Reasons Why Manuscripts are Rejected

    This is another one of my favorite LTUE panels. It was given by Jason King, the acquisitions editor at Curiosity Quills Press as well as the author of the Age of the Infinite series.

    He started off this panel by reminding everyone that while rejections sucks, it's also a big part of being a writer. It's all part of the writing process. After this reminder, he launched right into the biggest reason why he rejects manuscripts.

Writing Political Unrest Without Boring Readers

    It's been a while since I've been able to do an LTUE post, so I'm excited to share this one. This topic is especially relevant to me right now as I'm editing Powerful because one of the main conflicts of the book is political unrest, and the one piece of feedback I get from every reader is that the conflicts go on for too long without any point.

10-ish Things About the Brain by Danny Potter

    As I mentioned last week, my favorite LTUE panel was "Things About the Brain that Every Writer Should Know" by Danny Potter. Turns out, someone recorded that panel and now it's on Youtube!!!

    Yay! Now I can share the whole thing with you guys! Seriously, it was AMAZING. It may be 50 minutes long, but it is worth the long time. In case you need some motivation to watch/listen to the whole thing, I'll summarize some of my favorite points for you.
    Our minds are always making connections. We are associational learners. For example- All chairs are different, yet whenever we see a chair we understand what it is. We don't have to relearn what a chair is every time we encounter a new one.

LTUE Overview

    I don't feel much like blogging today, for a few reasons.

1. I've had a really crappy day so far. Let's just say that spilled Dr. Pepper might be something worth crying over.
2. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept in days, and I've been fighting off a migraine since Sunday.
3. It's a distractingly beautiful Spring-like day outside.
4. I've got a lot of pent up creative energy and blogging is not as enticing as some of my other projects.
5. I'm lazy.

    But, I realized I never did a full LTUE overview. I kind of did, but then I got distracted. So now I'm forcing myself to-

LTUE 2016

    If you've been following me at all, you know that I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at LTUE. LTUE stands for Life, the Universe, and Everything. It's a sci-fi and fantasy writing symposium put on by BYU every February. 

    I attended last year and it was overwhelming. I learned so much and it was insanely inspiring, but I was in a totally different place in my life. It was my first time at a convention like that, so I mostly stayed to the back and didn't socialize very much. I was also in the middle of Rose at the time and I was losing momentum quick. I hadn't finished a manuscript, and I thought that all the writers and editors there could see right through me and that they thought I wasn't good enough to be there.

Characters

    Why do we like certain characters? What makes us feel like we understand and relate to certain characters more than others? How do we as writers create characters that readers will like?

    Character development is arguably the most important part of a novel, tied with plot development. It's so important because of how closely linked the plot is with the character. They have to develop together. Which is why plotting out a novel is so hard. Where do you start? Characters or plot? It usually ends up being a mix of both.

    At LTUE, I attended a panel on Character Development. One of the first questions asked was where do you start? The consensus? There's no one way to do it. You need to know about the characters to develop the plot, but as you plan, nothing is set in stone. Characters goes through editing just like the rest of the story. They evolve with the plot. 

Writing for Young Adults

    A while ago I realized I never really finished my series on the LTUE panels I attended. I know that was back in February and now it's September (almost October), but I've had a lot of other things to talk about since then. And now I'm a day behind my schedule and I've run out of blogging topics, so I'm digging back into my lovely, old journal of randomness for something to talk about. Be warned, though, the recollection of these events are a little rough due to the fogginess of my memory. This is mostly me rambling about topics they mentioned.

    This panel consisted of Tyler H. Jolley, Bree Despain, Kasie West, and Clint Johnson. They talked about a few different things that are commonly associated with YA novels, but Character and Romance seemed to be the two main things.

Worldbuilding With Magic

    For those of you who have been reading along, my friend Elise (Magic Writer) has been doing a series on Worldbuilding, and I've been promoting for her and sharing some of my own tidbits. I really like the series she's done because I've never been able to actually put into words how I build worlds, I just do it. It's nice to have guidelines to follow to see how well I did for my writing. Sometimes I discover things I missed, and I've found myself being more assertive about making decisions because they have to be made at some point.
    For example, as I was reading through some of Elise's advice, I discovered that I hadn't yet thought about the capitol cities of each kingdom. As I was going through chapter 7, it talks about how the people know Luzi so well, but no one knows Kyla. One of my readers asked how the people knew Luzi. Well, I decided that Varn and Laeto are very similar because their capitol cities (and castles) are major areas where many people go to visit. The royal families are well known and visit the general public often. Their castles are tourist attractions, and parts are open to the general public. In my last post I talked about the Varnan castle and how the center is a giant temple where many people go to pray. One of Aya's brothers is a priest there. Laeto's capital city is a market, very similar to Central City. The castle is in the center of a giant town and many people go inside the castle to meet with the royal family, give them gifts, and ask for help. Tykra and Zetalon, however, are different. Their castles are not parts of major cities, and are very isolated. The royal families rarely affiliate with their subjects. It's something that Kyla appreciated as a child, but grows to dislike. It makes sense for the story. 

