Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays With Story
July 9, 2013
Writer’s quotation . . .
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” — Ernest Hemingway
Tuesday at B&N . . .(thank you, Carol)
Summer activities are in full swing, keeping our members busy. A few of us did gather to go over a stories and two chapters.
First off, kudus to Katelin Cummins, who is up to 13,000 words in the NaNoWriMo Boot Camp! She’s discovering the freedom of just writing to see what happens and worrying about editing later. NaNoWriMo Boot Camp runs through the end of July.
Ray Woodruff presented his short story, “Head of Household.” Rebecca declared it “very freaky” overall (yes, this is a compliment) but thought with all the smog and pollution that the main character might cough and wheeze a bit. She also wanted a definition of “bikes” – bicycles or motorcycles? Katelin loved the way it read, and didn’t want it to end. Jen particularly enjoyed the first line, “Vehicles strangled the highway ahead.” Carol had a little trouble with the premise that people had to volunteer to die because all disease had been wiped out so people didn’t die naturally. Seemed like car accidents and lung disease, at the very least, would take out a certain number of people on a regular basis. She wondered if the Front was actually up to something else. Ruth liked the imagery of the buildings – they were clearly tall and overcrowded. One technical point: don’t use both Anna and Annabelle for the wife, pick one to be consistent. (And Katelin, thinking deviously, wondered if the sister-in-law could have been sent, instead…)
Ruth Imhoff brought in a rewrite of chapter 3 of Motto of the Hound. Starting with the end, Katelin liked the fact that the building wasn’t there. Ray felt that the detectives should have pressed for more detail/description of these people of interest, something beyond “loud.” He liked the intrigue, but said the scene would benefit from more description/details. It’s not clear that the restaurant is a brewpub, and the scene seems to be mostly dialog. Carol wanted more hints that there’s something odd going on. Daniel seems pretty oblivious, too calm and relaxed. There’s also good opportunity for character development in showing us how Daniel is feeling about losing his wife and kids – that was kind of glossed over, but probably deserves more attention.
Carol Hornung read a scene from Ghost of Heffron College. Rebecca wanted to know exactly what kind of senses the ghost had – is he really detecting the aroma of the Pop Tarts, or is something else at work? Nice idea to explore the ghost’s timeline by looking at when Pop Tarts were invented, but Ray felt the transition to it was a little quick. Katelin pointed out that there’s a lot of character associated with how someone handles their cell phone. Custom ring tones? Do they check it constantly, or is it a necessary evil? Jen felt that Kyle thinks the latter and suggested it would be fun to see him dodging around texters on campus.
Who’s up next . . .
July 16: (copied from most recent newsletter)
Ruth Imhoff (chapter, Motto of the Hound)
Alicia Connolly Lohr (novella, scene, Lincoln’s Other War)
Bob Kralapp (short story/part 2, “What is Missing?”)
Judith McNeil (chapter 2, My Mother, Savior of Men)
Aaron Boehm (film script/part 2, “Mesozoic Mall”)
Jerry Peterson (chapters 25-29, The Last Good Man)
July 23rd:
Rebecca Rettenmund, Hales Tales; Carol Hornung, scene from Ghost of Heffron College; Erin Syth, short story; Ruth Imhoff, Motto of the Hound. Room for two more readers – please contact Carol if you’d like to be on the schedule.
August 6:
Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret)
Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter, The Cheese Logue)
Andy Pfeiffer (novella/part 1 rewrite, Pilleum)
Ruth Imhoff (chapter, Motto of the Hound)
Pat Edwards (poems)
Amber Boudreau (chapter 17, Noble)
From our members . . .
* Pat Edwards emailed:
I must have just come out from under a rock, because I never heard of Dragon*con. http://www.dragoncon.org/
The web page tag line bills it as “…the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction & fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!”
Well, the universe they know of at least. All of our fantasy writers should go!
5th Tuesday . . .
July 30. 1st and 3rd group hosts at Panera store, (3416 University Ave., Madison, WI 53705). Writing challenge: Select a fortune from list posted in last week’s newsletter, then write a story, poem, essay, or film scene using the fortune in some way. Max length: 250 words. Deadline for emailing to Jerry is Fri. July 26.
Writer’s Craft . . . Pace and Theme
By Daniel Gleason
“Take out all the parts that people don’t like to read,” the great Kurt Vonnegut advised us years ago when we were his students. “Get people turning the pages fast….but know where to slow down for the curves. . . . Only later did I realize that he was talking about “pacing” and how essential it is to good writing, especially fiction. . . .
And what is pacing? If you think of a movie, see a camera that pans over the entire city of Los Angeles, for example—as an opening scene might. That camera is showing you a lot of detail in a short span of time—millions of people in one shot that lasts a few second. Then the camera pans in on a neighborhood, and finally on one house, then comes into the window for a tight shot on a man sitting at a breakfast table at 7 a.m. eating Cheerios and drinking straight whiskey. . .
If you want to speed up the action, you cover more ground with fewer words, limiting your descriptions to perhaps a few words. Let’s say, for example, that you have someone running, being pursued, and you want to show some of the scenery to keep the scene vivid while keeping the action fast-paced. Okay, read the passage below and then, on your own, before you read my second example, rewrite the passage to pace it better. Then look at my example.
As the boy ran across the street, he saw scenes he recognized. He noticed the candy store that he used to love to hang out and the swing where he had got his first kiss on the cheek from his first girlfriend, when he was nine years old on what had been a chilly summer evening when he was supposed to be home.
