The Art of Dialogue (Eurofurence 2011)


Guys, I’m so, so sorry for the quality of the audio in this one. The secondary recorder failed, and the camera itself was perched on top of the projector so there’s truly horrible noise throughout. Some parts are almost impossible to make out, even to me and even after careful filtering. I hesitated to put it up, but I figure something’s better than nothing…

The first of the panels I gave at Eurofurence was on the topic of Dialogue. In a dimly-lit room with a horse-shoe arrangement (as is typical for my panels: standing room only) I discussed the philosophy and purpose of dialogue in fiction.

It took a little while for the group to warm up, partly due to the less-than-comfortable circumstances, but once they opened up I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent questions being asked. I was likewise surprised by the fact that people seemed more interested in the slides about correct punctuation in dialogue than the sections about motivation — I underestimated how practically-minded the attendees were!

This year I decided that, rather than showing examples of *great* dialogue, I’d plumb the depths of terrible fiction to find really awful dialogue which we, as a group, could then dissect and critique. The choice was obvious: The Eye of Argon.

As always, thanks so much to everyone who attended.

- Alex

Source: youtube.com

Full-length video of my Voice Acting Workshop at #EF17

At EF 2011 in Magdeburg, the third of three panels I held was on the topic of Voice Acting.

We started off with a quick presentation on vocal technique, mic technique, posture and performance, then invited some volunteers to try their hand at performing a short script written for the occasion.

I had the pleasure of being accompanied by Shay, whom I’d invited as Special Guest. He was still reeling from the rather successful premiere of Bitter Lake the previous night, which I’m sure contributed to the fact that the panel was standing room only.

At the end of the panel, Shay and I took some rather excellent questions from the audience and to finish it off, did our own run-through of the script.

Thanks to all who came!

Recordings from last night’s Ustream Writing Clinic

What started as a neat little idea for a fun evening reading and discussing stories turned into quite a fantastic evening with a healthy crowd of listeners and participants. 

Altivo Overo, Buck Hopper of the Furry Basketball Association and Skip Ruddertail of Bad Dog Books became impromptu co-hosts of the online equivalent of a very productive writing panel, where we read and discussed seven story samples sent to me from writers across the world — as far away as Jakarta, Indonesia. And with one exception (he didn’t have Skype, alas!) we got to converse with all of them.

Over three hours, with ABSOLUTELY ZERO technical issues, all totally unrelated to my beloved Mac platform and wholly to blame on Ustream, Skype and the temperamental concoction of apps and services I had to use to be able to talk to people. I’ve just spent ten hours cutting it together and making everyone seem far more clever, awake and attractive than we were at the time, all for your enjoyment.

First we had Altivo Overo, who brought us a delightful sample of his work “Blue on Blue”, which can be found here: http://www.furrag.com/viewstory.php?sid=590

Then a pi-rat story (rats who are pirates!) from PS Lion, a fellow European who burned the midnight oil with me. 

Next was Buck Hopper, with an awesome interior monologue from his namesake in the FBA: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5241802

Cybercoyote couldn’t join us, unfortunately, so Buck Hopper, Altivo, Skip Ruddertail and I could say horrible things behind his back about his story, “The Last Flight of the Midnight Express”.

Tango, AKA Rebelsheart, seems to be an anime fan whose tale of converging universes seemed particularly upsetting to my fragile recording setup, and most of the Zero Technical Issues occurred here. But that’s okay! It just means you get to hear it explained three times in a row.

And all the way from the beautiful island of Java, Sulartenem gives us a story with waterscooters and fish, and critically reviews the three words of Bahasa Indonesia I can say, but don’t understand.

Last but by no means least, Don Iago AKA Siphedious teaches me how to pronounce his name and closes the session with a noir stream-of-consciousness that Buck rightly described as a ‘crackling read’.

I’d like to thank all the authors who sent in their work, everyone who listened in and my impromptu co-hosts. 

And for those who asked whether I’d do this again in future: absolutely. It was too much fun not to. Keep an eye out!

Meanwhile: please enjoy.

- Alex Vance

FC ‘08 Writing Panel #3 - Meet the Editors

The third furry writing panel I gave at Further Confusion 2008. The turnout was a bit slim as the panel was planned on the very last day and most people had already left, but good fun was had nonetheless.

I was joined at the table by two fellow editors. There was our own Ben Goodridge, who edited the first volume of our non-erotic fiction anthology ROAR, and Quentin “Cubist” Long who edits ANTHRO, the online anthology. 

Pretty much all the attendees were writers, which made for an interesting and diverse set of topics.

  
Download now or listen on posterous
FC08_#3_-_Meet_the_Editors.mp3 (77124 KB)

FC ‘08 Writing Panel #2 - Narrative Techniques

In early 2008, in the strange land of California, a slightly younger me gave his first furry writing panels in person, to standing room only.

The previous one was concerned with the Fundamental Story; this one delved into the judicious use of a few more advanced narrative techniques, including surprise/suspense, tragedy, sentimentality, and that most terrible and terrifying of techniques: the joke.

The audience was wonderful, and a delight to speak to. In attendence were authors Ben Goodridge, Teiran Dragon and André “Badger” Blaireau, each of whom had a book published by Bad Dog Books. 

Among many fine, insightful, and sometimes hilarious others.

FC ‘08 Writing Panel #1 - The Fundamental Story

In this episode, we hear a recording of the first writing panel taught by Alex Vance at the Further Confusion convention in January 2008 in the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California. 

In this panel, Alex discusses the Fundamental Story. Also known as the hero’s journey. Lightly touching on Vladimir Propp’s ‘Morphology of the Folk Tale’, the session quickly spirals out of control with a deconstruction of a bizarre hybrid of The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

Sadly, the recording failed after only half an hour due to a technical malfunction, but the portion that is recorded here, at least, should hopefully prove informative.

Third Eurofurence panel video: Anthropomorphic comics publishing with Yours F. Truly, Dark Natasha and Rukis

Apologies for the ghastly audio; I’ve cleaned it up as best I could. I’d mic’ed myself up really poorly so the only usable audio source was the camera. Sorry!

Nightfox from Black Paw Publications was originally going to join us, but was indisposed due to scheduling issues — but nonetheless, this turned out to be a very good panel.I was joined by Dark Natasha and Rukis, both furry artists, so there was a fairly heavy slant toward comics rather than fiction. Nonetheless we were impressed with some very good and well-targeted questions from our fabulous and intimate audience!

Second Eurofurence video: editing for publication in the small press

This workshop was a little dryer than the one about writers, artists, imagery and meaning, but more informative for writers and in much, much higher quality! Occasionally you’ll hear the camera guys whispering, and there was quite a bit of noise outside in the first few minutes, but I think it came out quite good anyway.It was a nicely intimate affair, where I put on my Editor hat to give the collected writers a glimpse into the world of story review, selection, editing from the other side of the glass.

Full video of the first writing panel I gave at Eurofurence 16 last week: writers vs artists

Presented by Yours F. Truly at Eurofurence 16 in Magdeburg, Germany in September 2010.

In this workshop we discuss the notion of conveying meaning through imagery. The theory of semiotics is briskly breezed through, after which we look at some examples of evocative imagery in art and writing.

Finally, we did a little mini Bullwer-Lytton contest, with some thoughtful and/or hilarious results!

Apologies for the darkness in the first half. The camera lost focus in the dark a few times, but really came into its element once the lights came back on.

This panel was a ton of fun to do, with a diverse and engaged audience, which included Elfasi, Watts Martin, Lupestripe and a fair few others I’m sure I forgot to name!