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?