My weekend was filled with FOGcon and I’m pleasantly exhausted. It’s always a blast to go, reconnect with friends, and talk about speculative fiction and movies and other geekery. This year I also did karaoke for the first time and despite my pounding heart had quite a lot of fun.
Catherynne M. Valente and Kim Stanley Robinson were the Honored Guests, and they both were wonderful speakers, providing some great insights on the panels.
Panels
I enjoyed just about every panel I went to, but here are a few of my personal favorites.
Stories within Stories within Stories within Stories…, including panelists Elwin Cotman, Catherynne Valente, Phyllis Holliday, and Andrés Santiago Perez-Bergquist, with Sunil Patel as moderator. The panel discuses a number of topics relating to nested stories.
One especially interesting thought, for me, was the idea that nested stories reflect how life works, in that we are the center of our own stories and our lives are filled with interjections and asides, from the gossip we tell a friend to the stories we relate about ourselves to the wikipedia article we pause to look up in the middle of a conversation. We are constantly stopped by interjecting narrative and it was even suggested that we are the frame narrative for every book we read.
For writers, it was noted that nested stories can sometimes be an engaging way to slip in exposition, reveal layers to the world, or characterization. However, the story needs to be just as compelling as the main (frame) narrative. Since it is interrupting the narrative flow, the first line of the interjected story had better be better than what came before it so that it doesn’t turn readers away. It was also noted that some nested stories work better as fragments instead of complete tales.
Notable book recommendations:
The French Lieutenants Woman, by John Fowles
Was, by Geoff Ryman
Order of the Stick, comic by Rich Burlew
