Unconventional

With those responsible for such things wrestling with Bouchercon panels and having just returned from Edinburgh, with Harrogate still a very pleasant memory, I was thinking about some of the stuff that goes on at such events…

There are of course, crucial differences between Festivals and Conventions – writers are invited to festivals, put up, PAID, that kind of thing – but both feature interviews, staged conversations and panels, all played out before paying audiences, and all with varying degrees of success. So what determines whether a panel is well received? Last year, Barry Eisler, together with a bunch of others, put together a well thought out guide to appearing on a panel, with advice on everything from moderation etiquette to what you should wear. I’m not sure that fashion choices are hugely important (though gingham is probably unwise) but I’m damn sure that some of those best qualified to comment are the writers themselves.

We’re all (surely) heartily sick of seeing those events where one writer drones on for fifteen minutes while holding up his or her book or displaying promotional bookmarks/coasters/pencils/candles/whatever, before handing over to someone else who does more or less the same. Ditto, those panels where writers exchange pearls of wisdom in reverential tones while trying to explain what “noir” is for the zillionth time. Whether serious or more light-hearted, the PAYING audience does not want to feel as though they’re eavesdropping on a private exchange of views. This stuff, at some level, has to be entertaining, and some of those responsible for putting such things together seem to have forgotten this.

In recent years, myself and a like-minded bunch of writers have made our own, tentative suggestions as to what we might do at various Bouchercons. The topic up for discussion has varied, but has always been less important than the make-up of the panel itself. We all know one another well and, most importantly, have a rapport that with luck will come across during the discussion. Mostly, we have been lucky in that those putting the panels together (the fantastic Madison team included) have said “thanks a lot, that sounds great” and I think the resulting panels have gone down pretty well. On one notable occasion however, we had our wrists soundly slapped for daring to presume, for having the nerve to tell people their job, and each of us was summarily slotted into a piss-poor panel of the organiser’s choosing. Each of us sitting alongside people we’d met for the first time five minutes before, talking about something we didn’t care about, to an audience that could see it. It’s like being a bamboozled and hung-over actor, dropped into a play for which you haven’t learned the lines and, ultimately, nobody wins. Not the writer, not the organisers, and certainly not the paying audience.

Most writers pay their own way at conventions. Most have one chance to put themselves across to readers, and while I appreciate that it would be an organisational nightmare if every writer went where they liked, surely there is room for some input. All writers know for example that the moderator is the MOST important member of the panel and not the least. Moderators often seem slotted in willy-nilly and we’ve all seen panels that should have been great stuffed by a moderator who didn’t know what they were doing or who succeeded in pissing off his panellists within the first five minutes. The Connelly-Lehane panel anyone?

When I was programming Harrogate, I was keen to put people together in ways that would bring things out of them that might not have been seen before. To this end, I think a certain amount of creative conflict can be a good idea. Surely nobody wants to hear writers spend an hour saying how much they agree with what has just been said. I’m also a great believer in seeing two writers in conversation, as opposed to a more conventional interview. This worked brilliantly with John Harvey and Ian Rankin, as it did a year or so back at Bouchercon with Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke. People of this calibre know what they’re doing. Give ’em a beer or two and let ’em talk…

Socially, Bouchercon will always be a blast. I can’t wait for Madison and am looking forward to catching up with old friends and making new ones; to disgracing myself in the bar and laughing a lot. But there ARE other reasons for attending and it’s a long way to come if that hour or two in front of an audience doesn’t work out…

So what do people want to see at conventions? How can we move things forward in a way that will keep everyone happy” How can we ensure that writers don’t have wasted trips and that the legions of crime readers that attend such events are as entertained and stimulated by events as they deserve to be?