Next Noble Pen Meeting

May 1st, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

A study in the UK found that going to the library regularly was among the activities that did as much for a person’s well-being as getting a raise.

Victories

Ciuin has written 1,000 words or more per day recently.  Unfortunately she lost the file for a good chapter.

Janice found a full-time job in the field she wanted, so with more regular hours will be better able to schedule writing time.

Aimee heard from her collaborator, so there is progress on their story.

Education

The ending of a story is the payoff, and the reader wants the payoff to be worth having read it all.  Larry Brooks talks about structuring the story for a killer ending.  Vicki Hinze discusses how to wrap it up.  Here’s Laura Miller’s take on what makes a great ending.  And some more tips on endings.

It’s important to get it right.  Remember, Hemingway wrote 39 endings to Farewell to Arms.

Nobody reads a (novel) to get to the middle.  They read it to get to the end.  If it’s a let down, they won’t buy anymore.  The first page sells that book.. The last page sells your next book. ~ Mickey Spillane

Upcoming Schedule

May 1st
Nick
Tyree
Janice (canceled)

May 8th
Ciuin
Janice
Open slot

May 15th
Aimee
Open slots

May 22nd
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 24th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Former Noble Pen attendee Lynda Waddington is the newest member of the CR Gazette editorial staff.

Victories

Dylan’s latest book has doubled all previous sales of all his books.  He finished a 30k word commission.

Nick put out the railfan newsletter on schedule.  He also wrote a four-page train-spotting report.

Ciuin is doing non-school reading again.

Education

Writer’s Digest offers a free nine-page download on “Step-by-step guide to the Publishing Process” when you sign up for their email newsletter.  It covers a lot of how things work with a major publishing house.  Nathan Bransford offers his summary of the process.  Randy Ingermanson compares the process for different size publishers.  You might want to read some of the cautions on the Predators and Editors site.

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 24th
Ciuin
Janice
Barbara

May 1st
Nick
Tyree
Open slot

May 8th
Open slots

May 15th
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 17th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

Victories

Tyree went on a writing binge on multiple stories.  He was asked for a 2nd story for the anthology he recently submitted to.

Janice finished an important paper for school.

Ciuin starts working with an editor on Petty Theft on Monday.

Dylan did prep work on formatting of his books for electronic publication.

Education

Backstory can be problematic for authors.  The reader may need to know facts about the characters and situations but may get bored if you start with the story of their lives.  It is usually better to start where the significant conflict, action, and tension begin.  That leaves the problem of getting the backstory facts into the narrative, but interrupting the flow for pages of history is also a way to lose readers.

Karen Dionne discusses how she approaches backstory, trying to time it and achieve a balance between flow and needed information.  Eleanor Henderson thinks it is crucial to have sufficient backstory, but agrees that it is important to present it carefully.  CG Blake considers how much backstory is too much and gives an example of how a little dialog can do as much as paragraphs of backstory.

My backstory is so tedious. ~Ray LaMontagne

Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let’s have no more back story! ~Colm Toibin

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 17th
Ciuin
Janice
Nick

Apr 24th
Ciuin
Janice
Open slot

May 1st
Nick
Tyree
Open slot

May 8th
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 10th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Author Tracy Hickman recently gave a rather bleak view of the market for fantasy writers.

Victories

Janice did research and reading for the Chloe story.

Aime got a cat.  We’ll assume she is writing something about it.

Dylan now has more time for writing and life, as his work project just completed a major release.

Education

A long time ago we featured free on-line tools such as Pro Writing Aid, a proofreading tool.  It will identify over-used words, sentences of monotonously same length or excessive length, cliches, repeated phrases, alliteration, and other things you may want to consider changing.  It also highlights dialog tags so you can see at a glance what you used.  The free version will process 1000 words at a time.

It helped me a lot, but became tedious after I changed the major offenses.  My biggest complaint is that it reports too much.  I even tried a better writer’s material with the same result.  The highlighting of repeated common 2-word phrases, 2-word alliterations, etc. (like “to town” or “an apple”) results in clutter that hides the things I want to find and change.  The homonym finder is a nice idea but appears to have no context sensitivity so you see ALL of them.

The author of Writer’s Diet offers a free on-line tool for evaluating your writing, but not its content.  While not as extensive as Pro Writing Aid, another view is often useful.

There are also on-line forums where you can post work for critique by others, as well as discuss writing topics.  One is writingforums.org where you have to do some critiques during a waiting period before you can post yourself.  An issue might be someone considering such postings to be “publication,” so it is best to only post small samples.

Does anyone have comments on similar tools?

“It’s commonplace to nitpick on minor faults. But to actually improve on those minor faults – that’s just tedious.”  ~Benson Bruno

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 10th
Tyree
Cassie
Barbara

Apr 17th
Laura
Janice
Nick

Apr 24th
Open slots

May 1st
Nick
Open slots

May 8th
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill