Norwescon 2—Supplemental

Norwescon was held at a hotel near the SeaTac airport. Here’s a view with an airliner taking off in the upper left.

 

I should have said in yesterday’s post that Kimberly Unger was one of the speakers on the subject of AI—or not really AI, just machine learning.

 

 Later, she won the Philip K. Dick award for best paperback novel (science fiction of fantasy) published last year. Here she is with the award for her book, The Extractionist.

For me, the best event was a workshop called “Plotting Your Novel with Save the Cat!“ A lot of people have good writing skills. They can write interesting scenes. But they are told their story structure will not attract readers. Our instructor, Emily Leverett, went over in detail the best story structure that works over and over again, using the book Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, by Jessica Brody.

As Emily Leverett emphasized, this is not a matter of imposing a wooden template that gets rid of originality. The story template comes from observing successful novels and movies. It can be seen in stories as diverse as The Lord of the Rings novels, the Star Wars movies, Jane Austen novels, the movie Legally Blonde, etc.

As to what the phrase Save the Cat! means, buy the book. It will do you good.