Next Noble Pen Meeting

August 9th, 2018 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

We’ve heard it before – many reviews are paid-for fakes.  Here’s a story about a product and a guy who does paid reviews.  Amazon claims only 1% of reviews are faked, but others wonder. The caution also applies to books.  An article discusses how to spot fakes.

Victories

Randy is beta reading Flight for Dylan.

Education

Authors are sometimes advised to “write what you know.” A long list of authors gave their advice about this.

Certainly personal knowledge makes it easier to set up and describe scenes, people, and places.  But research can fill in what you don’t know about real places and history, and imagination can add a lot, especially for futuristic settings.

If you write about real places, do research to get the geography right. (Dan Brown, I’m looking at you.)  If your character has a profession, research enough to know what they would spend their day doing.  Don’t give historical characters actions they would have been unlikely to do.  But there is still a lot of room to make stuff up.

If you write fantasy, vampires, or space opera don’t let yourself be limited by what others have done.  Make new rules for vampires.  Invent a new way to travel space.  Write a fantasy that is not in a medieval setting.

Upcoming Schedule

Aug 9
Logan
Uriah
Aime

Aug 16
Ciuin
Laura
Uriah

Aug 23
Logan
Ciuin
Open slot

Aug 30
Open slots

Sept  6
Nick
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill