Here is the first in a series of upcoming panel take-aways from last weekend’s LibertyCon. They shouldn’t be considered comprehensive by any means, but they do sum up some of the things I found most interesting about various panels.
Writing a Series: Keeping a Reader Hooked Although this panel did seen to have difficulty staying on topic, it did offer some helpful insights into serialized storytelling. One of the more interesting ones was offered by Eric Flint. Forgive the paraphrasing, but he essentially stated if you approach a publisher with a six book series, the publisher will assume that you don’t know how to end a book. Ideally, you should approach a publisher with a book that could be expanded into a series if successful. Several panelists visibly agreed. Some may have disagreed, but they didn’t vocalize it.
However, everyone on the panel did vocalize an agreement on a cliffhanger ending: Don’t do it. They’re cheap and prove you have to resort to gimmicks to keep things interesting. My problem isn’t with the idea, but with the generality. It doesn’t hold true to every genre. I’m not going to say anything else about this topic for now because I think it’s worthy of its own post.
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