Next Noble Pen Meeting

February 20th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Barnes and Noble has reduced the staff at their Nook division, another bad sign in the prospects for that product.

Some publishers are putting out books in a series at a much faster rate to suit the “gotta have it now” world we live in.

Victories

Dylan got a good edit of Sand and Blood back from his paid editor after waiting too many months.

Bill wrote an 11 kword technical training guide.

Nick’s favorite railfan magazine published his letter to the editor.

Tyree found three haiku in his old files and submitted them to a magazine.

Education

Should your characters cuss? It depends on your target audience and your publisher.  Elizabeth Sims explains the correct terms for the various kinds of crude language.

You should be rather cautious about using it for the young adult market, despite the fact that you could probably hear all the terms you know and some you don’t in any junior high school.

Sims offers the advice that for some characters such language in moderation may be appropriate and useful to set them apart.  It should be realistic for the character and their *&@%$ environment, but probably not as extensive as real life.

A little goes a long way. Rosanne Parry offers advice on how to balance authenticity versus respect for the audience.  Another article talks about how reviewers lowered their ratings because of sparse profanity, but justifies it in some cases.

A Wikipedia article points out how science fiction has the opportunity to make up profanity in unknown languages, but some consider it preferable to use the real words or none.

If you would like more discussion, a search for    profanity in fiction    will get you 2.6 million more items to read.

Upcoming Schedule

Feb 20th
Barbara
Dylan (end of S&L)
Nick

Feb 27th
Tyree
Cassie
Open slot

Mar 6th
Janice
Nick
Open slot

Mar 13th
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill