Top Ten Internet Horror DON'Ts (Part 2)

**Note: Clicking on the links throughout this article will take you to horror of varying types and degrees, from mildly unnerving to gory to existentially terrifying. If that kind of thing wigs you out too much, or that's just not what you're looking for, this is your warning. I also take no responsibility for any curses, brainwashing, sudden deaths, or other similarly odd events potentially connected to these links. And, like Arthur Weasley said, don't trust anything intelligent if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Oh, and spoilers are going to exist in this article.**

Well, I hope you’ve read the first five don'ts in the last post, as well as the top ten dos. If not, they are HERE, HERE, and HERE, in publication order. Once you've caught up, swing on back here and we'll go through the top five things not to take from internet horror. Or my top five, anyway.

5: DON'T Underestimate Your Audience

Yep, I made this point in the do section, but I want to harp on it more. I want to harp on it over and over and over again, because damn it, it's important.

Your readers are not stupid. Your audience, if you're creating, say, film, are not stupid. Please remember that. You have room to be subtle. Seriously, I cover this in more detail in the dos, I just wanted to really drive it home. So much internet horror is done by amateurs, and those amateurs can be talented… but by and large, they overexplain. They give the reader too much handholding, and inadvertently damage their own work.

4: DON'T Hide Everything, Otherwise You Have Nothing

Okay, this may be counter to what I just said, but… well, it's a balancing act. Even the smartest reader needs something to work with. If you hide everything… what's the point of your story? Writers see advice (Like the advice I gave.) saying to be subtle and not play your cards too soon. So, rather than overexplaining, writers underexplain. You see no sign of anything weird. The character is therefore scared of… the next plot point?

It's fine to have a mysterious entity in horror. H.P. Lovecraft was a master of it, rarely ever describing the otherworldly horrors he created. But even Lovecraft mentioned a creeping tentacle or a flash of color. So many internet horror writers have this tendency to write their story without anything to actually horrify. And, perhaps in the worst horror of all, it's starting to creep into traditionally published writing. Professional authors… I just can't, with that. Give the audience enough without giving them too much.

3: DON'T Forget the Polish

Now, I did say that passion would make people appreciate your work. But if you don't pay attention to the polish of your chosen craft, you're not going to rise to any height. If you're a writer, you need to know your grammar. You need to know how language flows. Film makers need to know about their angles, the use of focus, their editing techniques. That kind of thing is what moves an okay, likable work into something worth paying attention to.

Polish is something I would really like more of in the world of internet horror. You see it in some work. Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is very polished and put together. TheRussian Sleep Experiment is wonderful. But by and large, even some of the best work out there (Marble Hornets, Candle Cove, Tribe Twelve) lack a shine and shimmer that a little more attention would have brought them. They're wonderful, but I can't say that they're great technical creations.

2: DON'T Forget Your Twist

There are no original ideas left. Sorry, it's true. Everything has been done. There are only three stories, in the end. Or thirty six. Or nine. Whatever you want to pick, there are only a set number of actual plots. Your idea has likely been done before, too.

I know that I'm focusing a lot on creativity, but that's because it's a massive success of internet horror, when it works. It's also a massive failing because, even though I think the idea of gatekeepers in publishing is patently ridiculous, there is something to be said for mitigating clichés. It doesn't mean it's going to be good, but it won't be something seen a million times unless something actually happens to it that's different.

Your audience will love you if you do that. So will editors and critics. There's very little people enjoy more than seeing something expected actually turned around. It can be hard to come up with the idea, but when you do, it can be some of the most powerful fiction created.

1: DON'T. Pull. Your. Punches.

Ignore everything else in these four posts if you have to. Seriously. This is easily the most important thing I have to say in this whole thing: don't pull your punches. Whatever the reason you may have for it, conscious or not, pulling your punches will only harm the end work. You have to fully commit to the work, and this is where internet horror falls flat and falls hard. Okay, that's contradictory to a previous point saying that they do well in this, but again: those are the outlying standouts, not the massive bulk of the genre.

You can tell when someone put the forethought and love into a piece to make it really special. But you can also tell when someone doesn't, and they just want to get popular without trying. The first step to actually throwing solid punches is training it up. This is where learning comes in. The polish. The passion. All of it.

Your punches will be weak if you don’t work up your skill. But even if they're strong, you can kill yourself on it. If you’re worried about not pissing anyone off… you're dead. You're throwing shallower punches. You have no follow through. I was taught years ago that, if you're going to punch someone in the nose, you don't aim for their nose. You aim for the back of their head, and their entire head just happens to be in the way.

Pulling punches is a way to absolutely destroy any emotional impact you might have had. You can't keep people 100% happy and deliver a powerful story. If you don’t want to risk ever upsetting anyone ever, your work will be placid and gray.

"If everyone likes your work, but nobody loves it, it will fail." That's from Mark Rosewater, and it's an absolute truth when it comes to internet horror. 99.9% of work produced in the "genre" fails. No one really watches the videos or plays the games or reads the stories, and those who do… they don’t care enough to fight for the work in question. And the only way to make someone love something is to risk other people hating it. It's that simple. So for the love of god: Don't. Pull. Your. Punches.

And that is my final word on the matter. I hope this has been helpful to you. It was helpful for me to write it. Really sets some things clear in my head.

Until next time, lovelies,

Voss

Top Ten Internet Horror DON'Ts (Part 1)

**Note: Clicking on the links throughout this article will take you to horror of varying types and degrees, from mildly unnerving to gory to existentially terrifying. If that kind of thing wigs you out too much, or that's just not what you're looking for, this is your warning. I also take no responsibility for any curses, brainwashing, sudden deaths, or other similarly odd events potentially connected to these links. And, like Arthur Weasley said, don't trust anything intelligent if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Oh, and spoilers are going to exist in this article.**

So, the last couple posts, I went over the do's from internet horror as its own weird little genre. What we can learn about writing horror, and just about writing in general, from the online scarefest that's been blooming over the past decade or so.

But as many of you probably already know, internet horror is far from perfect. For every Candle Cove and Marble Hornets, there's a dozen "WHO WAS PHONE" and "Jane the Killer" stories to muddy the waters (Although WHO WAS PHONE is at least funny.). There's a lot to learn from all that bad horror about what we should absolutely avoid doing, too. And I've got ten of those nuggets plucked from the pile here.

You can read the do's, as well as my definition of internet horror, HERE in the first pair of articles. This set will be largely self contained, but there will likely still be references back to the first two, so I do recommend reading these all in order.

Now, enough of all the lead-in crap – let's get right to what we all want out of this: numbers in descending order!

10: DON'T Abuse Internal References

This is low on the list, since it's not always applicable, but I feel like it has to be said nonetheless. The world of internet horror is largely composed of Creative Commons elements reconfigured into something unique. Whether that's good or not is not the point here. What matters is that it makes for a very self-referential genre.

If you're going to do something like that, you have to do it well. Slenderman, the Rake, Jeff the Killer, and the Brutal Obscene Beast all get cursed by Smile Dog and Normal Porn for Normal People… that's not a good story. That's a mess, and it happens way too often. Well-done internal reference can be seen in works like EverymanHYBRID (Slenderman/the Rake), but the key is that it's brought in well. It makes sense. It works within the world and, perhaps most importantly, the elements that are borrowed and included are not all that exists. They're not even the main antagonistic forces. That honor falls to Habit in that universe, and Habit is an entirely original character created by the guys.

Outside of actual internet horror, I'd say this has the most application in Lovecraftian fiction. Sure, Nyarlathotep, Hastur, and the Hounds of Tindalos might all be hunting the same guy together… but I doubt it, and I doubt even more an author could make it work without some very original worldbuilding to tie the disparate elements together. And really, the same could be said when using any mythological elements. Use them carefully, know them well, and bring something original in, but don't overuse any of it.

9: DON'T Assume Your First Idea is Clever and Amazing

It's not. I would put money on the first idea you have for something being trite, cliché, and generally predictable, in fact. It's not a mockery or me being rude or mean. You could say the same thing about my first idea for something, too. Our brain stores up ideas it's seen already. If we see a solution work once, our brain is designed to remember it, because from a survival standpoint, it makes sense to just do it the way you know for sure works.

That, however, is the absolute death of creativity. But the internet horror community seems largely ignorant of this fact. Almost every story in the internet horror community involves Uncanny Valley Creature #12 stalking Mary Sue/Marty Stu through a setting that is barely touched upon, causing insanity/sickness as well as electronic interference. Also this is the last journal entry Mary Sue/Marty Stu made. It's done over and over because there are several well-created, popular internet horror pieces that follow this formula. The plot is stored in your brain already, and it leaps out when presented with an opportunity.

I guarantee that, when you see a call or a specific theme, you come up with a half dozen ideas that you've seen somewhere else before you get to something worth dealing with. You may drop everything rapidly, but it comes up nonetheless. That doesn't mean you should write it. Well, not normally…

8: DON'T Just Reuse Someone's Idea (Caveat Incoming)

To go along with the last point, you can't just find a successful idea and do it over with a different veneer. You have to change something to make it work out as something worth doing. I mentioned that in the do's, but it's important. It's so important, and especially in internet horror, it's way too prevalent.

This phenomenon is really easily seen with Slenderman. So many Slenderman based creations floating out there, to the point where it has passed out of the internet and into the mainstream. And unfortunately, the mainstream does Slenderman… poorly, as a rule. Take a look at the Marble Hornets movie to see that in full glory… or, actually, don't. It's so bad. It's so bad, guys. Not only did they not understand what made Marble Hornets work, the changes they made… just didn't work. They weren't original. Instead, it actually took something that had some interesting elements, something original, and shaved off all the edges to fit it into the same box we've seen a hundred times in every forgettable horror movie.

Don't be Always Watching. Please, please, please.

7: DON'T Rely on Blood and Gore

I praised internet horror for subtlety… but again, that's the really good stuff, the stuff worth learning from. For the most part, the common horror tactic of "let's drop blood everywhere" is so overused. I'm a fan of splatterpunk, personally, but there's a way to eviscerate hundreds of people and make it actually work. Read Peel and Eat Buffet by Vincent W. Sakowski to see it well-used. Assuming you have a strong enough stomach.

This isn't a large, complicated point: use your blood and intestines sparingly. They're expensive, and they're best left implied, in my opinion.

6: DON'T Rely on Aesthetics

Internet horror is full of aesthetic terror. Pictures and videos, yes, but in a genre that has an unfortunate tendency to leave out grounding details, the horrific entities are often described in excessive detail, often to the point of just throwing up a photograph.

That is not enough, no matter what anyone thinks. Even the most unnerving pictures won't save a story. Jeff the Killer is popular, but widely acknowledged as just straight up bad. The plot is weak, the writing is awful, the characters are ridiculous. The image associated with Jeff the Killer is terrifying, but if you don't stop there, if you look at anything beyond the aesthetics, it falls apart. You have to bring more than some scary imagery to your story, whatever the medium. Otherwise, you end up with a mess. You end up with, at best, a work that will only ever be known for one, fleeting element of it.

And those are your first five don'ts. Tomorrow, we'll have the top five, and the end of a very fun series for me to work on. I like these bigger collections of blog posts… so you could safely expect more, most likely.

Top Ten Internet Horror DOs (Part 2)

**Note: Clicking on the links throughout this article will take you to horror of varying types and degrees, from mildly unnerving to gory to existentially terrifying. If that kind of thing wigs you out too much, or that's just not what you're looking for, this is your warning. I also take no responsibility for any curses, brainwashing, sudden deaths, or other similarly odd events potentially connected to these links. And, like Arthur Weasley said, don't trust anything intelligent if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Oh, and spoilers are going to exist in this article.**

Welcome back to hell. Or… my blog. Whatever. Yesterday, I did entries 10-6 on this series, and you can read that by clicking on the big happy face.

Remember the happy face. You might need it as we go through the last five. I will… of course, I don't handle this kind of horror particularly well either. But it's there if you do need it.

5: DO Focus on Your Concept

I teach a short story class with another author, and one of the things we both try to drive home is the importance of your idea. Especially in speculative fiction (Including horror), the idea needs to be solid. You need to know what your idea is, and you need to know it well.

Again, internet horror comes in to drive home a point that I would make anyway. It is a singular concept that sells most written internet horror. Jeff the Killer, for its many flaws, hinges on a well-traveled concept: the consequences of your actions may be larger than they appear. Smile Dog: misery loves company. Candle Cove: perception may lie. One concept, and everything builds around it.

4: DO Have Passion

No one has perfect execution on every part of a creative project. It's fucking impossible, in fact. Even if someone actually produced exactly what they had in mind, someone else could hate it. Look at Van Gogh's Starry Night. It's a master piece… but some people think his paint was laid on too thick. Because of that, they not only dislike Starry Night, but everything Van Gogh painted.

You know what people respect, though? Whether or not they like something, they want to see you go balls deep into it. Even if they don’t like what you've produced, they can then see that you, as a creator, were passionate about it. And if they do like it, then that will help them love it.

I'm not going to run through specific examples of this one. Internet horror is full of missteps, things that could have been done better or had more time given to them. But you know what? The genre is still successful, and the people doing it are still passionate. And that is a testament to the creators, in my opinion.

3: DO Shirk off the Genre Shackles

… or at least wiggle around in them a little bit. Horror is a breeding ground for monsters and aliens and magic. I love all those things. I love them done and I love them redone. But I also love it when some creator throws caution to the wind and goes outside of their purview. Or, at the very least, takes the access road running next to what's "normal."

The best example I have of this is a fairly popular series on Youtube called alantutorial. It's not supernatural. It's not particularly scary, in the traditional sense. But it is one of the most unnerving experiences I've had with fictional media to date. To sum it up, alantutorial is the web series of a man with unspecified developmental issues. He makes tutorials on ridiculous things no one would need a tutorial for (Such as crushing a can with wood.), or just makes incorrect tutorials. But he loves it. It's his passion, and damn it, he's going to do them.

As the series progresses, he seems to love the tutorials less and less. He has some traumatic experiences. He becomes destructive, and eventually, his caretaker (We assume his brother from context clues) locks him out of the house and bars his windows shut. This is a man who really can't take care of himself. And the ensuing abuse that follows Alan is not any easier to play witness to.

The series isn't scary because there's a monster after you, ooga-booga. It's scary because there's a… depravity to the kind of person who would do that. It's scary because we know this isn't all that fictional – this sort of thing happens all the time when someone with one of any number of mental disorders, learning disabilities, et cetera becomes "too much" for their caretaker. It's especially scary if you know someone who is reliant on another person for so much of their wellbeing.

Alantutorial is entirely fictional, thankfully (As a side note, Alan Resnick, who was behind it, is brilliant. Check him out.), but it feels a little bit too real. Even when it's clearly going over the top, you can't help but feel dread for Alan in that situation.

Now, it's not the only piece that does that. A lot of horror feels maybe just a bit too real in certain places. Sections of a lot of these indie horror shows online have a lot of realism to them. I can't make too many recommendations because the more realistic they get, the harder it is for me to watch them. As the whippersnappers say: it's too spoopy for me.

2: DO Embrace the Unknown

Not knowing is the basis of all fear. What's in the dark that I can't see? What are the motives of this thing? Why is this guy avoiding the moonlight? What's going on in my dreams?

But often, those questions are answered. That's totally valid, don't get me wrong. But I tend to lean with H.P. Lovecraft on this one: the not knowing is worse than the knowing. Or, as I've heard it many times: the audience's imagination will come up with something ten times worse than you ever would have created. Something unknown and not seen can't be ruined by substandard description or bad effects or a lack of budget or any other problems. In the mind of the reader, that terrifying fill-in-the-blank can be the scariest thing in the world.

Again, it's not the only way, but it is a way, and it's one that the internet horror crowd has taken to heart. I'm going to point you back at the SCP Foundation. Redaction, Expungement, and Black Boxes are key components in many of their pieces. SCP-087 does something awful if you send more than one person. SCP-447 does something with dead bodies that's too horrible to detail out. And then you have SCP-231, which is one of the most heavily redacted entries in the project. And Procedure 110 Montauk to control SCP-231, which is so horrid you need special clearance to learn about it. That is the power of the unknown. A few clues, some information skirted around… and the audience's imagination, now their own worst enemy.

1: DO Twist the Unoriginal

Internet horror, as I kind of hope I've shown, is… vast. There's a lot of it, and a lot of it interconnects somehow or another. But more than that, a lot of it comes from seeing it, hearing it, reading it. When Marble Hornets hit the scene, suddenly another half-dozen indie horror shows in a similar vein started… and flopped.

Because we've all seen Marble Hornets, too. You can't just remake it with your characters. You have to do something that's actually original with the idea.

I love riffing on ideas. I love squishing two or three disparate things together. It's actually one of my favorite ways to create new fiction. But when I do it, my first question to myself is: what's the angle? Where and how am I approaching this to bring something fresh to it? That's unfortunately harder to find in the wild. What comes immediately to mind is the channel StanFrederick. After you've watched some of the other similar shows online, find that one and you'll see what I mean.

But by now, I've started you down the rabbit hole, or you've already been there. So what did I miss that twists the norms around? Let me know so I can tap into the new veins of horror even deeper. And stay tuned for the top 10 DON'TS we can learn from internet horror, too.

Voss

Top Ten Internet Horror DOs (Part 1)

**Note: Clicking on the links throughout this article will take you to horror of varying types and degrees, from mildly unnerving to gory to existentially terrifying. If that kind of thing wigs you out too much, or that's just not what you're looking for, this is your warning. I also take no responsibility for any curses, brainwashing, sudden deaths, or other similarly odd events potentially connected to these links. And, like Arthur Weasley said, don't trust anything intelligent if you can't see where it keeps its brain. Oh, and spoilers are going to exist in this article.**

So, this is going to be different. And long. On a random fluke, I wrote up a two day blog post a while back. I didn't expect that, but I went with it. This time I'm expecting it. I'm expecting twice as long, actually. This is probably going to spread across 4 blog posts, so I hope you're in for the long haul.

So, Top Ten Do's to Take from Internet Horror. Two posts. Top Ten Don'ts to Take from Internet Horror. Two posts. But what the hell am I talking about when I say internet horror? What makes it special or unique? I'm a reader/horror fan/random passerby, why do I care about any of this? I'm not a writer!

What I'm talking about/What makes it special: Horror is an old, old genre, and it's gone through countless permutations. Gothic horror, with vampires and werewolves. The existential dread of H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries. 80's slasher flicks. The 90's brought splatterpunk. And in modern times, there's what I consider a new genre of internet horror. It's… hard to define. It encompasses creepypasta and the ARG phenomenon. We'll learn more detail about it as the list goes on.

Why you should care: admittedly, I'm putting these articles together with an eye to helping writers… myself included. But, at the very least, you may find some new things to read/watch/listen to. At the most, you could find it interesting to peek behind the curtain and see Professor Marvel pulling at the levers.

Okay, this intro is already getting too long for my tastes – let's get going.

10: DO Experiment

Now, this isn't exactly unique advice to be gleaned from internet horror, but I feel what people are doing with their online spooks drives it home very well. Traditional horror is just that: traditional. It follows a narrative structure, and it's told the normal way a story is. And that's great.

But internet horror doesn't need that to function. In fact, the lack of traditional narrative structure can be used to make it better, if handled correctly. One of my personal favorites is Candle Cove. It's just a basic, epistolary short story, told via forum posts, but it wouldn't be the same if told simply from beginning to end. Or, perhaps a bit more famously, you have the SCP Foundation. It's easily got to be the largest collaboratively written spec fic online… maybe ever. The community behind it creates everything. While there are narrative pieces involved, you don't need it. It's not the core of the work. Instead, everything comes from "internal files" written as a record of contained phenomena, detailing effects, encounters, and security measures. And believe you me, that shit is scary. Which, speaking of that…

9: DO Scare the Audience

I honestly can't believe I have to put this in when talking about horror, but here we are. I recently read one of the recent editions of Year's Best Horror. I put it off, because I read at night… and fuck that noise. But when I eventually started in on it… there was not a lot of terror there. The first story was, at best, funny. At worst, it was dumb and disjointed. But it was not God damn scary, and even if I was a little cautious about reading it, I wanted scary from my horror. Go figure.

Scary is not hard. If you try, you can sit there for a few minutes and come up with a list of shit that's scary. Big things, small things. It doesn't matter, something should be there that actually qualifies your work as horror. Even if it's just creepy.

Internet horror turned a husky into one of the most prevalent horror creations in decades: Smile Dog. Huskies are fucking cute, and if they can be scary? You can do something with it, trust me (Sorry, that was angrier than I intended it to be.).

8: DO Devote Yourself

Any modern indie creator will tell you that it's not easy. We're all struggling in one way or another. You can't start in as a creator of any sort if you're not ready to accept that, and lots of people quit when it doesn't work out how they want.

But let me tell you a story. It's a very short story about determination. In fact, it's seven words that speak to my point: EverymanHYBRID has been going for five years. Here's another one: Marble Hornets lasted for five years. Or how about this one: the SCP Foundation began in 2008.

Internet horror thrives on a devoted base of creators. These are people who do it for the love of what they're making, and that love drives them through the process of creation, come hell or high water.

7: DO Respect Your Audience's Intelligence

While it can be tempting to spell everything out, people are smarter than a lot of content creators seem to give them credit for. They can pick up on context clues. They can piece things together, and that’s especially important and useful when you're working with horror.

Now, this can be in a narrative sense. Take Candle Cove again. The ending could have been spelled out very clearly, thus robbing it of any value and ruining one of the best new horror stories in quite a long time (Okay, my opinion. But still. It's damn good). Instead, the author leaves it with the revelation that, as a child, he would watch static for half an hour when he said he was watching Candle Cove. That's creepy as shit, guys.

But there are broader strokes to it, too, and sometimes cleverer. SCP-231 has hidden text that can only be revealed if you mess with the scripts on the page. Marble Hornets and other similar projects hid actual ciphers and codes to be resolved in their work. Hell, NOC +10 may as well just be called "See if you can crack this code." Or heck, try pulling up all the information about "This HouseHas People in It." And good luck.

The modern horror audience doesn’t want to be spoonfed every scare. They want to have the realization that they should be terrified, and it's the creators job to just stay out of the way.

6: DO Embrace Subtlety

To go along with the intelligent audience, it's worth it to use subtlety to your advantage. I'm going to chime in with Marble Hornets stuff again because it's very popular and, of the three big-time Slenderverse Series, it's the one that I think is creepiest. And a lot of that is down to subtlety.

At first, you don’t see the monster. Not really. Anything you get from him is fleeting. A quick turn of the head, him standing in the background, the camera just quickly panning past him. That changes as the series goes, sure, but it's subtle to begin with. The Operator in Marble Hornets is… there. And that's the real terror. It could be there at any point. It probably is. It's probably around the corner. It makes every single episode tense, because you're watching and waiting for the Operator to show up, just like the characters.

In fact, the very original Slenderman "story" is all on its own very subtle. It was literally just two photos with the Slenderman in the background, and some implications of missing or dead children. That was it. And that was all it needed to be.

And with that, I'm going to put this aside for the day. I'll be back tomorrow with entries 5-10, and I hope you'll be back, too.

And… umm… here's some kittens to make you feel better, in case you actually went to any of those links. I did warn you.

Voss

Friday Writer Roundup: 20,000 Names

Yikes. I've been so caught up in drafting, I've completely neglected the last few Friday Writer Roundups. My apologies. This book has stolen my attention quite effectively.

But I'm here today, however late, with one of my favorite resources: 20,000 Names.

When it comes to naming websites, it's not the most glamorous, but it's by far my favorite. It gives the ethnic origin, the meaning, and the traditional gender of all the names it lists. And, while I can't say for certain that they actually list 20,000 individual names on their website, it wouldn't surprise me if that number was at least close.

But there's another one I find almost as useful: the Social Security Administration's Baby Names Section. It only really helps with American names, for obvious reasons, but it has lists of the top hundred or so names for boys and girls in any decade from the 1880s to the 2000s. Which makes it awesome for NPC characters. Just give a guess to their age, subtract it from the date your work is set, and then go through that decade's listing until something catches your attention.

Of course, there are always other alternatives. SeventhSanctum has several name generators in its depths, including Angel Names, Vampire Names, and plain General Names. Another one that can be useful, and also make a very good breeding ground for procrastination, is Behind the Name's generator. You can customize your generator for several factors (origin, masculine/feminine, style), and have it provide you with a matching surname, or provide your own. The downside? It does one at a time only.

So, I hope you have a lovely rest of your Friday. And don't forget, there's still time to enter the drawing for free copies of Zirkua Fantastic and The Jester Prince.

Voss

Friday Writer Roundup: Microsoft Word

This week, I'm touching on something so ubiquitous in the modern writing world that it honestly didn't occur to me until now that I might want to do a feature on it. And, for once, my big, main selection isn't free. I, the master of frugality, am recommending that you pay for something out of your wordmonkey pittance of a salary. This week is word processors and for me, Microsoft Word is the alpha and the omega.

And it's not just because of my personal feelings. In general, if you intend to publish your work, it will probably, at one point, have to be in .doc format. It's just the way that the publishing industry works.

But aside from that Microsoft Word has been around for quite a while, and that's let it learn a few tricks. Aside from being a moderately simple word processor (Honestly, you don't normally touch 80% of the tools provided in the program.), it has Track Changes. Nowadays, most word processors have a Track Changes feature. This lets you (or someone else) make changes to a document without deleting the original, so that you, the author, can make a decision on how to change things, or whether you should change them at all.

Word's Track Changes feature is just better. I've tried many over the years, but Word's is the most user-friendly, the simplest, and the clearest. It may not seem like a big thing but, at least for this writer, a good, reliable Track Changes is very, very important. And Word also has a decent, though not perfect, spell check (I wouldn't trust the grammar checker a far as I could throw it, however… and given that it's just a string of ones and zeroes, that isn’t far.) and is very easy to use for basic formatting changes (Alignment, font size, italics, bold, et cetera.).

The biggest downside, of course, is the price. It's… steep. Not Photoshop steep, but steep for what amounts to an electronic sheet of paper. But I wouldn't switch to another program for a hundred bars of chocolate. And that, my friends, is saying something. I do love me some chocolate.

As always, there are alternatives. The big competitor is Scrivener. It's billed as a tool specifically for fiction writers. It includes planning and organizing tools for your notes, your plots, your chapters. All that good stuff. Personally, though? I can't stand Scrivener. A lot of my writer friends use it, and it works wonders for them. I just can't. It makes me want to throw things.

Another program that I recommend, despite my somewhat checkered past with it, is Open Office. And this one's actually free. It's designed to fill the void for people who can't get their hands on Microsoft Office for whatever reason, and it can actually save files in .doc format. However, I have had issues with it changing formatting when saving in a foreign file type like that. Putting whole paragraphs in all caps and such like that. I've also talked to a lot of people about that, and I seem to be the only one who ever had that issue. So take that as you will.

Aside from those big three, there are some interesting little processors scattered around, including Word's former competitor, Corel WordPerfect. You won't hear much about it anymore, but it still has a fairly faithful following. It's really not that much different from word, aside from having more control available for internal formatting and saving as a weird file type no publisher will touch. OmmWriter is one of a new school of word processors, designed for meditative writing and, theoretically, to help you enter the all important flow state. And another one I found and intend to play with is Q10. Perhaps that will, at long last, unseat Word as the crux of my writing. We'll see.

Any word processors you love that I missed? Let me know, and be sure to subscribe for more, and to see how my relationship with Q10 goes.

Voss

Friday Writer Roundup: The Submission Grinder

This is one I'm particularly in love with. Does anyone remember Duotrope? I mean, Duotrope's still around, but they finally had to become a subscription site in order to cover their costs. For a long time, I missed them greatly. There just wasn't a replacement.

And then, along comes the new kid. Diabolical Plots'Submission Grinder.

It's great. It's almost like having Duotrope back in my life, which pleases me to no end. For anyone who never got to use Duotrope, it was the king of submission aggregators (and still is, actually, but I prefer free, and I prefer to offer you free tools, when possible). It had all the submissions categorized by genre, sub-genre, theme, word count, payscale, type of project, and a handful of other things. It was glorious.

Well, The Submission Grinder does pretty much the same thing. It lacks the subgenre category, which is a slight annoyance on occasion, but it also let's you search for markets with certain qualifications, such as SFWA and RWA Qualified. Which is awesome, from time to time. And, as with Duotrope, you can register in order to help you keep track of your submissions, as well as improve the data The Submission Grinder has to draw from.

Now, as always, there are alternatives. If you just want a listing of open markets, specifically speculative fiction, head over to Ralan.com. It doesn't have a search function, but it has categories based on pay, as well as a category for anthologies, one for contests, and one for miscellaneous things, like flash, poetry, and audio.

Another one, specifically for any erotica authors out and about here on my blog, is ERWA's Author Resources. Now, don't go here if you don't want to risk some explicit language, but, if you writer erotica/erotic romance, it's a good place to find not only anthologies and magazines, but also full-length markets.

And of course, there's Duotrope. It's not exorbitant in any sense of the word. $5 for a month or, if you go for a year subscription $50. I know a lot of authors who will spend that much just on their own website hosting, if not more. If you plan to write, or find yourself writing, a lot of short stories, I would say it's a good investment to at least consider making.

If you liked this and want to learn more about writing tools next week, pop up top and hit subscribe.

Voss

Friday Writer Roundup: MyNoise

Here we are once again, and today, I have an interesting little website for you. It's called MyNoise.net, and it's a personal ambient noise generator, which is wonderful. There are a number of studies showing that ambient noise, in spite of what anyone might think, actually allows the human mind to focus better on the task at hand (I'll link some down below for you to look through at your leisure.). And if anyone needs help focusing, writers need help focusing. There's only so much your mind can handle, and writing tends to be a push toward the outer limits of that, depending on the day. Anything to help us get through those next two, three, or ten thousand words is good by me.

When you first go to MyNoise.net, you'll want to do the personal calibration. Go to the Online Noises tab and it should be in the top left box. That will take you to the calibration screen. All you do there is turn your volume up (I had to have mine all the way up, but I also don't use headphones, just my laptop speakers; please don't do anything that might damage your hearing.) to where you can hear the static it's producing, and then you'll adjust each slider to where that particular frequency is just barely audible. The hit done, and MyNoise will actually save all that calibration info for you, so it's there every time you come back (While I'm not fully sure of the mechanism involved in that data storage, I'm pretty sure they use cookies. So if you have cookies disabled, it most likely won't remember you. Fair warning.). Since over ninety percent of the sounds on there can be calibrated, it's worth the two or three minutes, I think.

MyNoise has more than a few generators. As a rough estimate, I would say 25-30, but don't quote me on that one. And, at the top of the Online Noises page, they give you a little legend that gives suggestions on the quality or effect of each noise generator. Eerie, meditation, noise blocker. My personal favorites, as of right now, are the Cat Purr, the Rain Noise, and the Himalayan Bowls.

Now, if you'd like to donate to them (they provide this whole service for free), please do. Not only does it help out, but it allows you to get the new sounds before non-contributors have access to them. Which makes me jealous, since they have a coffee shop generator in the works. I may have to donate and get that one.

And on the subject of coffee shop noise generators, I have a couple alternatives, as well, if you don't like MyNoise. The first one, Coffitivity, is a web app, but can also be downloaded onto Droid and iPhone/iPad (at one point, it could run on the basic Mac OS as well, but when I looked into it, the link was broken. If anyone knows otherwise, let me know and I'll edit the post accordingly). Coffitivity is a collection of recordings from various coffee shops all over the world. On the web app, you get three: the morning coffee run, the lunch rush, and a collegiate café.

The other one is Rainy Café. It only has two sliders to control—rain and café—but it's surprisingly useful. To boost my personal creativity, I prefer to crank the rain up really high and keep the coffee shop murmuring about halfway, maybe a little less. I guess white noise just works better for me.

If you have any other noise generators you love like this, particularly good ones that can run on Windows, let me know. They're some of my favorite productivity tools. If you want to hear what else I have to say, hit subscribe up on top of the page.

Articles:
http://99u.com/articles/16711/turn-it-up-how-the-right-about-of-ambient-noise-increases-creativity

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/how-the-hum-of-a-coffee-shop-can-boost-creativity/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Voss

4 Easy Steps to Take Charge of Your To-Be-Read Pile

Step 1: Throw out all the books I didn't write.

Problem solved.

In seriousness, though, readers have to-be-read piles. In what sense would we be readers if we didn't? And, if you're anything like me, your to-be-read pile is so large that you hide from it and read Harry Potter for the twentieth time rather than tackle the ever-mounting stack of literature threatening to topple down upon you.

Breathe. As much as I like Harry Potter... 

(and I do like it)...

we can't just go back to Hogwarts constantly. Or Westeros. Or Narnia, Panem, Cloral, and Wonderland. It just doesn't work that way. We need to grow and expand our minds, and the best way we as readers know to do that is to read. Read different things.

But fear not. It's not as hard as you think. It just takes a small amount of work on your part, and soon that to-be-read pile will slowly shrink down to something manageable.

Step 1 (The Actual Step 1): Don't stress about time. You probably have books that are a couple years old, and you just know that you need to read them, and you know that you should really read them before the half-dozen you just bought today, even though you really want to read your new books.

Breathe. Remember that. Just breathe. If you own a book, that means you own it. Plain and simple. You can read your personal books whenever and however you want. Reverse alphabetical order by the author's middle name? Absolutely fine. The order you buy books in doesn't have anything to do with the order you read them in. We do this for entertainment above anything else. So read what you think is going to entertain you today, not what's been on the shelf the longest.

Step 2: Library/borrowed books have a time limit. It really is something to remember. While I think Step 1 is more important, it's pretty vital to remember Step 2 as well. Books you borrow are like dear old friends who live across the country. You can only enjoy their company for a little while before they have to go back home. Still always read the book that claws for your attention the most, but if you have a library book or a book on loan from someone else versus a book that is wholly yours, at least consider whizzing through the borrowed book first.

Step 3: Remember whose to-be-read pile this is. It's not your neighbor's, or the Internet's, or mine or The New York Times' or Levar Burton's or anyone else's but your own. You don’t have to read anything you don't want to, no matter what anyone or anything might tell you. Tried Shakespeare? Good. Didn't like it? Good. Don't proceed to add 'The Complete Unabridged Works of William Shakespeare' to your pile. You won't get to it, and it's just going to add to your guilt. Focus on things you want to read.

Already have books that have been recommended, but just don't hold your interest? Purge them. Get them out of that pile. Sell them, donate them, keep them, use them to perform interpretive dance. Hell, send them my way, if you want to. I can always use more books. Just get them out of there. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks and read what you want and only what you want.

Step 4: Find time to read. This is the final step, and I'd say it's far and away the most important step. You have to find time to go through your pile. After all, you can't very well expect it to go down if you never touch it. So make time to get some reading done, realize how much time you actually have, and work with that. Don't get hard on yourself if it takes you a month or more to finish Les Miserables when you only have 10-15 minutes a day.

If you don't think you can make time to read, you're wrong. Audio books on the commute to work or in the shower. A book for bathroom breaks and lunch breaks and ankle breaks… wait. Back that one up. Don't break your ankle just to find more time to read. You have time. Heck, you just spent time reading this blog post, didn't you? And tomorrow, you'll have those five minutes extra to read your book.

Just do me a favor and read. It's good for us authors, and it's good for the world as a whole. After all: more art is a never a bad thing. But mostly, it's good for you. And that's what really counts.

Voss

Friday Writer Roundup: Written? Kitten!

Hello, writerly types, and welcome again to the FridayWriter Roundup!

This week, we're going over one of my favorite tools: Written? Kitten! Those of you familiar with Dr. Wicked's Write or Die will understand the premise. However, Written? Kitten! is a much softer, more user-friendly version. And, unlike Write or Die, there's no option that deletes your words… ever. And that's wonderful. Missing words keep me up at night.

Written? Kitten! is a fantastic tool for the simplest, and sometimes hardest, part of the writing process: getting out the words. Sitting down and plugging away, throwing one word right after the other until you have a sentence. Then a paragraph. Then a chapter. And then, finally, a book. It sounds easy, but sometimes, the motivation just isn't there. Or just isn't stronger than vegging out on TV and video games all day.

You set Written? Kitten! to a certain number of words and begin typing. Once you hit the word count you selected, guess what? You get a kitten! Yes, a cute, fluffy kitten will pop up on your screen to remind you that, hey, writing actually is worth it! That's the sheer beauty of Written? Kitten! Positive reinforcement, but somebody else does all the work, leaving you to plug away at your keyboard.

Now, it should be noted that Written? Kitten! does not, in any way, save your words for you. You absolutely have to, have to, have to copy and paste them into a file that you can save. Otherwise, all the work was for naught. An that makes kittens sad. And nobody wants sad kittens.

"But I don't like kittens!"

Shun the non-believer!

Oh… sorry. Freudian slip. What I meant to say was this: there's a way around that. You don't have to have a kitten. You can put in just about any search term you like, and those are the pictures that pop up. Just modify the URL like this:

writtenkitten.net/?search=searchterm

Obviously, you would modify it to whatever you want instead of searchterm. It will then pull pictures at random from Flickr.com's 'Most Interesting' category for that search term. There are three built in options that hang out below the text box, down with the word counters: kitten, bunny, and puppy. But, of course, you can do anything. I like chocolate, myself. Nothing better than an endless stream of chocolate floating by on your computer screen, after all. Well, eating it would be better… just not for my waistline.

(If you have a search term with a space in it, just replace the space with '%20.')

Now for those of you out there with different tastes, you can of course use the traditional Write or Die, or the new and improved Writeor Die 2. They've adopted the positive reinforcement model introduced by Written? Kitten!, and I actually kind of love it. Dr. Wicked may convert me yet, despite my love for kittens. There's also an interesting dog based one called Write orBite. It rewards you with a cute puppy picture, but if you fall below your set WPM, you get a picture of a biting dog, instead.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of the Friday Writer Roundup! If you want more, go up top and subscribe to keep receiving these posts.

Voss

Friday Writer Roundup: StayFocusd

Hello, and welcome to a new feature here at Demon Hunting and Tenth Dimensional Physics: the Friday Writer Roundup. Rather than posting writerly advice and finds and such on the rest of the log, from now on, I'll be doing them here, every Friday. Fun fun fun!

This week is a doozy, at least for me. I'm sure I'm not the first to talk about StayFocusd, and I probably won't e the last. For me, it's a godsend. Like a lot of writers, I have a nasty habit of procrastination, and my biggest crutch is Facebook... and the occasional online game I get obsessed with. With Stayfocusd, that's not much of a problem. I load up my list of blocked sites, however many I need to keep myself from, and I just hit the button. Then I pick my time (I just stuck with the default ten minutes) and there you go. That's the amount of time you have per day to go to your sites. Not the amount of time you have for each site, the amount of time for all of them. Now, you can change your time... but only while you still have time left. If you use up all ten minutes and then decide you want more Twitter or Facebook or Pinterest... sorry? You have to wait until the next session.

Now, if you're disciplined enough to have specific blocks of time where you work, you can also set the program to only run during those specific blocks of time and then leave you free outside of those blocks.

And then there's Nuclear Mode... we don't talk about Nuclear Mode. Just like we don't talk about Kamikaze Mode in Write or Die. Nuclear Mode is a complete Internet block. If it's not in the allowed sites, you don't go there for however many hours you set the timer for. It is t be sued with caution, as you will definitely be without distraction but you may lose access to research material, your eMail, your bank account... important things. Definitely not something to use for more than a couple hours.

The downside? It's a Chrome Extension only. No other browsers. But there are programs out there to help with the same thing. Firefox has an Add-on called LeechBlock. There are programs you can download. The most popular I've heard of is Anti-Social. It works on any OS and blocks all of the social networking sites for you. That one, however, costs fifteen dollars. Leechblock and StayFocusd are both free.

One more issue with StayFocusd, which most Chrome users will be familiar with, is the somewhat finicky attitude the Extensions can have. You may be uninstalling and reinstalling the extension a few times, with no notice. It doesn't take long, and it remembers which sites you've blocked.

So, there's the Friday Writer Roundup. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. I'll be back next Friday with more advice from the trenches,

Voss

GUEST POST: Dragging Yourself Out of a Creative Dry Spell

Today, I'm thrilled to have Esther Jones over for some demon hunting... or tenth dimensional physics. Whatever she's in the mood for. Esther is part of the writing duo Frog and Esther Jones. Along with their Gift of Grace books (Grace Under Fire and Coup de Grace), they also run the Friday Indie Review. Check all of it out, and check out Esther's tips for getting out of those nasty creativity droughts.

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Voss asked me for a guest post on writing a while back, and since this is something I’ve struggled with recently, I thought it would be a good topic to talk about while it’s still fresh.

As writers, we’ve all had the weeks (or months, sadly sometimes years) where we just don’t feel those creative ideas percolating like they used to.  Personally, I’ve been fighting with a creative dry spell on and off for what feels like, oh let’s say, the last millennia or so.   

Now, I know that’s not factually true, because (for example) I’ve had short stories and a novel come out in the interim. 

But while standing in the middle of my own personal creative famine— where no new ideas for stories are showing themselves— it can be really difficult to remember the times when a story just walked up and walloped me behind the eyes without warning. 

Here’s a secret:   Every writer goes through periods of feast or famine like this.  It’s what you do to drag yourself out of the famine and keep writing that makes the difference.  Or at least that’s how it goes in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience. 

Unfortunately, I am not one of the characters I write, and there is no summons or plot device that will make the ideas instantly come flocking back—like simply swiping blood across a rune.  But there are things I can do to go back to my roots and remember what inspires me. 

To drag myself out of the hole, I need to remember what I love about writing, and what I am trying to do by telling stories to myself and others. 

Now that last paragraph sounds pretty great in theory.  But what does it mean? 

I’m getting to that, I promise.

First off there are some very simple questions I need to ask myself.

11)      What inspires me and urges me write in the first place? 

For me, it’s always about an idea, and the characters that spring up in my head as a result of that idea… Which means if an idea isn’t coming, then I’m pretty stuck, right?  Well, not necessarily.

22)      Is the reason I’m having trouble writing due to something in my environment? Is it something I can fix?  If it isn’t, what can I do to lessen the impact it’s having on my creative psyche?

Sometimes when I’m having trouble writing, it really is because something in my vicinity is disrupting my focus.  It doesn’t have to be something big either.  It can be subtle.  

For instance, I usually listen to music as I write.  Occasionally, I’ve found my music clashed with the thought those wily and secretive creative-imps were trying put together in my head.  As soon as I turned the music off, the scene actually started behaving and flowing naturally.  

 If you’ve eliminated all the distractions, and you’re still staring at a blank screen, continue on to the next question.

33)      Am I just having general focus/self-confidence issues?  If so, maybe it’s time to go get some love from people who enjoy reading my work. Frog and I have often talked about how it’s necessary to have someone with a critical eye look at your work.  But sometimes it’s just as important to take the time to remember that you don’t suck.  There has to be balance.

44)      What do I love reading?  What do I love writing?

It can also be important to remember what I relish about books.  Sometimes, I’m a little embarrassed to admit my true tastes. They’re not always highbrow, or deep, or as literary as I think they should be.   Am I holding myself back from an idea, because I think other people wouldn’t like it, even though I (secretly) think it’s pretty cool?

Maybe it’s time to get down with writing some pure popcorn fiction, or just allow myself to write something crazy that I don’t think anyone else would ever want to read.  Those are usually the times where I surprise myself. 

Finally, if I still feel like I’m struggling, dehydrated and devoid of hope in the event horizon of a blackhole that (once upon a time) used to be a desert, I ask myself one more question:

55)      Where can I go or who can I enlist who will be willing to creatively engage with me? 

Don’t forget the resource you have in your fellow writers and friends.  No writer is an island; we all stand on the shoulders of the writers who came before us, and the hand-in -hand with the writers we read and interact with.  If I can’t figure out what I should be doing on my own, it’s time to go looking for advice and other authors who have been there and clawed their way out. 

Or I might even just immerse myself in the energy that comes along with being at a writer’s retreat or gathering.   Sometimes it ok to stop freaking out about being in the dry spell and just enjoy my friends and the craft of writing.

It’s always ok to step back and recharge.  Once you’ve done that, go back and start again—at question 1, if you need to. Hopefully you won’t need to.

You can do it. You can make it out of a creative dry spell, no matter how dire it seems.  But you can’t give up, and then you can’t give up some more.  Like everything else in writing, overcoming a slump or lack of ideas relies on your own persistence and will to keep trying to move forward.  

Convention Survival Guide

Hello, my darlings!

So, for those who haven't yet heard the joyous news, I'm a panelist at RadCon 6A this year (my schedule is here, if you're interested.). This is my fourth sci-fi/fantasy convention, and my umpteenth trip, in general (thank you, high school band trips). I wouldn't say for a second that I'm an expert, but I do know some things, at this point, and I'd like to pass on that information to you.

I'll note this now: reading this is probably going to be a bit of a trek. Like, bring a tent. But I'll do my best to keep you entertained. Also contains some PG-13 content.

Preparation:
So, you've found your convention and you're ready to go and all that happy stuff. Now, with most of these conventions, there are some things you want to make sure of, for the sake of your bank account. They tend to suffer the most from excursions like this.

1: If you're going to be staying at a hotel and not with friends/family/gracious strangers with candy, they might very well have a discounted price for the convention (normally, that'll be on the con's website). Now, you get some people working at the hotels that will ask you, when you give them the dates, if it's for the convention. If they don't make sure and point it out that you're here for the con. The savings can be real. For RadCon this year, the discount is something like 40 dollars a night off the usual price.

2: Pre-registration is your friend...kind of. The pre-reg price is usually cheaper, and pre-registering for the convention allows you to stop worrying about whether they'll run out of memberships by the time you get to pay (which does happen). Speaking from personal experience, those are not worries you want to have. But pre-reg does come with a different cost. Unless you're going to a bigger convention (like NorWesCon, WesterCon, OryCon, et cetera), the pre-reg line is going to be enormous, at least in my experience. If you can get there early and be at the front of that line, then that's what you should do. I've missed panels waiting in the pre-reg line, before.

3: If you've ever been to a convention or know someone that has, you've probably heard all about the dreaded con plague. The wonderful combination of 1000+ bodies, poor eating habits, sleep deprivation, tight quarters, and full blast air conditioning to combat the heat of those 1000+ bodies makes conventions the perfect place to catch 18 separate strains of influenza and, if you're particularly unlucky, fourth dimensional Andromedan mega herpes. So, before you even think about stepping over the threshold to that hotel, or even getting in the car, you should be taking Vitamin C. Don't exceed the dosage, obviously, but take it, and take it without shame--you'll be the one walking away from the convention instead of crawling through a puddle of your own vomit.

4: Most conventions put up a programming grid that has all the events for the weekend, the rooms and times they can be found in, and whoever is participating. As soon as you can, put together a preliminary schedule (it's going to change, I can almost guarantee). Then, about a week before the con, remind yourself that you do not, in fact, run by filtering dark matter through your skin. Sleeping and eating are important. So: what can you cut to give yourself a few breaks throughout the day? Find it and cut it, keeping in mind that the schedule can change an hour before an event.

Packing:
It's now very close, days away. You've made sure you have the days free (You have, haven't you? I shouldn't have to remind you of that, right?), you have the hotel room reserved (and the confirmation number at the ready, just in case), and your ride is arranged. But you now have an empty suitcase and a house full of stuff you suddenly can't live without. I promise, you can.

1: You'll forget something. It's inevitable. It could be something stupid, like your pack of playing cards, or you could be like me and forget your laptop charger. But don't panic--you'll make it through. Hand in hand with that is the fact that you simply can't fit everything you want to, barring the rental of a U-Haul.

2: When you're packing, realize what you can physically fit inside the three dimensional space of your chosen mode of transportation. A good rule is two bags and another smaller container of some sort. You can normally cram that into even the smallest vehicle. This also applies to packing people. If you have so many people in the vehicle that you have to open your doors to buckle yourselves in, that is TOO MANY people. Trust me: riding in those confined spaces can cause some very serious health issues.

3: Now, what is it you actually need to bring, and how can it possibly fit?

• Underwear and shirts for every day (roll them, don't fold them--they take up less space that way.)
• A pair of pants (or a skirt) for every two days, at least (again: roll)
• Camera (you'll be sorry if you don't) and batteries/charger
• Money (make sure it's nothing that would ruin you if it did go missing)
• Wallet/ID
• House keys/car keys
• Things you require for continued living (inhalers, prescriptions, et cetera)
• Supplement pills (I bring ibuprofen, naproxen sodium, Vitamin C, Vitamin B Complex, antacids, and St. John's Wort)
• Playing cards (or another small game to pass the time)
• Good shoes (save the heels for absolute necessity moments--you average 17 miles a day at conventions, believe it or not)
• Water (please, please, please drink water. More than you think you need)
• Condoms (yes, they can be used for their traditional purpose (and should be), but they can also be filled with ice and applied to a sprain or something, in a pinch (they stretch better than a zip top bag or something like that)
• Electronics (laptop, MP3 player, CD player, cell phone, et cetera) and all applicable chargers
• Food (save yourself money: bring ready to eat foods, or easy to prep foods. And make sure you ask the hotel if they have refrigerator/microwave in the room, or at least available.)
• Chocolate (I put this separate from food for a reason. Not only will it give you a boost of caffeine, and put some food (if not very good for you food) in your system, it will help with the high stresses of a con.)
• DEODORANT (For the love of all that is holy, use this! Sacrifice something else if you have to, but bring the deodorant. Bring more than one, if you can, in case someone else needs it.)
• Females, you should also bring along the appropriate products. I won't go into more detail than that.

There may be other things you need to bring, depending on what you have to do at your convention. I personally have to bring several copies of books and a piece for reading, as well as a binder full of collectible cards I plan to sell, and paper plates/cups. Yeah. All packed into a Geo.

At the Convention:

You're here! You've got your bags and are ready to go, and you didn't even kill anyone on the trip over. Good for you.

1: Most people I know aim to arrive at a convention around noon. Here's the catch--check in at most hotels is around 3. You can get in early, sometimes, but you may end up having to leave everything but the absolute most essential items in the trunk until you can actually get up to your room.

2: Get in line right away. Like, immediately. As soon as is humanly possible. Obviously, you shouldn't do anything to piss off the people running the convention, but you absolutely must get in that line to get your badge. It's going to take some time, no matter what, so the sooner, the better.

3: Once you're all badged up (make sure it's always visible--the convention guards can get a little miffed if you try to get in without a badge), look over whatever schedule they gave you and compare it to your own schedule. Also go around to the rooms that you'll be jumping between. A lot of the time, your con will focus in one or two hallways, but not always (and those times when they don't can be a bit of a pain if you don't prepare). Also, I would grab a map, if they have one available.

4: You'll see people dressed in provocative costumes. I will almost guarantee that. That is not an invitation to grope them. It's an invitation to look and possibly start up a conversation, but hands should remain to yourself until further notice.

5: Also, please be respectful of the costumes. The people wearing them have put a lot of time and sweat (and sometimes blood and skin flakes) into making them. Even if you think it's atrocious, say nothing. Say good things, or shut up. Seriously.

6: There's a rule that goes around called the 3-2-1 rule. It's your minimum for a convention. Every day, get at least three hours sleep (in a row), 2 meals, and 1 shower (I did say minimum). If you can get more of any, do, but those are your basic survival numbers.

7: All right, now, technically, this is your con to do with as you please. You are fully welcome to pay for your badge, then sit in the hotel room until it's time to leave. But that's really dumb. You're paying anywhere from 30-70 dollars to go to this convention, not counting hotel room or travel. The very least you should do is go to the panels, and probably the dealers' room and art auction (if they have one). I won't say that you should hit the parties, especially if you're under 21 or, for some other reason, can't drink. Most of them revolve around drinking. But if you can drink, I would say to at least try a party. If you don't like it, that's fine.

8: Don't be a dick. it's Wil Wheaton's life advice, but I'm specifically putting it in here. You don't want to be that guy (or gal) that ruins someone's convention, least of all your friends'/roommates' convention. If they're nervous or stressed out or having a panic attack, that is not the time to leave them alone, or tell them to fend for themselves, or belittle what's happening to them. that's the time to try and comfort them, or at least get them away from the situation.

9: The pros and volunteers for a convention, at the most, will probably only be getting a free badge. At the most. Treat them with respect. They came here for you, to try and give you a better convention experience. And there is no training program, really. The volunteers roaming the halls, behind the tables, or guarding the doors to various events have perhaps an hour or two before the convention. And they don't get to do all the fun stuff that you do. The pros are thrown in with zero training, really. Being a panelist is a learn it on the go kind of job. So relax, and tell them that you liked it, if you did--complements are good. But don't be totally creepy about it. Bathrooms are not the place to approach your favorite panelist, I'm afraid.

I'm sure there are a million other things, but, with this, you should at least be able to avoid being disemboweled by a bat'leth. And really, when you put this many socially awkward people in a confined space, 'not disemboweled by a bat'leth' is a pretty good achievement.

Now, go forth and do great things,

Voss

Relish

How do you take your hot dogs? Mustard, ketchup, sauerkraut, jalapenos...? Sure, a hot dog is sufficient--it's still food (or something close enough to food to pass), it will still fill you up, but without the relish, the barbecue sauce, or the aioli (what, it could happen), it's just a tube of leftover meat.

The same thing with writing. Lately, there's been an outpouring against the delightful condiments of literature. Everyone says cut, trim, destroy, burn--anything to make it tighter and more concise. And, in theory, it's a good idea.

Not exactly in practice, I think. Tight is good. Fluff-free is food. The conservation of words is a fantastic concept that I fully support. But what's Harry Potter without wizard's chess? Or Pendragon without spinney-riding? Star Wars without R2D2 and C3PO?

The little things are important. Not just to show off little bits of your world, but to give your readers something to latch onto. Let's face it--humans like sparkly things. It's why we have tinsel. It's that same thing that makes us try and figure out what's shining the weird little light on the ceiling. Give your literature some sparkle. Games, sports, food, fashion--it's all good.

And there's no reason it can't be meaningful sparkle. Take The Hunger Games. The couture in The Capitol is opulent to the point of disgust. It tells you about the nature of The Capitol. And it's shiny (often literally). Or Quidditch in Harry Potter--it's used to advance the plot or establish character...all right, sometimes it's just fun.

But when did fun lose it's place in literature, especially in science fiction and fantasy? Who passed down the law that decreed we all have to be miserable? Give it a thought.

Voss