An Overall Summary of the Bendigo Writer's Festival

All in all I have to admit I had quite a good time in Bendigo. I had the chance to meet a wide variety of lovely writers who were only to happy to answer any of the questions that I had. (Not that I had many beyond the general fangirl moments.) Each one of the authors was great to talk too and I loved the fact that I was in a relaxed environment and everything. And then I come to all the people I met within the class. I was amazed by the kindness of many of my fellow classmates. Everyone I came across always gave me a friendly smile and made me feel welcome. Finally I come to Sue. Not only did she make me feel welcome and took the time to make sure I understood everything that was expected of me for the subject but she even managed to convince me to open up a twitter account so I could tweet about all kinds of festival fun. Thank you so much for the wonderful weekend and such a great subject.

The Ethics Of Writing

The Ethics of Writing – Unlike most of the other panels I went to over the weekend I have to say this was the most disappointing of the lot. Anne Buist was quite the panellist and the best of the lot, I really wanted to hear more about her book Medea’s Curse and how she had to be careful about what she did and did not add to that story for fear of misleading the public or even causing ethical damage she was the only redeeming quality of the panel. When Doig got around to asking questions of the panel members, Peter Craven got so into answering the question that he went off topic, didn’t answer the question and I suspect was just talking for the sake of talking because he liked the sound of his own voice. I wanted to hear more about how if the author was not careful with what they wrote what kind of problems might they have to deal with. Although I have to admit I do want to go out there and get myself a copy of Medea’s Curse.

Fantastic!

Fantastic with Sean Williams, David Henley, Erica Hayes and Ilka Tampke. Having been quite pleased with the other panels that I went to that included Sean and Erica I knew that what I was going to get out of this panel would be interesting. Although in honesty I got more of a lecture on what the difference was between science fiction and fantasy. While that was something that most people needed explained to them I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t really talk more on the fantasy front. The focus was more on should we be giving the audience this stuff and are they smart enough to know the difference between reality and fiction. My answer is if they’re not smart enough to tell the difference then it’s their own darn fault and the blame shouldn’t be put on the writers shoulders. They discussed this idea of plausibility that should come up within a novel. The story must have the sense of being real even though it clearly isn’t.

What's Love Got To Do With It?

 Speakers – Jess Anastasi, Fleur Ferris, Alli Sinclair, Keri Arthur and Erica Hayes.  This time around for this blog I am just writing down things that I found interesting in this discussion.

In 2013 romance books sold for the most amount of money topping the best seller’s genre list at 1.1 billion dollars outselling all other genres by 50%. Romance is the hardest category to get published in. People want stories about people having relationships and that is why romance is still worldly popular. There is more to romance novels than just sex. You can’t exactly cut the romance plotline out of a paranormal romance book and still expect to have the same sort of story going on. The rule for romance is that love comes to all but that does not mean that your book has to have a happy ending. Most publishers these days are looking for books that have happily ever afters for now. Meaning that the true love may not last after all. Make sure your readers care for your characters.

The black moment – is where everything that can go wrong will go wrong and has gone wrong. And you have to make the readers believe that there is no way for the characters to get out of this alive. The bigger the black moment the bigger the payoff in the end must be.

Heart of the Matter

Anne Crawford and Helen O’Neill talked about their two respective books in the hopes of answering the question; what is harder to write about? A dog or an architect. Anne had released a very interesting novel about a dog-called Ralf who is a therapy dog. (And quite a big one at that, weighing in over 56 kilos.) Ralf rose to fame in 2012 when an article was found or mentioned on Dawn French’s facebook page. Helen’s book was bout Harry Sidler and is an autobiography of his life commissioned by his wife Penelope. (In all honesty I was sitting in this session confused because I don’t know who he is.) I must admit the conversation when it was about Ralf was quite riveting and interesting whereas when it came to Harry I was a little befuddled as to what was going on because I don’t know who he was. In the end I never did find out the answer to the previously posed question. 

Consult an Expert

The only way to really get published is to already have worked published. Whether it be small stories within literary journals or submitting your work to magazines and stuff for prizes. Make sure that you network and creating those connections may turn out to be very beneficial to you towards the end. Have an internet presence. I didn’t take many notes for this panel because I have already had many of this stuff already told to me when I first began to do my writing course. There wasn’t any new information that I really received.

Where Does Horror Come From?

Where horror comes from – There was a certain type of atmosphere in the old fire station when listening to the panellists talk about fears and how they used their fears in there own writing. Both Sean and Keri agreed that the reason they liked reading and writing about horror was because it was kind of a safe way to deal with it. That they themselves were not immediately confronted by what they were really afraid of and as such made the stories they read that much more thrilling. Each of the members mentioned what they were afraid of. Keith hates cotton wool, Sean hates spiders (which is fair enough in my opinion) and Keri hates ledges. They discussed an interesting theory whereby Keith asked them is there such thing as a universal fear. And the answer they came up with is really shocking. Most, if not all, people fear being left alone.

I am now going to go on and mention some of the things that they said that were really interesting. Keri hated the fact that in the old horror and fantasy books that the woman needed saving and sought to change that in her own writing (see the Riley Jenson Guardian Series for more.) People like to read about the fear knowing that they are completely safe from it. There is nothing wrong with using a trope (cliché?) so long as you do it well.