LTUE 2014

Without a doubt, my favorite sci-fi convention / writing conference / symposium is LTUE. I say this every year, but this year’s symposium was one of the best! Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson were both there, along with a whole bunch of other authors and artists, local and otherwise. It drew a huge crowd, too–around 1,800 people over the course of the weekend–but there was plenty of space at the Provo Marriott, so it never felt too crowded.

If anything, I think that LTUE has gotten better since leaving BYU. There’s much more openness, much less administrative or bureaucratic restriction. Fans can dress up in cosplay and that’s okay, panels can discuss pop culture topics without having to pretend to have academic value, non-LDS panelists are free to share their perspectives without feeling like the religious censors are breathing down their backs, and we have a whole hotel hotel to ourselves, as opposed to a corner of the student center.

At the same time, all of the stuff that makes LTUE great is still there, and there in abundance. Since the vast majority of attendees are LDS, the panels all revolve around the LDS perspective and experience. In his main address, Orson Scott Card talked about how his experiences growing up in the church influenced the writing of Ender’s Game and his views on leadership. At the banquet, Brandon Sanderson referenced Orson F. Whitney’s famous Home Literature speech in discussing Mormons’ place in the current science fiction & fantasy field.

In other words, all the good stuff was still there this year, plus a liberal helping of cosplay and facial hair. And who can say no to that?

In any case, I had a blast. I was on five panels this year, and they were tons of fun. In particular, the Writing Romance panel was really great. Since I’m not familiar with romance as a genre, I was a bit worried that I’d be out of my league. But the discussion was all about how to put romance in your sci-fi, and I know a lot about that. At one point, I argued that men have just as much of a hunger for romance as women. That surprised some of the female panelists, but I definitely believe that that’s true. We got into a lengthy and interesting discussion out in the hallway, which is how the best panels seem to go.

One major shift I’ve noticed from previous years is that self-publishers and self-publishing has all but lost its stigma, with people talking openly about the benefits of that career path. In fact, it was a major undercurrent throughout the entire symposium. In the green room, we got into some really intense discussions about the AE report, which came out just days before the symposium began. It seemed that I was constantly hearing or overhearing people talk about whether and how to self-publish, and on several panels people were openly advising to skip traditional publishing altogether.

Three years ago, people would have treated me like I had leprosy if I openly admitted I was self-published. Now, everyone seems to be embracing it. It’s so awesome that we’re past the stigma, because it means that we can all be open and supportive of each other and focus on the important things, like writing the best possible stories and connecting with our readers.

By far, the best event I attended was John Brown’s presentation on Clear and Vivid Writing. HOLY CRAP GUYS. That presentation completely blew my mind. The powerpoint is up on John Brown’s blog, so you can grab it and see for yourself. All I can say is that the man is a writing genius. The presentation completely changed the way I think about my own writing, and will definitely influence what I write from here on out.

Another great event was Sandra Tayler’s presentation on how to build a fan community around your stuff. She talked about the difference between a following and a community (basically, a community is a following where the fans talk to each other), how to cultivate a safe and inviting place for your fans, and what to expect from when you first start out to when the community starts to get rather large. I still feel as if my writing career is just getting started, but her advice will no doubt be very useful in the coming years.

The What Makes a Hero panel was really great. Peter Orullian, Larry Correia, and Lisa Mangum were all on it, so the discussion was energetic and full of awesome, juicy stuff. The big takeaway I got from that one was that as long as the reader doesn’t throw the book across the room in disgust, you can always bring back a fallen character and redeem them. There is nothing so beyond the pale that makes it impossible for a character to step up and become the hero once again. It takes skill to pull it off, of course, but it can be done–and that is one of the most awesome things about what it means to be a hero.

There was a bunch of other stuff that I took away from LTUE this year, but those are the major things. By the end of it, I just wanted to sit down and write! The climactic final battle for my current WIP, Sons of the Starfarers: Comrades in Hope came to me in all its awesomeness as I attended the various panels, and holy crap am I so excited to get to that part! It’s going to be amazing, and the cliffhanger ending is going to make you scream so horribly, but that’s okay because the next book will pick up right where the previous one left off, then take things in an even more awesome direction.

In any case, that was LTUE this year. SO MUCH FUN. If every convention can be like this one, holy crap, sign me up for them all!