Meeting Recap 10/25/12

Meeting Recap:

We were a little light last Thursday when we met, but we managed to get a lot done! We played around in our Universal Universe, and ended up with a few conceptual "races" and some stories that could happen under the Ice of our Europa like planet. 

Then, to test the colaborative, creative wiles of our group, we wrote up a little line-by-line short story about a dark and stormy night. Fun stuff!
(The Discussion, with the story at the bottom of it, are posted in the Editor's office)

NANOWRIMO!

All that being said We're looking forward to our Writing Goals for NANOWRIMO! (National Novel Writing Month for the unitiated.)

November is a month of many things... Facial Hair, Pomegranates, Native American Awareness, and Writing our brains out. The "traditional" rules are as follows:

***Write 50000 words (1667 words/day) before Midnight November 30th.***

With that lofty (but atainable) goal in mind Let's set some Goals for ourselves:

Alexander J. Turner: I plan to double the current word count (End with 10,000 words) of "More Letters" and bonus points if I can come up with a decent conclusion. 

Jn: Jn's going for the full monty! 50,000 words by 23:59:59 on November 30th, 2012. Godspeed!

More to come... Email Alex your personal Goals!




Oct 11th Meeting review

Prompt: Start a character arc for our universal universe. (Check out this post to learn more about what I mean) don't worry about matching it up with other writer's ideas, we'll be meeting next week to iron out some details with that.

The Meeting:
We talked about our Haikus, and learned that through the lens of haiku, just about everything takes on a little more meaning. Even things that aren't supposed to! (Link's to Valerie's Haiku)

The form lends itself to simplicity, and often takes on the environment we're in. (I was in a classroom, looking at a clock, thinking about time, Jn was on a plane, Indiana was looking at the fall colours...) It's a great way to exercise our observation skills and our poetic-thinking-brains, like snapping a poetic picture of our state and our surroundings.



Meeting Recap 9/29/12

Met to talk about our cliche mash-up poems, and it turns out that everyone liked our poems more than we did.

We now have a meeting time! Thursday 6-8, probably somewhere at RIT. Yay!

Prompt: Look at the Universal Universe, and add some things to your personal/group file, we'll be meeting again to talk about this soon, and collaborating online tonight till 8.

Other Prompt: 5 Haikus (3 lines, 5-7-5 Syllables each)

Haiku's are one of my favorite forms of poetry, largely because they are so limited in their scope. Just to get you started, haiku's are generally inspired by observation, and then that observation is posed as a metaphor on one or more levels. Since haikus are so short, each line, and each word can be taken independantly, and the piece can be read and broken down several different ways.

For some reason my haikus have always come in sets of 5, but that should not limit you. Write the 5 however you like (as a set, or 3 and 2, or each independently) We'll be going over them, as well as our additions and ideas for the universal universe next meeting.

We'll be doing our first colaborative assignment next meeting! Exciting sutff!

-Alex

Meeting Recap (from that one time)

First I'll apologize for being tardy in my handling of write club.
We had a brief meeting to consider our letters of encouragement. Our assignment through this week is to write into the world building file Jenn has so industriously provided.
Our homework is also this poetry prompt.
Choose a clichéd phrase ("fit as a fiddle," "think out of the box," "running on empty," etc.) and turn it around. Use the new meaning created by this reversal to fuel a poetic meditation.

Meeting Recap 8/18/12

Assignment: Write an encouraging bit of poetry or prose to Matt Benedict (either directly to, or dedicated to) and we'll take a look at it at our next meeting, and put it together

We took a trip to bolder coffee, I took a trip at bolder coffee, and we talked about world building.

The key question of world building is "what would it be like to live in a world where..." and "how does ... effect the way that I ..." the more ways that you can formulate that question and still get meaningful answers, the better your world building framework is, and the more real your story will seem.

The reason why it will seem more real is that you will be able to show how your world works by telling the What's, why's and how's of the way people live through events (interesting) instead of listing out facts and telling people the gears and fiddly bits behind the scenes.

Case in point: If you are world building a transportation system, don't tell us that it can go 250 miles per hour, show us how it feels to go 250 miles per hour, or take us on the journey twice, once with the "old way" and again with the new way, what are the consequences? Do new conflicts arise because people who normally didn't mingle now can travel about at ease?  That way the pieces that are important to each of your characters get highlighted, the nature lover misses the scenic route, the up and coming businessman loves that he can rub shoulders with the best and brightest, the adrenaline junky loves looking over the back to watch the ground zip by, and no one has to mention the speed or how it goes that fast or even what it is to know that it's changed the way that your characters interact with the world in a meaningful way.

In novels this adds depth and life to the setting (and characters) of your story, in short stories, a single world building "block" can play a central roll, or be the focus of the entire story. A very useful tool, and a lot of fun to play with.

Meeting Recap: 8/2/12

Assignment: Develop character arcs within a project that you're working on, or start a story with the character arcs we made during the meeting. (Not to be reviewed next week)

We went over our emotional sketch assignments from last week, and we learned a little bit more about short-short  fiction. (Insert "Who writes short-shorts? We write short-shorts!" joke here.) It didn't get too much focus but the idea of themes and dichotomies becomes more poignant, as it would in poetry. In Jn's work that looked like light/dark, in Mandy's it was up/down. We can add another layer of meaning by intentionally weaving these threads together. In a work that can be read two or three times in a sitting, those extra layers start to come out.

We read "Orange" a creative little Scifi story Jn found in an "In Flight" magazine (good snag!) that showed us a little different perspective on the dialogue exercise we did by using the format of an interview with just the answers.

Character Arcs:
Then we talked about Character arcs, based on this podcast from the guys at writing excuses
http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/10/31/writing-excuses-5-9-character-arcs/

These are the stories of each individual character within a story, and in every great work of literature, there are compelling characters, and the reason why they those characters are compelling is that they (almost always) have their own compelling arcs within the larger story.

We talked about the 3 act structure, which provides a framework for planning out how the conflict will happen within the character's life (and within the story as a whole). Introduce the character's status quo, upset the status quo, resolve to new status quo. (if they can get back to the old status quo, the upset wasn't big enough)

Example: Pippin Took
Introducing Pippin
A bumbling Hobbit who just wants to help Frodo and often doesn't understand the danger he's in.


The Status quo gets upset
Carelessly follows (or just bumbles) into riskier and riskier situations (Old Man Willow, Moria, Uruk Hai, The seeing stone) and barely makes it out with his own skin with significant help from others (perhaps showing just how unprepared he is for all this). Never really makes many decisions, just along for the ride, causing many to have to go back and help. He is largely a detriment to the fellowship, (entertainment value aside).

Pippin's Response
Decides to fight for a cause bigger than himself (Pledges service to Denathor) and starts saving others. He lights the signal fire to bring help from Rohan, and saves Faramir from being mistakenly cremated by Denathor.


Meeting Recap: 7/26/12

Assignment: Some traumatic or extremely exciting event has occurred in your characters life, write about their emotions and senses (What do they feel, sense, notice differently because of that event) but don't write out what actually happened to them. Goal 250 words (try to be concise, but don't restrict yourself if it turns into something longer.)

We planned to meet in Gilman Lounge, but the door was locked, so we climbed up on the roof and met anyways.

Talked about our dialogue exercises and discovered some useful dialogue tools, that will help to add depth to our stories without packing it into stilted dialogue.

How to differentiate characters:
-Dialect (aint, dunno, gonna)
-buzzwords (bro, shazzam, *whistle* chk-chk)
-Confidence level (careful with this one, it gets used a lot)
-Maturity (Father/son, master/apprentice)
-Education level (big words small words)

Here's the podcasts where I got the exercise (and some ideas):
http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/12/27/writing-excuses-5-17-dialog-exercises/
http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/01/16/writing-excuses-5-20-more-dialog-exercises/
Howard Taylor

The 4 authors who do this podcast are awesome teachers for epic fantasy (my eventual goal) but a lot of their stuff applies to short stories (fiction and non) as well.

In particular, Howard Taylor of the Shlock Mercenary Webcomic (schlockmercenary.com) does brilliant character arcs & sub plots (i.e. short stories within a comic that's been posted every day for more than 10 years.) I recommend you check out his work.

Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson does extremely good work in epic fantasy, and is one of the genre's best authors today. I've read his Mistborn series, very well done, and original in a genre where iconic cliches are so easy to overdo.
I'm not familiar with Dan's, or Mary's work, but I suspect that it is also good.


With that, I'll conclude this week's recap. Enjoy the writing prompt!


Interesting Fact: Howard and Brandon are both Mormon!






Meeting Recap: 7/19/12

Assignment: Write a set of dialogue without any supporting text. Find ways within the dialogue to differentiate their voices.


