Howdy,
This is the first of a little bit more in-depth writeup of my time at the Willamette Writers Conference. I’ll start off with Juice-box Hero: Squeezing Plot from Character by Tex Thompson.
Like most of the seminars I attended, I had to leave in the middle of the seminar to do a pitch. I did return to listen to the end.
First off, let me say that Tex Thompson is an engaging speaker – friendly and funny. The content of her talk is pretty good too. As the name of the presentation implies, the emphasis is about techniques/ideas to have the character drive the plot of the story, not the other way around. For example, let the character’s emotion drive decide the action and hence the plot.
The emphasis of the talk was utilizing emotions to inform the action. On the one hand, this is pretty basic stuff. I mean, of course, you want the story to be character-driven, but, like many things in life, it’s easier said than done. Tex had many ideas try out to help the author do this. Unfortunately, I missed most of them. Having said that, attending this seminar was worthwhile.