He looked back and saw that the man was still pursuing him angrily, running in long strides but breathing heavily now. The boy hoped that the man might slip in the wet street, but he could see why the man was angry, since he and his friends had let the air out of the front tire of his brand new Buick LeSabre.
He rounded the corner and climbed over old man Wilburn’s picket fence, which had never been painted, or certainly hadn’t since the boy could remember.
Then he cut through a yard that was cluttered with tin cans and old lawnmower parts and barely had any grass on it, except for crab grass and a few dandelions. The man was still on his tail.
Finally he crossed the same wet street again and headed back in the direction from which he’d come, up a long hill where he began to run out of breath, which is when the man who had been chasing him finally managed to grab hold of the back of his shirt and bring him to a halt.
Okay, now make sure you have done your own rewrite before you read my version below:
The boy raced across the street past his favorite candy store as the angry man pursued him in long strides in cadence with labored breathing, raising his hopes that he would wear the man out and get away.
The boy continued on in unbroken strides past the swing where he’d got his first kiss, then climbed over old man Wilburn’s unpainted fence and through a scruffy, cluttered yard. He sprinted back across the street, the man still hot on his tail, then up the big hill where he finally lost his breath and the angry man grabbed him by the back of the neck. The chase was over.
The first version requires 250 words, the second just over 100. . . the first version is so slowly paced that it gets dull. Remember, you have someone being chased and the action should be moving fast. You do not have the luxury of going into long descriptions about unnecessary things. You could have either mentioned early on what the boy did and what kind of car the man had, or saved it for later, when the action takes its natural lull.
Read the whole article at: http://www.writingclasses.com/FacultyBios/facultyArticleByInstructor.php?ArticleID=11
By Terry Bain
The theme is the container for your story. Theme will attempt to hold all the elements of your story in place. It is like a cup. A vessel. A goblet. The plot and characters and dialogue and setting and voice and everything else are all shaped by the vessel. In many cases the vessel will go unnoticed by readers, but it would be very difficult to drink a glass of wine without the glass itself. The glass itself is, of course, part of the experience, but it is not one we always pay much attention to.
Okay, okay, so I used a nice metaphor. But now you want to know: what the heck is a theme? First, the word theme is confusing and may do you as much harm as good. You shouldn’t think of theme as the ponderous sort of explanations given by critics and academics. That doesn’t have much to do with writing a story. And you’ll get into an equal amount of trouble if you think of theme as synonymous with message or moral. That kind of thing is best left to pundits and philosophers.
The novelist John Gardner wisely says: “By theme here we mean not a message—a word no good writer likes applied to his work—but the general subject, as the theme of an evening of debates may be World Wide Inflation.” You see, the theme may be simply world wide inflation without there being any elegant solution for inflation or even a single point of view on the subject. The great Anton Chekov also said something something smart. He said that the fiction writer does not need to solve a problem so much as state the problem correctly.
So, you see, you’re off the hook. You don’t have to create themes that will solve the problems of the world. You just have to shine your flashlight on some aspect of life and let the reader see what’s there. Not every aspect. Some aspect. And that’s a key point because a theme should give a story some kind of focus, in a manner similar to how plot gives a story focus.
We’re probably best off by just saying that theme is some kind of unifying idea in a story. Any kind of unifying idea will do, truth be told.
Read the whole article at: http://www.writingclasses.com/FacultyBios/facultyArticleByInstructor.php?ArticleID=19
Writing Contests . . .
The Biggest Writing Contest for Everything (WritersCafé.org) * all types/genres * free for members – free membership * limit 3 pieces *deadline 7/23/13
http://www.writerscafe.org/contests/The-Biggest-Contest-FOR-EVERYTHING%21/48479/
Dream Quest One Poetry & Writing Contest * $5/$10 entry fee * deadline 7/31/13
http://www.dreamquestone.com/
Swanezine Short Story Competition * 1K word limit * worldwide * deadline 8/31/13
https://sites.google.com/site/swanezine/short-story-competition
2013 Nano Prize * flash/short fiction * $15 entry for up to 3 shorts * deadline 9/1/13
http://nanofiction.org/submit
Great words . . . (thanks to Jerry)
This provided by Word Spy Paul McFedries:
stealth wear
n. Clothing designed to prevent the wearer from being tracked, recognized, or photographed, particularly by surveillance systems.
– stealth-wear adj.
Example Citations:
“The term ‘stealth wear’ sounded cool, if a bit extreme, when I first heard it early this year. It’s a catchy description for clothing and accessories designed to protect the wearer from detection and surveillance. I was amused. It seemed like an updated version of a tinfoil hat, albeit a stylish one.
– Jenna Wortham, Stealth Wear Aims to Make a Tech Statement, The New York Times, June 29, 2013
“Clothing and accessories designed to help individuals remain anonymous in public, known as stealth wear, are becoming increasingly popular.”
– Kristin Feledy, Slacks That Literally Hide Your Butt, SiliconAngle, July 1, 2013
Earliest Citation:
“Building off previous work with CV Dazzle, camouflage from face detection, stealth wear continues to explore the aesthetics of privacy and the potential for fashion to challenge authoritarian surveillance.”
– Adam Harvey, Stealth Wear: New Designs for Countersurveillance, Adam Harvey Projects, December 29, 2012
Food for Thought . . .“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.” — Jack Kerouac
Tuesdays with Story 
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