Speaking at the World’s Largest Sci-Fi Convention: What I Learned
LAconV, also known as the 84th World Science Fiction Convention, occurred between August 27–31 in Anaheim, California. Attracting over 8,200 participants, of whom over 4,500 attended in-person, this convention was a space for both professional and aspiring writers to speak on topics ranging from how to build a world in 60 minutes to the difficulty of finding good reviews of sci-fi novels. The prestigious Hugo Awards were also hosted at this convention.
This convention was marketed as a space for all genres of speculative fiction. As an avid reader of speculative fiction (particularly fantasy), I was curious what these world-renowned authors had to say about both the writing process and about the genres themselves. So, I attended the session on Saturday, August 29th, sitting in on different writing workshops and discussions.
There are two workshops that I want to highlight in particular. I felt like these workshops captured the common difficulties a writer of speculative fiction might encounter during their creative enterprises. They proved wildly useful for my own fantasy novel.
The first workshop, with authors such as Henry Lien, Madeline James, Marshall J. Moore, and T. R. Napper, was on fight choreography. Speculative fiction authors love to invoke tense, high-stakes fight scenarios between seemingly larger-than-life characters—the hero versus the dragon, for example. I love reading about how a character overcomes a difficult fight. But how does one make a fight interesting to the reader? How do you achieve the balance between storytelling and inference?
One of the most important rules of fight choreography that I learned is not to narrate every blow. Rather, focus on what feeling you want the fight to have. Is the character getting overwhelmed? Are they confident about their victory? Moore told us that a fight scene can be like a conversation—both between the characters fighting and between the characters and the reader.
Another useful tip was to narrate the change in environment, rather than the precise movements of the characters. It can be hard to visualize a complex attack, but anyone can picture leaves rustling, or, humorously enough, a boat rocking back and forth as characters punch one another. These descriptions can help orient the reader in an otherwise unfamiliar environment. One attendee posed a question about the difference between a fight on a screen versus a fight in a book. What advantage does a book have over a movie? The answer that the panelists settled on was interiority. Books provide access to the thoughts and motivations of characters that a movie cannot replicate. Additionally, writers can explore the interiority of many different characters throughout a fight, adding an additional dimension.
The second workshop, led by Janet Forbes, provided a tutorial on how to build a speculative fiction world from scratch. There are five steps, which I will detail below:
Step One: Define your vision. Figure out the genre (sci-fi vs. fantasy), motivation (novel vs. short story), theme (hopeful vs. dystopian), and worldbuilding area (LA vs. US).
Step Two: Choose your “focus points.” What do you want to focus on in the world? Class relations? Military influence? Magic? Your story can’t be about everything.
Step Three: Establish some stakes. What is the hook for this setting? Put another way, what kind of fun are we having?
Step Four: Figure out the human experience. What does it look like to live in this world? Questions like “what will home be like” and “what will prized possessions look like” help sharpen the rules and topography of the world.
Step Five: Set your world in motion. What’s the big stuff going on in the world? Are there new inventions that are changing society? Changes in policy or government? Make events with pros and cons—different characters will have different opinions on them!
This five-step process helped refine the world that I’d built for my fantasy novel, even though I’d spent years working on it. I would recommend it to anyone who has even a slight interest in worldbuilding.
Finally, I’ll address the elephant in the room: what was the panel that I spoke on? I spoke on a panel about what teens are looking for in the next generation of YA speculative fiction. I tried to highlight how YA isn’t a genre, as some might misconstrue it, but rather a readership. I also spoke about how YA tends to overexplain its magic systems and world logic to the reader, assuming that the reader can’t figure it out or infer it for themselves. And, of course, I advertised my fantasy novel to the audience.
Overall, this convention was really fun to attend. I got to hear from plenty of renowned authors (George R.R. Martin attended on Friday, the day before I went), and I even participated in a panel discussion myself. To any fans of speculative fiction, I would highly recommend attending the next World Science Fiction Convention.