Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 30th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

A debate is going on about the Hugo Awards (Wikipedia) for science fiction and fantasy.  Some claim that the awards are being given on the basis of stories pushing a social viewpoint or the author’s ethnicity or politics, rather than on being good stories.  Factions have formed with claims going both ways.  See typical arguments here.

Victories

Cassie had a good trip to a book festival.  She did some rewrite on a novella, made a dent in the first draft of a new novella, and did plotting for another.

Ciuin is writing an article on Noble Pen for City Revealed magazine and will be doing reviews of local authors’ books.

Bill tried to do outlining and organization for his SF novel idea.

Education

How do you pick the title of your novel?  If you go through a traditional publishing house, you probably don’t.  The marketing department will pick the title, replacing your working title.  If you use a smaller house you may have some say in it, and if you are independent it is all up to you.

Here’s some advice on ways to come up with a title.  This post suggests brainstorming methods.  Here is more advice.  You probably should have alternative titles and ask as many people as possible which ones are most likely to catch their interest.

Your title should be distinctive but not distracting and somehow connected to your story and genre.  You should search for similar titles and avoid any that will get confused with a classic or appear to be riding the the tails of a currently popular book, movie, or song.  It is not smart to name your book The Games of Hunger.  On the other hand, it is permissible to use a title that already exists, and this happens frequently.  Titles have little legal protection, and if the other book(s) is/are relatively unknown and not similar you are probably okay.

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 30
Cassie
Aimee

May 7
Laura
Open slot

May 14
Ciuin
Open slot

May 21
Open slots

May 28
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 23rd, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The summer (Northern Hemisphere) edition of Science Fiction News is out.

Victories

Dylan got a good review of Sand and Blood in the Mark Lawrence competition (see March 26th victories) among 260 submissions, and goes to the second round.  He got a fan mail for a work under a pseudonym.

Ciuin wrote a few pages that, for a change, were not academic papers.

Education

Writing dialog is unnatural, because good dialog is different from ordinary speech and different from formal writing, and the punctuation rules are not obvious.

Here’s a good overview that also has some punctuation rules for special situations: Part 1 and Part 2 and another summary.

People don’t talk in complete sentences and with precision like they would write a report, so your dialog needs to reflect that while maintaining clarity.  Practice listening to nearby conversations with the purpose of thinking about what it would look like written down.  It may not read very well if written verbatim.  Write it, and then clean it up only to the point that it reads smoothly enough readers won’t get lost — not to the point of becoming report-style English.

Dialog tags (“Hi,” Joan said.) should be used often enough to remove all doubt who is speaking.  Each speaker must have their own paragraph.  Tags can, however, be omitted from many paragraphs in a two-person conversation, especially if the characters’ voices and message are distinct enough that the reader can easily keep them straight with only an occasional tag.

Do not try too hard to put variety in dialog tags.  Said and asked will carry most of the load and their repetition will go unnoticed like “the”.  Others such as shouted or whispered can be useful when they impart information not obvious from the dialog.  Trying to make every tag different  results in undue attention to the tags instead of the dialog.  Demanded, wheedled, complained, offered, opined, etc. should be obvious from the character’s words and not need the tag to explain the intent.

Another trap is adding an adverb after said.  If you need to write that the character said it sadly, angrily, or forcefully then you probably need to use stronger dialog instead of an adverb to pump it up.

An alternative to a dialog tag is an action that also tells whose paragraph it is, like picking up their coffee cup, looking around the room, laughing, or tightening their finger on the trigger.  Note that the action should be a separate sentence, because it is NOT a dialog tag.  You don’t laugh, smile, or sigh your words.

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 23
Ciuin
Eugenia

Apr 30
Cassie
Aimee

May 7
Laura
Open slot

May 14
Open slots

May 21
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 16th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

With many people feeling time pressures, we have had less demand for review slots.  We will plan to only schedule two reviews a week for a while, so people will find it easier to keep up with the reading.  If this leaves us time in the meetings, we may have the dreaded educational exercise on verb tenses.

Victories

Cassie got her author web page and Facebook page up, with the first blog post.

Dylan’s lyrics are on a friend’s Death Metal CD, just released.  His are all the English words.  The other two-thirds are in Russian.

Laura revised her story with a reduction in use of “was” and other cleanups.

Ciuin got another A on a paper.  We expect her to continue the winning streak.

Education

The standard advice for a new writer is to write a stand-alone book, and don’t put more than a hint into your query that there is series potential.  Agents or publishers may think it will be an incomplete story without the rest of the series, and they certainly aren’t going to invest in a series until the first one sells well.

A self-published author, however, may want to have a series of books out there so that every book sold is an advertisement for the rest of their books.

Kurtis Scaletta talks about a middle ground – a stand alone book with series potential.  Another blog takes a similar view, saying that the settings and characters from one stand-alone book can be re-used by giving them a new problem in a companion book.

The key, in any case, is to avoid a serial plot.  Make sure each book contains a complete story arc, so that the reader doesn’t feel like they’ve been tricked into reading the whole series to find resolution.  No cliff hanger books.  If your book is so long it needs to be a trilogy, maybe you’d better find the essential story and trim it down to one satisfying book.  Then see if you have enough story material left for more books.

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 16
Aimee
Dylan

Apr 23
Open slots

Apr 30
Open slots

May 7
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 9th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

We thank Stacy Green for her presentation.  We have extra copies of her handout with many good resources, which we can give out at future meetings.

Victories

Nick sold  a fiction short story.

Aimee finished part 2 of a story.

Ciuin got another perfect score on a school paper.

Dylan figured out a problem so his fictionary is working.

Tyree reports from MiniCon that Jed and Dylan’s books have had some sales.

Education

Two authors discuss their creative and editing processes.

I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right. ~Cheryl Strayed

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 9
Laura
Ciuin
Dylan

Apr 16
Aimee
Open slots

Apr 23
Laura
Open slots

Apr 30
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill