On My Favorite Thing, Moderating
People who talk to people in front of other people are the luckiest people in the world
In Conversation With
Dear Readers,
[This is paid subscribers week, but I don’t like gatekeeping publishing info, so this week it’s free! ENJOY!]
It’s festival season, which makes me think of a topic I keep meaning to write about. My favorite thing. Well, after cats. And Diet Coke. And friends/some family. The way I feel when the bridge kicks in on “Treacherous”. The swell of the Jurassic Park score. The first time I read Never Let Me Go. A few other items, etc.
I first moderated a panel over ten years ago. I was terrified! I’d seen other authors do it and they always seemed like genius rock stars. I can’t imagine anything cooler than being a genius rock star myself. I couldn’t fathom I could be capable of it. But a friend recommended me, and I did it, and it went OK, and then I kept doing it, and it kept going better than OK.
I struggle a lot with feeling like maybe I am not good at very many things at all, but one thing I do not struggle with is feeling like I am good at moderating. I think I’m good at it! I think I’m great at it! I wish it was a tenable career path because I would spend my whole life researching and then having incredible conversations with cool people in front of other cool people — the dream!
People sometimes ask me about it, and I actually do think a lot about moderating. So here are my tips for moderators, if you’re new to it or are like, do you have advice for what works for you? Buried in this advice is also advice to being on a panel! Which may affect more of you!
I mean ALL of this with kindness and also a big dose of this is what best works for me! I never give advice that I think is like 100% applicable unless it’s like “don’t be a jerk” or “if you’re calling your book a romance the couple has to happily be together at the end, just call it something else if they don’t, this is fine, OK” or “if someone orders a Diet Coke, do NOT ask ‘is Diet Pepsi OK’”.
Thoughts on Moderation
Know the Material — At Least a Little. Look, sometimes you’re given four to six books to read for a panel, and unless you have those special half-alien powers from Out of This World where you can stop time for a bit, you can’t always do it!
But here’s what I do:
I read all the books if I can. If I can’t, I read a solid chunk at the beginning, and spend a little time online figuring out bigger picture themes, how the book is being marketed, etc. I jot all this down (either from the reading itself or the research). I do this for all the books first.
A strongly-worded note here: You may not get to finish all the books. You may not even get sent some of the books. It sucks. Your job as a moderator is to make sure NO ONE CAN TELL. Do not walk into the green room and say to only one author “Oh hey I didn’t read your book”. That author will feel like shit! (I know because it’s been me multiple times. Also, definitely don’t THEN turn to another author on the panel and say I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN AND HAVE READ ALL YOUR BOOKS MULTIPLE TIMES, which has also happened to me, and definitely DEFINITELY don’t then go on stage and ask mainly only that author questions omggggg look this stuff happens hi ho the glamorous life)
I never assume someone will have time to do a deep dive into every text. But make authors feel like you did, that you took the time and care—and never single someone out as the only one you didn’t read, even if it’s true! Honesty: not always the best policy.
Writing the Questions — Once I’m done with reading or doing at least cursory research, I try to find overlapping themes. Since I normally moderate YA and romance, these often present themselves easily: dealing with family pressure as one grows up, pursuing your dreams, falling in love for the first time, second-chance romances, etc. I put together some broad questions based on these themes, for everyone to answer.
Next, I think about what’s most interesting on a broad scale about each title. Every author gets a question about this! Note that during book festivals, most of the audience members will not have read every book; they may not have even heard of all the authors before! Therefore, I am careful to not get too specific. I might bring up a plotline or a specific character arc, but I don’t want to get into the weeds and make the audience feel left out or confused.
I also try to bring in all authors on each question. For example, if my specific-to-one-author-question is something like, “I love the beautiful setting in your novel, how did you go about building this, and where did you draw inspiration from?” (See? I would probably make this sliiiiightly more specific for an actual event, but mainly I’m just queueing an author up to get to talk about her setting, her book, the way she’s inspired, etc.), after that author answers, I would open it up for the rest of the panel: “And for the rest of you, how did setting and world-building play into your novels?”
Finally, there are broad writing and publishing questions that audiences almost always like to hear, and if I don’t ask them, they will ask them during the audience Q&As. Because as authors we’ve been asked a million times about where we get our ideas, what our writing process is like, and what our path to publication was like, I try to ask these questions in ways that feel as fresh/interesting as possible. But at the end of the day, even if we think we talk about this stuff a lot, IT’S INTERESTING! People like hearing about it, and I also find that as we talk about it onstage, WE ALL LIKE EACH OTHER’S STORIES! So don’t be afraid of writing the tried and true questions!
I also write way more questions than I need so that I can choose questions that fit the vibe of the moment, or if people inadvertently end up answering another question with their answer to a previous question. Having more than enough questions makes my brain feel taken care of, and I have far less anxiety onstage when I have that big-ass list of questions with me.
Actually Moderating — So now that all your prep work is done and it’s the day of the show, y’all, it’s your time to shine to let others shine even harder. In my view, I am thoroughly in charge of everyone having a nice time: the authors, the attendees, the people who get feedback later. So I am gonna work my ass off to make sure everyone has a nice time.
Though sometimes I’m more
Maybe your role models are alive/not in prison for crimes they most certainly did do! GOOD FOR YOU.
Seriously, though, whatever your vibe is, that’s your vibe. GOOD!
My goal beforehand/in the green room is to make the panelists feel comfy and taken care of. Whatever nerves they have, that’s fine, but there’s no worries as far as I am concerned. I am vocal about the fact that my job is gonna be to make everyone look like a freaking rockstar. (This can’t, like, fix someone’s stage fright, but just letting people know that you are handling something can take a little pressure off, I think.)
On stage my whole purpose is to entertain and make the authors look great. My biggest way of doing this (this will differ for every moderator, of course, we all have our vibes and goals) is to work hard to make this less of A Panel Discussion and more of A Fun Conversation. This is why I generally will not send out questions beforehand. I think this often leads to folks memorizing well-phrased answers like little presentations, instead of just three to five humans onstage having a sparkling conversation. This is why I also tend not to tell the panelists what order to speak in, since I don’t do that in real conversations UNLESS I KNOW SOMEONE SPECIFICALLY HAS SOMETHING AMAZING TO TELL US and then I will point dramatically to them. Also if someone isn’t getting a chance to speak or is a little shyer, I will make sure they get a chance! I’m keeping an eye!
Finally, during Q&A moderation, it is WELL AND GOOD to tell the audience you are not taking any “this is more of a comment than a question”s (though I do permit “this is more of a compliment than a question”s!). I have also multiple times been in the position of having one Very Well-Known Author on the panel and other people who are more mid-list or emerging, and if I get more than one question only for that author, I will nicely say, “that’s a great question you should ask in the signing line, but right now I’d love to get questions for all four of the authors” and people are always really nice about it, and it keeps the conversation onstage more even (and often more interesting for attendees too!).
FINALLY finally MOST IMPORTANTLY??, be careful of skirt length. There are some wildass chairs out there at wildass angles, y’all. Pants/midis/maxis only in this house (this house is my human body).
xoxoAmy
The other day I couldn’t remember the character name of Joe Gideon and all my mind could conjure up was Mob Mosse.
Amy, I saw you moderate at the LA Times this year. You were amazing, just like every time I have watched you! I love your advice on moderating.