These are notes from a Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium panel. Any misinformation is the fault of the note taker.

Q: are the entire characters default white male.
– Not all of your characters don’t have to be white.
– It’s unreasonable that all your characters would be white.
– There are roles where gender is important. They mas cast a tone to the story
– Some will flip half of their characters to a different gender.
– Your book should pass basic gender biases for each gender. Meridian clients then compare to the culture or a Norse culture. It should fit the demographics of the place where your culture exists.
– Their biases in our world don’t have to exist in the world you’re creating. They will have their own set of biases influenced by their culture. You don’t have to have someone beautiful.
– Biases get created from the cultures where they grew up. Don’t lean on the ones we have here. Design them on the culture of that world.
– Make traits relevant to your book like eye color in Brandon Sanderson’s books.
– Videos tropes versus women in video games. Check out YouTube.
Q: When you get a manuscript back. What test do you run mentally?
– The first draft put away for a month to give you the distance. Can’t see the forest for the trees. As you read it to see issues. Does my characters arch go all the way through the end of the book? If not are the characters needed. Does it have foreshadowing?
– Use the beat sheet in the book, save the cat. Do I have the conditions pointed out to save the cat? You can fix thin in revision.
– In your first draft, you put in a lot of work and struggle. You feel you are done. You’ve raised some sticks in the ground look sound. Now the wood is there and you have to put up the foundation enough for all the walls. Does it have a foundation? Can it handle structure pressure?
– Mileage does vary on these tests.
– Read it out loud test. Unique dialog on a per-character basis. If you can make dialog nature change so it sounds like real dialog
– Pull out the garbage words that doesn’t change the meaning. See what can cut such as: very, likes, just. Remove the word and see that it’s not missed.
Q: Audience members asked are strong males no longer desired by publishers?
– Have a strong plot that is unique. It has not yet changed in the real number of strong females.
– When someone designed a person of colors authors feel they can’t give that character a fault. Give people of color faults.
– How do you add other people and cultures that are not you like race or LGBT? If growing up with a theme is essential to the plot you need to review how you are qualified to write on that culture s if that is a main importance of the plot.
– The difference between adding a character as part of the group is handled by having the main character. Do not use check out website writing with color.
Q: How to handle multiple voices of characters and make voices distinct?
– Have that person read your book. Have rep of that culture read the book.
– Each character will look at the world in a unique way.
– Your new scenes need to be very clear you have changed to a new character. Listen to see how people talk. Each person has different speech patterns. Some characters will use big sentences or small sentences or use fall instead of dropped. If a character is easy going that you will see them like that.
– Producers and Hollywood will require a scene by scene synopsis.
– They also look for a logline that describes the book.
Preferred outline:
– What kind of story is it? Hero journey, growth book each have different expectations from the audience.
– You need a clue every two minutes in a story.
– You know about your story but does the audience now it. They need to know.
– Some authors will do a fake interview that can help embellish the character. He also does visualization of his word. Create 20 interesting places that exist in your world that your character may visit. You need to have different places to visit. After that, he will start plotting.
– When can an outline be bad? About halfway through the book, you will see that certain thing has gone astray. The authors may have to outline the novel again to incorporate the change. Some authors will plot a book 1 rd of the book.
Resources to go for outlining:
– Google can provide answers
– Everything needs structure. When you write certain genera it needs to fit what the reader expects. Maybe
– Get a book that is in your genera and plot out that book.
Writing other Cultures?
– Test 1: Bechtel test: to women talking but not about a man.
– Sexy lamp: woman necessary code.
– Anti-freeze: test
– Strength is a relative test.
– Book: million dollar outlines by Dave Wolverton.
– Many people use snowflakes plot. Where you visualize a scene. And see what other scenes is attached to it. Many people will use the hero’s journey. Its ok to use the hero journey as long as it comes out naturally and not forced.
– The onionskin plot. Layers of circles. As a character discovers something and keeps going through new discoveries. This is good for mysteries
– Some people create stories on an emotional level. Give the reader an emotional ride.
– What is driving your story? It comes down to where you are coming from?
– Flash fiction or short story may not require an outline.
– A story may not have an inciting incident and in the third try fail cycle. You don’t have to show everything.
Q: how do you intermix different plotlines that run simultaneously?
– Will create a group of characters in one chapter and have another group of characters as secondary characters in that chapter. And whole different chapter when the other groups are characters is prominently featured.
– Try fail cycle builds up in each attempt to fix and things get worse and the problem gets b bigger. You can broaden the problem. You fall in love with girl and you meet her mother. If murder mystery someone has been killed not found any clues then someone else is killed and that death provides additional clues and tension. You can deepen the problem. A character finds out he becomes far more emotional.
– How do you outlining pacing?
– Some authors will write a book and then documents the plot outline after to find weak areas.
– The goal to outline is to get the action down. Keep dialog and visual details. Narrate what they say.
– You can put the details of your world in detail in a separate file.