Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Noble Pen for Oct 3, 2013

September 27, 2013Newslettersbhart

Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 3rd, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

Victories

Dylan finally heard back from his editor, who said she was not done. His next edit will be free because of the delay.

Tyree did more writing on Aoife’s Kiss.

Rachel submitted a drabble for the current contest.

Education

Protagonists are very important, but to make an interesting story they need to work against interesting and believable antagonists who have their own motivations , personalities, and even redeeming qualities. Here are some things to ponder when you write your bad guys.

You might benefit from filling out a character sheet (such as what Tyree discussed at the last meeting) for your antagonists, to see that you have made them three-dimensional.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. ~Edmund Burke

This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern. ~Barbara Deming

I don’t want to play a bad guy who doesn’t have a bit of good in him. ~Jeremy Renner

It’s cool to play a sinister bad guy who also has a human side. ~Lukas Haas

Upcoming Schedule

Oct 3rd
Tyree
Nick
Rachel

Oct 10th
Laura
Dylan
Jed

Oct 17th
Nick
Rachel
Tyree

Oct 24th
Riley
Tyree
Open slot

Keep Writing,
Bill

The Noble Pen for Sept 26, 2013

September 20, 2013Newslettersbhart

Next Noble Pen Meeting

September 26th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Welcome to Riley, who found the group.

A new public library has opened with many ebooks for checkout, and not a single paper book. It isn’t the first to try going all electronic, but the first one was too early and the idea did not fly then.

Victories

Rachel’s play review has been accepted for magazine publication.

Dylan got a fan letter. He has finished the first draft of Sand and Love.

Jed has reached fifty pages on his Castalia story.

Education

Dialog makes up a large part of most fiction writing. Writing effective dialog doesn’t always come naturally, in part because good dialog is not a transcript of a conversation. Have you ever read a verbatim transcript? It probably sounded very awkward.

Conversations usually ramble, are full of social niceties, have many sentence fragments, and uhh, you know, pause fillers. We tend to forget most of that and only remember the important points. Dialog should be condensed to make the points that advance the plot, and only sprinkled with enough conversational traits to read like we remember the conversation, but not sound like a transcript.

Maxwell Alexander Drake makes this and other good points about dialog. Another article illustrates the difference as does this one. Here are 25 tips on dialog. Jenna Kernan gives us 8 reasons dialog is useful in a narrative. Here are some more tips.

I do love to eavesdrop. It’s inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk. ~Lynda Barry

Always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start. ~P.G. Wodehouse

I’ve found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they’re communicating but it tells you a great deal – by dialect and tone, content and circumstance – about the quality of the character. ~E. O. Wilson

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 26th
Jed
Dylan
Tina

Oct 3rd
Tyree
Nick
Rachel

Oct 10th
Laura
Dylan
Open slot

Oct 17th
Nick
Rachel
Tyree?

Oct 24th
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

The Noble Pen for Sept 19, 2013

September 13, 2013Newslettersbhart

Next Noble Pen Meeting

September 19th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The court gives Apple some restrictions on its agreements with book publishers, but not the more serious consequences orginally sought against it in a case begun a year and a half ago. Another version of the story here.

Victories

Tyree is doing a lot of writing.

Nick edited using review comments.

Dylan got feedback from someone who doesn’t read much fiction and was totally new to fantasy, but still read all of Sand and Blood. Dylan found out he was sixth out of seven entries in a writing contest.

Rachel worked on development of characters for the Nikki story, and revised Harper.

Jed wrote instead of studying for an economics test.

Education

A book, whether it is a memoir or a thriller, needs a hook. Stating a succinct hook is important in a query letter. Here’s some suggestions for looking at your hook in different ways. A hook should be supported by the rest of the story, or else some my call it a gimmick and dismiss the book.

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 19th

Nick
Barbara
Tyree

Sept 26th

Jed
Dylan
Tina

Oct 3rd

Tyree
Nick
Rachel

Oct 10th

Tyree ?
Laura
Dylan

Oct 17th

Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

The Noble Pen for Sept 12, 2013

September 6, 2013Newslettersbhart

Next Noble Pen Meeting

September 12th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Welcome to Ethan, who found the group.

–//–

Frederik Pohl died recently at age 93 after a 75-year career as a science fiction writer and editor. He wrote numerous books and short stories by himself and in collaboration with other well-known authors. He is also remembered for two laws, “No one is ever ready for anything” and “Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate it”.

Victories

Tyree read some pulp fiction and wonders how such bad writing gets an audience (e.g., protagonist never in danger). He got good advice from Nick about European railroad terminology.

Barbara is reworking an old story.

Rachel made an outline for a story.

Dylan finished a 50k word story he had promised 5 years ago to write.

Tina finished her novel and has interviews set up to research a non-fiction piece.

Jed is writing a lot and has 21k words on a new story.

Education

World building (and here) is an important part of writing any story that is not set in the here and now. How do you invent a possible future or an alternative world? It should somehow make the reader think about his own.

Restructure the world we live in in some way. You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens. ~Frederik Pohl

That’s really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality of change. Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have. ~Frederik Pohl

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. ~Frederik Pohl

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 12th

Tyree
Dylan
Jed

Sept 19th

Nick
Barbara
Tyree

Sept 26th

Jed
Dylan
Tina

Oct 3rd

Tyree
Nick
Rachel

Oct 10th

Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

The Noble Pen for Sept 5, 2013

September 1, 2013Newslettersbhart

Next Noble Pen Meeting

September 5th, 2013 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Welcome to Tina, who found the group.

–//–

Barnes and Noble continues to have bad news as its founder drops a plan to buy out the corporation’s bookstores, splitting the company. And a deal falls through that might have transferred their digital media to Microsoft.

–//–

Writer information: Tyree brought in a digest from Pro Se Press, www.prosepulp.com.
They are looking for pulp-type fiction, from short stories to novels. They also promote a pulp culture convention in Springville, Arkansas. For more info check out
http://www.pulpark.blogspot.com. Next convention is April 2014, I think.

Victories

Dylan is happy with progress toward an expanded family, but is unhappy that he still has no response from his editor.

Barbara & Matt did some recalibration on their story and have decided to give it a change of direction, which will be evident in their next submission to the group.

Janice managed to do more writing than usual, despite the distraction of classes.

Jed’s new story keeps reminding him to work on it.

Education

Accents and dialect are tricky for authors. They are easily overdone and difficult to do well. Anyone wanting a bad example might look up Poe’s Gold Bug, or the example used in this advice, and here, and here. It points out that subtle use of word choice , sentence length, slang, idiom, and phrasings can be more effective than overpowering the reader with difficult spellings, overuse of contractions, and other devices that make it difficult to read.

At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects. ~David Crystal

I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing a story. I also read a lot of diaries and oral histories. ~Ron Rash

My whole deal when I do accents or dialects is I gotta fool the locals. If I fool the locals then I’ve done my job. ~Brion James

Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident of human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech. ~John Steinbeck,

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 5th
Nick
Laura
Rachel

Sept 12th
Tyree
Open slots

Sept 19th
Nick
Open slots

Sept 26th
Open slots

Oct 3rd
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill