Besides the book dealers' room which I previously mentioned, Readercon 22 consisted of program items such as readings by authors, kaffeeklatches, panels, a meet-the-pros party, and the Bad Prose Contest. The latter is the highpoint of the con for me. The audience laughed themselves sick as they tried to figure out which reading was the actual ending to an epic of really bad fiction instead of endings made up by the panel members.
I enjoyed another good laugh at a "panel" which used improv to help writers with characterization, dialog, etc. It was a fresh approach to the subject and very well done. I also attended a rapid-fire reading done by several members of Broad Universe, an organization of which I'm a member, dedicated to promoting genre fiction written by women.
Another such panel was dedicated to helping authors write fight scenes. The female presenter was an expert in theatrical combat and demonstrated several types of fighting techniques. If you've never tried writing a fight scene, let me tell you it isn't easy! Many such scenes end up so laughable that they become fodder for the bad prose contest.
In yet another panel, we discussed the tendency in fantasy to feature romances between human females and "otherworldly" men: vampires, werewolves, beasts, elves, etc. Topics covered ranged from Twilight to Beauty and the Beast.
This is just a tiny sample of what went on at Readercon, and that was only the programmed features!
Maybe more later on.
MRTighe
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