Holly Black Keynote! Basics of Fantasy - The Sequel!

The distance of fantasy lets us address issues in a way that we (and our readers) can process it.

Like anger. If you have a werewolf, who is helpless with rage, that's a metaphor that fantasy lets you work with...

On the difference between Horror and Fantasy:

Fantasy contains the Numinous (that was Holly's word in the word parade!)

Something at which you tremble and are fascinated by at the same time.

Fantasy contains this combination of FEAR and AWE. Horror is fear and disgust.

On setting up the magic of your fantasy world:

There's day logic and night logic

day logic is almost like science - it works the same way every time

with night logic the rules are seldom spelled out. We (the readers) don't exactly know how it works. It's hard to write, but it's very satisfying because it contains the numinous.

Figure out which kind of magic your world has. The Magical society has its own rules. So does the magic!

Wow - now she's drawing out "Holly Black's Theory of Fantasy Plotting"...

so much good stuff!

Posted by Lee Wind

Holly Black Keynote! Basics of Fantasy - A Live-Blog, Book One

Holly's speech is called "Examining the Strange: The Basics of Fantasy Writing"

She's talking about her affinity for fantasy, especially her childhood, where

Holly's mother told her to never astral-project, because if you leave your body empty, something else could get in there!

(This got a Huge Laugh.)


And if we want to write fantasy, Holly exhorts us to READ fantasy! But not JUST fantasy. We need to read broadly. Widely.

As children's book writers, Holly believes we are in a genre-less genre, because kids don't know about the boundaries of genre, and that enables us to mix and meld and experiment!

And that fantasy has something amazing that makes it unique...

To find out what, check out the Holly Black Live-Blog Trilogy, Part Two!


Posted by Lee Wind

Holly Black: How to Be Good Critiquers and Critique Partners

A few of Holly’s critique group tips:

• Achieve a balance between work and social—have fun but get the job done (says one attendee). Just don’t let the social take over.
• A critique group shouldn’t be scary or intimidating.
• In critiquing you have to be generous and willing to give away good ideas, but also work to find the right idea that works for your critique partners. You will inevitably influence each other, consciously or not.
• Everyone comes to groups with different strengths and it’s great to cultivate those strengths and use different critique partners for different things.
• You may be in groups where member have varying degrees of success. It can be hard as relationships have to adjust to this.
• Your job as a critique partner is helping make your partner write the story they want to tell.

Holly Black: How to Be Good Critiquers and Critique Partners

Fantasy author Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles) wanted to do a session on critiquing because she feels she wouldn’t be an author today if it wasn’t for her critique partners.

By show of hands, about half of room is in critique groups. Holly is talking about the difference between critique groups and critique partners. Her critique group meets to go over a finished draft of a novel. (The meet 3 or 4 times a year.) She relies on her critique partners on a more day-to-day basis with work-in-progress issues.

Your critique group doesn’t have to necessarily write exactly what you like, but they should have the same taste in book—otherwise they won’t get you, Holly says. You really have to love each other’s writing or you won’t work as critique partners.

Holly often feels like she’s writing for her critique partners—they’re the audience she knows.

She ways there’s no one “in charge” of her critique group. “Our group is chaotic. We meet and we have no pattern to what we do.” (Note: Holly mentioned that sometimes the problem with critique groups is that you start out with everyone being equal, but when problems arise, there’s no “one charge” to deal with it, then people leave or groups splinter off.)

SCBWI TEAM BLOG Keynote Speaker Interviews

Today blogger Lee Wind offers a great interview with Holly Black, one of the terrific keynote speakers for the upcoming SCBWI Annual Summer Conference. Also check out Paul Yoo's interviews with keynoters Ingrid Law and Betty Birney. There will be more interviews with SCBWI conference keynote speakers from TEAM BLOG between now and the event. (Of course we'll link to them when they're posted.)

And for those of you who still may be thinking about registering for the event but haven't yet, read Suzanne Young's post featuring feedback from three first-time conference goers.

Also be sure to follow SCBWI TEAM BLOG on Twitter (because when we're not blogging, we'll be tweeting):

• To follow Alice Pope on Twitter, click here.
• To follow Jaime Temairik on Twitter, click here.
• To follow Jolie Stekly on Twitter, click here.
• To follow Paula Yoo on Twitter, click here.
• To follow Suzanne Young on Twitter, click here.
• To follow Lee Wind, click here.
  
• You can also follow SCBWI by clicking here, where you'll find tweets linking to all the SCBWI Conference Blog posts.