Words    Words    Words

My fellow members of the Society of Voluptuaries who were with me at the con type much faster than I do, so they took on the task of attempting to transcribe the panels. Which they should be finishing up for sharing any day now. (Hint, hint.) My job was to write down anything that particularly jumped out or caught my interest (or that Steve wanted written down, since he had neither laptop nor analog input devices at hand). In the interest of avoiding other writing work, I present the tidbits noted from the first Friday evening panel. Feel free to discuss any or all in comments.

Panel 1: From Cool Idea to Story

“It’s not about the characters, it’s about the relationship between two characters.” — Marissa Lingen

“I like a last line that leaves you wondering while still wrapping things up in the story.” — Ellen Klages

“The scale of the beginning dictates the ending.” — Will Shetterly

“The beginning you have creates very specific expectations.” — Alec Austin

“Narrative proprioception. ” — Ellen

“I think it’s a good thing to have a closet full of unfinished story ideas.” — Will

“Your trunk stories are like the nurse logs in a forest ecology.” — Mris, quoting John M. Ford

“Part of the art of writing is making everything in the story count.” — Jim Frenkel

“Marissa and Ellen both use a lot of touch-oriented words in their descriptive speech, and both also write their stories out of order. Is there a connection or just coincidence?”

“Sometimes I like to write down my scenes on 3×5 cards so that I can arrange them in front of me and touch and move them around.” — question from audience, answer from Ellen