Aha. We should make that panel happen somewhere. It would be awesome.
Definitely the moderator is a big part of it. (And the panelists, and the audience, and...) It's sort of a closed system--panelists, audience, moderator--if you affect one part, the effects ripple through all of them.
This is a little rambly, but... another factor is expectations, I think. Because the panels you're talking about seem to be "talks with awesome pretty famous YA writers"--so the writers are expected to talk about their books and maybe go off that a little if people ask things. Whereas at Fourth Street and other cons I've been to it was more "let's talk about YA in general", and people who go "well, in MY book..." are assumed to be egotistical.
(I really am enjoying your anecdotes of panels you've seen. Hearing authors talk about their work can really be affecting. It's also great when there's a writer on the panel you haven't heard of and over the course of the panel you decide you have to find their work.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-06-25 12:01 am (UTC)Definitely the moderator is a big part of it. (And the panelists, and the audience, and...) It's sort of a closed system--panelists, audience, moderator--if you affect one part, the effects ripple through all of them.
This is a little rambly, but... another factor is expectations, I think. Because the panels you're talking about seem to be "talks with awesome pretty famous YA writers"--so the writers are expected to talk about their books and maybe go off that a little if people ask things. Whereas at Fourth Street and other cons I've been to it was more "let's talk about YA in general", and people who go "well, in MY book..." are assumed to be egotistical.
(I really am enjoying your anecdotes of panels you've seen. Hearing authors talk about their work can really be affecting. It's also great when there's a writer on the panel you haven't heard of and over the course of the panel you decide you have to find their work.)