Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 1st, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Lawrence “Yogi” Berra contributed many colorful sayings to our language.   “It ain’t over ’til it’s over” but unfortunately it is over for him at age 90.

We also lost Jackie Collins, known for steamy stories, at age 77.

Finally, some depressing news about award-winning books; they don’t make a lot of money.

Victories

Ciuin finished two articles about ghosts for City Revealed’s October issue.

Benjamin has settled in after moving and is working again at the writing business.  He found the Vault Coworking space and started a short story.

Aaron’s novel-in-a-month effort taught him a lesson on lack of conflict and tension.  Nevertheless, it gave him some good material to rework.

Education

One of the many confusing sets of verbs is the lay/lie group ( another source).  In present tense, lay expresses your action of placing something and requires that object to be named.  Lie is what you or the subject thing does while resting in place, and does not operate on an object.

I lay down the book because I am tired.  Yesterday I laid it on the table.  I have laid it there often.  I am laying it there as you enter.

A confustication occurs because lay occurs again in past tense, and we generally misuse laid instead – so consistently that I suspect it will formally change in some future decade.  The book lies where the others lie on the table.  It lay there all yesterday.  It has lain there a long time and is still lying there.

This of course, has nothing to do with telling a lie, but we have fewer problems with that meaning.

Upcoming Schedule

Oct 1
Laura
Cassie

Oct 8
Nick
Benjamin

Oct 15
Ciuin
Laura

Oct 22
Open slots

Oct 29
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

Sept 24th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The short list for this year’s Man Booker prize for fiction has been announced.

Victories

Dylan is included in an interview with participants in the Mark Lawrence competition.

Aaron is on pace at the halfway mark to finish his NaNoWriMo novel in September.

Cassie added 4,000 words to a story and plans to finish the draft in September.  She put out more quotes in picture form on Facebook, web page, blog, and newsletter.

Benjamin has been writing a lot and found the group.

Education

You may encounter the term “high concept” story.  The definition is a quite vague, but generally requires a fresh idea, often starting from a “what if ….” premise.  Jeff Lyons lists some qualities that are associated with “high concept.”

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 24
Ciuin
Aaron

Oct 1
Laura
Cassie

Oct 8
Nick
Benjamin

Oct 15
Open slots

Oct 22
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

Sept 17th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Stephen King muses on whether a novelist can be too productive.  I doubt any of us have that problem, but it is interesting to ponder.  He discusses his writing in an interview.

Victories

Dylan’s reader accepted the commissioned piece with no changes.

Aaron is on pace to finish a novel in September, following the NaNoWriMo method.

Education

Stories can be written in any of several points of view.  Third person talks about Joe, Nancy, he, and she, and is very commonly used.

Omniscient POV is a form of third-person where the narration has access to all information including characters’ thoughts and things they don’t know.  This is relatively uncommon in today’s fiction.

Another, that is popular in recent young adult stories, is first person, which is written as “I went there and did that.”  In this POV, the reader has full access to one character’s thoughts and experiences, but no one else’s.

Second person addresses the reader as “you.”  In fiction it is rather uncommon, and some people find it obnoxious.  It is natural for self-help and instruction books.

The most common today is probably close third-person, also known as deep third person, where the story is told by following one character at a time, including knowing their thoughts, while still using third-person sentence construction.

Once you start a scene, in most genres you are expected to have a scene break or new chapter when changing to a different character’s POV.  Frequent changes are known as “head hopping” and are discouraged, except they are more common in a romance genre.

Dylan is preparing a presentation on POV for us later.

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 17
Dylan
Aaron

Sept 24
Ciuin
Open slot

Oct 1
Open slots

Oct 8
Nick
Open slot

Oct 15
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

Sept 10th, 2015 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Someday you, too, may get a chance to continue a series started by a well-known author.  This time it is someone adding to the Stieg Larsson series that started with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Victories

Eugenia found a better job.  Unfortunately it is in another state.

Ciuin’s writing will be used for a museum exhibit.  She even got to edit her boss’s writing for part of it.

Dylan finished the draft of a 25k word commission at 42k words.  He will participating in four panels at ICON in October.  He was a semifinalist, but is now out of the running, in the Mark Lawrence self-published novel competition.

Cassie made a post on her blog and newsletter including another picture relating to her story.  The pictures seem to attract interest.

Education

Participial phrases can be tricky to apply correctly.  The participle is a verb form (action word) which most often, but not always, ends in -ing.   Participial phrases are attached to a complete sentence to modify or supply additional information about the subject or object noun (person or thing) of the sentence.

For example, “Rowing the heavy boat, John soon tired.”  The participial phrase “Rowing the heavy boat” is not a sentence because there is no subject person to do the rowing.  “John soon tired” is a sentence, but needs the added phrase to explain why John, the subject of the sentence, became tired.

The phrase should be set off with commas from the sentence as above, or in “Pulling into the driveway, the noisy car alerted the occupants of the house.”

The noun should always be the nearest one to the phrase that modifies it.  It would be incorrect to write “Pulling into the driveway, the occupants of the house heard the noisy car” because the phrase appears to modify the nearest noun, occupants, not the intended noun, car.

Here is more discussion of participial phrases.

Upcoming Schedule

Sept 10
Dylan
Laura
Dylan’s lesson on POV ?

Sept 17
Open slots

Sept 24
Ciuin
Open slot

Oct 1
Open slots

Oct 8
Nick
Open slot

Oct 15
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill