Tuesdays with Story

Tuesdays With Story Newsletter
Fourth Week of March

Four of us gathered Tuesday night for a lively round of critiques.

We started with Rebecca Rettenmund’s The Cheese Logue, Chapter 22. Andy liked the piece but felt it ran a little long and could have been a little more playful, especially with the kid. He thought the interactions were a bit repetitive, but Jen thought they worked together well. Carol really liked the character development involving Isaiah and the Halloween party. There were also a few technical things, verb tenses that didn’t match, and some homonyms to be corrected. Rebecca asked if the idea of a one-year story structure worked, and we all said “yes.”

Andy Pfeiffer read a scene from People. The way he read the scene out loud was funny, but the wording of the scene itself didn’t come off as funny. Might need the main character to find the situation funny so the reader follows along. Jen was concerned about the character of Brenna. Hard to know what’s really going on with Liam, and the director needs some one-on-one time with her to develop the relationship. Watch out for the harassment, too – unless someone is particularly valuable a company won’t try to correct behavior, they’ll just cut him lose to protect themselves. Carol wanted to see Spaulding with some incredible talent that makes him valuable. Rebecca thought Brenna should be above all the foolishness.

Carol Hornung read a scene from Ghost of Heffron College. Andy suggested more physical descriptions of the characters. Rebecca really liked the idea that the ghost had some power over others – but don’t let Olivia slip back into bitchiness after the ghost influenced her behavior. Also, put the two comments of the different kinds of flooring together for contrast. Makes more sense. And the description of the name tags on the door read a bit awkward. Otherwise, the scene worked well.

Who’s Up Next:
April 2: Amber Boudreau (chapter, Noble), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter, The Cheese Logue), Michelle Nightoak (chapter, memoir), Andy Pfeiffer (???), Clayton Gill (chapter, Fishing Derby), and Alicia Connolly Lohr (chapters 3-4, Lincoln’s Other War).

April 9th: Terry Hoffman (The Great Tome); Bill Eisigner, (short story); Jack Frieburger, (Jesus at the IHOP); David Mayer, (Time Traveler’s Definitive Guide, Vol 2); Rebecca Rettenmund, (The Cheese Logue – Black Friday); Jen Wilcher (The Hogoshiro Chronicles).

April 16: Lisa McDougal (chapter 12, Follow the Yellow), Amber Boudreau (chapter, Noble), Millie Mader (chapter 43, Life on Hold), Pat Edwards (???), Andy Pfeiffer (???), and Aaron Boehm (film script/part 5, “Whole Again”)

April 23rd: Carol Hornung (Ghost of Heffron College); Andy Pfeiffer (People) (room for 4 more).

Fifth Tuesday: April 30th
We have a challenge for Fifth Tuesday, coming up on April 30! We are still looking for a location. Anyone have any ideas?

The challenge is:
Poorly Translated Cliché
Pick a cliché. Make a poorly translated version of it. Build a story around this translation. Perhaps a foreigner or alien writes home about the cliché and you translate the letter back to English? 250 words or less.

Great words . . .
Courtesy of Word Spy Paul McFedries:
crime-as-a-service
n. Web-based software that enables or enhances online criminal activity. Also: cybercrime-as-a-service, crimeware-as-a-service, CaaS.

Example Citations:
“A worrying new phrase has entered the lexicon of cybercrime – Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS)… CaaS has become a well-oiled machine, built on a wide network of players that fulfill specific functions.”
– Vishak Raman, Cybercrime-as-a-Service – A Very Modern Business, PCQuest, March 7, 2013

“New versions of the ZeuS botnet code costs $3,000; Butterfly botnet code costs $900. Simplified botnets used in the rental and crime-as-a-service model are cheaper, such as Bredolab, starting at $50.”
– Ellen Messmer, World of botnet cybercrime paying pretty well these days, Network World, December 19, 2012

Earliest Citation:
“Finjan says Crimeware-as-a-Service (CaaS) is becoming an increasing problem and the ability of law enforcement to track malicious hackers will become increasingly hampered.”
– Larry Dignan, The next big thing? Crimeware-as-a-service,” ZDNet, April 7, 2008

Notes: The something-as-a-service idea comes from cloud computing, where online applications (such as DropBox and Google Docs) are called software-as-a-service (SaaS) and online computing power (such as Amazon EC2) is called infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

Thinking about words . . .
YA author and blogger Nathan Bransford is, like you and me, a writer. In the past week, he had occasion to think about the words people use, particularly some of the words that are endowed with tremendous power:

It’s interesting to think about what words really are. They’re air passing through vocal chords. They’re pixels on a page. They’re a collection of sounds and shapes that we have collectively decided have meaning. And we bestow certain words with tremendous power.

In the comments of my post about the reaction to The Onion and the Twitterverse finding enemies, we got to talking about the power of words, who can say them, and how much intent matters when they’re said.

Why, exactly, do certain words carry so much power? I don’t mean that in terms of history, which I understand, or why people take offense to the most hateful words, which I also understand. People are right to be offended by them.

I’m talking about, at a basic level, how did we all collectively arrive at deciding that these words or any words have totemic power?
Read the entire post at http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2013/03/words-have-power-we-give-them.html