how not to be awkward at book festivals, part 2: the awkward book panel

Last weekend, I went to a rather awkward book festival. On Tuesday, we discussed the Awkward Book Booth (check the comments for some brilliant reader suggestions). Today, some observations on the Awkward Book Panel.

There is nothing like an awkward panel to make book festival goers wish they had gone on a brewery tour instead. There you are, trapped in your rickety folding chair while three authors you’ve vaguely heard of say a whole lot of nothing for forty-five minutes, followed by a fifteen-minute question period in which even more nothing gets said. When the panel’s over, you can’t remember a single thing anyone said—you can’t even remember what the panel was supposed to be about. Why are you even here? Why did you think you would find this stimulating? Can we go home now?

If you are a panel-bound author, here are some ways to make things less awkward for your audience:

Know thy panel-mates

There is nothing more awkward than a panel where three authors who have obviously never heard of another spend forty-five minutes avoiding eye contact and otherwise pretending that the fact of one another’s company onstage is nothing but a mildly embarrassing coincidence.

In contrast, there is nothing more fun for a book festival audience than a panel where three authors have obvious chemistry—teasing one another, responding to or expanding on one another’s points, and generally promoting the illusion that authors all belong to one big club, complete with friendships and rivalries and much creative feuding.

If you are assigned to a panel with two authors you’ve never heard of, for heaven’s sake reach out to them before the event. Look them up on the internet. Give them a call or e-mail and introduce yourself. Perhaps you can go out for a beer the night before the festival. Perhaps you can trade battle stories of panels past. Perhaps you can discover some interesting fodder for the panel.

A panel is not a one-woman (or one-man) show. No matter how engaging you and your panel-mates may be individually, things will be awkward if the three of you don’t create something larger and more interesting together.

Be supremely tweetable

In this age of live-tweeted book festivals, it doesn’t seem like the worst idea to spend some time before the panel jotting down thoughts and statements about your panel’s topic, and asking yourself whether any of them could be re-worded to be more tweetable.

This idea will probably make some people shudder (part of me is shuddering as I write it) but if you want to get the most out of your time investment and reach a wider audience than the fifteen or twenty people sitting in those folding chairs, having some highly tweetable comments is a good way to do it.

And even if you’re not lucky enough to have an iPhone-happy audience member live-tweeting your brilliant thoughts, chances are you will still be more succinct and memorable than you would have been otherwise. (this is not to say that you should prepare for your panel by coming up with sound bytes at the expense of deep thoughts on your subject. the tweetable stuff should emerge from the deep thoughts, not exist for its own sake).

Don’t count on the moderator to ask good questions

In a perfect world, a panel moderator’s questions would be scientifically calculated to draw out your most brilliant remarks and wittiest anecdotes.

“Well, Jim,” you would say. “This reminds me of a conversation I had with President Obama the other day…”

In real life, your panel moderator will probably kick things off by reading factually incorrect bios of you and your fellow authors in a monotone, then asking questions of such galloping incoherence you will wonder if your festival-provided bottle of water has been dosed.

Classic job interview wisdom holds true for book panels: think about what you REALLY want to say, then find a way to say it, even if the actual questions are duds. Which facts, opinions, and anecdotes would be most interesting to your audience? Can you find a way to work them in? A panel with uninspired questions is just as disappointing to the audience as it is to the authors. We WANT to hear the juiciest things you have to say.

Never underestimate the power of unexpected delights

The people attending your panel are probably hot, cranky, hungry, and uncomfortable in those horrible folding chairs. If you can make our panel-going experience any less physically unpleasant, we may actually pay attention instead of day-dreaming, texting, or scouring the festival program for more stimulating events for which we could ditch your panel halfway through.

Can you get away with passing out cookies? You could lift us out of our existential misery with cookies. If cookies are too crumbly, what about a bag of Hershey’s kisses? Licorice? Tic-Tac? ANYTHING?!?!?

Point is, if you hand out a treat, we will suddenly feel clever for attending your panel, and we will spend the whole panel thinking “I can’t wait until this panel is over so I can tell my friends about the free cookies they missed” instead of just “I can’t wait until this panel is over.” And if you’re really lucky, our moods will be so brightened by the unexpected treat, we will actually listen and ask questions and remember to buy your book.

In cases where handing out food items is inappropriate, you can still delight your audience with something unexpected—a prop? a great story? a handout? a surprise announcement? Whatever it is, make us feel lucky to be there, lucky not to have missed it, and eager to tell everyone about what happened.

*

Have you ever been to a book panel? What made it good? What made it awkward? Are author panels even worth it, or are they generally just exercises in awkardness? Who’s the best author panelist you’ve ever seen, and why did they stand out?

how not to be awkward at book festivals, part 1: the awkward book booth

This weekend, I went to a medium-sized book festival with a mission: to observe which authors were successfully selling books, and why.

Like all situations where you are meeting face-to-face with the producer of an item you may or may not want to buy, book festivals can be sort of awkward. This particular festival was especially awkward, as many of the booths consisted of lesser-known, debut, or self-published authors who were selling their books “cold” with no name recognition to ride on. As a person who will herself claim the illustrious title of Lesser-Known Debut Author in about eight months from now, I am very curious to find out how other LKDA’s were making it work (or failing to make it work).

To begin with, some pointers to authors who are selling their books at booths or tables:

Team up with other authors

I found myself shying away from booths where an author was sitting with stacks and stacks of a single title. Why? Because it’s already awkward enough to walk away from someone’s booth without buying anything, but it’s even more awkward, not to mention personal, when you walk away from the ONE BOOK into which someone has poured their hopes and dreams.

I was much more likely to approach booths consisting of several authors with several different books, because then it felt like browsing, which is fun, instead of crushing someone’s dreams if I failed to make a purchase, which is not.

Unless you are supremely engaging and/or well-known, having your own booth at a book fair is a recipe for awkwardness. On the flip side, if you team up with two or three other authors in your genre, people will feel less pressured and will be more likely to chat, browse, and buy books. Even better, you and your author-friends can talk up one another’s books, instead of (awkwardly) talking up your own.

Be supremely engaging

You would be amazed how many authors were either sitting in their chairs looking bitter and possibly murderous or aggressively flogging draw entries for (totally unappealing) prize packs consisting of their book, a dubious piece of confectionary, and a whole lot of cellophane.

Authors, I could be charmed into buying almost ANY book. I am a huge sucker. Really, I am. But you don’t charm someone by guilting them into entering your raffle. You charm someone by giving them an EXPERIENCE.

Listen. Most people wandering around at these small book festivals feel vaguely disappointed and at loose ends. The festival is not as exciting as we’d hoped. We spend most of our 1.5 laps around the tables thinking about where to go for lunch. We WANT to be engaged in a brilliant conversation. We WANT something memorable to happen to justify our presence here on a Saturday afternoon.

So dress beautifully. Stand up tall. Engage people in conversation—not because you want them to sign up for your mailing list, but because you are genuinely interested in who they are, what they’re reading, and where they bought that delicious-looking falafel because you want one too. Forget about selling your book. Forget about your #%$% prize draw. Be silly if you want. Stay loose. Be the one person at the book fair who is in on the joke. People will be flocking to your booth. You will be fighting them off with bats.

Make me a deal

One preconception I didn’t even realize I had is that buying a book at a book fair is supposed to be cheaper than buying it in a store, or it should come with some sort of bonus. Maybe I’m just spoiled from too many trips to Vancouver’s Word on the Street festival, where you can buy an entire grab bag of new books from Arsenal Pulp Press for ten bucks. Either way, I found myself not just disappointed, but mildly put off when a book for sale cost its full cover price, without some added bonus to make up for it.

Part of the point of going to a book festival—at least, for me—is snagging a whole lot of books and magazines that are either cheaper than regular books or come with a fun incentive. Example: three back issues of a literary journal for $10, new book comes signed by supremely engaging author who has brightened your day with her delightful banter, buy all three of supremely engaging author’s books for $30 instead of $14 each, etc. etc.

If you are not offering festival goers a special deal or experience, why the heck should they buy a book from you instead of getting it cheaper on Amazon or not buying it at all?

Write a book people want to read

There is nothing more awkward than a book nobody wants to read (authors of hastily self-published memoirs of alien abduction, I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) No amount of free cupcakes or prize packs can change this.

So write something saleable. Be supremely engaging. Make it less awkward for all of us.

*

Have you ever been to a book festival? What makes you more likely to buy a book from a particular table? Does anyone actually enter those prize-pack draws? What’s your advice for Lesser-Known Debut Authors trying to make their way in the book festival world? 

gas in the trunk: why your conflict isn’t working (and how to fix it)

 One of the most cited reasons agents and editors give for declining manuscripts is “there wasn’t enough conflict” or “the stakes weren’t high enough.” For this reason, writers have learned to pile on conflict—checking for internal and external tensions in every scene, giving each character a backstory wound, defining clear and compelling story goals, etc.

But while these strategies can and do lead to stronger story telling, they can also backfire in confusing ways. Over the past six months, the freelance editor version of myself has noticed a peculiar phenomenon: manuscripts with loads of conflict that are nevertheless deadly boring.

“What’s going on here?” I found myself thinking again and again. “There’s so much drama, but I don’t give a tinker’s damn.” (No damns at all! Not a one!)

It turns out these writers had misplaced their conflict in various ways. It’s like keeping gasoline in the trunk of your car instead of putting it in the tank. Sure, you have gas, but it’s not doing you any good. Gas is only useful if it’s in the tank—and conflict sort of works the same way.

Here are some of the weird places writers mistakenly stash their story’s fuel.

1. Conflict pertains to every character EXCEPT the main character

One thing I’ve seen a lot of lately are outlines that look like this:

Bonnie McPhee is a thirty-year old osteopath whose life has just hit a wall. Her boyfriend’s sister is facing life in prison, her parents’ house just got foreclosed on, and her neighbor’s son got diagnosed with leukemia. Then she makes a startling discovery about her great-grandfather’s past.

This story has so much drama—prison! deadly diseases! financial crises! dark family secrets!—but the protagonist’s role in them is unclear. Where’s Bonnie in all this? What does she stand to gain or lose? Why do we care that she resolves a dark secret from her great-grandfather’s past? What about her?

Obviously, it is possible to craft a great novel in which the protagonist’s friends and family are embroiled in crises—maybe the whole point is to show your MC’s journey from being a doormat with no life of her own to refusing to let other people’s drama dominate her existence. But if that’s the case, you have to really show that journey and develop it just as much as you’ve developed the other crises; in other words, make it into a conflict.

2. Conflict is MC’s, but does not relate to overall story goal

Another common place where conflict tends to drift off course is in a novel’s subplots. Here’s an example:

Joe Kerp wants to be the first blind person in space, and is taking exhausting astronaut training sessions in his spare time. Along the way, his house gets broken into by a neighborhood thug, his mean coworker tries to get him fired, his girlfriend runs off with his best friend, and a freak snowstorm kills his prized plum trees.

Yes, our protagonist is subject to many trials, but they feel random and episodic—nothing connects to anything else. Because the conflicts don’t connect to the larger story, the scope of their impact is very limited: you get a string of minor setbacks, none of which have any game-changing effect on Joe’s goal of becoming an astronaut.

Now, if the neighborhood thug stole his top-secret astronaut files, and his girlfriend proceeds to run off with said neighborhood thug, and it turns out Joe is the center of an international space conspiracy, that’s a different story. In general, conflict works better when it is tightly to connected to the internal and/or external story goals.

3. Backstory wound does not relate to story present

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If your novel contains a zillion flashbacks to the day your protagonist’s little brother drowned in a swimming pool while your protagonist stood by, helpless, you’d better make sure that themes of guilt and helplessness come up in the present story’s conflicts, whatever those conflicts may be. Otherwise, all those flashbacks are going to fall into the category of drama for the sake of drama—which does not make for compelling storytelling.

Now, two more quick/self-explanatory ones:

4. Conflict fails to escalate or develop

You’d be amazed how many ostensibly high-stakes novel outlines look like this:

Ch. 1 There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 23 There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 49 There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 50 Bomb resolved! The End!

Sure, you can have a bomb on your cruise ship for the entire novel—but no matter how big the bomb is, you still need to find a way to raise the stakes. Maybe the only way to defuse the bomb is to throw all children under age ten overboard. Or to dump oil on the last remaining coral reef. Or…

Keep things moving. No conflict is “too big” to stagnate.

5. New conflicts are piled on instead of developing existing ones

You know how annoying it is when, instead of picking one movie on Netflix, somebody makes you watch the first ten minutes of fifteen different movies while they make up their minds? And just when you’re getting interested in one movie, they pull the plug on it and switch to a different one, and then a different one after that? So many manuscripts read like this:

Ch. 1: There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 2: Phone call from protagonist’s mother. Bank is reposessing the house!

Ch. 3: Protagonist discovers dark secret from great-grandfather’s past!

Ch. 4: Also, the ship’s captain and crew are all strung out on heroin, and protagonist is a former addict!

Ch. 5: Also, dead whales are floating up beside the ship—why?!?

Readers get tired of investing emotionally in plotlines that repeatedly get yanked out from under their feet. If you choose to put a certain conflict in your novel, commit to it.

*

I feel the need to mention that any one of these so-called conflict “problems” could work fabulously as conscious, well-executed artistic decisions or constraints. I could imagine an incredible, Waiting for Godot-style bomb-on-cruiseship story in which the conflict literally never escalates. Or a novel in the vein of Slacker in which there is no single conflict running through the entire story. My intention here is not to list “rules”, but rather observations on the most common failure modes in a certain type of manuscript.

Long story short: no matter how your novel is structured, make sure the gas is in the tank. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wasted energy…

gas in the trunk: why your conflict isn’t working (and how to fix it)

 One of the most cited reasons agents and editors give for declining manuscripts is “there wasn’t enough conflict” or “the stakes weren’t high enough.” For this reason, writers have learned to pile on conflict—checking for internal and external tensions in every scene, giving each character a backstory wound, defining clear and compelling story goals, etc.

But while these strategies can and do lead to stronger story telling, they can also backfire in confusing ways. Over the past six months, the freelance editor version of myself has noticed a peculiar phenomenon: manuscripts with loads of conflict that are nevertheless deadly boring.

“What’s going on here?” I found myself thinking again and again. “There’s so much drama, but I don’t give a tinker’s damn.” (No damns at all! Not a one!)

It turns out these writers had misplaced their conflict in various ways. It’s like keeping gasoline in the trunk of your car instead of putting it in the tank. Sure, you have gas, but it’s not doing you any good. Gas is only useful if it’s in the tank—and conflict sort of works the same way.

Here are some of the weird places writers mistakenly stash their story’s fuel.

1. Conflict pertains to every character EXCEPT the main character

One thing I’ve seen a lot of lately are outlines that look like this:

Bonnie McPhee is a thirty-year old osteopath whose life has just hit a wall. Her boyfriend’s sister is facing life in prison, her parents’ house just got foreclosed on, and her neighbor’s son got diagnosed with leukemia. Then she makes a startling discovery about her great-grandfather’s past.

This story has so much drama—prison! deadly diseases! financial crises! dark family secrets!—but the protagonist’s role in them is unclear. Where’s Bonnie in all this? What does she stand to gain or lose? Why do we care that she resolves a dark secret from her great-grandfather’s past? What about her?

Obviously, it is possible to craft a great novel in which the protagonist’s friends and family are embroiled in crises—maybe the whole point is to show your MC’s journey from being a doormat with no life of her own to refusing to let other people’s drama dominate her existence. But if that’s the case, you have to really show that journey and develop it just as much as you’ve developed the other crises; in other words, make it into a conflict.

2. Conflict is MC’s, but does not relate to overall story goal

Another common place where conflict tends to drift off course is in a novel’s subplots. Here’s an example:

Joe Kerp wants to be the first blind person in space, and is taking exhausting astronaut training sessions in his spare time. Along the way, his house gets broken into by a neighborhood thug, his mean coworker tries to get him fired, his girlfriend runs off with his best friend, and a freak snowstorm kills his prized plum trees.

Yes, our protagonist is subject to many trials, but they feel random and episodic—nothing connects to anything else. Because the conflicts don’t connect to the larger story, the scope of their impact is very limited: you get a string of minor setbacks, none of which have any game-changing effect on Joe’s goal of becoming an astronaut.

Now, if the neighborhood thug stole his top-secret astronaut files, and his girlfriend proceeds to run off with said neighborhood thug, and it turns out Joe is the center of an international space conspiracy, that’s a different story. In general, conflict works better when it is tightly to connected to the internal and/or external story goals.

3. Backstory wound does not relate to story present

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If your novel contains a zillion flashbacks to the day your protagonist’s little brother drowned in a swimming pool while your protagonist stood by, helpless, you’d better make sure that themes of guilt and helplessness come up in the present story’s conflicts, whatever those conflicts may be. Otherwise, all those flashbacks are going to fall into the category of drama for the sake of drama—which does not make for compelling storytelling.

Now, two more quick/self-explanatory ones:

4. Conflict fails to escalate or develop

You’d be amazed how many ostensibly high-stakes novel outlines look like this:

Ch. 1 There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 23 There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 49 There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 50 Bomb resolved! The End!

Sure, you can have a bomb on your cruise ship for the entire novel—but no matter how big the bomb is, you still need to find a way to raise the stakes. Maybe the only way to defuse the bomb is to throw all children under age ten overboard. Or to dump oil on the last remaining coral reef. Or…

Keep things moving. No conflict is “too big” to stagnate.

5. New conflicts are piled on instead of developing existing ones

You know how annoying it is when, instead of picking one movie on Netflix, somebody makes you watch the first ten minutes of fifteen different movies while they make up their minds? And just when you’re getting interested in one movie, they pull the plug on it and switch to a different one, and then a different one after that? So many manuscripts read like this:

Ch. 1: There’s a bomb on the cruise ship and we’re all going to die!

Ch. 2: Phone call from protagonist’s mother. Bank is reposessing the house!

Ch. 3: Protagonist discovers dark secret from great-grandfather’s past!

Ch. 4: Also, the ship’s captain and crew are all strung out on heroin, and protagonist is a former addict!

Ch. 5: Also, dead whales are floating up beside the ship—why?!?

Readers get tired of investing emotionally in plotlines that repeatedly get yanked out from under their feet. If you choose to put a certain conflict in your novel, commit to it.

*

I feel the need to mention that any one of these so-called conflict “problems” could work fabulously as conscious, well-executed artistic decisions or constraints. I could imagine an incredible, Waiting for Godot-style bomb-on-cruiseship story in which the conflict literally never escalates. Or a novel in the vein of Slacker in which there is no single conflict running through the entire story. My intention here is not to list “rules”, but rather observations on the most common failure modes in a certain type of manuscript.

Long story short: no matter how your novel is structured, make sure the gas is in the tank. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wasted energy…

shelfspy #1

I love inspecting other people's bookshelves. They occupy this funny space between something private and something on display. It almost feels like spying—but is it?

I took this picture of my current bookshelves this morning, with the intention of posting it here. I thought it would be easy—take a picture, post it, done—but I found myself wavering, wanting to edit it for the camera, remove some books and display others more prominently, show off some aspects of my reading life while downplaying others. 

Finally, I just took the picture without changing anything. This is what's on my shelf. More books cycle in and out of my house than I can keep track of, but these are the ones that have earned at least a temporary stay of execution from the used book store where most of my reading material ends up.

So spy away. And if you post a photo of your own unedited bookshelf on your own blog, leave link in the comments—I'd love to see it.