Singapore Writer Festival 2011

I have attended a couple of SWFs previously and I must say that this year's was relatively on a bigger scale and with a comprehensive list of programmes. Unfortunately, I was away in Hong Kong on holiday for the most part and only got to attend a few sessions on the Saturday when I was back on 29 Oct.

I attended 3 programs in total, the first being "OFF THE PAGE: First Page: Buy or Bin It" which was moderated/judged by Dr KK Seet and Fran Lebowitz. Writers will present the first page of their manuscript and audience and judges will decide if the 1st page will warrant a buy or a bin. It is kind of scary, especially when we see some established writers up there waiting to be praised or razed. In any case, it was all in good cheer eventually. In perspective, I think it is rather subjective on deciding where to buy a book or not based on it's 1st page. Honestly, it's really diffcult by just basing on that 1 page. Personally I would read the blurb and jacket for any reviews and also read the prologue or 1st chapter to decide if I liked the writing and if it entices me to read further. If I have time, I will check out online reviews too. My friend Jeremy and I were saying that this sort of thing should be done for musical scripts instead.

The next event I attended was the panel session "Why So Serious?" featuring Tom Cho, Neil Humphreys and Chuah Guat Eng, moderated by Carolyn Camoens. It was a session meant to discuss maintaining a good sense of humour in your writing with the writers sharing how they strike the right balance in their approaches towards humour. The discussion got a bit side-tracked along the way and well, maybe too much sharing of other people's work went on. On the whole, one would agree that a familiar context (to identify with the story) and timing is crucial to getting the joke and bring it out at the right time.

Lastly, there was the panel session "From Page to Screen" which I was glad I decided to stay on for. It featured Lee Shinho (writer of Korean thriller "The Chaser"), Vikas Swarup (writer of "Q&A" which was made into Slumdog Millionaire) and Prabda Yoon (writer for "Last Life in the Universe"), and with the session moderated by Tan Kheng Hua. It discussed the writers journeys from their books that became adapted for screenplay, although some have moved towards screenplay. It was an interesting session with rather different experiences from each, and the audience could gain insight into the way things worked in the film industry for each country and also how each writer worked. I actually took quite a few notes. An analogy given by Vikas (which he heard from someone else) was rather apt about responding to questions on having your book produced into a film (I may not have reproduced it here in its entirety) - allowing your novel to be made into a movie is like marrying off your daughter. You get stuck with a son-in-law. And one thing you never do is to speak ill of your son-in-law in public.

Well, looking forward to the next SWF!