Next Noble Pen Meeting

May 3rd, 2018 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The restaurant has a big party scheduled for May 3rd.  Look for us on the left as you enter the building.  It might be a bit crowded, but we’ve managed a similar situation every December.

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If you have days when you don’t feel like accomplishing anything, this article says maybe that’s a good thing.  And we might guess especially so for writers.  Just don’t do it too often.

Victories

Aime broke writer’s block and turned out some words.

Randy is making good progress on Sins of Omission and has two chapters left to write in his draft.

Ciuin finished two scenes in Chessmaster, and found someone to correct her Latin.

Logan is half-done with a story.

Education

Authors often want to have a series of books that share characters and settings.  A series of books helps the author because every book sold is an advertisement for the rest.  However, each book needs to be complete and enjoyable by itself should a reader happen to get it first.

New authors are advised to never try to sell a series to an agent until they have success with one book.   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.

Still, a stand-alone book can leave hooks for series potential without a too-obvious cliffhanger leading into a sequel.   The settings and characters from one stand-alone book can be re-used by giving them a new problem in a companion book.   Karen Wiesner has more.

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

May 3
Aime – short educational session on cliches
Nick
Logan (double: complete short story)

May 10
Ciuin
Aime
Uriah

May 17
Open slots

May 24
Ciuin
Open slots

May 31
Jeremiah
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 26th, 2018 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The fight over a broadway production of To Kill A Mockingbird continues.  The executor of Harper Lee’s estate thinks the production is not true to the novel.

Victories

Aime’s son is writing and they had their first big serious discussion of writing.

Ciuin has emphasized the chess theme in prior chapters of Chessmaster.  She is at 80k words and hopes to complete the story this weekend.

Education

Every writer needs to find plotting methods that work for them, and those may differ from those of other successful writers.  You need to try lots of advice and see what helps you.  Jan Ellison offers some tips.  I particularly like her point that you need to get to the end of the story before you polish parts of it.  That approach is consistent with the Snowflake Method.  It’s hard to bring yourself to tear up a beautiful chapter when you find later that the plot needed to go a different direction.  There are many ways or levels of detail to outline, from a strict structure to a loose summary of the story.

For those who want to improve their planning, this article on outlining may help.  Here is a page with downloadable links for several types of outlines as fillable PDF forms you can edit and print.  A seven-point story structure is a classic configuration that may help you shape the story.  Here’s  a collection of outlines used by successful authors.

But not everyone believes in detailed planning.   Some people write by the “seat of their pants”, to use a metaphor that came from pilots who stay oriented by their senses instead of by instruments.  These writers let the story develop as it seems to need to go.

Which are you, or can you take a middle road? John Irving says he always knows where he’s headed, though it would appear from this interview that he doesn’t necessarily know how he will get there.

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 26
Jeremiah
Uriah
Randy

May 3
Aime – short educational session on cliches
Nick
Logan (double: complete short story)

May 10
Ciuin
Aime?
Open slot

May 17
Open slots

May 24
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 19th, 2018 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

It’s always been known that bad news travels more quickly than good news.  Now social scientists are studying how fake news propagates, relative to other things.

Victories

Ciuin added 8,000 words to Chessmaster, putting it up to 72,000.

Education

If you know where to start and end, how do you get the reader to stay with you through the journey?  Generally, you need to maintain conflict and tension, with complications and/or more problems for the protagonist to get through.  But it should all tie together – don’t give the characters a lot of distractions that have nothing to do with the climax and resolution.

Camy Tang writes about keeping up interest through the “The Sagging Middle” Part 1 and Part 2, based on Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer.

This article offers a bunch of ideas to help keep that middle interesting.  Here are more suggestions.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. ~Ernest Hemingway

Focus on the journey, not the destination.  Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.  ~Greg Anderson

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 19
Ciuin (double)
Randy

Apr 26
Jeremiah
Uriah
Randy?

May 3
Nick
Logan (double: complete short story)

May 10
Open slots

May 17
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill

Next Noble Pen Meeting

April 12th, 2018 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The Science Fiction News edition for 2018 Spring (Northern hemisphere) is available.

Victories

Nick edited on his SSS novel.

Ciuin finished an editing job.  She got an order for Petty Theft.

Education

You don’t dare have an important character who isn’t interesting.  There are a lot of ways to make an uninteresting, unlikable character.  It’s trickier with your protagonist than the antagonists.   Here are some negative characteristics that characters may have.

Unlikable characters can be interesting.  They typically come with built-in conflicts, and conflict is the meat of storytelling.  Here is a discussion of some interesting but unlikable characters from published fiction.

Upcoming Schedule

Apr 12
Uriah
Randy
Ciuin

Apr 19
Ciuin
Aime
Open slot

Apr 26
Randy
Jeremiah
Open slot

May 3
Nick
Open slots

May 10
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill