solid skills in the art form can open up jobs in multiple media: comics, video games and pen-and-paper games, television shows and films all need writers and narrative designers that know how to play God.
In this fun and intentionally humorous 90-minute workshop, author and game designer Arinn Dembo will use examples and techniques from her own career to show aspiring gods how to build a wonderful sandbox for the imagination...without becoming bogged down in the quicksand of Too Much Information.
Instructor: Arinn Dembo
[Arinn Dembo](Arinn Dembo)[www.arinndembo.com] is a computer gaming industry veteran with over twenty years of professional writing experience in her field. She has contributed narrative design and background fiction to a variety of SF, fantasy and horror franchise games, and has been called “The Tolkein of Science Fiction” by her peers in the industry. Her stories and poetry have appeared in Deep Magic, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, Lamp Light, and several anthologies, including the World Fantasy nominated Gods, Memes and Monsters, and the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows.
11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Adapting Your Story to Screenplay - 4 Simple Rules For Success
All filmmaking, and all storytelling, has one primary objective: to elicit emotion in the audience. The basis of all myths, legends, epic poems, fairy tales, plays, short stories, and novels, is simply: to emotionally involve characters in overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve their compelling desires. In this seminar, learn how to concentrate on adaptations that give you your greatest chance of success: stories that already contain the elements that have proven to be the foundation of Hollywood’s most successful movies through 4 easy-to-remember simple rules.
Instructor: John Lovett
A transplant from Hollywood, John Lovett has worked as a screenwriter, producer, and military advisor for the motion picture and television industries. He has had two movies produced from original screenplays and now teaches screenwriting at Bellevue College.
1:30 - 3 p.m. (Track 1: Fiction)
Fear and Writing in Les Genres
Author and journalist Evan J Peterson (Clarion West 2015) leads this workshop on tackling two necessary kinds of fear: the dramatic fear needed for a good horror or dark fantasy story and the universal fears that hold every writer back from creating and publishing.
Instructor: Evan J. Peterson
Evan J. Peterson is a 2015 Clarion West writer and author of the forthcoming The PrEP Diaries from Lethe Press (spring 2017). He is also the author of the speculative poetry chapbooks Skin Job and The Midnight Channel, and volume editor of the Lambda Literary Award finalist Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam: Gay City 5. Evan’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Weird Tales, BoingBoing, The Stranger, The Rumpus, Best Gay Stories 2015, The Queer South Anthology, Unspeakable Horror 2, Queers Destroy Horror, Nightmare Magazine, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology, and Aim for the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Minor Arcana Press.
1:30 p.m. - 3 p.m. (Track 2: Screenwriting)
Individual Critiques with John Lovett
Critiques are 20 minutes each. Once you have registered, you will be assigned a 20-minute critique slot and asked to send a properly formatted scene (no more than 15 pages) to John by Jan. 29 or to bring a properly formatted scene (no more than 5 pages) to the session.
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