Virtual conferences are a great way to connect with other authors, to level up your writing craft and to learn the ins and outs of the business of being an authorpreneur.
In this episode we dive into what makes virtual conferences so valuable for writers—especially in this day and age. We explore why it’s a good idea to participate in at least one of these virtual gatherings, how can you make the most out of the experience and how you can contribute as a part of the worldwide community of writers. We also look at some of the challenges of engaging in this virtual format, and how you can keep yourself energized and healthy to avoid zoom fatigue and screen burnout.
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Resources and books we mentioned in this episode
Complete Episode Transcripts
This site contains affiliate links to products that we have used and love, and that we think may be of help to you on your authorpreneur journey. We may receive a commission on sales of these products, which is how this podcast stays independent and free of advertising. Thanks for your support! Click here for a full list of recommended tools and resources.
Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 037: How to Get the Most Out of a Virtual Conference
Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs, I’m Crystal Hunt.
Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani. We are here to help you save time, money and energy as you level up your writing career.
Crystal Hunt: Welcome to episode 37 of the strategic authorpreneur podcast. On today’s show we’re talking about how to get the most out of virtual writers’ conferences.
But first, we’re going to dig a little bit into what we have been up to this past week. Michele, what have you I’ve been doing?
What has happened since the last episode?
Michele Amitrani: I am so excited to say that I’ve been working a lot to what is going to be the first publication in Italian in three years and a half and the first publication in English in, around one year and a half.
And it’s a mythological fantasy novella that I’ve been working on. And, there are so many things to do, Crystal, and so many pieces that you have to keep track on now on the promotion, production, publication side. And it’s amazing, but at the same time, sometimes it feels overwhelming. So I’m just trying to …there is actually a very good suggestion Crystal gave me: to use one tool called Asana, which I did not know. And it’s saving me a lot of times. So that’s one tool that we can definitely … we’ll get you a link on the resources pages. It’s helping me a lot on this pre-publication phase, the organization kind of thing. And because we discussed it so many times about the importance of being able to organize everything so that … this is going to be like a very long career, hopefully. And one of the other thing that Crystal you were saying is this is not going to be your only book, so you want to be able to replicate this system for book 2, 3, 27, 12o. I’m not sure if I’m being a bit too optimistic, but I hope they are going to be that many books.
So organization is super important. We mentioned so many times, and I’m seeing now it’s true. It’s very true. Especially if you have to publish two books in the span of two weeks. So I am overwhelmed with joy also because I got, just a few days ago, from my designer, the cover for Soul of Stone, which is the mythological fantasy I’m going to publish and then like 30 seconds after I got the cover I was like, via WhatsApp: Crystal! I’ve got the cover!
And she was like one of the first person to see it, with my wife. And I was like, what do you think? And because they gave us three different options and you, and we were like, what do you think is the best? And I was like: This one? That one? It’s exciting. It’s when you see that your book it’s actually taking shape. You can see it from my face. I’m really super, extra pump, but at the same time can, it can be overwhelming. So this is why organization is so important. So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ve been trying to survive the publication of these two novella, but I also want to suggest you as I do, usually, a book of the day and this time is by an author we mentioned more than once. And, I believe we already mentioned this book, but I just wanted to underline the importance of it. If you’re not on YouTube, you’re not going to see it, but it’s called Amazon Decoded by David Gaughran. And, it’s basically a marketing guide to the Kindle store.
And, the reason why I’m suggesting this book is, there are so many ways things can go wrong on Amazon, on the Kindle store and so many things that authors can do to optimize their release. And they don’t know. So there are so many things that this book say, good practices, how to, use metadata. How actually Amazon algorithm works, and how both wide authors, our case, but also people that are chasing the page reads trends, it’s everything there. And I just can’t recommend it enough and it’s not a short book. It’s like a book that has a lot of resources in and this is the second edition so it’s also up to date. I think David release it a couple of months ago, so not very long ago.
So definitely I suggest you to read this book is super helpful. This is the biggest online store on the planet that your book is going to be there, if you want to make any money and so I suggest you definitely to check that out and I want to know, Crystal what have you been up to in this past week?
Crystal Hunt: A few things. I’ve been reading this book, which I will … it’s digital, but I holding up the cover here and it is called Alchemy, The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland. And it’s a really interesting. Effectively is a book about marketing, but it’s really about human behavior and how a lot of it has actually quite illogical, and then when we look at some of the evolutionary causes of those things, it makes a little more sense. And he talks a lot about how you bring those pieces together to create what sometimes seems like magic, but is actually not necessarily magic. It’s really just using what we know about how people’s brains work.
So he talks about psycho-logic, which is really psychology, which, is an interesting way as he points out in the book, it’s very rare actually for marketing to really focus in on psychology in a deep way, and to really understand people it’s often coming from an economic perspective that we tackle marketing and promotion, and it isn’t really about the economics of it. It’s more about getting people to act in the way you want them to act or to buy into something or feel a sense of urgency. All of those things happen in ways that we don’t really expect, so as I’m getting ready to re-launch my Rivers End Book Club and, re vamp, refresh, rerelease, all of my books wide. I’m just looking at how do I want to create some of that magic in my publishing world and how will I go about that? So that’s been really interesting to ponder and also on the writing side right now I’m just putting the finishing touches on the full-time author book that I’m writing with Eileen Cook.
So we have been getting ready for December launch and following on attending, the Surrey International Writers Conference and presenting and watching as many of the recorded sessions as I can, just processing all that information and making sure that there’s nothing we really wanted to change or add to what we had in our books so that we have as complete a picture as possible. To other exciting developments it is fiscal year end as of the 31st of October in my world so it is the time of year when I review all of last year’s expenses and income and really do the data-based taking stock of where the business is at and then putting the finishing touches on my business plan for next year, based on what I see in the data.
So that has been really interesting and, my daughter officially started as my author assistant today. So I now have a minion as it were to help me and she is diving into doing basically a series Bible in plotter. So she’s gonna go through all of my books and enter all the characters, the places, the events that happen to make sure that, in my own planning documents I have everything in there from everything I’ve planned. And I have a hard time keeping track of which parts have been publicly committed to and which haven’t. So the database she’s in charge of is all the stuff that’s made it into publication and can’t be changed. And then my planning database is all the stuff I’ve envisioned, but hasn’t necessarily been in print yet.
So in participating in these online conferences and doing some teaching and talking to a lot of the people who have been attending, I’ve now been to, I think I’ve been to five or six online conferences in the last few months for writers and have just downloaded the file package for another one that all happens virtually at your own timeline.
So I’ve been really interested in seeing how that virtual writer’s conference experience compares with the real thing in air quotes or, the in-person in real life versions. So today that’s what we’re digging into is: how are the virtual conferences different from the regular ones? And how do you get the most out of that other format?
So we are going to dive right in I think,
In person conferences vs virtual
Michele Amitrani: Yeah. I think one of the most important things that, if there’s something good that happened from everything, this year is that, we discovered different ways to connect and, using the internet in a completely, well, not completely, but on a different scale. Something like Zoom, for example, or like a software that allows us to meet and connect with so many other people online.
I don’t think what really, I think, two or three years ago now because of the need of, being able to connect and keep really the economy running and then staff like Zoom for example, really, started being used on a massive scale. And I think what we’re going to talk about today is opportunities and I do believe that conference that are online do have a lot of pros that the in-person conference don’t have. And I think it’s important that we explore them. Crystal said that she has been participating at a number of different conferences online in the last few months.
I can say I participated really only in one conference, The Surrey International Writer’s Conference, but that conference is so huge that I felt like I was in 12 different conferences at the same time. And I really do mean it. I was lucky enough to be one of the volunteers, so I would see also some behind the scene, that were very cool and I got to interact with some of the presenters. So I introduced a couple of them, but really what I would like to say to just set up the tone for this podcast episode is that I don’t believe that online conferences are necessarily the poor child of conferences that are offline.
There are definitely some pros that you cannot get from the in-person events, and again, we’re going to dive into those in a few moments, but really the thing is if it’s important for us to connect as writers, it’s important for us to have a tool, a software, an app, whatever it is that allows us to do just that. I think virtual conference for writers, authors, even if you have any other professions, are useful, are instruments that you should be using.
And, we saw with Zoom you can do so many different things, from have closed caption to show your screen, to record, to have pools, to get questions. Those are all things that you really can’t have on an in-person conference. Again, we’re going to talk about that a bit more in detail, but, before that, I wanted to ask you, Crystal, you said you participated to a number of conferences, right? And I just wanted to ask you, we mentioned that there are some pros, of course there are going to cons. If you had to summarize the experience that you had with these online conferences, what would you say is the most important thing that you took out? The number one difference in good and in bad compared with any in-person event to people that have never been on a conference online yet.
Crystal Hunt: That is a good set of questions. So I found there are, as an attendee, there are a large number of pros. The first of which is being able to do sessions in your pajamas, from the comfort of your own home.
I find it’s often a little bit uncomfortable if you’re there in person and you’re sitting all day and you can’t really move around or anything because it’s a bit disruptive for the presenters. So it was really nice to be able to walk around my house and listen to sessions on my phone and, be able to be a bit more flexible about how that works.
So I’ve done a lot of different sessions actually while cleaning my house or sitting outside on the deck or, sipping my cup of tea. It really is easier. I find to stay a bit more balanced and for me, at least it’s easier to hit log off and not feel quite so much like you’re missing out.
Whereas it’s a real conference the tendency to just stay in the public spaces all the time, because you don’t want to miss out, any chance to socialize with people. There still is some of that FOMO stuff going on, but not quite as much I found. So that was definitely an issue. One of the upsides is accessibility. So like at the conference last week, we were able to have closed captions running and transcripts of the sessions were shareable.
Things were recorded. So I don’t know about all of you, but I often hit the overwhelmed stage not so very far into a big conference where you were absorbing information all day, every day, and your brain just gets fried and you hit a point where you just can’t really take in any more information.
A lot of the online conferences are being recorded because the ability to do that is much greater and easier than it would be in real life. Arranging for camera crews and all of that stuff and streaming video for all the sessions that are happening concurrently, it gets very expensive and it’s a lot more difficult to organize.
Whereas hitting the record button in zoom or having that setup is much easier. So that’s something I’ve really been enjoying about the last couple of sessions is just being able to watch at my own pace. And also to be able to decide on the order I want to watch them. So I actually went through, I’m just looking around my office to see if it’s in here, but I think it’s in the other room.
I made a little, somebody made a bingo sheet of all of the sessions at the Surrey Conference. And so I downloaded it, printed it out and then I use my highlighters to color code all of the different areas. So all of the sessions on plot are one color and all of the sessions on character are another color.
All the stuff about the business of being an author is the third colour. So I really customized the packages of information, and now I’m watching all the stuff inside of one package of information and making notes on it together. And so you can custom craft your conference experience, which is very cool.
The other upside is that, some folks, are in sessions I always miss out on so much while I’m teaching, because I’d love to go see the sessions that my colleagues are doing, but you don’t get a chance when you’re the one who’s doing the talking. And so the fact that a lot of the masterclasses and other sessions were recorded meant that you can also see multiple things happening at the same time slot.
So that does really open things up as far as information. And I think another pro of accessibility is the cost is usually much less for an online delivery because you’re not dealing with food costs and hotels and travel and the space rental that has to be factored into the cost to attend some of these events in person and you really do get a worldwide representation of people, which is very cool.
So that was all of that lots of pros I think. And the technology really does let you do a lot of this stuff in ways we hadn’t really explored before this year. And I think we’ll talk about socialization a little bit in a minute, but what did you find? Is there any pros or cons that you experienced that I left out of that list?
Michele Amitrani: There are some things that I noticed as I’ve been the introducer to some of the presenters. And I will always remember, I was introducer for, one of the Donal Maass, the New York agent, webinar. And at one point he stopped, he was reading the chat and, because it was a webinar where he was asking, okay guys, so I’m going to give you this assignment and then you let me know, write something about passion or this kind of stuff.
And he was reading the chat and there were a lot of people there writing and he was stopped and he was like, guys, one of the things that I’m noticing is that for the very first time I can actually see what you’re writing. On a conference, when I am giving an assignment, that will be like maybe 100 people, and of course I can’t read them all, but in there with that shot, he had all the screen and we could read every single one of them. And so had a better idea on what they were writing or what they were thinking. Also, from that, very, webinar there were so many questions that he was able to go through.
So it didn’t even need me in that, in that case. And he could basically have a sense of what really was the thing that they wanted to ask. So these are a couple of things that I really noticed and that made me also pause because it was a way to underline how virtual conferences do have a pro, several different pros, but one of the things is I think, what technology can give us that we cannot get, when we are just in person because of logistic problems or time constraints.
This is just one of the things that I noticed, the ability of the presenter in this case Don, to being able to really see what the people in the room were saying to him and asking to him. Of course there are also things that are not as good. What I can say is that I also participate to one of SiWC the past year. And they’re just, how can I explain this? I like to be in between rooms and I want to move and I want to see people, I want to see their faces the way they, they move or they interact between each other. You can connect online of course, but at the end of the day, it’s just the screen.
Like you can’t do that much. Maybe it’s because I’m Italian, but I need to be in a room and I need to feel the people or the person that is in front of me, even to understand a bit more of what made them tick, what made them interesting. And it’s just something that I really couldn’t see in two dimension.
And that’s definitely was, a con for me, which is just for me, it might be not for the other persons. So I couldn’t really get an idea of that person. That’s why I was maybe a bit more laid back. I was a bit more formal because I didn’t really know what the other person was trying to say.
So maybe some just as you can see, I move a lot, the hand movement gesture, that’s one of the major cons for me. But there are so many other pros. One of the things that I really loved was that Crystal and I and other volunteers or coordinator or member from the board, we were actually able to get tutorial on how the instrument we were going to use worked.
So for example, we use like a Discord for the private chat that, We used zoom, all of those things we weren’t just thrown away. Just figure out how to use them. There was an organization before that was very well planned and I’m sure that this is also because of Katy and Crystal and all the wonderful people from the board that organized the conference, but what I’m trying to say is that we were given the tools to enjoy the conference at the best. And that’s not something you can probably always 100% having on in-person conference, because what you get is like a pamphlet, or maybe a magazine.
But on a Zoom room you have a bit more power. For example, let’s say you are in a room and you want to speak with person number one, there is five or six, seats on your right. You can’t do that. You can’t whisper to him, but in zoom you can private chat a person while something is happening. You can have a conversation with him or her.
These are just a couple of things that I really saw a bleeding potential in the future if things are going to stay the same, for some time as we, as it seems, we can really use these, new knowledge that we have to make the best out of it. So I would say these are some of the pros, but also some of the cons for online conferences.
I just mentioned before Crystal of this socialization, if you will, part of it and how they take place in a different way, in an online contest and I just wanted to have your opinion on that. How do you think, especially if we’re going to use this kind of technology in the next few months, until things don’t stable out, how is it impacting the way people socialize?
So what happened to you? How did you felt this difference in the virtual world?
The social side of the virtual
Crystal Hunt: Yeah, the social side of things is definitely interesting. Some of the conferences I’ve been to are live in the sense that you click a link and you show up to a Zoom room and your presenter is sharing content with you.
And so you can see sometimes you can see the other people on the screen if it’s in a meeting format, versus a webinar format. So a webinar format, you really only see the presenters. Nobody else is on screen and you’re just chatting in the chat with the other folks who are in the session. Whereas the meeting environment, one you are seeing like the Hollywood squares kind of option, where you see everybody’s faces and you can interact a little bit that way.
I think there’s a different feel to that when you can see other people in the class and that has both its good and its bad sides. One is it’s super distracting actually, when you have a whole bunch of people moving around and doing their own thing and some people have cameras on and some are off and some have pets walking through the screen or kids calling for stuff or whatever.
And that is a source of a bit of chaos, but with the option to switch to speaker view, you can just really focus in on the person who’s talking and then there’s the option to engage with the other people. So I think you feel like you’re part of something in a different way when it’s set up in that meeting space kind of approach.
I think, there’s also a lot of other tools that you can bring into the picture, not all conferences do, because it is a heck of a lot of work, I can say that from experience, to have other channels. So Discord is a very common way of having chat forums and we called it like the hallways at SiWC where, you know, between sessions, you can chat with other people and you can arrange to go meet up somewhere.
We had a virtual bar space that was set up. It was a Zoom room dedicated to being a social space with a whole bunch of different breakout rooms that were for different purposes and had different names and whatever. So you could go in a quiet writing room and just write with friends, or you could hang out and have craft discussions, or you could just visit with people from all over.
And so that was a fun way to mimic the structure of what is often the bar or restaurant space in the hotel where people are staying for an in-person conference. We had that virtual equivalent that was open all the time, actually. And so people had the option to just pop in there and be social.
And they had the option of posting in Discord or emailing a friend or texting somebody else they knew was at the conference and saying, okay, I’ll meet you at the bar at, we had one room I called the cliffs of insanity from the princess bride. We’ll meet you at the cliffs of insanity at eight o’clock tonight or whatever it was.
And so that was a nice way to give people the ability to still have that social time, but it wasn’t required as well. So for a lot of people, they really liked that socializing was optional. If you’re at an in-person conference and you’re walking through the hallway, people can just come up and talk at you, even if what you really need is peace and quiet.
And so the online format had the advantage of letting people choose to opt in or out to those pieces. So for a lot of folks, they are fairly introverted writery type people. And all of those in real life, humans gets to be a bit much at times. And so a lot of people were commenting they really liked that they had the option to just not participate when they were tired or stressed, or had enough of people for that day.
So that I think was really great. And I think it was really interesting to see the interactions when joining a group of people requires you just click a button to join a Zoom room conversation. It seemed like people were more willing to jump into a Zoom room than they were to necessarily walk up to a group of people in a bar and interrupt a conversation to join in.
So a lot of people also were mentioning that they found that to be really freeing and fun and because everybody is an equal square on the screen, it was a nice way. As Michele said, if someone is sitting three seats over from you in a classroom, you can’t necessarily talk directly to them, but in this way, you get to see everybody’s faces.
Nobody’s sitting behind you. So you’re able to really engage with people in a different way. And I think the faces and names got to be really familiar for folks. And because we could use our virtual backgrounds, people were being really creative about that and were using that to express their personalities.
So at the live Surrey conference and lots of others, there’s generally either buttons or ribbons or some sort of something that identifies different genres you write in and special interest groups and all kinds of things. And so the virtual background options, let us do that. And it was actually, it was really neat.
So I think some of the more unusual social things that happen is we did pull off karaoke, we had a big group singalongs, we still had keynotes, we had all of those things that, we all associate with the in-person experience and it really did help to make it as much, I think like the real thing as we could, there was no hugging, which is really sad as that’s one of the things that, people love about seeing their friends at these live events and getting to meet people that you’ve maybe only seen online before, or maybe you’ve been interacting on author forums for years, but never actually met.
So I think, it isn’t a replacement for sure, for the in-person, but as far as upsides and, opportunities to use that technology, I think they are there, but we do have to be open-minded about how we approach those things. And we also have to be a little bit clever about learning the technology.
And I think, as Michele said, it requires a lot of leveling up on everybody’s part and creativity to think about how to use these, what we’re really meant to be business tools and kind of a creative, social, non businessy sort of way. So there’s been some really cool stuff coming out of various author communities and people are getting really creative about how they use those things, which has been really wonderful to see.
So personally, I’ve really enjoyed seeing what our humans are capable of when given the opportunity to stretch. So that’s great.
Recording the seminars
Michele Amitrani: Yeah. And I think, there are a couple of things I will put in the positives traits in the, pros. We mentioned recording, right? To have the liberty, the freedom to go and see the recording of a webinar or a masterclass, or whatever you have it, at your own pace.
And I was actually doing that just a few hours before recording this podcast. There was, I think it was a Q and A, that Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy and science fiction author was having about traditional publishing and the independent publish. And actually I was part of that, a live, but there were so many things that I lost and that Brandon was saying they were like gold.
And so I went back and I actually watch that recording twice? Why is this important? For two reasons you can really sit when you have a moment in time when your brain as Crystal was saying it’s not frying and enjoy the conference a bit better. And that’s exactly what I did. With Brandon Sanderson, this Q and A, I listened to it between two introductions that I was doing what I was eating, because I didn’t have time.
But the second time I was like with this spreadsheet, the notebook, and I was taking the notes out of it. Like I really spent a lot of time to just dive in and it actually, it was so interesting that I even made a live on my YouTube channel, three hours ago about how important and interesting that conversation was.
It is something that you can definitely use as an asset afterward. And the second reason is that it really gives you the opportunity of, re-listening to something and internalize it. Once you listen to conference that is alive, it’s done. If nobody else is like setting up cameras and all the device and stuff like that.
But if you have the recording, that conference can be there for a very long time. So I would say this is one of the major pros. The knowledge of that moment is frozen in time and that’s, for me, huge and amazing. And it’s something that we cannot underestimate the importance of. This is something that I just wanted to underline.
And the second thing that Crystal was mentioning actually about the gallery view, I have an episode that is very interesting. One of the keynotes was Eileen Cook, one of our common friends, and she was giving, the, basically the last speech that closes officially the conference. And if you ever listened to Eileen Cook, one of her public speech, it’s almost impossible for you to not, start, crying, but in a very good way, because she has the gift of, I don’t know exactly how to say it, but just release a lot of emotion and for the very first time, I was able to see hundreds of people, while she was talking their reaction and most of them were basically crying of joy. Because her words that they were so strong and the one who weren’t crying were aliens.
So this is important and this is something that I was not able to see the first time. Eileen was able to, address, the Surrey conference also one year ago.
I could just see her from the distance. Like 20 meters, because the room was very big, of course. This time, I could see her, like she was in front of me and I will see every single person tearing down and crying and enjoying her conversation. But I felt, I don’t know how to explain it … I felt like more connected to them. And that’s one of the only, probably time that I felt that was better than the real thing, because I could really see the emotion in front of my eyes. I just wanted to put that in the toolbox of the pros, being able to see the reaction of people to Eileen’s speech, but also of other speakers, I’m saying, because I saw that one, but this is something important.
You can actually, you can see the emotions coming from a speech. Anything that can be in a conference, even if it’s online. So do not discard this as a B option. This is really an option that is just different from the real think, that’s just what I think, Crystal about all these things. And, again, for me, the recording was one of the most important thing and, do not underestimate online conferences. If you have the occasion to assist and to be part of one, be really part of one and see what happens.
Crystal Hunt: I think if you are going to dive into it, we’ve got a handful of tips for you that might help make it a little more survivable because it can be easier to access all the things. It makes it pretty tempting to try to do all the things, which can be fairly overloading. So a few survival tips for you. One: make sure that you get up and move around a bit, when there are sessions running from morning until evening, and you could really just sit right here in your chair, in front of your computer for the entire day.
But especially if it’s a multi-day event, you’re going to end up feeling not great, to be honest and pretty exhausted. Screen fatigue is a real thing. So make sure that you’re getting up at least, between every session, if not wandering around during the session, if you can, if you’re just listening and making sure that you are also getting a bit of fresh air, whether that is leaving your office window open or stepping outside, if you can just outside your front door, even for five minutes, between sessions will help a lot.
Looking off into the distance is really important to recalibrate your vision. So a lot of us have our giant monitors and our computers jammed right up against a wall, especially right now, everybody’s got extra workstations in their homes and everything’s all a little bit crazy.
Anytime you can gaze off into the distance for even 20 or 30 seconds, it will help recalibrate your vision and I noticed since I’ve been doing that, my glasses have not been getting as stronger as quickly. So every time I go back to the eye doctor, my eyes are usually worse over the last few years, since I’ve been full time computering. And, but I’ve noticed since I started making a real effort to actually look off into the distance, it is helping to, slow that down and occasionally even reverse it a bit. So that is something to keep in mind. I think knowing how you plan to track all your information is also really important.
Again, information is easy to grab when it is all digital. And so you’re going to be tempted to download every handout that’s offered and, you have all the videos and all of the pieces, and that can be a bit much also. So knowing what is your system for organizing your notes from an event? How are you going to keep track of all that, whether it’s a single notebook that you put everything into, or if you’re digitally oriented, I love actually creating a Scrivener doc or a Google doc for an event. And if you’re there with friends, you can actually divide and conquer. You can go to different sessions and you can each type notes into a shared Google doc.
And that lets you process the information from all the sessions and also get two different perspectives on a session as well. Cause if Michele and I watched the same session, we’re going to get different information out of it. So sharing that Google doc lets us collaborate and it also makes it a little bit of a fun social thing.
That is something to keep in mind is how are you going to do that? If you are thinking of using Scrivener to organize your notes, the way that works generally is you can create a folder for an event. I have one master Scrivener document that’s for all of my conference notes from everywhere, and I will make a higher level folder for an event.
And then I will use scenes for each workshop and I will put the workshop title and the person’s name who’s teaching it and then pile all my notes in there. And then after the event, I can also have another series of folders that are on topic. So I might have one on character and one on plotting and one on the business of being a writer and I can pull that information and just copy it into those topical folders as well. So then whether I’m looking for something based on, who I remember teaching a class or how long ago it was, or if I’m looking for something by topic, it’s really easy to pull that information up and make use of it.
Now I do also really love writing in my notebook, and I am trying to be offline a little bit more. So if I’m listening to a session, I might make notes in my notebook and then consolidate them all later with the highlights from all the different things, combined into a document. Totally up to you, how you approach it, but having a plan of how you’re going to approach it will help because you won’t end up at the end of the conference with, hundreds of separate pieces of paper or different files that you were taking notes into and then discover you don’t really know how to find anything at the end of all that Also eating well, and hydrating is super important for lots of us we’ve been like holed up in our writing caves on our own for a really long time. And I found I was so parched after talking to people all day, every day during the conference that the lip boom and the water became very important. And if you’re going into a big event, maybe prep some super, some salads, or make sure you stock enough groceries on hand that you have enough quick and reasonably healthy things to access that you can go into conference mode fully and really experience it and not be tempted to just live off of chips, which is always tempting.
I think one last thing too is to think about how can you reinvent the conference experience for yourself. And I know a lot of people have a hard time with distractions at home and they really wanted that kind of clear brain time to go and go right into the conference content and really just fully immerse themselves in being a writer.
And so a lot of people actually went and stayed at hotels by themselves and just did all of the sessions from those hotels, wherever they were staying so that they weren’t dealing with the kind of day to day of their normal lives. And they had that sort of retreat experience, which is another option for you potentially, if you live somewhere where that is possible right now.
All right. So now that you are ready to take on some of those online conferences, there are loads out there, have fun exploring, and we would love to hear back about any suggestions you have for us as well. So feel free to send us ideas@strategicauthorpreneur.com. If you have anything you’d like us to share with our listeners, that would be great.
And now this time for the curious jar to make an appearance. As usual, I will stick my hand in the jar filled with coloured papers until Michele says stop.
How do you visualize characters and keep all the details straight?
Michele Amitrani: Stop now.
Crystal Hunt: Green one. Okay.
All right. Today’s question is: How do you visualize characters and keep all the details straight?
Michele Amitrani: That is an interesting question, but what question from the curious jar is not? All of them are interesting. So I’ll try to go first, if that’s fine with you Crystal. How do I visualize characters? So it depends from book to book. Usually what happens to me is that I will visualize a scene and then this scene is populated by characters, which I know nothing about.
And it’s a, this is something that happened with one of the novella I’m working on. There was a scene that I was interested in. I had to populate it with characters. And so I started to visualizing them, by visualizing them I mean I’m visualizing them with the eyes of my mind, if you will. I don’t dream them. I don’t imagine them. I just try to be very pragmatic, even in something very that use imagination. I’m trying to park to start from a ground or a place and then build up particulars.
And that’s something that I’ve noticed, the second seven way I visualize character is in the research stage.
So I will research on something that I want to write about and if there is something of a story that really interests me and then I will start imagining the famous: What if? question and start to populate that with an answer to the question. So there are different ways that I can visualize characters and, none of them is always 100% the same, at least that’s what I notice happening.
One thing, for example, that happened once I was listening to a master class from, Margaret Atwood and, I’m going to say this again, even though I already related the episode, but she started the trailer of this master class with this sentence: Little Red Riding Hood, let’s start the story from a different place. It was dark inside the wolf. And when I listened to that sentence, I basically came up with the character of Tavana. Which is a Little Red Riding Hood Granma, which found herself in the wolf’s stomach. So I visualized that character almost immediately. So it depends really on what I’m doing, what I’m writing, what I’m reading, what I’m visualizing.
It can be really many different things and that’s basically how I visualize characters. And now it’s Crystal’s turn to unveil the way she visualizes her characters which I’m sure is going to be very different from mine.
Crystal Hunt: I have a lot of characters to keep track of because I’ve populated an entire town with people.
So I need some systems to do that because I think at last count I had over 250 characters that I was keeping track of and they all kind of cross paths in different stories. And I need to know what age they are and what other characters they went to school with and who they know and who they’re related to.
In terms of visualization, I’m not very good at physical details of people in terms of picturing them in my mind, I usually am better at feeling the characters of what’s on the insides of them. And so I use stock photos actually, where I will go through photos until I find somebody that feels right. And then I will actually use that photo to help me as I’m bringing them to life. So when I’m visualizing a character, I actually start with who they are. So their emotional wounds and their histories, and whatever kind of central things matter to that character. I’m a psychologist. It makes sense. I start from the insides and work my way out.
And then I try to match that up with pictures so that I don’t send everybody off in multiple directions in order to get consistency for hair color or things like that. I need to be able to see that, to remind me of who and what they are, in terms of what I have described them as on the page.
I do have Plotter, which is a great tool. If you are looking at building a series Bible and wanting to know how to do that. But for years before that I used just spreadsheets. I have a master spreadsheet and I have everybody’s name and there’s all these different columns for what their job is and who their family members are and what stories they appear in and all that kind of stuff.
For me, sometimes the picture comes first, sometimes if I’m exploring through a stock photo database every now and then I will find a picture that just grabs me and I just will save that to my desktop or into a folder until my brain connects it with the insides of one of the characters that I’ve been developing for something else.
It’s a fairly organic process, I think but I do mot have a great visual memory in that sense, the same way I’m really not good with floor plans of houses and I actually find floor plans for the houses that my characters live in because I, otherwise I get all turned around and confused. So visual aids are very helpful as far as keeping track of all that
Michele Amitrani: I would say at this point, if you’d like to see our show notes or links to resources that we mentioned, and for coupons and discounts on the tools we love and we use, you can visit us@strategicauthorpreneur.com. Also remember we recently added a buy us a coffee button in the homepage of our website, strategicauthorpreneur.com.
So if you feel like, buy us a coffee although we don’t drink coffee, but you get it. We are using this on books and we’re blowing up on other stuff like Champagne or Prosecco when we release one of our books and then you can definitely click that button and see what happens.
Crystal Hunt: I love that when you’re the one who does that announcements went crazy and wild and spending it on champagne.
And when it’s me, I’m like, yeah, we’re going to pay for website hosting and podcast distribution. Clearly Michele is way more fun, but yes, any contributions you want to make to help us with operating costs is amazing. So thank you for that. And also we would… we do send out a weekly newsletter. So every Monday we send out just one thing to help you level up your writing and publishing career in some fashion.
So if you haven’t already signed up, you should visit our website and click the magic button so that you get those messages every week. And lastly, we would love if you hit the subscribe button wherever you are listening to this podcast, because next week we’re going to be talking with Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, who are the co-authors of many of these thesaurus guides for writers that we love and are constantly recommending to you.
And we have them on the show to talk about co-authoring and how you work collaboratively with other authors. So they have managed to do this successfully for a very long time and I have all of the interest in picking their brains about this. So I cannot wait to hear what you all think about that interview and until next time keep writing and we’ll see you soon.
Michele Amitrani: See you next week. Bye bye.