Next Noble Pen Meeting

June 20th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Having received only a small response on the idea of building a lending library, we have a less ambitious proposal.  Send the moderator a list of good writing references you would be willing to loan to other members, giving title, author, and publisher.  If we get several listed, we’ll put the list somewhere on the web site.

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After recent news, sales of Orwell’s 1984 have jumped to at least number 213 on Amazon’s best seller list.  And these authors seem to have lucked out on timing their book.

Victories

People seem to be busily writing, but had no special victories this week.

Education

It is important that characters have distinct “voices” or ways of talking so the reader can easily picture them as individual personalities and distinguish them from each other without relying entirely on the dialog tags.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself about how your characters speak.

Alicia Rasley offers some advice and exercises to help a writer develop character voice.

Here’s a good list of things to think about and some great suggestions.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?”
“‘Sometimes.”
“‘So why don’t you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.”
“But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?”
~Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning. ~Maya Angelou

There is no index of character so sure as the voice. ~Benjamin Disraeli

Upcoming Schedule

June 20th

Janice
Tyree
Nick

June 27th

Tyree
Jed
Aimee

July 4th

No meeting

July 11th

Nick
Shannon
Open slot

July 18th

Open slots

Keep Writing,

Bill