Next Noble Pen Meeting

December 1st, 2016 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News and Commentary

We need to be thinking about whether to meet during the end-of-year holidays.  It looks feasible as there is no direct conflict, but will enough attend to make a good meeting?

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Glen Weldon asks, “Is the term ‘graphic novel’ a useful one?”

Victories

As far as I know, we all survived an overdose of turkey and at least some of us got a bit of writing done.

Education

Writer’s “voice” is a subtle concept.  The way you tell a story can make or break it.  Brian Klems tries to explain the difference between a writer’s voice and style.  Steve Thompson goes to greater length on the subject, but sums it up as:  “The voice is the word choice and method of speaking and thinking as demonstrated by characters, while style is much more broad.”  Randy Ingermanson links style to “writing patterns” and voice to “attitude”.

The Wikipedia article on writing style also discusses writer’s voice.  After reading these and the other articles, I’m still not sure I get it.  They seem to overlap and many sources’ explanations of one make reference to the other.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. ~Nietzsche

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward. ~Robert Frost

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It is also important that characters have distinct voices or ways of talking so the reader can easily picture them as individual personalities and distinguish them from each other without relying entirely on the dialog tags.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself about how your characters speak.

Alicia Rasley offers some advice and exercises to help a writer develop character voice.  Here’s a good list of things to think about and some great suggestions.  Beth Lewis offers some good ways to develop voice.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning. ~Maya Angelou

Upcoming Schedule

Dec 1
Dakota
Uriah
Andrea

Dec 8
Laura
Aime W.
Stacy H.

Dec 15
Open slots

Dec 22
Open slots

Dec 29
Open slots

Jan 5
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

December 1st, 2016 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

Most companies are giving their employees Thursday off to work on their writing, so we won’t interfere with that to have a meeting.

Victories

Aime decided her story was ready to publish on Amazon.

Stacy sent query letters.

Dylan wrote a 3 kword essay on the electoral college and a chapter of a commission.

Education

Writing a character who is not of your own gender can be difficult.  A.  Lee Martinez offers advice.

Part of the advice is to make sure your characters aren’t stereotyped.  But if you are writing in historical fiction or an alternate world which parallels our history, then you may need to pay attention to these historical attitudes of gender roles that have changed.

For fun, you may want to see if this Gender Guesser can correctly determine who wrote a selection.  The tool is mostly a curiosity, but could help you balance your writing to appeal to a wider audience.

It doesn’t seem to be very accurate for fiction.  I tried the first chapter of my story and it was 51% confident I was male, whereas Randy’s first chapter came up 63% for male.  But it indicated male for recent submissions by Cassie and Laura.  The most “female” result from my trials was a submission from Stacy that came out only 46% confident.   Do these results indicate our group is influencing each other to a neutral style?

Upcoming Schedule

Nov 24
Thanksgiving – no meeting

Dec 1
Dakota
Uriah
Andrea

Dec 8
Laura
Aime W.
Stacy H.

Dec 15
Open slots

Dec 22
Open slots

Dec 29
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

November 17th, 2016 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

We’re used to writing and reading most anything we please, with many negative opinions, and not fearing repercussions.  Let’s hope it never gets to the point where this country sees events like this story in China.

Victories

Nick made progress on edits.

Dakota finished the draft of a book

Dylan has reader for Sand & Bone.

Education

Do you have only a short time on a given day to write?  Make the best use of scattered moments through out the day to make notes of ideas for plot, character, and scenes.  Here’s a list of possible times to think about your story. Use your phone or other gadgets to capture those notes while driving.  Think through your plots while exercising.

When you do sit down to write, you may find it best to just capture the ideas and not worry about cleaning it up.  Keep editing as a separate (but necessary) task so you don’t slow down the creative process.

Do whatever it takes to make sure that when you sit down to write, you don’t get distracted.  Some people keep an old computer, off net, just for writing so they aren’t distracted by email and F*ceb**k.   If you’re going to want a cup of tea, make it before sitting down so you don’t interrupt yourself to get it.

Eleven authors give their productivity tips.  Here are 10 tips on productivity and another series of tips by a prolific writer.

Upcoming Schedule

Nov 17
Laura
Riley
Stacy H

Nov 24
Thanksgiving – no meeting

Dec 1
Dakota
Uriah
Andrea

Dec 8
Open slots

Dec 15
Open slots

Dec 22
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

November 10th, 2016 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

A recent NY Times article lists science fiction stories, old and new, that reflect serious ideas about the effects artificial intelligence might have on society.

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Some of our group have used the computers and printers at the Kirkwood Training Outreach Services (KTOS) facility on Armar drive, and should be aware that it is closing in December.

Victories

Nick received a rejection and submitted his story elsewhere.  He is editing again on the Knight story.

Cassie attended a convention and sold books.

Dylan had a better reading session at the convention than in the past and sold books.  A well-published author approved of his work and said he had fixed earlier problems.  He will participate in a panel on the writing craft at the West Branch library on Saturday.

Stacy revised three chapters.

Randy received two more rejections and set a deadline of next Thursday for sending his book out for editing.

Dakota edited all weekend and finished all markups from her readers.

Cassie’s book came out on Tuesday and is getting good ratings.

Education

Stories can be written using any of several points of view.  See the links in the article on Omniscient for details on others as well.

Third person talks about Joe, Nancy, he, and she.  In third person Omniscient POV the narration has access to all information including characters’ thoughts and even things they don’t know.  This once-popular form is relatively uncommon in today’s fiction.

The most common today is probably close third-person, also known as deep third person, where the story is told following one character at a time, showing what they see and knowing their thoughts, but not intermixing things they do not know.  It resembles first person in this aspect but uses third-person sentence construction

First person POV is popular in recent stories, especially young adult.  It is written as “I went there and I did that” as if the character is talking to you.  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.

A story can be told from multiple points of view.  However, 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 and accepted in a romance genre.

Upcoming Schedule

Nov 10
Dakota
Greg
Andrea

Nov 17
Laura
Riley
Stacy H

Nov 24
Thanksgiving – no meeting

Dec 1
Dakota
Uriah
Open slot

Dec 8
Open slots

Dec 15
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill