The Norwescon 2003 Report
Apr. 20th, 2003 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperI have to admit, actually going to panels and getting out of my hotel room and doing stuff makes for getting a lot more of my money's worth out of a science fiction convention. This year, I did a lot more of the panels at Norwescon than I've traditionally done--and as a result had the most fun at a local con that I've had in some time.
Most people who will be reading this post know that I'm a regular attendee of the science fiction convention Norwescon, held in SeaTac (that's the little town-let right between Seattle and Tacoma, which pretty much sprung up as a result of the SeaTac airport).![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird, my partner, is on the convention's committee and not only runs the fanzine lending library, she also does the convention's daily newsletter and sometimes has stuff in the art show. My housemates mamishka and spazzkat have often had stuff in the convention's art show as well, though this year only Meems had stuff prepared to sell.
Me, I usually just go to hang out, read, play with my computer, browse through the huckster room and buy stuff, and occasionally go listen to the filk. But this year, in the interests of actually trying to pay more attention to the people around me and to try to get some valuable insights on the process of writing a fantasy novel, I attended several of the writing-related and music-related panels being held, and some of the big fun events like the Masquerade and the Klingon Karaoke as well. I made specific efforts to talk to random strangers. And on the whole I had a very satisfying experience indeed.
First and foremost, the writing panels. I didn't attend all of them, but I did attend several, and one of the major things I noticed was that even though a specific given panel might have an ostensible topic it might be focused on, many of the people in the audience would wind up asking similar questions. Things like "how can I get my characters from point A to point B?" and "do you write on a regular schedule?" and "do you write a full formal outline for all your stories?" I also noticed that I knew a lot of what got mentioned already--but wasn't necessarily aware that I knew it in a formal sense. So it was simultaneously disappointing to discover that I didn't know quite as much as I thought I did, and gratifying to know that I had more clues than I had previously realized.
However, two invaluable nuggets of advice shone out in the middle of these panels, which in combination were specifically responsible for busting up a productivity block I have had for the last several weeks on the story I am working on. These two things were deceptively simple, and were:
I got to thinking hard about these things and as a result whipped out a skeletal but complete outline for where I'm going with Book 1 of my proposed trilogy. Which is more than I'd had before, and now for the last couple of days I've also been working heavily on the backstory to try to rearrange a lot of things I've realized need rearranging as a result. So, all good there. I need to see if I can dig up Mike Moscoe's email address--he was one of the authors that were on these panels--and specifically thank him, as he was the person who talked about thinking about the plot as a series of problems.
Terry Brooks was another notable fantasy author who gave a panel--and although most of what he said in his panel was stuff I generally already knew, he did get one interesting question. I.e., this woman described how she wanted to get her characters from Point A to Point B and she was having a very hard time coming up with an in-character way to get them there. They did not seem to want to go. So Mr. Brooks asked the audience what this meant her characters were telling her--and while everybody called out things like "character motivation" and such, his answer surprised me. It was basically that she didn't need to show how the characters got from Point A to Point B unless there was something important to the story that needed to be portrayed in between. He very heavily stressed the need to keep the story moving--and when I told Dar about this later she said "TAD WILLIAMS! PLEASE TAKE NOTE!" Snicker.
The music-related panels were not quite as enjoyable. Dar and I tried to attend a panel on the basics of harmony--but again, this turned out to be a situation where what they were talking about was a lot simpler than I'd hoped for. Me, I wanted something along the lines of "so, you have a melody line that goes in this particular way, here are some easy ways you can develop a harmony for that melody line". But it was much more geared towards teaching people about notes and basic chords and stuff--and I knew all that. Plus, the people on the panel obviously all knew one another and were pretty prone to going off on their own little tangents of discussion--so Dar and I got bored and left.
But, the Jam panel was pretty fun. Mimi and Dar and I all showed up for that, me with my big mandolin, Meems with her djembe, and Dar with flutes. We whipped off a couple of the songs we knew, and we got some polite applause--tried to teach folks "Mari-Mac" but I don't think I properly showed the guitarists how to follow my chord changes. Oh well. :) I also tried to do "Lukey", but rapidly discovered I had to take it up an octave in order to be heard over my own instrument. Autumn is surprisingly loud for an acoustic instrument; those bronze strings seriously ring. So I have to yell, it feels like, to be properly heard. I also tried to get people to follow me on "Judas Cart"--though I did call it "Si Bheag Si Mhor" since I figured that would be a more familiar title, even though I was playing the "Judas Cart" arrangement. I screwed it up, though. Sigh.
On the other hand, I did find that I was following one of the guitarists fairly well and was able to figure out when he was hitting D, G, and A on his guitar, now that I know the general finger arrangements of those chords. So that was fun.
The Masquerade had the usual huge line of people waiting to get in and the usual huge delay in starting. Notable costumes included:
This year was also the first year I went to the Klingon Karaoke with Paul and Meems and Dar. Very, VERY funny, more right than it had any right to be. ;) The whole schtick was a karaoke contest being held by the folks who run Rustycon, another local science fiction convention--and the judges were all from one of the local Klingon fan groups and were dressed in full Klingon costumes. If the judges didn't like your performance, they threw tribbles at you.
Meems got up and belted out "I Will Survive", and not only didn't get tribbled, she got one of the Klingons theatrically swooning at her by the stage. Paul did "Chantilly Lace" and channeled the Big Bopper very well--and the impromptu usage of a banana as his "telephone" was especially snickerworthy. So was his adlib of "there ain't nothin' in the world / like a Klingon girl! / to make me act so funny...".
In fact, the second best act of the evening came up to Paul later and told him HE had wanted to do "Chantilly Lace"--but as it turned out, that guy did a hysterical rendition of "Great Balls of Fire". Sung Klingon style, i.e., roared at the top of his lungs. He got the judges all bellowing cheers when he screamed "PRAISE KAHLESS!" in the middle of the last verse. ;)
This one skinny guy who looked a LOT like he should be doing Thomas Dolby ditties got up and did Queen's rendition of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", and was VERY good and theatrical. Lots of Elvis-like waggling. He tied for second place with this woman I know by the name of Omaha, but I personally think that he was robbed for second place after he got up and did a kickin' version of "Greased Lightning". He was especially funny during the lengthy bridge, posing checking his watch waiting for the saxophone solo to finish up. ;)
The funniest act by far, though, was one of the Klingons who got up and did "Shout at the Devil". In Klingon. SCREAMINGLY funny.
Paul and Meems want to translate "I Got You Babe" into Klingon for next year.
What else... I went out to the hot tub, once, on Thursday evening. And chatted with a couple young women, one of whom had come all the way to Missouri to visit the other, her cousin, and attend the convention with her. The dark-haired one (I'm not sure if she was the local one or not) opened conversation with me by asking me why I hadn't attended the Bodacious Babes Clothing Exchange panel, and I wasn't sure whether or not I thought that was flattering. The whole point of that panel was supposed to be a general exchange of nifty clothing for large women--and while I'm not exactly a thin delicate slip of a girl, I'm also not exactly huge! Not to mention that I didn't have any clothing to exchange, so I would have felt weird showing up for something like that without anything to offer myself.
I suppose one can argue that she might have been obliquely hitting on me and considering me "bodacious" in the "ogleworthy" sense, but ahem, er, well hey. *blush*
This same chick, when we got onto the topic of frivolous lawsuits, expounded at length about how the traditional example folks like to mention in conversations like that--i.e., suing McDonald's for their coffee being hot--wasn't quite as frivolous as people make it out to be since the coffee in question was well over the legal temperature limit. Which was something I hadn't known before. She did agree, though, that the case in which someone was trying to sue McDonald's because his fat children were constantly eating there and he was maintaining that McDonald's had made his children fat was in fact quite frivolous indeed.
I also had a random conversation with a guy who seemed to be an acquaintance of Liz, who is another acquaintance of mine and is the current person I go to if I need a massage appointment. I didn't actually catch this guy's name but we did have a nice geeky conversation about handheld computing devices, and it turned out that he knew about the same sort of frob that my other friendtinlail has. A Zaurus, specifically, which seems to be a fairly cool little frob. It runs Linux, and it also has a tiny keyboard. When I get around to changing frobs, I may have to get one of these just because I have had a hard time finding a frob that will let me actually write on it. For purposes of writing prose, I can't just do something that doesn't come with a keyboard, and I'd feel weird using a keyboard that'd be bigger than the actual device. Joe says that the Zaurus people are putting out a clamshell model soon, similar to my Velo, so I may need to look into that.
I'm still amused though that my brain keeps wanting to call this thing the Zathras.
Another annual tradition at Norwescon is the movie previews panel, which is usually run multiple times during the convention. I had to go to this, not only because I knew they'd be showing trailers for the new Matrix and X-Men flicks, but also because Paul, who'd attended an earlier edition of the panel, relayed that they had shown the trailer for Master and Commander.
So there I was, waiting through a bunch of trailers I didn't much care about, until I saw the same blue seascape I'd seen at the beginning of the M&C trailer I'd already seen on the net. I started grinning. And Russell Crowe's blond visage came up on the screen, and his English-accent voiceover kicked in.
The funny part of this, though, was when I heard the girl sitting right across the aisle from me squeal, "Wait, is this Patrick O'Brien--RUSSELL CROWE?! HE'S PERFECT!" I told her, "Yes. Yes he is!" And we high-fived at the end of the trailer, much to Paul and Meems' amusement. Paul deadpanned, "Fans? The DEUCE you say!" Hee hee.
What else... I got Heather Alexander's new CD at the huckster room, as well as the newly remastered CD release of Julia Ecklar's album Divine Intervention, since Julia Ecklar was the very first filker I ever seriously admired.
I took three books with me, and didn't actually read any of them. I consider this a milestone since in past years I've done a lot of reading at conventions! This year, though, just because of doing so much--I didn't have the time. And I'm okay with that. I'm going to have to try this going to panels thing more often, and it's made me look forward more to going to Worldcon in Toronto!
Most people who will be reading this post know that I'm a regular attendee of the science fiction convention Norwescon, held in SeaTac (that's the little town-let right between Seattle and Tacoma, which pretty much sprung up as a result of the SeaTac airport).
solarbird, my partner, is on the convention's committee and not only runs the fanzine lending library, she also does the convention's daily newsletter and sometimes has stuff in the art show. My housemates mamishka and spazzkat have often had stuff in the convention's art show as well, though this year only Meems had stuff prepared to sell.Me, I usually just go to hang out, read, play with my computer, browse through the huckster room and buy stuff, and occasionally go listen to the filk. But this year, in the interests of actually trying to pay more attention to the people around me and to try to get some valuable insights on the process of writing a fantasy novel, I attended several of the writing-related and music-related panels being held, and some of the big fun events like the Masquerade and the Klingon Karaoke as well. I made specific efforts to talk to random strangers. And on the whole I had a very satisfying experience indeed.
First and foremost, the writing panels. I didn't attend all of them, but I did attend several, and one of the major things I noticed was that even though a specific given panel might have an ostensible topic it might be focused on, many of the people in the audience would wind up asking similar questions. Things like "how can I get my characters from point A to point B?" and "do you write on a regular schedule?" and "do you write a full formal outline for all your stories?" I also noticed that I knew a lot of what got mentioned already--but wasn't necessarily aware that I knew it in a formal sense. So it was simultaneously disappointing to discover that I didn't know quite as much as I thought I did, and gratifying to know that I had more clues than I had previously realized.
However, two invaluable nuggets of advice shone out in the middle of these panels, which in combination were specifically responsible for busting up a productivity block I have had for the last several weeks on the story I am working on. These two things were deceptively simple, and were:
- Think about your plot as a series of problems which your characters will either solve or not solve, and what happens as a result, and have the situation get progressively worse until you finally reach the climax of the story.
- Think about your characters' motivations. For each character, he or she should have something that they want, and something that they will be willing to risk in order to get it.
I got to thinking hard about these things and as a result whipped out a skeletal but complete outline for where I'm going with Book 1 of my proposed trilogy. Which is more than I'd had before, and now for the last couple of days I've also been working heavily on the backstory to try to rearrange a lot of things I've realized need rearranging as a result. So, all good there. I need to see if I can dig up Mike Moscoe's email address--he was one of the authors that were on these panels--and specifically thank him, as he was the person who talked about thinking about the plot as a series of problems.
Terry Brooks was another notable fantasy author who gave a panel--and although most of what he said in his panel was stuff I generally already knew, he did get one interesting question. I.e., this woman described how she wanted to get her characters from Point A to Point B and she was having a very hard time coming up with an in-character way to get them there. They did not seem to want to go. So Mr. Brooks asked the audience what this meant her characters were telling her--and while everybody called out things like "character motivation" and such, his answer surprised me. It was basically that she didn't need to show how the characters got from Point A to Point B unless there was something important to the story that needed to be portrayed in between. He very heavily stressed the need to keep the story moving--and when I told Dar about this later she said "TAD WILLIAMS! PLEASE TAKE NOTE!" Snicker.
The music-related panels were not quite as enjoyable. Dar and I tried to attend a panel on the basics of harmony--but again, this turned out to be a situation where what they were talking about was a lot simpler than I'd hoped for. Me, I wanted something along the lines of "so, you have a melody line that goes in this particular way, here are some easy ways you can develop a harmony for that melody line". But it was much more geared towards teaching people about notes and basic chords and stuff--and I knew all that. Plus, the people on the panel obviously all knew one another and were pretty prone to going off on their own little tangents of discussion--so Dar and I got bored and left.
But, the Jam panel was pretty fun. Mimi and Dar and I all showed up for that, me with my big mandolin, Meems with her djembe, and Dar with flutes. We whipped off a couple of the songs we knew, and we got some polite applause--tried to teach folks "Mari-Mac" but I don't think I properly showed the guitarists how to follow my chord changes. Oh well. :) I also tried to do "Lukey", but rapidly discovered I had to take it up an octave in order to be heard over my own instrument. Autumn is surprisingly loud for an acoustic instrument; those bronze strings seriously ring. So I have to yell, it feels like, to be properly heard. I also tried to get people to follow me on "Judas Cart"--though I did call it "Si Bheag Si Mhor" since I figured that would be a more familiar title, even though I was playing the "Judas Cart" arrangement. I screwed it up, though. Sigh.
On the other hand, I did find that I was following one of the guitarists fairly well and was able to figure out when he was hitting D, G, and A on his guitar, now that I know the general finger arrangements of those chords. So that was fun.
The Masquerade had the usual huge line of people waiting to get in and the usual huge delay in starting. Notable costumes included:
- One lady who was dressed up like Tina Turner's character Aunty Entity from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. She was mostly notable, though, for the interminable length of her presentation. She mostly just stood around for her two minutes on stage, while the Tina Turner ditty played. No real skit or anything. Bor-ing.
- Two folks who did excellent Hogwarts-uniform Harry Potter clothing. The guy in the pair had on quidditch gear. Well done!
- The funniest skit by far was an Iron Chef parody in which the competing chefs were the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, and "Iron Chef Scotch". The secret ingredient--as part of the whole dragon theme of the convention--was of course a dragon, which turned out to be alive. Wacky hijinx ensued, including the two chefs mock-beating the guy playing Chairman Kaga. VERY funny. Would have been funnier if the guy doing the Swedish Chef had actually done some of the Swedish Chef's style of dialogue. ;)
- One impressive costume from a children's book whose title unfortunately now eludes me involved a child dressed up as a wizard and someone who was obviously an adult in a huge kangaroo costume. The kangaroo had enormous butterfly-type wings, and the narrative read from the story involved the child riding the winged kangaroo to the moon to get a bottle of light. Very cute. Especially when the child in the wizard suit scampered back around the kangaroo and one of the stage ninjas stuck a doll in the same costume on the back of the kangaroo, for the "flying" sequence.
This year was also the first year I went to the Klingon Karaoke with Paul and Meems and Dar. Very, VERY funny, more right than it had any right to be. ;) The whole schtick was a karaoke contest being held by the folks who run Rustycon, another local science fiction convention--and the judges were all from one of the local Klingon fan groups and were dressed in full Klingon costumes. If the judges didn't like your performance, they threw tribbles at you.
Meems got up and belted out "I Will Survive", and not only didn't get tribbled, she got one of the Klingons theatrically swooning at her by the stage. Paul did "Chantilly Lace" and channeled the Big Bopper very well--and the impromptu usage of a banana as his "telephone" was especially snickerworthy. So was his adlib of "there ain't nothin' in the world / like a Klingon girl! / to make me act so funny...".
In fact, the second best act of the evening came up to Paul later and told him HE had wanted to do "Chantilly Lace"--but as it turned out, that guy did a hysterical rendition of "Great Balls of Fire". Sung Klingon style, i.e., roared at the top of his lungs. He got the judges all bellowing cheers when he screamed "PRAISE KAHLESS!" in the middle of the last verse. ;)
This one skinny guy who looked a LOT like he should be doing Thomas Dolby ditties got up and did Queen's rendition of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", and was VERY good and theatrical. Lots of Elvis-like waggling. He tied for second place with this woman I know by the name of Omaha, but I personally think that he was robbed for second place after he got up and did a kickin' version of "Greased Lightning". He was especially funny during the lengthy bridge, posing checking his watch waiting for the saxophone solo to finish up. ;)
The funniest act by far, though, was one of the Klingons who got up and did "Shout at the Devil". In Klingon. SCREAMINGLY funny.
Paul and Meems want to translate "I Got You Babe" into Klingon for next year.
What else... I went out to the hot tub, once, on Thursday evening. And chatted with a couple young women, one of whom had come all the way to Missouri to visit the other, her cousin, and attend the convention with her. The dark-haired one (I'm not sure if she was the local one or not) opened conversation with me by asking me why I hadn't attended the Bodacious Babes Clothing Exchange panel, and I wasn't sure whether or not I thought that was flattering. The whole point of that panel was supposed to be a general exchange of nifty clothing for large women--and while I'm not exactly a thin delicate slip of a girl, I'm also not exactly huge! Not to mention that I didn't have any clothing to exchange, so I would have felt weird showing up for something like that without anything to offer myself.
I suppose one can argue that she might have been obliquely hitting on me and considering me "bodacious" in the "ogleworthy" sense, but ahem, er, well hey. *blush*
This same chick, when we got onto the topic of frivolous lawsuits, expounded at length about how the traditional example folks like to mention in conversations like that--i.e., suing McDonald's for their coffee being hot--wasn't quite as frivolous as people make it out to be since the coffee in question was well over the legal temperature limit. Which was something I hadn't known before. She did agree, though, that the case in which someone was trying to sue McDonald's because his fat children were constantly eating there and he was maintaining that McDonald's had made his children fat was in fact quite frivolous indeed.
I also had a random conversation with a guy who seemed to be an acquaintance of Liz, who is another acquaintance of mine and is the current person I go to if I need a massage appointment. I didn't actually catch this guy's name but we did have a nice geeky conversation about handheld computing devices, and it turned out that he knew about the same sort of frob that my other friend
tinlail has. A Zaurus, specifically, which seems to be a fairly cool little frob. It runs Linux, and it also has a tiny keyboard. When I get around to changing frobs, I may have to get one of these just because I have had a hard time finding a frob that will let me actually write on it. For purposes of writing prose, I can't just do something that doesn't come with a keyboard, and I'd feel weird using a keyboard that'd be bigger than the actual device. Joe says that the Zaurus people are putting out a clamshell model soon, similar to my Velo, so I may need to look into that.I'm still amused though that my brain keeps wanting to call this thing the Zathras.
Another annual tradition at Norwescon is the movie previews panel, which is usually run multiple times during the convention. I had to go to this, not only because I knew they'd be showing trailers for the new Matrix and X-Men flicks, but also because Paul, who'd attended an earlier edition of the panel, relayed that they had shown the trailer for Master and Commander.
So there I was, waiting through a bunch of trailers I didn't much care about, until I saw the same blue seascape I'd seen at the beginning of the M&C trailer I'd already seen on the net. I started grinning. And Russell Crowe's blond visage came up on the screen, and his English-accent voiceover kicked in.
The funny part of this, though, was when I heard the girl sitting right across the aisle from me squeal, "Wait, is this Patrick O'Brien--RUSSELL CROWE?! HE'S PERFECT!" I told her, "Yes. Yes he is!" And we high-fived at the end of the trailer, much to Paul and Meems' amusement. Paul deadpanned, "Fans? The DEUCE you say!" Hee hee.
What else... I got Heather Alexander's new CD at the huckster room, as well as the newly remastered CD release of Julia Ecklar's album Divine Intervention, since Julia Ecklar was the very first filker I ever seriously admired.
I took three books with me, and didn't actually read any of them. I consider this a milestone since in past years I've done a lot of reading at conventions! This year, though, just because of doing so much--I didn't have the time. And I'm okay with that. I'm going to have to try this going to panels thing more often, and it's made me look forward more to going to Worldcon in Toronto!
Re:
Date: 2003-04-22 02:49 pm (UTC)2) *BEAM* We played and somebody liked us! *sniffle* Warms an amateur musician's heart, it does! ^_^