Category Archives: Conferences

The Rocky Mountain Gold Conference was weeks ago, but I wanted to share a couple of tricks n’ tips which have stuck with me.

First, I spent all of Friday in workshops with agents and editors, who know the industry inside and out. Brian Farrey, acquiring editor at Flux (responsible for launching careers for people like Maggie Stiefvater), shared one important tip: be specific. He told us many new authors try to be mysterious. For example, we’ll introduce a strange man, but this man won’t speak to the main character until chapter five. According to Farrey, this is a big mistake. We lose our readers to vague writing. Instead, if we give specific, interesting details, our readers will be intrigued and will be likely to read more.

The rest of the weekend, I dodged in and out of various workshops, where talented writers shared their own experiences. Most of it was good. Some of it was random. But I still remember these key pieces of advice.

1. Kirt Hickman gave several workshops, all of which were excellent. He gave us so many tips, I can’t even begin to write them all down. Probably the most helpful–Get rid of filler words. I’d heard this advice before. Take out as many “looks, felts, etc” and so I worked on finding other words to use instead. Hickman explained why we need to take these words out.

He told us if we’re writing a story from Mike’s perspective, we wouldn’t say… Mike looked at Jessica as she fluffed her hair. We would simply say… Jessica fluffed her hair.

If you want to read more simple tips, buy his book, Revising Fiction. It’s well worth the money.

2. Tip two comes from Carol Berg. She spoke about fantasy fundamentals and things we should consider when writing unique worlds. I learned about some of the stereotypes in fantasy, but the most interesting tidbit was about keeping it realistic (for the world). If your travelers are out on the road, they are not going to make stew. Think about it, she told us. Stew takes hours to make, so why is it always in fantasy novels?

3. Finally, Bernard Cornwell (keynote speaker) had the best advice for writers–find a different job, any other job. But in all seriousness, he said we’re writers and probably wouldn’t heed his advice. If you have a passion for writing, any other job just won’t do. So he wished us all the best of luck.