Hey,
I plan to run a one shot AW session for some friends while we're at GenCon this month.  I attempted to run a campaign for some of them earlier this year with mild success.  I'm not sure precisely what caused our initial foray to be so... meh.  I was new to the system, so some things, like going aggro and seize by force, were not so clear to me at the time.  Also, we're all long time D&Ders, so most of the players feel uncomfortable without a more... narrative/guided approach.  I've read Hatchet City and Sunken Sydney, got inspiration from forum user octoscott's Iron Road campaign and generally scoured forum posts on the subject of 1 shots or Con games.  I still have some questions, however. 

I keep reading that I shouldn't use pregenerated characters, but what's the reason?  How important is the character generation portion?  I guess what I'm most concerned about is making sure that the HX makes sense, since they're basically starting in session 4 or somewhere like that.  I really like the idea of Love Letters and plan to use them, but can they replace the HX section?  Does anyone have some good advice on writing them?

I realize that I am probably stressing too much over a game with just my friends, but I really want to give them a fun, unique experience that isn't D&Dish. 

From what I've seen so far, the users on this forum are extremely helpful, so I will say thank you in advance.