Ross Grayson Bell – Writing for a Screenplay versus a Novel (pt 3)

The Hero’s Journey One way of telling a story. Stage 1 – The Ordinary World  Stage 2 – Call to adventure  What is the call to adventure?  What new force appears to challenge hero?  How is hero’s flaw tested?  Stage 3 – Refusal of the call  Heroes initially reject the call to adventure  Stage 4 […]

Ross Grayson Bell – Writing for a Screenplay versus a Novel (pt 2)

7 ways to engage an audience 1. Premise  Your point of view and how to live it.  Eg romance writers have a perspective on love  Eg in Fight Club, the only way to evolve was to break yourself apart to move on. Not the same as the book, where he ends up in an asylum […]

Friday workshop: Ross Grayson Bell – Writing for a Screenplay versus a Novel (pt 1)

Ross Grayson Bell is a screenwriter, producer and story consultant with over twenty-five years of international experience in story development and film production. Having started as a creative executive for legendary, Hollywood producer Ray Stark, Ross developed and produced Fight Club for Twentieth Century Fox and executive produced Under Suspicion with Gene Hackman and Morgan […]

“Basically Quite Weird”: The Queer Medievalist Virtual Romance of Alexis Hall’s Looking for Group

Kristin Noone (Irvine Valley College) Session 12.4: Love in Other Worlds Abstract: In a recent blog post, award-winning romance author Alexis Hall comments that “something we’re grappling with as twenty-first century people is the way our assumptions about relationships are changing and that’s something I tried to explore in the new book, both explicitly and […]

“Outlander’s Tactile Caress: a Multisensory Romance”

Athena Bellas (University of Melbourne) Session 12.3: Love in Other Worlds Abstract: Much of the existing literature on television series Outlander (STARZ 2014– ) emphasises its prioritisation of a female gaze at the scene of erotic pleasure. This is important to a discussion of shifting representations of gender and sex on the contemporary screen. However, […]

Georgette Heyer’s Unruly Eighteenth Century

Dr Stephanie Russo (Macquarie University, Australia) Session 5.1: History and Romance Abstract:  Georgette Heyer’s fame, both in her own time and in ours, is inextricably connected to her representation of Regency England.  However before Heyer wrote about the Regency, she was writing about the eighteenth century, setting her first novels in both England and France… […]

Think Globally, Love Locally? – Popular Romance Studies comes to Sydney

Recently I was fortunate to attend some sessions the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (aka IASPR) Conference with the theme ‘Think Globally, Love Locally?’ held in Sydney. Due to a combination of illness and other commitments I was unable to attend all the sessions.  I also apologise profusely to all those who […]

Breakout 5: Ally Blake – How to hook your reader

How critical is your first page, really? If it doesn’t grab the reader / editor / agent on the first page, you are done. Step 1:  Opening line Memorable Poetic Gets a laugh It out to connect, entice, tickle reader’s curiosity Make it impossible for a reader t put your book down Your opening line […]

Breakout 4: World building panel

Mel Scott (moderator), Keri Arthur, Denise Rossetti, Alison Goodman, C. S. Pacat CS Pacal Writes fantasy with gay princes Keri Arthur Dark urban fantasy Alison Goodman Fantasy, sci fi, crime Wearing steampunk shoes Denise Rossetti Sword and sorcery fantasy Science fiction Erotica World building is important, and needs to be consistent