What I Wish I Knew

    As I was going through my notes from LTUE again, I discovered another one of my favorite panels. It was titled, "What I Wish I Knew When I Started - Common Mistakes Made By New Writers". Kasie West, Jacob Gowans, Joe Vasicek, Karen C. Evans, and Bree Despain sat on the panel.

    This was one of those panels that was pretty much a Q & A session without much of a direction, so this post might seem kind of random as I convert my notes into a semi-coherent blog post. Basically the answer to every question was "There's not one way to do it." Honestly, I could just leave that one sentence as my summary of the panel. But I really enjoyed hearing how these authors write, so while their advice can be summed up in a sentence, it's good to hear how published writers handle things in different situations.

Breaking Through Blockages - Advice from Sandra Tayler

    One of the very helpful panels I attended at LTUE was titled "Breaking Through Blockages". Sandra Tayler was the speaker. I've been wanting to share her ideas for a while, but as I've been busy putting them to use, I haven't had a chance.

    The very first thing she said was, "When you have trouble finding the time to write, time is very rarely the problem." The reason you "don't have time" is because you're not prioritizing your time. How many things do you have to do in a day? Make a list of those things in order of importance. How important is watching Netflix or playing Angry Birds? (Actually, I think she said Plants vs. Zombies, but that's not the point.)
    In 5 years when you look back at how you spent your time, what will make you proud? That you worked on your book (or whatever project you're working on) or that you binge watched a season of Psych (in case you were wondering about how I spend my time). People make time for what's important to them. Is writing (or whatever project) toward the top of your important list?

LTUE Days 2 & 3

    I used half a pen's worth of ink taking 35+ pages of notes at LTUE.  The majority of those notes were stuff people said that was really good advice I wanted to remember, but I also had quite a few moments of inspiration and I made about a thousand notes in the margins of my notebook of ideas to implement in all my stories.
    I've made notes about how I might fix Rose, which I am sure I want to fix and finish, but I still am not quite sure how. LTUE inspired at least 12 ideas, including (but not limited to) shortening it to a novella, switching it out of the modern day setting and into a fantasy setting so magic will be more prominent, and giving each princess character a mental illness (Rose already shows signs of anxiety) that they have to combat.
    I also made a lot more notes about Powerful that I still have to sort through. Scene ideas, magic ideas, and a lot of ideas about how each kingdom is different. 

LTUE Day 1

    The first day of LTUE was AMAZING!

    
    I (finally!) met Andrea Pearson, whose book I beta read back in August. I talked about it here, too.  She was on four panels today, and will be on two tomorrow and three on Saturday.  It was awesome to finally meet her after only having contact through email for so long.  She's releasing two books soon too.  One comes out on the 20th, and the other comes out in April.
    Some of the other panelists I saw today are Ali Cross, Bryce Moore, Stephen Gashler, Howard Taylor, David Powers King, James C. Duckett, Johnny Worthen, L. E. Modesitt Jr., Bryan Beus, Jason King, S. A. Butler, Peter Orullian, Rebekah R. Ganiere, Maxwell Alexander Drake, and M. K. Hutchins.

LTUE

    I apologize for spamming everyone with news about my adventures at Physical Therapy.  I know some of you care, and some of you are like, "Hey, Alyson, I thought this was a writing blog.  Where's the writing?"  Well, that's why I figured I'd give a bonus blog post this week!  Which I guess really isn't a bonus when all I've been doing is not talking about writing.
    Anyway, this post is titled LTUE, and if you're anything like me, you're like, "What the heck does that stand for?"  Well, I'll tell you!  It stands for Life, The Universe, and Everything.  And if you're anything like me, you're still totally lost and probably going to ignore me and google LTUE.  I'll save you the trouble by posting the LTUE website link here.