Next Noble Pen Meeting

February 5th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

A charity auction of 75 first edition books with the authors’  recent annotations brought over a million dollars, with prices up to $80,000.   See the list and sample annotations.  Some of the authors found it uncomfortable to review what they had written earlier in their careers.

Victories

Cassie heavily revised two more chapters.  She plans to go to a book festival in LA in April, and is planning a research trip in July to see the places in Chicago that she uses in her story.

Ciuin got a school paper back marked A+ and is 2/3 done with another long paper.

Education

A lot of good fiction has a dystopian setting, and maybe your story is in that category.  Wikipedia has an overview.  You need a sympathetic character to walk the reader through that world.  You want your readers to relate to that world, and you can do that by taking things that are problematic, annoying, or disturbing in the present world and extrapolating them.

Social commentary has often been made by exaggeration and extrapolation in dystopian fiction. The more you can make your world an extension of, or parallel to, the our present and history, the better the commentary.

Scared of ebola? Pandemic disease has been the basis for many dystopian views of the future.  What will the next pandemic be, and will our society disintegrate because of it?  How will your characters try to cope?

Don’t like red-light cameras?  They are a minor Big Brother element, consistent with the novel 1984.  What if cameras on every corner watched for all kinds of activity?  How would your characters behave?

Your cell phone shows where you are and is being used more and more to conduct business, and could become necessary rather than just convenient. What if your phone’s presence at a crime scene was enough to convict you, and stolen phones were being used by factions in a power struggle to eliminate their opposition?  How would your characters get involved?

Do try to make your story original and fully thought out.  In the recent wave of dystopian stories, too many are not.  As one comment on a forum put it, “not every dystopia requires the MC to lead a revolution against a totalitarian regime.”

This article, and this one give more tips.

Upcoming Schedule

Feb 5
Aimee
Eugenia
Tyree

Feb 12
Ciuin
Tyree
Open slot

Feb 19
Eugenia
Laura
Open slot

Feb 26
Open slots

Mar 5
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

January 29th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Here’s a dismal view of the future of publishing.

Victories

Tyree submitted Wolf to a publisher.

Ciuin wrote another protest letter.

Cassie addressed tension issues in a chapter and ended up doubling its length.  She asked someone to be a beta reader, and they said they’d rather do copy edits for her.

Education

If you as a writer are taking your reader back to historical times, you don’t need a sci-fi machine, but you do need a heavy dose of research.

The first problem is making the earlier times seem right to readers who may not have a lot of detailed knowledge of it.  For them, you need references that they will recognize.  Mention of horseless carriages will take most people back to the early 20th century.  Fallout shelters may bring the 1950’s to mind to older people, but younger ones may not have heard of them. Black and white TV might work better for them.  Party lines (that’s several houses on the same wired phone line) may be a foreign concept to younger folks.   Listening to Elvis and Buddy Holly might work for more people.

The second problem is avoiding anachronisms.  The people who do know the historical period will burn your book (and your ratings) if you get things wrong.    How silly would it look to have a detective in 1982 Google an address on his smart phone?  We all know that not only didn’t he have a cell phone, he is unlikely to have a home computer, and there was no internet.  Did they use forks at dinner in 1200 AD?  Research it.   Could the fur trapper back from the wilds take a train?  Not at the height of the fur trade era.  Could the Civil War soldier zip his coat?  Not by decades.

Names should be chosen from those in use at the time.  A World War II widow named Brittney or Aimee just wouldn’t be believed, any more than a 2005 graduate named Agnes, Mabel,  Mildred, or Archibald.

And the characters’ language must avoid more recent jargon, slang, and common expressions.  As this article says, a reference to a person who did not fit into 1850 society would not be “What planet is he from?” A medieval peasant would not say an easy job was a piece of cake.

Characters’ attitudes and world view (there’s a modern term) may be even harder to deal with than their words, particularly when dealing with the interaction of different social classes.

Tessa Arlen has recommendations for getting the time right.  Kate Nagy has good comments about what might be overlooked and what won’t.

Upcoming Schedule

Jan 29
Tyree
Greg
Cassie

Feb 5
Aimee
Ciuin ?
Tyree ?

Feb 12
Open slots

Feb 19
Eugenia
Laura
Open slot

Feb 26
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

January 22nd, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Science Fiction News is available for Spring (Northern Hemisphere) 2015, although it seems to be a little early to be thinking of spring.

Victories

Cindy has an article in February’s St. Lukes Health Beat Magazine.

Dylan’s article on magical resonance is published.

Tyree submitted Bombay Sapphire II.

Nick got his western back from his editor.  His postman article was accepted for publication.

Education

Plot twists, including surprise endings, are an effective tool for keeping readers entertained.  However, they need to be carefully crafted so the reader accepts them as believable developments in the plot.  Ideally, no one should see it coming, but in hindsight everybody should say that the evidence was there to support it.   Wikipedia breaks them down into several types. Steven James discusses plot twists in more detail. Here is a longer list of types with examples.

Upcoming Schedule

Jan 22
Aimee
Ciuin
Tyree

Jan 29
Tyree
Greg
Open slot

Feb 5
Open slots

Feb 12
Open slots

Feb 19
Eugenia
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

January 15th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

NPR offers their “best books of 2014″ list sorted by category.  They also have links for prior years.

Victories

Tyree finished Bombay Sapphire II and started III.  He also wrote another chapter of a different story.

Dylan’s article on magical resonance was accepted for the Alban Lake magazine Outposts of Beyond, and Victim of Love for Trysts of Fate.

Jed’s Castalia is being published at the beginning of February.

Barb (welcome back) sent a story to beta readers.

Cassie made a breakthrough on a scene that was giving her trouble for too long.

Ciuin wrote 2000 words on a story and continues to make progress editing Petty Theft.

Education

Writing isn’t easy.  This tutorial discusses some hurdles that frequently trip beginners.  Here’s a list of most common mistakes that lead to rejection.

The Immerse or Die critic (who reviewed Dylan’s Sand and Blood last fall) believes a good story doesn’t have anything that breaks the reader’s immersion.  He published a list of the things that most often took him out of stories.  Topping his list was weak mechanics, followed closely by unnatural actions by the characters and too-frequent repetition of words or phrases.  Those, along with illogical worlds and info dumps, accounted for half of the problems.  He found the issues fell about equally among world-building, storytelling, and editing problems.

Upcoming Schedule

Jan 15
Tyree
Greg
Nick

Jan 22
Aimee
Ciuin
Open slot

Jan 29
Tyree
Greg
Open slot

Feb 5
Open slots

Feb 12
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

January 8th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Amazon’s all-you-want-to-read subscription is drawing complaints from authors who earn less because of it.

–//–

Never give up.  Edith Pearlman sold occasional short stories for 27 years before she was able to get a book published.

Victories

Most of us survived the holidays, and some did write.  I know that Ciuin has been working on Petty Theft edits.

Education

Word repetition is a common problem for writers.  In the early drafts you are working at getting the story told in any words that come to mind.  As you revise, you need to notice when you are overworking a word and find a way to rephrase, use a pronoun, or find a synonym.  Ben Yagoda has some tips.  The more common words can be repeated more often.

Repetition can also be used for desirable effects such as emphasis, rhythm, and mood.  More discussion here.

Upcoming Schedule

Jan 8
Eugenia
Greg
Ciuin

Jan 15
Tyree
Greg
Nick

Jan 22
Cindy?
Aimee
Ciuin

Jan 29
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill