Capclave 2008, Sunday Oct 19th.
Finally, I’m getting the Sunday Capclave details up. As you know, we were so busy on Sunday that we didn’t get to post.
We got up late. Packed up and got our bags and baggage out to the car. Double checked that we hadn’t missed anything in the room, and checked out. By this time, we’d missed the 10 a.m. panels and it was after the 11 a.m. ones had started, so we visited the ConSuite, talked to some friends and waited for the noon panels to start.
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Is Genre Good panel
Noon: Is Genre Good? There’s lots of talk about genres and breaking genre restrictions. Authors find themselves having to use different names in different parts of the bookstore. So why do we have genre? What do these lines do for good or for ill? What happens when writers ignore these lines or try to cross them?
Panelists: Jim Freund (moderator), Michael Dirda, Ted White, Dr. Charles Gannon.
Ted White gave an excellent overview of how genre distinctions came to be used. He started where publishers would just have stories and a magazine would have a mix of science fiction, horror, westerns, literary, poems, and so forth. Ending with the divisions that we have today in publishing and bookstores.
The panel talked about how genre is really a marketing tool. It tells bookstores where to put books and then readers can look for the books that they like in the categories they read. If you like romance you look in the romance section ….
While things have changed over the years and there are now classes in the university on science fiction and fantasy, it’s still not fully accepted as a field of study. If you are in academia and up for tenure you need to have a list of publications. If you’ve published in periodicals, even prestigious ones in Science Fiction Literary Study or Review — it has less weight then publications in the standard academic publications.
One benefit of genre is that there is an identified group of readers, you don’t have to explain things like FTL (faster than light) because the readers are already familiar with the tropes and accepted mechanics of the field.
Keeping Control of Your Characters panel
1 p.m. Keeping Control of Your Characters. How do you make sure your characters follow the plot you want without making the author’s hand too visible or your characters seem out of character? Do you follow your characters or your plot? Or do you not outline at all, just create characters and see where thy go?
Panelists: Resa Nelson, Dina Leacock, Brenda Clough. (The moderator didn’t show for this panel).
The panelists agreed that characters are plot. Everything that makes a fully-formed character — their backgrounds, education, profession, social interactions — effect their decisions and their decisions are what get them moving and reacting and that’s plot.
What is bad is characters as sock-puppets for the author. You should concentrate on story not getting your political or social agenda over to the reader. When you’re more interested in getting your world view across you should be writing non-fiction. That’s not to say that you can’t have your story convey your opinions and beliefs but if it doesn’t come out of the characters it’s not a good story.
The trick is to realize that when you’re having problems in a story and it won’t go the way you want it to — it may be that the characters you have developed wouldn’t do what you want. If you write for the characters that you’ve developed the story should flow smoothly. So, if you’re stuck, try to imagine what your characters would do or say in that situation (one at a time), you’ll probably find one of them just doesn’t fit that scene. You are the ruler of your story but if you develop characters that are fully developed you can’t cause them to act counter to their core — they must move according to how they are created and their background you gave them.
Sometimes the problem will arise from how you decided to tell the story (point of view). Maybe it needs to be changed. Maybe one character wants to narrate and since you’re not telling it that way it keeps stalling. The panelists all believed that authors have to learn to listen to their cast because characters are plot.
2 p.m. Who should we be reading? Who are the great writers of our day? Who is unfairly neglected? Panelists recommend books, stories, films and authors.
Panelists: Doug Fratz, Kathryn Cramer (moderator), Hildy Silverman, Lenny Bailes.
The panel decided that actually that they’d list writers who are good solid story tellers that are under-appreciated. The key is under-appreciated. Some of those listed are fairly well known but still the panel considered them under-appreciated. Here’s the list in no particular order:
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Terry Bisson (light SF with heavy themes)
Robert Reed (has short stories in almost every major SF/F magazine but little known)
Howard Hendrix/Howard V. Hendrix
Elizabeth Moon
Michael Flynn (The January Dancer)
Matt Ruff (Tiptree Award Winner)
Ken Macleod
Cory Doctorow (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town)
Neal Stephenson (The Baroque Cycle)
Grania Davis (The Rainbow Annals)
Avram Davidson
A.R. Morelan
Jim Butcher
Greg Egan
Mary Sangiovanni
Karl Schroeder
Steven Baxter
Nancy Kress
Greg Benford
Michael Swanwick
Gwyneth Jones
Gene Wolfe
James Patrick Kelly
Bruce Sterling
Robert Sheckley
Carol Emshwiller
Mary Rickert/M. Rickert
Lucius Shepard
Jeffrey Ford
Ted Chiang
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
The audience suggested: Jennifer Smith Stevens, David Marusek, Karen Joy Fowler, Howard Waldrop, Nick DiChario (Valley of Day-Glo), and Susan Palwick.
Movies mentioned were: Pan’s Labyrinth, Being John Malkovich, Momento, 13th Floor, Donny Darko, and Gattica.
After Con Review Session
3 p.m. Gripe Session. This is the session where convention attendees can come and tell the convention committee what worked and what didn’t.
We explained our problem with the smelly/perfumy room. There were a lot of suggestions to make the convention better next year (double index for the restaurant guide, find out if the hotel could have coffee/tea available in the bar after the restaurant closes for non-drinkers, more time between events to allow a trip to the bathroom or such so they don’t have to miss panels, suggested a clock on each panel table so the panelists could better check time, add in koffeeklatches if possible as well as the readings, a bit more time for some of the workshops such as the one for Reviewers, publicity, and how to get an agent, since they ran over, add a handout or something on the web for those who are attending their very first convention so they know about things old-timers take for granted, such as they can go to the parties on the party board, in the bio section list some of the books the authors have written, maybe have a break for lunch (again so attendees don’t have to miss panels.
Seems like everyone, including myself, had a great time at the convention. After the gripe session, we met some friends to sit and talk for awhile before going out to dinner in a big crowd. Finally drove into our driveway at about ten. As you know, I didn’t get Sunday written up. But now you have the full report from the convention. Check out the Capclave 2009 website for the dates for next year. The Guests of Honor are Harry Turtledove and Sheila Williams.