2017 post-Bronycon blog #1 · 3:41am Aug 14th, 2017
The evening after coming home from Bronycon for the last time is always depressing.
Anyway, I want to keep things separate to avoid the whole thing going on too long. First I'd like to recap events.
I helped out on the "Editing is Magic" panel along with maskedferret, Corejo, Sunchaser, Dubs Rewatcher, Majin Syeekoh, and ABagOVicodin. We covered various topics about how to gain self-editing skills, how to get into editing for others, and how to receive feedback from those who edit for you. A lot of people liked various points we made, especially on seeing editing as a dialogue or even a friendly argument: something that involves a back-and-forth between author and editor with the ultimate goal of optimizing the story. I'm not going to rehash the whole thing here, as Bronycon will eventually post it to YouTube (probably in about 6 months if history is any guide), and you can watch it then. But as some of the points relate to Equestria Daily submissions, I've made a forum post on feedback there. It was especially nice to have a well-known author (guess which one!) talk to me later and express appreciation for the point about not dropping your completed 500-page story on your editor all at once.
Later, I led a panel on keeping prose aligned with character perspective. Mostly, this derived from the constant perspective mistakes I see on stories I've reviewed, and I figured it'd be a good idea to try and reach a larger audience with it than working one author at a time through reviews. I had Dubs Rewatcher and GaPJaxie as co-panelists. Ether Echoes missed her Friday panel due to flight delays, so we asked her to join as well. It'd kind of suck to miss the opportunity to be a panelist, and she's certainly qualified to discuss the topic, so we were glad to include her. Which also meant I could do less talking, and as my allergies had me losing my voice, that was a good thing.
We got far more attendees than I would have expected, which was great. Applejinx estimated the hall at 70% full (that's part of his job), which he said was very high for a writing panel. We did benefit from a good time slot, right in the middle of Saturday afternoon. This one will of course also appear on YouTube eventually, but most of it will be available earlier: I came up with all the content for my and Dubs' parts, and I did a full write-up of it that'll go up as a guest column on Chris's "One Man's Pony Ramblings" blog later this week. I'll do a blog post linking it when that happens. In any case, a lot of people said they found the panel helpful, and I was very happy to have it reach a larger audience. So when the column goes live, we'll reach even more!
I even had fun doing a turn on the "And That's How Equestria Was Made!" game. Wanderer D and I did an "I'll volunteer if you do," and we had a good time.
Already working on some new panel ideas for next Bronycon!
It was good to meet you!
Can't wait for the panels to hit the web. Maybe, maybe, I'll be able to finally go next year <3
The editing panel and the perspective panel we're both some of the best con writing panels I've enjoyed. So good job! Might even get a story out of an idea the perspective panel gave me.
Both panels were helpful and insightful. "How Equestria Was Made" was way more fun and funny than either of the other improv events I attended.
That sounds very helpful indeed. Since I started writing regularly last year during Season 6, I will watch those panels and download them, whenever BronyCon gets around to uploading them.