1 Plot & Pace
2 The Future of the Future
3 Fantasy of Manners
4 The Next Step for New Writers
5 The Young Female Protagonist
6 Tough Love for New Writers
7 Ageing your Characters
8 The Age of Fighting Sail isn't Over
9 Fantasy Noire
10 Anglo-Saxons and Other Panels I've Forgotten
11 An Anecdote
12 and lots of drinking


Plot and Pace

panelists: Sean M. Mead, Stephen Dedman, Alison Baird, Jay Lake, Jim Gardner, Uncle River

This was not a "meta" panel on writing, like the archetype/princess alone panel, but more of a "how to" or rather "how I..." panel. Overall, I found more to disagree with than to agree with amongst what the panelists said, but it was good discussion to overhear nonetheless. I found that Jay Lake, surprisingly, had some of the best things to say. (You see, I was all prepared to resent Jay Lake, for some reason, but then it turned out he was this really funny and interesting fellow, and dammit, who's left to resent? Who??)

Sadly the whole thing about pace seemed to get mired in the "how to avoid infodumps" discussion, and really far, far too much was said about how to do exposition in a showing/not telling way. Ok, riiiight.

The best things said were: plot structure is a *tool* to make certain you've actually told a story (Jay Lake) and structure is subjective (Stephen Dedman). Uncle River actually pointed out something rather brilliant, I thought: aggression and rapid pace are often confused. And George R.R. Martin was cited as having some of the best pacing around-- "Something is always happening to someone."

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The Future of the Future

I was wandering around trying to get into a number of panels that ended up standing-room only, until I gave up and went to this one about ten minutes late. But as it turned out to have not only matociquala on the panel, but also Walter Jon Williams, I was actually quite pleased. Plus, Stephen Dedman from the previous panel was sitting about two seats away, and I got to sneak little adoring glances at him. What can I say? I'm a sucker for any accent that's not my own.

Other panelists: Dennis Livingston, Judith Berman and Daniel Hatch

It was a good panel, but I didn't take too many notes. Walter Jon Williams hit the nail on the head with pointing out that politics and technology don't evolve at the same rate--just because technology exists doesn't mean it's going to get distributed to the masses. He cited the fact that everyone on planet earth right now could eat and eat well, but for politics. (I started thinking all these thoughts about redistribution of wealth that quite distracted me from the conversation for a bit, and I was taking notes on a story--and Stephen Dedman snuck away then, too.)

I did like the general agreement amongst the panelists that the singularity is not something anyone actually needs to worry about. Phew. I never did want to worry about it. (droll smile)

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Fantasy of Manners

panelists: Ellen Kushner, Madeleine E. Robins, Jo Walton, Lois McMaster Bujold

Finally a panel where I had not only read every author, but where I was actually quite knowledgeable about most of the works of most of the authors.

MER (I highly approve of her initials): "a lady never offends inadvertently" (very Jane Austen in sentiment)

JW: a fantasy of manners should have 1) a fantasy; 2) be defined as "Jane Austen with..."; 3) have manners used as a weapon and 4) be small-scale, not epic 5) wit

(Note to self: pursue Barbara Hambly's Stranger at the Wedding)

Class is a vital piece to anything that could be defined as "of manners"--since class leads to social climbing, and social climbing leads to adopting certain behaviors and affectations that allow the native members of a class to recognize one another...

MER: dislikes the 1810's settings with the 1990's characters. (I thought immediately of sartorias's essay, which was probably the first and only thing I've read on the internet that caused me to write an author out of the blue.)

I took rather personally relevant notes on this, and the whole fantasy of manners panel has gotten oodles of discussion around and about, so I don't feel that I'm actually contributing much fleshing out my notes here.

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Next Steps for New Writers

Panelists: James Steven-Arce, Eleanor Wood, Kevin Anderson, Vera Nazarian, Sally Weiner-Grotta and Jane Jewel

This was a panel for folks who'd recently made their first big sales--either a novel or maybe had finally qualified for SFWA membership. I figured that I was going to be an optimist and assume that I would qualify for SFWA membership by the time WorldCon got around to the US again, and thus went.

I took four pages of notes. It's even less meta-writing on the scale than the plot and pace panel, but I think I heard some good things; mostly, exhortations on acting like a professional, and how to act like such, and hey, that's always good advice.

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The Young Female Protagonist

Panel: Tamora Pierce, Louise Marley, Mary H. Rosenblum, E. Rose Sabin, Anne Harris, Mindy Klasky and Mike Shepherd/Mosco(w?)

I'm not sure I learned much in this panel--my youthful girlhood does not feel very far away in many respects--but it's just lovely to hear Tamora Pierce get all fired up about what she writes and why she writes it.

I was 11 when I read In the Hand of the Goddess and I stayed up what seemed like all night to do so (it was probably 2AM, at a guess). That was it--the first book that kept me up past my bedtime, and certainly not the last, and it was exactly the sort of book I wanted to read. And write.

There was a lot of discussion in this panel about why it's liberating to write young characters: they aren't afraid to take risks; they won't be penalized (by the reader) for not knowing the rules of their society; they can be used to deconstruct their society... but I found that all of that really wasn't why I still read YA books after all these years, or why I write them.

It's not so complicated for me, really. I'm 29, right? But in my head, I'm still 11 a lot of the time. It's just the world I know. I'm still a girl, and I still don't get everything, and I still want to read about girls kicking butt. Yeah.

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Tough Love for New Writers

panelists: Gavin Grant, Priscilla Olson, TNH, Steve Miller, David G. Hartwell

I've never spent a more empowering 50 minutes listening to people talk about despair and desperation.

It's not that any of them painted a rosy future. But it's that it was so honest, maybe, that I found it inspiring. Statements like "publishable does not mean good," and so forth.

Basically, I think the message was positive: if you're a writer, you write because you have to write. Whether or not you get published is a completely different issue. It doesn't make you good or bad... or a writer.

After some back-brain cogitation on the matter, I decided that if that panel depressed or discouraged anyone, then they were the ones who needed to be depressed or discouraged. If it empowered anyone--then they were crazy. But my kind of crazy.

Would I be happy with my publishing career if I never managed to break into the pro's? Noooo.... but would I still be happy with my writing? Yes.

I dunno. I liked it.

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Ageing your Characters

Sort of the opposite of the young female protagonists panel. Lois McMaster Bujold, Jean Lorrah, Nancy Kress, John Scalzi, Steve Miller and Susan Schwartz presiding.

I found what people were saying to be interesting, but the whole panel threw me off into thinking about the "abuela" theory of human evolution, and naturally, my note-taking suffered. There was almost some youth-bashing going on at some points--someone implied that young people are "unformed." (The actual statement was more like, "Writing older characters is about transformation. You can't have a transformation unless something has actually been formed.") Hm.

Hm, hm, hm.

I think anyone who has spent any time around a child knows that they get formed awfully young. Personality traits seep through at startlingly early ages--traits you can't account for through simple nature versus nurture argumentation. There's something there from very early on, and pretending that age is this magical thing that makes people more interesting was more baby boom elitist bs that I frankly don't enjoy. On the other hand, Lois and John certainly didn't jump into the midst of that, and gained even more respect in my eyes thereby.

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The Age of Fighting Sail isn't Over (it just moved to SF)

panel: Walter Jon Williams, Jim Mann, John G. Hemry and Susan Schwartz

Various parallels between sailing ships and spaceships were drawn: 1) movement through a hostile environment; 2) specialized technology (rigging, etc vs. the accoutrement of space travel); 3) first contact situations

Something that struck me: we are between both of these ages of sail--perhaps even at a midpoint between tallships and spaceships, with only straggling remnants of the one and the early prototypes of the other. I don't know why that thought would actually excite me, but I'm always sort of thrilled by littoral places and moments. Or even liminal ones, if you'll forgive me the word abuse.

My notes get sort of random at points, but I did thoroughly enjoy the dialogue WJW, JGH and JM struck up about David Weber stretching the boundaries of good sense in order to make his Napoleonic warfare allegories hold fast in space. If anyone's really thrilled by this topic, or how Kirk is no Jack Aubrey, I have some more notes about it. Just speak up.

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Fantasy Noire

Panelists: Delia Sherman, Faye Ringel, Glen Cook and Jim Butcher

There was some early debate over whether or not the topic should be treated as "fantasie noire" or "fantasy noir"--and the moderator (Ms. Ringel) decided to cut it right down the center and discuss both.

I had some flashbacks to my 8th grade English class's unit on film noir and sort of felt vaguely out of phase, but fortunately, the conversation turned around to dark fantasy, which is where I was waiting for it to go--nothing against The Maltese Falcon and such, but I thought that Madeleine E. Robins in discussing Point of Honor during Fantasy of Manners said more interesting things about noir-as-genre in just a few brief comments than was said in a good half-hour here.

This panel did spawn some of the better quotes, though.

"Who doesn't love a big old apocalyptic trilogy?" --Jim Butcher

and

"Dark fantasy has at risk the soul; light fantasy, the heart." -- Glen Cook

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Anglo-Saxons and Other Panels I've Forgotten

I seem to not have taken notes on a few panels, so I'll try to relate what I recall of them as best I can.

I got up early to attend "Anglo-Saxon influences on fantasy" lecture/panel thing, which had some charmingly funny moments. (Not to mention, I think lovers of Old English resonate at some weird frequency that's incredibly... sexy?) At one point, people were bandying about A-S roots and stories about Tolkein (and actually, this was my first glimpse of papersky)... And someone brought up Boethius. There aren't an incredible lot of OE texts for the young scholar to peruse. You pretty much end up reading some of the gospels, maybe a little "Apollonius of Tyre" and the obligatory Beowulf when you're starting out, but you know. Boethius is one of the few things we've got. And I think that if you got up for a lecture on Anglo-Saxon influences on fantasy at 9:30, you probably were pretty familiar with the OE corpus, in general. But the moderator stopped and squinted apologetically at us and asked how many of us were familiar with the Consolation of Philosophy. And I'd say that 98% of the attendees raised their hands.

I just grinned and decided I had found my tribe.

The other panel I forgot to mention was "Do women write differently?" -- and the essence was, no, men do. Ha!

No, it was a good panel, with lots of room for discussion, and good, intelligent discussion at that. Plus, more time to admire Justine Larbalestier's pretty hair and accent. (I mentioned my thing with accents, right?)

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An Anecdote from The Fantasy of Manners Panel

The discussion had turned to class structures. And Jo Walton said to Lois McMaster Bujold that yes, she very much thought that the class structures on Barrayar quite lent themselves to fantasy of manners. But, "you couldn't have a fantasy of manners set on Beta Colony."

It was the expression on Lois' face that brought the house down. That pause for thought, as suddenly the wheels just leaped into motion without her permission. She held her breath and looked up, and you could see the story forming in her mind, I swear. The audience erupted into laughter.

papersky said that she'd be the first in line to read it. :)

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Drinking Games

Apologies to certain stomach virii namesakes who shall remain nameless.

Apologies to timprov. I believe I waved blurrily at him (no, wait; he was blurry, not me--or at least, my perspective... argh!) and proclaimed my inebriation quite loudly, which is hardly the worst thing I could have done, but... not precisely the best, either.

Apologies to my roommates. Let's do it again sometime real soon.

I was not drunken when splash_the_cat and I trekked over to the Sheraton bar to find porphyrin, and get introduced to cristalia, katallen, retrobabble, stillnotbored and others whose LJ names I didn't catch but who are hopefully around. I heard lots of good advice and good stories in a few hours, and if I hadn't had to leave the hotel at 3AM, I would have stuck around much longer, soaking up the vibe. Y'all were great--a very welcoming amoeba. :)



If I've missed anything, it's not for lack of taking notes.