Mass All-Stars

[ellen_kushner]

And so concludes Day One of the Mass(achusetts) All-Stars 2-day  Ad Hoc workshop, in which Our Gang convenes whenever someone gets a novel draft done, and "sits on it," subjecting it to intense peer scrutiny and analysis.

Today was Holly Black's stunning & scrumptious The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.  Nothing beats talking Writing with her and Sarah

Comments

[la_marquise_de_]

Those are excellent lines.

[dawn_metcalf]

Sounds like an absolute blast & those are some kick-tush titles!

[omnia_mutantur]

I read this at first as the advance reading copy of reader desire. Which seemed delightfully recursive.

[ellen_kushner]

You justabout made me snork my breakfast!

Now I'll have to use that one, too: I've definitely had my eye on a few ARCs of Desire this year!

[issendai]

The Arc of Reader Desire

Ooh! Could you elaborate?

[ellen_kushner]

Oh, dear; I was afraid someone was going to bring that up...! ;)

[heartofoshun]

Cool shit ALWAYS trumps narrative tension for me. But then I am one of those people who read for the pleasure of the journey not to reach a destination. (I think there are a lot more of us out there than publishers are willing to admit.) Whoops sorry--you hit a nerve!

[ellen_kushner]

You say that like it's a *bad* thing...!

[heartofoshun]

I am probably not making any sense to anyone but myself. I was thinking of the assumption that one needs to always present the reader with a breathless tightly-plotted narrative, as though the protagonist is forever being chased by the hounds of hell, vs. the satisfaction to be found in a more character-driven leisurely way of telling a story, which is redolent with back story and foreshadowing. I sense a pressure upon writers to provide the literary equivalent of car chase after car chase vs. providing the reader with the opportunity to discover layers of complexity within the characters. I am less interested in what happens than who it is happening to. That to me is cool shit over narrative.