This panel wrapped up a very busy Saturday for me at Norwescon as I moderated a panel on writing effective and believable dialogue with fellow authors and panelists Tori Centanni, Cymbric Early-Smith, Carol Berg, Patrick Swenson and the inimitable Simon R. Green.  Among other topics we chatted about the differences between spoken and written dialogue, differentiating character voices, and the importance of reading and listening to dialogue, and I admit that I hadn’t expected the panel to be as funny (for me and, I think, the audience) and informative as it turned out to be.

I wasn’t expecting attendance for this panel to be overwhelming, but in fact the room was standing room only as Steven Barnes, Susan DeFreitas, Matt Youngmark, Mike Selinker and I spent almost an hour tackling the finer points of plot structure: different forms, modes, uses, how and why we care so much about plot, does it override the characterizations, and so on. As it turned out, the lively audience and panelist interaction made this one of my favorite panels from the 2015 edition of Norwescon.

This was an interesting panel on avoiding the dreaded pitfall of “putting things off until some indeterminate later time,” a particular problem for authors.  Nina Post, Jennifer Brozek, Stephanie Herman, Kevin Scott, Harold Gross and I (pretty sizable group for an hour long panel) talked quite a bit about why we tend to procrastinate and strategies for getting back on track–along with some fairly serious discussion on listening to your best inner voice, not your “you’re terrible and everyone knows it” one.