If you are a serious SF or Fantasy (or other speculative or historical fiction) writer and are going to go to one con, go to this one and pay for as many workshops as you can get into. Great material. I have all too many notes for rewriting and fixing Cerelian Gold, especially the center, and once I change the center, the end will probably change as well. Tips i found particularly applicable here were:
Give the characters hope and the illusion of nearing at least their first, lower level goal before dashing it and making them realize they have to deal with a bigger a problem than they hoped.
As you approach the climax, give the characters a big setback so the climb to success (or ultimate failure) is even bigger than it was before.
Add more problems as you go (complications) as well as solutions to the problems that were there from the start.
Lots of work to do.
Also, along the way I realized one of the reasons I was having trouble with my Something New: I have yet to create a character I actually like. I haven't had that problem when I've put the story further away from semi-contemporary life so I'm thinking of creating a character in space, maybe even an alien, or way back in the past, then turning them into a more contemporary human and plopping them back into the world of Something New, with an outsiders view even if they aren't actually an outsider: a lot of people, including but not limited to loners, geeks, and rebels have a tendency to at least feel like outsiders, and they are characters most of us can relate to, even like, so I can start there and see if that doesn't work a little better.
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