BSAB Sunday with Amie and Peter
BSAB Sunday kicked-off with a pitch party in the window bays beside The Edge auditorium. Hopeful authors and illustrators queued up to pitch their ideas to four editors and one agent: Cathy Vallance (UQP), Meg Whelan (Affirm Press), Marisa Pintado (Hardie Grant), Kristy Bushnell (Freelance editor), and Annabel Barker (Agent). The queues were long, but spirits were high. A lot of positive feedback flowed, so there were smiles all round at the end with only a tinge of regret that time was up.
The conference then split into two strands: writing and picture books. The writing strand was further broken up. During the first half of the day, Amie Kaufman ran the session. She opened by talking about ‘What is Voice’. This is clearly a strength of Amie’s writing. She expanded our thinking into ways we can think about voice to the depth of why a character might make a word choice and how. She said that if our characters are going to sound different, they need to be different. Amie explained that the type of life your character lived gives the edge to their voice. During your novel, she stated that the voice of your character may also change due to their experiences and character development. Amie explained we need three things for our characters: voice building, world building and character building. She went on to give many examples to build all three and give depth to your novel. Amie talked about the subplot and how it should shed light on the story arc of your main character and not necessarily its own thing.
Peter Carnavas took the second half of the day. His topic, Writing Stories With Heart, was all about getting to the heart of the story. He started by giving us the formula for writing a story. His clear concise style was easy to follow and implement into our own writing. Then, Peter went through the same structure linking it to the Hero’s Journey plot structure. He encouraged us to have one simple idea to underpin our story.
With some writing prompts, we were able to workshop what our own stories could be about. He asked us to consider if our character was advocating for change or resisting change. He then went through some stories and asked us to pick which direction the author had taken the character. Peter stated that people often cry when they read his books, but they are not sad books. He said he achieves this by always bringing something to brighten the reader’s day. He asked us to consider what ordinary things do we have that are important to that character. He showed us some objects: an old poetry book, a typewriter, and a musical instrument. We were encouraged to interact with the items and consider how they might be important to a character. He encouraged us not to overexplain or be afraid of short sentences.
The calibre of the two speakers was outstanding. So much insight was given into the craft of writing with practical examples.
Those who returned their badges went into a draw to receive a prize of Amie’s book ‘The World Between Blinks’. Peter picked out the lucky winner. That’s a wrap for now, but can’t wait to do it all over again in 2026.
Written by Danielle Freeland Photos supplied by Danielle Freeland
Book Links SoryArts Brisbane is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
