Next Noble Pen Meeting

September 4th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Novellas by Mrs. Tolstoy will be published, which reflect her side of a turbulent marriage.

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Authors from other countries are also protesting Amazon’s tactics.

Victories

Dylan wrote 30,000 words this week.

Tyree wrote more on Bombay Sapphire II and Wolf, and started a pulp story with a new superhero.

Ciuin used a backup file after a messed-up edit.  Backups work!  Her human rights class professor will let her write all papers on gypsy issues.

Education

How long should a story be?  How long is a piece of string? They should be long enough to do the job without a lot of excess.  Always review your story to see if it contains padding that does not move the story along.  However, a long manuscript may not be publishable regardless of whether it is the right length for the story it tells.  If your writing is tight and still too long, you may have to modify the events of the story to fit a publishable range.

The Nebula Awards define lengths for short story, novelette, novella, and novel.  Definitions vary.  Other formats include drabble, usually defined as a story of exactly 100 words, and flash fiction, which is variously defined as less than 300 or 1000 words.

The average book sold through Amazon has 64,500 words.  Chuck Sambuchino offers a detailed guide that recommends 80-100 k words for most novels and memoirs, with sci-fi running slightly longer.  Westerns and books for younger readers tend to be shorter.  Here’s another guide , and a third, that mostly agree, and define lengths for other formats.  Wikipedia goes into the details of counting words, which you can digest for details after getting your story into the right length range for your market.

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 4
Tyree
Ciuin
Aimee

Sept 11
Tyree
Dylan
Ciuin

Sept 18
Dylan
Open slots

Sept 25
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

August 28th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

A blog discusses whether the monthly unlimited e-book subscription services are worth it.

Victories

Dylan got a review of one of his novels from someone he didn’t know.  Previous reviews have all been family and friends.  He invented a font for the language of his novels.

Cassie started the 3rd draft revisions of Dreams in Red, and now has 20 k words on Blue Moon Baby.

Ciuin received an offer from a well-known artist to do the cover of Petty Theft.

Education

A good article lists seven essential elements of a good novel.  First among those is readability.  Another article lists five elements, and mentions that dialog must be easy to read.  This blog lists sixteen, and clarity is first.

Upcoming Schedule

August 28
Tyree
Ciuin (double slot)

Sept 4
Tyree
Ciuin
Aimee

Sept 11
Open slots

Sept 18
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

August 21st, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Amazon is aiming to become more dominant in college book sales, with a new partnership that lets students order on line and pick up locally.

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An author of Dystopian young-adult books talks about the genre and says although the books and films have been popular recently, she thinks their run is ending.

Victories

Tyree submitted and sold another story to the anthology that is in preparation.

Nick has re-edited eight of eleven chapters of his western.  He sent a report on a long train-spotting trip.

Dylan’s giveaway of Sand and Blood on Goodreads resulted in people in two states and Australia receiving copies.   Another 500 added it to their “to read” file so a few may actually buy it.  He is hoping for some reviews to be posted.

Education

While many authors do fine with an ordinary word processing program, others find help in writer’s software with more power, such as discussed here.  A summary compares several writing software programs.  Another review (as of 2012) includes some not in the other list.  Neither list rates free programs, of which there are many.   A few people write their own program.

These programs, costing $30 to $130 (list price), integrate the functions of outlining or storyboarding, note taking, character sheets, and writing to a much greater degree than word processors like MS Word and WordPerfect.  Some go beyond spelling and thesaurus to offer a full dictionary and even name lists from which to choose characters.  They still do not write the story for you, nor give a reader’s critique.

Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Internet is nothing like Shakespeare.  ~(modified from) Blair Houghton

Upcoming Schedule

August 21
Aimee
Ciuin
Cassie

August 28
Tyree
Ciuin (double slot)

Sept 4
Tyree
Ciuin (?)
Open slot

Sept 11
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

August 14th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Alban Lake Publishing has a Drabble contest running until the end of August.  Submit a story of exactly 100 words plus title that follows the current theme.

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A court found the Arthur Conan Doyle estate had no basis for trying to require a license fee for an anthology of works about him, and re-confirmed that the Sherlock Holmes character is in the public domain.

However, Mickey Mouse is still protected by copyright for at least a few more years and by trademark for as long as Disney wants.

Victories

Dylan finished a commission piece and it was accepted and paid for.  He has a Goodreads raffle offering copies of Sand and Blood, trying to gain reviews for it, and at this writing 244 people have entered a request.

Ciuin implemented a plan for backups.

Cassie overhauled a chapter of Blue Moon Baby and finished it.

Education

How do you end your story?  It’s important to get it right.  As I’ve said in prior articles, Hemingway wrote 39 endings to Farewell to Arms before picking one.

This article has some suggestions for a satisfying ending.  The struggle that has provided tension should be resolved, although it doesn’t always have to be a happy ending.

The elements of the climax and ending should have been foreshadowed so the reader does not cry “Deus ex Machina!”, yet that information should not give away the ending.   Ideally the reader will not expect the ending but will find it to be completely natural when looking back at the events leading up to it.

There may need to be a post-climax dénouement, such as where the detective explains how she put the evidence together or the newlyweds drive off into the sunset, but that should generally be short and to the point, and possibly tying back to the opening scene.  After the tension is gone the reader will become impatient with a long explanation.

Nobody reads a (novel) to get to the middle.  They read it to get to the end.  ~ Mickey Spillane

It ain’t over until it’s over. ~Yogi Berra

Upcoming Schedule

August 14
Ciuin (double)
Tyree

August 21
Aimee
Ciuin
Cassie

August 28
Tyree
Ciuin
Open slot

Sept 4
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

August 7th, 2014 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Welcome to Anthony who found the group, and Manuel who came back after several years.

Victories

Dylan submitted Sand and Blood to a super-critical reviewer, who reports how many minutes it took him to find three major things wrong with a story.   At Dylan’s work a high manager mentioned his book to a meeting of company VIPs.

Tyree has Bombay Sapphire 2 about 10% done, with 3,000 words added this week, in addition to his work on Wolf.

Barbara and Matt further developed a character in their novel.

Education

Word repetition is a too-common, although not major, flaw in most people’s first drafts.  A little attention and substitutions can quickly make improvements.  This article offers some examples of rephrasing, as does this one.  

A search will find many tools to point out repetition, sucy as this one.

Do not fall into the trap of simply choosing the next word in a thesaurus, because synonyms all have nuances and you want the right shade of meaning.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing. ~William Safire

Upcoming Schedule

August 7
Ciuin
Tyree
Laura

August 14
Ciuin (could take double)
Tyree (would cede)
Open slots

August 21
Aimee
Ciuin
Open slots

August 28
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill