Well, here I am, able to post a blog entry today after all. This rocks, because I wrote one yesterday too (I just have to move it from the laptop to my main computer and post it… expect some posting out of order time travel magic soon) which means that once I have all my cute little ducks in a row, I will actually have a post for every day of the convention.

And you know what that means? No posting gaps! My post-a-day record will remain! w00t! 🙂

Had a pretty fun time at the convention, overall, despite the incident that I wrote about for yesterday’s entry (warning, it’s a dark and depressed entry… try to accept that I was feeling really horrible at the time and venting that into text, and that afterward I felt a lot better). Had fun at furry panels, talking about various stuff.

Went to one about Character Building. I joked with the people there that I needed a panel like that, because my Dad always told me that I needed to build some character. They laughed, and I am pretty sure they were laughing with me, so that was positive.

Talked about a lot of cool writerly stuff there about how to make a deep and well fleshed out characters. The dude running the panel had a fairly good understanding of the basics… all the stuff the writing books tell you about how to make your character seem more like a real person. Ask yourself questions about what they are, who they are, when they were born, where they come from, why they do what they do, that kind of thing. What are their motivations? What is their involvement in the world you have built around them?

Stuff I already knew, to be honest, but there is a lot of benefit in just doing something with a bunch of fellow writers. We are such a solitary and isolated lot that anything that lets us all be together and relax and enjoy is worth its weight in publisher’s ink.

I brought up one of my own favorite subjects, which is character appeal. What makes certain character just leap out and make you fall in love with them? What makes a Superman, a Mickey Mouse, a Sherlock Holmes? Characters that have such enormous appeal that they become, essentially, immortal, unlike their all too mortal creators?

Because that is seriously the sort of thing I would like to get into. I want to make characters that people will love so much, they cannot wait to see the next thing they get up to. It’s something I learned from all my sitcom watching, but it applies to everything. Characters people love and want to spend time with will carry your work forward better than absolutely anything else. Audiences will forgive bad writing, poor special effects, plot inconsistencies, and practically all other sins and errors if they love the character enough.

Yes, I’m talking about Doctor Who at the moment. Now THAT is a character that has stood the test of time and proved irresistible to audiences.

Sadly, nobody at the panel had anything particularly insightful to add about character appeal, but that is fine. I have trouble learning writing from others anyhow. I seem to be destined to me the sort of person who has no choice but to learn by doing, as much as I wish that was not the case.

The hotel we stayed at was great. I absolutely loved our room, because it had a whole little kitchen in it. Full sized fridge (none of that minibar crap, although they couldn’t quite keep themselves from at least putting some $2 bottled water in the fridge door. Microwave oven. Sink. Kitchen cabinet with a full set of silverware in it. It felt quite homey, and it meant I saved a ton of money because I just ate food we brought from home most of the time. Beats the hell out of having to pay for a restaurant meal every time I need to eat.

Speaking of that, I saved so much via eating food from home that I was able to splurge by going to the super fancy awesome buffet the restaurant does for Sunday Brunch. And the food was quite good. I deliberately loaded up big time on the protein because I knew I would not be able to avoid the marvelously decadent looking dessert table, and protein does wonders to slow down the digestion of pretty much everything that is not protein, so it blunts the effects of eating bad things.

Still, I probably should not have had the fudge. Not all sugary things are alike, and some are far worse for me than others, and I am pretty sure fudge is about as bad as it gets outside of maybe sugared Kool-Aid or some other form of liquid sugar.

But in my defense, the fudge was really really good. It was just like my grand-aunt’s amazingly good brown sugar fudge that she made every Christmas to give as gifts, but super creamy and soft and rich. So while it was very stupid of me to eat the damn stuff in the first place, at least I got a lot of pleasure from my sin.

If I wasn’t so greedy by nature, I would have been a good boy and just eaten the lovely tasty fresh cut fruit for dessert. Watermelon, pineapple, strawberries… all my all time favorites.

But no, I had to also nab the little slice of chocolate cake, some kind of weird cookie I didn’t end up liking, and the wonderful, magical, deadly fuuuuudge.

The moment I finished eating it, I knew it was a bad idea. And I ended up having to crash out in the car and miss the closing ceremonies due to my overindulgence. Gluttony, thy bite is cruel!

Man, it sucks to be broken.

But I had a great time overall, and I look forward to the next one!