Narrativity offers a single track of programming, so ideas can carry through from one panel to the next and the conversation continues all weekend — and our panels are participatory events, so the audience is as much a part of the conversation as the panelists. Panels run from 11:00 am Friday through about 6:00 pm Sunday. In the evenings, we’ll have all the function space available for music, conversations, games, or other activities that take your fancy. If you’d like to organize something specific, let us know!

Welcome to programming planning for Narrativity 2026: Six Impossible Things! Want to know what would make my task impossible? Programming this con without your feedback. Below you’ll see some of the ideas we have for this year’s programming. Let me know what panels you would be interested in attending. And just as importantly, let me know what panels you would be interested in being on. You can email me directly, comment on our Facebook group, or in the Discord.
Oh, and do you have an idea for what could be an amazing panel and don’t see it here? Let me know that, too.

As we get things narrowed down, this page will be updated with more complete descriptions of the ideas below. Come back often! -Erin Shanendoah

Worldbuilding

• Creating conflict via lack of understanding
• Idioms
• ‘Twas Brillig, and the Nouns Were Verbed – Language grows and evolves, and writers often push it — off a cliff? Whether it’s neologisms or word-forms that don’t exist but should, what does a creative approach to vocabulary and usage bring to our stories? Is there a point where poetic license morphs into gibberish? How slithy does a tove have to be before you’ll gyre along with it?
• Postal Service
• Drinking culture
• Cost

… Solves Everything

• Signalling the reader
• Laws of YOUR universe

Tools

• How do the rules of poetry lend themselves to storytelling
• Cutting as a tool
  Beats & dramatic structure
• Using storytelling games to tell your story
• High-level creativity – finding the tools to create
• Give yourself permission to write the worst possible slop you can write
• Theories of storytelling (heros journey, heroines journey, carrier bag, etc)
• Oral storytelling
• Brainstorming for one – How to ask the right questions, generate solutions, and get yourself unstuck when you don’t have anyone else to bounce ideas off of. (This is the latest iteration of “teach Liz how to do plot”, as I currently suspect that my plot problem may really be a brainstorming problem.)
• How do you figure out Step 2 (or 12, or 217)? – Brainstorming tricks for when you know where your story’s going, but not how it gets there.
• Shielding the Spark, Fanning the Flame – You can’t always dive into working on a story when the initial idea strikes (though it’s nice work if you can get it). What are your tricks for keeping the excitement of a new idea alive when it has to wait on the day job, real life, other works in progress, etc.?

Craft

• Advice from new writers
• Does hard writing make hard reading
• POV/Tense in a story
• Middles (HELP)
• What’s this thing Liz keeps talking about that is obviously not called “Plot”
• How do you get the audience to trust you?
• Is Theme a Thematic Question
• When NOT to write
• How to make your setting real
• Extending the series – You’ve tied up all the loose ends. The story you were telling is done. But your editor/publisher/audience wants more! Do your main characters have a new adventure? Do you skip a generation? Find a tangential character to focus on? How do you give the audience what they want without messing up your original story?

The Author

• There’s no such thing as lanes – Discuss why we think it’s important to have no prior restrictions on ideas or their expression, and what benefits we think art gains from exploring uncomfortable and even alarming territory.
• How to love your own work in public
• how author worldview impacts reader experience
• Does the author get to speak?
• Is it possible for the author to be too present in the work
• How do I tell if I am lying in my art
• This is what you call feminism? – Politics in storytelling
• Writing an effective author bio
• The Aging Writer – All-nighters leave you wrecked the next day. Your eyes can’t take long sessions staring at the computer screen. And what the hell is the word for that…? Tips, tricks, and sympathy for continuing to write while less-young. (And for younger writers to mitigate the ravages of time. It gets us all in the end….)

The Reader

• How to give effective feedback
• Industry vs Audience: Who are we writing for?
• Writing to Market: Yes, No, and How
• How do we choose what to read
• What does the reader owe the author

The Characters

• Writing unsympathetic protagonists: How far will you go – Serial killers, cannibals, actual demons. What are the perils — and pleasures — of writing a character that some would consider beyond the pale? Where do you draw the line between pushing boundaries and pushing away your audience?
• Where do your characters come from
• How do you get your characters to talk to you?

Meta

• Location, Location, Location – how where you are feeds, starves, and otherwise influences your writing
• Road Trips As Creative Fuel – Some Narrativitists find a long stretch of open highway tremendously relaxing and stimulating to the creative brain. Others may look to a busy coffeeshop for their storytelling stimulus, while still others may long for that classic garret or isolated cabin. How does where you are affect what you write, and what role does getting away from it all play? Let’s also talk about how the space you live in affects mood and creativity: Is a clean, uncluttered desk the sign of a sick mind, or is mess and chaos the mind-killer?
• Non-linear storytelling – adding layers
• Prequels – the good, the bad, and the ugly
• What does the author owe the story vs what does the author owe a series
• Collaboration: Why Do It? And Why Not?
• Collaboration between a plotter & a pantser – can it work
• Pre-Joycian Fellowship vs Escapism: Daggers Drawn
• Translator as “author” – How the choices of a translator impact the story
• Stories about storytelling/storytellers
• Is scifi just other genres in a trench coat
• Managing mutliple writing projects
  Genre jumping
• Picking what to read based on influencing/not influencing what you’re writing
• Writing for writers, writing for readers (can we Bugs Bunny it)

Have your own idea for a panel next year? Want to be a panelist? Please contact our Paragon of Programming, Erin Shanendoah, and let her know what you’re interested in.