So the night before the conference, there is a lot of individual parties- faculty, regional advisers, VIPS, etc. Well, uhh- wasn't invited to any of those, so headed around a large group of RAs gathering to head off to the pool and sat down in the hotel lobby near a pleasant looking woman by herself and started chatting- well don't know how to hold the suspense in a blog- but needless to say, Holly Black (click on her name to got to her website) of the Spiderwick Chronicles was sitting next to me and she was a little surprised I didn't know who she was, had to explain that to me- lovely lady and fun to chat with about having an artist verses writer brain and having to turn our images in our heads eventually into words. Got nervous when other writers started to come over in "ahhh" to just talk to her and one, even doing a mock bowing down!!Holly Black was one of the main speakers in the general session, attended by about 900 writers/illustrators and it was amazing in that every other speaker having a highly graphic power point presentation, all she had up there was a dry eraser board, which she did not use until the very last and here is what she drew to the "ohhs and ahhhs" and cheers of everyone else!
If you are going "uhhhh?" let me explain- think Star Wars- the big mega event starts first- the purple line, then in the first part of the book, slightly after that is in place- Luke starts off on his journey- blue line, they kind of meet at the top, she pointed out that the two lines could be very close together at that point, but then the resolution of the main event, Luke fighting the Empire and Darph Vader, has to be resolved before the main character, Luke can bring resolution to his own journey- I know Star Wars is a sequeal, prequel- but each story has an arc- and Holly Black explained it wonderfully, only using a white board and dry earser!!
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