We sat in the rain
We read our work
We slurped on juiceboxes
We wrote this:    

     I cannot believe we used to feed tuna fish to our cats. There is no nutritional value to them, and when they pass gas it's as if it's raining sewage into a giant vat of old milk. Pure unbridled putrescence; the stuff of nightmares. Nightmares that make a person wonder how nature allows such abominations. Yet, he continued to eat.
     "No sense stopping now."
     As with any horrible smell he gradually grew a tolerance to for it's appalling odor as he ate. The taste, however, caused his stomach to seriously reconsider his brain's questionable decisions. He kept telling himself,
      "food was food, right?"
     but years of survival training could not stop him from second guessing the fact that this was "food." He began to tear as the smell seeped into his nostrils, nearly feeling the rot. Closing his eyes, he took a bite... suddenly his vision was filled with stars... rainbows! A flavor so savory, so sweet... beyond words! If the appearance and odor deceived, the flavor bedazzled. Sadly, only three spoonfulls remained. He finished them quickly, and soon regretted not savoring the last of his meal. For all he knew it would be his last for a long time. He turned his back to the sunset, picked up his pack and started walking.

__________

     Isla, in complete shock of the the destruction that lay before her, became blind with dizziness. A dizziness so profound that she collapsed. Her wrath exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep in the center of what used to be down town.
     "Hey... wake up..."
     She opened her eyes to a near pitch black night. Only the distant fires of the burning rubble illuminated the shadow that awakened her. It was the size of a large cat.
     Her hair stood on end. No one - nothing should be here. She'd thought she was safe enough for a few moments of rest. As she sat, the aching gnaw of her most recent memories began to make her ill. Isla vomited. Why, oh, why would anyone ever do something so disgusting and so violent? She would never be able to enjoy a watermelon again.

Afterword:
The writers of this story apologize for any serious offences taken due to its' disturbing content. We had no idea what we were doing at the time.
          
    -Write Club

p.s. But then again maybe society needs to be shaken up once in a while. Judge for yourself. We should hope for something better.

__________

     Every time I stop at your grave, I experience some satisfaction seeing last years rose is missing. Despite my fading memories, it seems my gift is still being accepted. It seems a paltry offering, I suppose, after everything that happened, but in my heart I know you're dead, and the dead don't really mind. You never were one that went for a lot of flattery and empty gestures. Oh well. I suppose a bribe will be necessary... will twenty dollars fit the bill, or will you be so cold hearted as to demand more?
     "I don't plan on running this business much longer to be honest. I'll give it to you for twenty dollars right now. I assure you, you won't find another offer like this anywhere else."
     I'd already started to walk away. The offer caught me off guard. I had exactly twenty dollars in my pocket. Maybe I could walk home instead of catching the bus. I have principles and a spotless reputation to uphold. Walking will be worth it! I will make it to eh convention, and make sure that everyone learns the truth. I will make it if it kills me!
     He made his way to the station and boarded the next train to Memphis; nothing could stop him now.

__________


     "It just won't work." Henry sighed as he tossed the device into his scrap heap left the workshop. Henry didn't worry much about the work he was tossing away; his creative mind could come up with new ideas faster than he could fix the problems with his last one. But, his deadline was quickly approaching. He pulled out the old Underwriter. Somehow the metallic clack of keys shifted his muse into overdrive in a way the plastic tick of a computer keyboard never would.
     It was time to get creative. Think of irritating cliff hangers, suave discriptions, and thought provoking inner voices. If only he could find a real compelling villan, with an axe to grind! Then his hero would finally have a worthy opponent, and he would finally be able to unleash his true genius.
     As soon as this thought ran through his mind, an angry old man walked by, wearing a top hat and trench coat, muttering something under his breath. Villanous? Maybe not... but he'll have to do for now.
Back int he day, he'd worked for a rumor rag. He was used to turning safer individuals into criminals, just for the revenue a scandal would bring. It was worth a shot to try it again on the passing stranger. But this person was a young woman. Perhaps she was a new mother or was going to school.
      It didn't matter who she was, she would know the power of the device. He would make it work. He would change the world!

Allow me to Propose a Purpose

This blog will serve as a place to collect the things we write as a group, as well as a place to post assignments and selected responses to those assignments.

Your first assignment is simply to bring a piece of writing you'd like us to critique at the first meeting.

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."