Moderator Tania is also known as itsabigrock.

Fandom can often be insular, with little interaction between groups. We aim to show just how much we all have in common. Attendees from different fandoms will discuss predetermined themes, directed by a shadowy conspiracy who wants to rule your hearts and minds.

Why say Cyclopean when you can say one-eyed? Is cerulean always better than blue? Our panel discusses how to decide between the dizzying array of descriptives to give your story the punch it needs.

Are you interested in being a beta but not sure what that entails? Are you an experienced beta with knowledge to share -- or a laundry list of things you wish other betas knew? Join this roundtable discussion of the beta process. Topics will include the different types of beta reading, the beta/author relationship, essential resources for the beta reader, common copyediting pitfalls and peeves, questions the beta should consider when analyzing the story, and more.

Unconscious use of gender-specific pejoratives can speak volumes about both the society the author hails from and the attitudes of that author’s characters. We talk about how to be more conscious of what we’re really saying – and when such language is an effective aid to our storytelling.

Reviews can be written by anyone - fans for fans, pros for pros, fans for pros. This workshop will start with the basics, including how to condense a plot without spoilers, grabbing interest with quotes, how to be fair and honest (even if you don't like what you're reviewing), and what warnings reviewers owe readers. From there we will move to how to for different kinds of reviews - fanfic, professional fiction, nonfiction, TV/movies, audio, and books. We'll finish with a discussion of finding markets for these reviews, fannish or professional. Attendees are highly encouraged to bring short stories or plot synopsis of something they want to review for the hands-on portion of the workshop.

A talk/question and answer session on writing as a career and the basics that people starting out as writers need to know. How to submit stories for publication, how agents work, what the publishing process should be like, scams to avoid, publishing myths and misconceptions, and anything else the participants would like to discuss.
Limit: 40

Talk about the nuts and bolts of crafting stories of adventure, mystery, horror, and action – without a romantic duo in sight.

Are you a former English major in love with a show heavy on the engineering? We know how frustrating it is to try and write technobabble when you haven’t the foggiest idea of how it really goes. Let our panel of scientists give you the basic information you need to write convincing science fiction.

How to keep your baseline arc steady while writing episodic stories.

The Creature. The Vampire. The Werewolf. Mummy, Zombie, Revenant, Ghost. These days, they’re as likely to be found shilling pizza, breakfast cereal, and beer than starring in our nightmares. How can we make these archetypes – old as imagination – inspire fear instead of nostalgia?

Blogging sites, message boards, newsletters and comms, you name it. Fanfic is the focal point for community-building world-wide. Come talk with our learned guests about how we find each other, what we get out of it, and whether we're all six degrees of separated from every other fan in existence.

Writing action has unusual challenges – how to convey movement through a static medium, how to describe without bogging the action down in endless accounts of fists and fury. Together we’ll learn the rules for writing fights – and when to break them like a cheap stoolie. Let’s get ready to rumble!

In this workshop, we'll do some brief guided-ideation/writing exercises designed to help you learn about the characters you're writing about -- whether in fanfic or original fiction -- by acts of guided imagination with particular attention to sensory details. This is a material-generating workshop, which works well whether you have established characters, or just the merest sense of a person you'd like to explore through writing. Please come prepared with writing materials of your choice, and at least some idea of what character you'd like to work with during the 90 minute session. Between exercises there will be some opportunity to read aloud and hear (positive) feedback about your results.
Limit: Nine participants in each session

Kristina Busse will focus on tropes and their emotional impact. Tropes, the use of familiar plots, scenarios, and characterization, are a crucial part of fandom. They can be specific to a particular fandom, such as Pon Farr!first times, wishverse!AUs, and sentient!Atlantis fics; more often they transcend fannish boundaries, as in the case of amnesia, curtain!fic, and mpreg. Generic plots and themes are encountered within the shows we watch and books we read, and, in turn, we use them in the stories we write and the art we create. Tropes are a way to organize our fannish experiences: they allow fans to characterize fiction in archives, rec lists, and communities; they offer a shared framework in which to read and write stories; and they provide a vocabulary with which to analyze and talk about fiction. And yet critical fan meta often dismisses tropes as clichéd writing. Fandom thus is a culture torn between valuing originality and loving familiarity. Busse will open up the question of our own emotional investment in fan fiction, and the role fan fiction and their tropes play for us in our engagement with source and fan texts.

Are fics improved by a little mystery, or should the world be your characters’ gynecologist?

Do adjectives in a sex scene change the tenor of the entire story? Can you call it ‘making sweet love’ in a tale of betrayal and revenge, and vice versa? We explore whether sexual scenarios are more or less likely to set the tone for the story you’re trying to tell.

Sex seems so omnipresent in fic that it can sometimes overwhelm storytelling. This workshop will show you how to write relationships that don’t require sex to move the narrative along – not just between romantically-involved couples, but including friendships, sibling rivalries, parent-child dynamics, and other non-romantic attachments.

It's a late-night titillation sensation! Listen to raunchy drabbles based on the winners of the fundraiser pairings, and offer your own bawdy tales.

If you love writing and fanfic enough to come to Writercon, it's quite likely you already know that plagiarism is wrong. But it still negatively impacts our fannish experience, particularly if we assume everyone understands it in the same way. Too often our plagiarism definitions are a lot like identifying pornography – we're sure we'll know it when we see it.

This program will be a discussion of the gray areas that border plagiarism: homage, satire, popular culture references, hive mind, etc. We'll also discuss what actions we can take as writers, mods, award sites, archivists, etc., to move the implicit fandom norms about plagiarism to more explicit ones.

Does magic have any place in a science-driven universe? Can science exist in a magic-driven one? Will they duke it out or can they coexist in your narrative? Our panel discusses past use and future possibilities in a variety of settings.

If you've ever submitted your story to a beta, you know that the critique process can turn a good story into a great one. The Writers' Salon is like a face-to-face beta session, in which your story will be discussed by a small group of people who are passionate about writing. We'll give your story an honest critique, and you'll do the same for our stories, and then we'll all go home energized and ready to rewrite. We'll also discuss how to set up your own writing critique groups, whether online or face-to-face.
Limit: Six participants

To quote myself (in "Kansas Burning," a Supernatural meta post I made some time back on LiveJournal): "Let's begin with a position statement: Supernatural isn't just horror/fantasy; it's deeply and specifically American horror/fantasy." As such, some of its most effective monsters-of-the-week have been drawn from regional history and legend; nor have fanfic writers neglected this rich vein of source material. Not every writer, though, has the advantage of physical proximity to all this local color; the workshop, accordingly, will also explore alternate means -- the internet, library research, asking questions of your friends and relatives and the occasional helpful stranger -- of digging it up and transforming it into story."
Limit: 13 participants

Fans often fall prey to the notion that we’re better than other people. Unfortunately, prejudices are present in fandom just as in all subcultures. We examine what we can do to make our corner of the world a more tolerant place.

In this workshop, we'll do some brief guided-ideation/writing exercises designed to help you learn about the characters you're writing about -- whether in fanfic or original fiction -- by acts of guided imagination with particular attention to sensory details. This is a material-generating workshop, which works well whether you have established characters, or just the merest sense of a person you'd like to explore through writing. Please come prepared with writing materials of your choice, and at least some idea of what character you'd like to work with during the 90 minute session. Between exercises there will be some opportunity to read aloud and hear (positive) feedback about your results.
Limit: Nine participants in each session