Here's my plans for Conflux this October long weekend.
If you're going to be at Conflux then these are the places you can catch me; if not, then there's still plenty of chances to say hello or get books signed as I go out to Dymocks stores!
If you aren't going to be in Canberra this long weekend, then why not follow things on Twitter? I'm going to be Twittering live at bookstore appearances and, if it's true to form, will have plenty of amusing tales from the shopping centres!
Look for @DuncanLay if you're not already following me.
Not on Twitter?I'll also be updating things on the blog and Facebook, so jump on there if you like.
Friday September 30
11.30am - Dymocks Belconnen
1.45pm - Dymocks Central Canberra
5.30pm - Media franchise panel
Saturday October 1
10am: Starting The Journey panel
11.30am: Dymocks Tuggeranong
2.30pm: Author-in-residence at Conflux
3.30pm: Writing With Dinosaurs panel
4.30pm: Mass Signing at Conflux (perfect for a chat as there'll probably be far more authors than readers!)
Sunday October 2
10am: Fantasy Accoutrements panel (where I'll be unveiling my new Goblinator 6000 Mark II ... )
11am: Kaffeeklatsche
12.30pm: A reading of The Radiant Child
Hope to say hello to as many people as possible!
My name is Duncan Lay and I'm the author of the Australian best-selling fantasy trilogies, The Dragon Sword Histories and the Empire Of Bones. I am now with Momentum Books (Pan Macmillan) and my new series, The Last Quarrel is out in eBook and print. Book 2, The Bloody Quarrel, is coming out in December 2015/Jan 2016 in eBook and will be in print later in 2016. Head over to my website, www.duncanlay.com for more!
Showing posts with label Conflux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conflux. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Conflux Part 2: Fantasy literature
THE second panel I appeared on at Conflux was a tricky one, to say the least. With a rather nebulous title - fantasy as literature, moderator Jenny Blackford, myself and Sabrina de Souza attempted to tackle something that had little to grasp hold of!
Beyond suggesting that fantasy is, in fact, the bedrock of Anglo-Saxon literature, using as my supporting evidence the epic poem Beowulf and the tradition of bards and skalds, we were fighting to come up with anything controversial. Sadly that (my effort) did not stir the passions of the audience, given they were almost all fantasy fans and quite happy to agree!
Jenny, a judge on the World Fantasy Awards, had kept us going with some discussion but we were running out of steam.
Luckily for us, panellist and fellow Voyager author KJ (Katie) Taylor (The Dark Griffin) arrived. Her entrance was a little late due to Daylight Savings but was perfectly timed. Her energy and outspoken enthusiasm rescued a panel that was threatening to struggle.
We also all agreed with KJ, when she said fantasy is unfairly maligned and that fantasy was a genre of almost unlimited possibilities (although it has plenty of bad fantasy efforts).
But we were also saved with the best question from the audience I heard all weekend (admittedly there were many panels I missed).
Christian Tambling, self-published author of Dragon Moon, asked if there were any boundaries you could not cross in fantasy.
This had us all thinking hard.
My take came back to my favourite saying - get the characters right and people will be more inclined to follow them on the journey you are writing, no matter how extraordinary it grows to be.
The only barrier I like to avoid is the limit of normal human ability. If you have heroes slaughtering hundreds of soldiers, or able to far surpass normal physical efforts, then you may well have a problem.
Readers will check their disbelief at the door when they crack the cover of a fantasy book, allowing you to indulge the fantasy of magic, mythical creatures and the like - but having people do the impossible without even an attempt at a logical explanation is what gives the genre a bad name.
What do you think?
Beyond suggesting that fantasy is, in fact, the bedrock of Anglo-Saxon literature, using as my supporting evidence the epic poem Beowulf and the tradition of bards and skalds, we were fighting to come up with anything controversial. Sadly that (my effort) did not stir the passions of the audience, given they were almost all fantasy fans and quite happy to agree!
Jenny, a judge on the World Fantasy Awards, had kept us going with some discussion but we were running out of steam.
Luckily for us, panellist and fellow Voyager author KJ (Katie) Taylor (The Dark Griffin) arrived. Her entrance was a little late due to Daylight Savings but was perfectly timed. Her energy and outspoken enthusiasm rescued a panel that was threatening to struggle.
We also all agreed with KJ, when she said fantasy is unfairly maligned and that fantasy was a genre of almost unlimited possibilities (although it has plenty of bad fantasy efforts).
But we were also saved with the best question from the audience I heard all weekend (admittedly there were many panels I missed).
Christian Tambling, self-published author of Dragon Moon, asked if there were any boundaries you could not cross in fantasy.
This had us all thinking hard.
My take came back to my favourite saying - get the characters right and people will be more inclined to follow them on the journey you are writing, no matter how extraordinary it grows to be.
The only barrier I like to avoid is the limit of normal human ability. If you have heroes slaughtering hundreds of soldiers, or able to far surpass normal physical efforts, then you may well have a problem.
Readers will check their disbelief at the door when they crack the cover of a fantasy book, allowing you to indulge the fantasy of magic, mythical creatures and the like - but having people do the impossible without even an attempt at a logical explanation is what gives the genre a bad name.
What do you think?
Conflux: Part 1
My first panel at Conflux was the Secret Of Writing Humour - and I feared it was to be no laughing matter. Humour is such a subjective business, I was worried what would be said and if I would end up looking like the joke.
After all, The Wounded Guardian has a fair bit of humour (at least, it was intended to do so, and plenty of people have said they found it funny) and it is something I enjoy having in my writing. I find it breaks the mood if things are getting too heavy and can have multiple benefits.
But I needn’t have worried too much. Moderator Richard Harland (who’s funny in the nicest possible sense) and fellow panellist Val Toh made it easy for us to relax.
My theory (as I told the audience) is humour flows from the characters. Get the characters right, get them real enough that people can visualise them and then put them into situations where humour can arise. You don’t need snappy one-liners, which, after all, often fall flat!
The perfect example, of course, is Fawlty Towers, where such “unfunny” lines as “Don’t mention the war” are almost guaranteed to have people in stitches, even though on paper they don’t look like much. It is the character that gives life to the words so, if you have strong characters, you can have them generating plenty of humour.
In-jokes and pop culture references, we all agreed, are not easy to make funny - and can easily date, so should be stayed away from.
My thought was to have no more than 10 per cent of the book as humour, to use it sparingly - unless of course you aspire to be the next Terry Pratchett, in which case you either need no advice from me or are doomed to failure. (Sadly the latter is probably more likely).
Another little trick is to have “sidekick” characters, whose purpose, at least initially, seems to be to provide light relief - but if then they get swept up into the action (and, hopefully, tragedy) it has even more of an impact.
One thing both Richard and I felt very strongly about was the need to assess your characters as you write - if someone placed for humour then turns out to be particularly interesting, then give them more. Keep going with them, because sometimes they can take your story in new directions and give it an extra dimension. Sometimes characters demand to be given more of the story - and you should give it to them!
TWG, with a peerless warrior forced to look after a small girl and an ex-bandit without a filter between brain and mouth, was designed to have humour breaking up the action.
So, for me, the secret of writing humour is giving your story strong characters and putting them into incongruous situations.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong!
After all, The Wounded Guardian has a fair bit of humour (at least, it was intended to do so, and plenty of people have said they found it funny) and it is something I enjoy having in my writing. I find it breaks the mood if things are getting too heavy and can have multiple benefits.
But I needn’t have worried too much. Moderator Richard Harland (who’s funny in the nicest possible sense) and fellow panellist Val Toh made it easy for us to relax.
My theory (as I told the audience) is humour flows from the characters. Get the characters right, get them real enough that people can visualise them and then put them into situations where humour can arise. You don’t need snappy one-liners, which, after all, often fall flat!
The perfect example, of course, is Fawlty Towers, where such “unfunny” lines as “Don’t mention the war” are almost guaranteed to have people in stitches, even though on paper they don’t look like much. It is the character that gives life to the words so, if you have strong characters, you can have them generating plenty of humour.
In-jokes and pop culture references, we all agreed, are not easy to make funny - and can easily date, so should be stayed away from.
My thought was to have no more than 10 per cent of the book as humour, to use it sparingly - unless of course you aspire to be the next Terry Pratchett, in which case you either need no advice from me or are doomed to failure. (Sadly the latter is probably more likely).
Another little trick is to have “sidekick” characters, whose purpose, at least initially, seems to be to provide light relief - but if then they get swept up into the action (and, hopefully, tragedy) it has even more of an impact.
One thing both Richard and I felt very strongly about was the need to assess your characters as you write - if someone placed for humour then turns out to be particularly interesting, then give them more. Keep going with them, because sometimes they can take your story in new directions and give it an extra dimension. Sometimes characters demand to be given more of the story - and you should give it to them!
TWG, with a peerless warrior forced to look after a small girl and an ex-bandit without a filter between brain and mouth, was designed to have humour breaking up the action.
So, for me, the secret of writing humour is giving your story strong characters and putting them into incongruous situations.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong!
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