Orson Scott Card was the keynote speaker at the LDStorymakers conference on April 25th, 2014.

I haven’t read any of his work (sci-fi is not my usual thing to read), but I’d heard of him (obviously), and knew that he’s Mormon (a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).

He had strong opinions about a lot of different subjects, and he kind of wandered at times, but I liked his remarks in general and felt like I learned something when all was said and done. I didn’t realize till later that a lot of the attendees were not happy with his speech, and thought it was controversial. Of course, you can’t please everyone, and it doesn’t take much to offend others. But the thing is, these were just his opinions, and you can take them or leave them as you please. I won’t go through all the notes I have of his speech, or everything he talked about, but just some of the ones that pertain more closely to writing.

One of the things Orson Scott Card said is that writer’s block is a gift from the unconscious telling you don’t believe in that part—you need to come up with something else; usually something that is the right thing to happen. The unconscious is trying to give you better ideas than the social clichés you have that far. In my experience, the times when I was stuck and couldn’t go forward with the story I wanted to tell, something better did come along than I what I thought was meant to happen. I usually have to talk it over with a writer friend, and think about who my characters really are, and what they’d do, not what I would do.

He also talked about how the present tense in a literature context has no audience for it. It’s only used for describing habitual tasks or telling anecdotes/jokes. The past tense is for telling the truth when you want to be believed. If you think of this sentence, when you say “I go to the store’, in English this means that you go to the store periodically. When you mean that you intend to go to the store you say “I’m going to the store”. This is how the English language works. In the Romanic languages, for instance, you can use ‘I go to the store’ with the meaning of ‘I’m gong to the store’, but not in English. In every day life, people speak in present continuous or past tense, so I usually find the present tense in a novel a kind of disconnection between the reader and the main character. For me, I’ll say that I find there are very few authors who can pull off a well written novel in the present tense.

He brought up the subject of decorum in writing, saying that Mormon writers need to be better writers because they can’t rely on sex scenes and bad language. In his opinion, swear words are barriers to readers, and this, of course, depends to the level to which each writer is comfortable. Some readers are offended with explicit sex and language, and others are offended by religious content, so you can’t please every one.

In the end, he did say that more important than being a good writer is being a good person, especially in the relationships with our families and those around us, and also in our relationship with our God. He quoted the Prophet and President of the church, David O. McKay:

“No other success [in life] can compensate for failure in the home.”

In good faith, I don’t think anyone will disagree with that.

After the keynote speech, he was in a side room talking to some other conference attendees. He had mentioned he served his mission in Brazil, so I approached him about it. We talked for a few minutes, and he signed my autograph book with a personable line, which I thought was very kind in the context of meeting so many people.