Pittsburgh: 3 Rivers Screenwriters' Conference; "Making up a bedtime story" · 4:50am May 19th, 2017
Just a heads-up to anyone near Pittsburgh that the yearly screenwriters' conference starts tomorrow. It snuck up on me, but I'm going. It's in a different location, which is hidden on the webpage, and not on the directions page: 201 Wood St., Pittsburgh, PA. I think it's $120 for students. A great deal. I doubt they'll do it again next year; it appears on the website that very few people registered.
Bronycon didn't accept my panel ideas, so I won't be on any panels at Bronycon. I did 3 last year, so I'm not crying. (One was a cooperative effort with Horse Voice, which Nyronus also put work into.) I will be running a demo of "And That's How Equestria was Made!", an adaptation of Baron Munchausen to MLP, with horizon, Applejinx, GaPJaxie, Ferret, bookplayer, & Blagdaross doing the actual work. More on that later.
As long as we're all here, I meant to recommend "Making up a bedtime story" by lord_steak. 1800 words or so. This story is very simple, very sweet, and very odd, in that it... isn't really a story? I mean it doesn't fit any definition of a "story" that I know. It's very much Realistic (in the 19th-century French way that's usually so boring), slice-of-life, meaning a non-climactic section of someone's life with no character arc or plot. But unlike most true "slice-of-life" stories, I didn't regret reading it afterwards, because it (a) chose a slice of that life that was very emotionally rich, and (b) is short. Your mileage may vary. I'm tagging this post "Experience" so the people who favorited "Experience" will see it, because they are probably the audience for "Making up a bedtime story".
Now you have me wondering what those panel ideas were.
I did enjoy listening to that Baron Munchausen game that I sat in on once upon a time. Hope your MLP adaption goes well!
I'll finally get to meet you at BronyCon! Squee!
4538321 If I'm not mistaken one was pretty much FIMfiction userbase analysis, and I was in favor of it. (I didn't get Hoof of Argon approved this year myself, so I'm not the final arbiter, sadly
) My best guess is that the analysis panel (pretty much the perfect match for Bad Horse) was presented so dryly and academically that it didn't sound like it would be interesting. The writing skills for pitching a panel are very similar to advertising, and from what I saw this is not a Bad Horse central focus and it sounded a lot more boring than it actually is when he does it 
Live and learn, I guess? And I will do my best to help make the Baron Munchausen panel/activity entertaining. It's a brilliant adaptation, provided people understand the mechanics: and it's not so hard to keep track of the pony-ized mechanics because they tie in to the characterizations so well. Looking forward to future BH posts outlining what you're going to experience, witnessing this new game
Dear Mr. Bad Horse,
We apologize but we cannot accept "Destabilizing a Nation 101," "The Practical Dictator" and "Kicking Puppies: Sport or Life's Meaning?" as panels at this year's convention. Also, perhaps you should consider not coming at all.
Sincerely,
Bronycon
4538454
Whaaaaaaaaaat...??? But Hoof of Argon is like, one of the best panels there.
4538583 I can try again next year
and I can bring the printed-out fics for people to do impromptu Hoof in Quills and Sofas! 
4538587
Oo that could be fun. Wouldn't be as many people though :/
I can't imagine why they didn't approve it this time.
Making up a bedtime story is very sweet. Yeah, it isn't strictly a story in the sense you mentioned, but I think it works because it does actually have an engaging and complete little story written in as a significant part of it.
Making up a bedtime story was fun and cute, but it seemed fairly standard to me.
On arc, it has Flurry Heart and Shining Armor progressing from tired/frustrated to asleep/content, through overcoming a series of (albeit minor) challenges. (Catching Flurry, diaper changing, making up a story/lullabye.) Sure, it's not a 'character arc' resulting in deep changes in their personality, but it fits the length and tone, and looks like a plot to me. I even see a rough three-act structure; there's the bit before Cadence shows up, the diaper-changing, and the 'making up a story' parts.
That being said, I think there's an argument to be made for the idea of 'stories' as a subset of a larger thing, like 'words primarily intended to entertain' - which, as far as I can tell, basically comes down to evoking emotion. As long as 'being entertaining' is the focus, instead of 'being a story', things like poetry and word-salad can be examined with the same lens (which makes experiments, hybrids, and crossovers sensible) and many storytelling conventions fall into context; things like theme, plot, mood, and character are useful because they're tested ways to evoke emotions - but if breaking them entertains more, then that's the way to go. This is why I consider 'boring' to be very harsh criticism, and why I think understanding the audience is useful, since different people find different emotions entertaining, and different conventions evocative.
(This is also part of why I think the readers interpretation is more important than the authors, because telling someone 'you're feeling wrong' seems ludicrous to me, but we've already had that argument. :P)
4538583 I saved up my paper-route money when I was a teenager to buy Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook.
4539695
No one does that. What's ludicrous is Stanley Fish saying that a random series of words is a poem because he can force his students to interpret it as one, or Roland Barthes saying that no one has ever authored anything because humans can't create original ideas. Equally ludicrous is pretending that a good story has so little structure and takes so little skill to compose that one can be written un-intentionally.
4540803
"With this, I'll overthrow the school principle!"