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.