Lectureship comes to close

MANAGING EDITOR

[email protected]

link Staff photo: Alisa Boswell

From left, authors Connie Willis, Laura Mixon and Steven Gould talk literature with young writers Saturday morning at Portales Public Library. The writer’s workshop was the closing event for the annual Jack Williamson Lectureship.

The Jack Williamson Lectureship came to a close Saturday morning with a Young Writer’s Workshop at the Portales Public Library.

Visiting authors Connie Willis, Laura Mixon and Steven Gould spent the morning “talking shop” with young readers and writers, covering topics like the unreliable narrator, who “lies” to readers throughout a story, and adding mystery to a story.

WIllis used a book she is in the process of writing as an example to her audience of how to build a question or mystery at the start of a story.

She said in the first chapter of her book, she makes reference to “the EED” but never tells the reader in that first chapter what the EED is.

“If I didn’t explain everything else, the EED would have been just another annoying thing,” Willis said, adding that it’s important for authors to build up questions and mystery in their stories, but it is equally important that the questions one builds up be important and relevant.

Gould used a backpack metaphor to explain creating questions within a story.

“They (the reader) can handle a few things in the backpack, but after awhile, the backpack gets too heavy,” he said. “What is the EED? That’s a good amount of tension (to build up).”

“It is really important a character has a question at the start of the book,” Mixon added.

All three authors said the question or mystery does not have to dominate the entire plot of a story. It just needs to be an immediate element to grab the reader’s attention.

“Just enough to make you uneasy,” Gould said.

Former Eastern New Mexico University computer science Professor Jacob Gore of Denver came to the lectureship for the second time with his son Joey, 15.

Jacob and Joey said they are not writers, but they are big science fiction fans, so listening to the perspectives of others on science fiction plot is fun and enlightening for them.

Joey Gore said he learned a lot from the workshop, such as the importance of not over-explaining things in stories, a quality he “hates” in literature.

“(And) these sci-fi writers are funny,” Joey said.