Antici– –pation
Last weekend I attended agent and writing lecturer Don Maass’s High Tension Workshop in Austin, TX. His whole “tension” idea is to make every paragraph in a work, of any type of narrative, so compelling a read that the reader can’t put it down. I found his strategies immensely interesting, partly because he presented them as a tool to be used wherever the writer sees fit. Some of them were based on anticipation or playing with reader expectations. Many others were rooted in the character, which is my favorite aspect of fiction.
Maass was a very engaging lecturer and knew his material thoroughly, using many examples from best-selling novels. Austin was also quite cool–we were at the north end of town, but I still found a cool brewpub called North by Northwest and a sampler six-pack of local ales from Blanco, TX. All in all, a damn fine weekend.
