Hatrack River Writers Workshop   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Writers Workshop » Forums » Hatrack Groups » Novel Support Group 11/16 - 11/22

   
Author Topic: Novel Support Group 11/16 - 11/22
Meredith
Member
Member # 8368

 - posted      Profile for Meredith   Email Meredith         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Welcome to this week's Novel Support Group. Anyone can join. If you're new, tell us a bit about who you are and what project you are working on. Feel free to update the NSG Work in Progress thread with your current projects. Although we can report on any number of things, here is a list of suggestions (suggestions welcomed).


What were your goals last week and did you accomplish them?
Describe what you worked on.
Set goals for next week.
Did you learn something during this week?

Here is a list of things that you can do each week as we work on our novels (suggestions welcomed).


Writing on a novel
Characterization
World Building
Relevant research

=-=-=-=-=

Oops! Looks like I almost forgot to do this. Well, it was that kind of week.

As for me:

Last Week's Goals:

DUAL MAGICS SERIES: As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. This is here to remind me that eventually I need to get back to this.
[Razz]

BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING: Promote through social media. I really need to find a way to become more effective at this. I really have to get back to that marketing book.
Not last week. I had the free promo for DAUGHTER OF THE DISGRACED KING, instead. [Wink]

BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM: Continue the revisions.
Yes. And done. [Smile]

MAGE STORM: Hold for revisions to BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM.
Easy one. [Smile]

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.
Yes. [Smile]

Next Week's Goals:

DUAL MAGICS SERIES:
As time permits, go through the x-ray listings for the Dual Magics boxed set and THE BARD'S GIFT. This is here to remind me that eventually I need to get back to this.

BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING:
Promote through social media. I really need to find a way to become more effective at this. I really have to get back to that marketing book.

BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM:
Revisions complete. I'm actually going to leave this alone for a week or so before starting the polishing edit. There's no rush since I'm not planning to publish until after Christmas anyway. And I want to do a little more research on different launch strategies.

MAGE STORM:
Hold for revisions to BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM. And try to resist the bright new shiny idea that came to me last night. Or not. Well, it's not a new idea, more like a story puzzle that didn't have all the pieces yet. Now, I think it does.

OTHER:
Update my blog twice a week.


List of published books just to remind me of all the things I should be paying at least some attention to:

Blood Will Tell (Chimeria #1)
Blood Is Thicker (Chimeria #2)
Fire and Earth
The Bard's Gift
Daughter of the Disgraced King
The Shaman's Curse (Dual Magics #1)
The Voice of Prophecy (Dual Magics #2)
Beyond the Prophecy (Dual Magics #3)
War of Magic (Dual Magics #4)
Become: To Catch the Lighting (Become #1)

This weekend I'm running a free promotion on three of my short stories--as short reads for a busy weekend. "Becoming Lioness", "Wyreth's Flame", and "Heart of Oak".

"Wyreth's Flame" grew out of a writing prompt right here on Hatrack. And then grew even further into THE BARD'S GIFT. Too bad we don't seem to be doing those anymore.

Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
extrinsic
Member
Member # 8019

 - posted      Profile for extrinsic   Email extrinsic         Edit/Delete Post 
Oh! A quiet though wow oh-ho moment this past week from study and discussion about craft and subtext. Literary interpretations often leave me in agreement and frustrated by the revelations those contain. How much I miss that others realize and, obviously, after the fact, realize is part of a given writer's intent. A five-hundred words plus reading rate and top percentile comprehension rate might be impediments of the past, might be somewhat tamed, might be soon more so tamed.

Copyeditor work I do, tedious and droll as the content often is, made less dreary and more astute for reading "between the lines," provides part of the reading skill enhancements. Ongoing rhetoric study and meditation how to apply learned skills, access to several layered subtexts most, enhanced reading skills, and signaled due, apt, noticed attention to those, irrespective of depth degree. More to go, though at last into productive territory about subtext and yada.

Glory be.

Seconded, time overdue for a thirteen-lines challenge. I'd set one up; however, my prompts tend to shy participation away instead of entice enthusiasm. Maybe a worst thirteen-opening lines challenge? Do your worst; worst fragment wins, places, or shows, and worst title? Yet, paradoxically, best in show for raw incongruence that entails profound first-thirteen lines insight? Yeah, another overwrought prompt.

Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Grumpy old guy
Member
Member # 9922

 - posted      Profile for Grumpy old guy   Email Grumpy old guy         Edit/Delete Post 
I'm not afraid of you, extrinsic. [Smile] Bring on any challenge you like: best in show, worst in show or ugliest mongrel; I'm up for it.

It's been a long time (relatively speaking) since I exercised my creative muscles. A substantive weight just might be the tonic I need.

Phil

[ November 21, 2018, 06:40 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]

Posts: 1937 | Registered: Sep 2012  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
extrinsic
Member
Member # 8019

 - posted      Profile for extrinsic   Email extrinsic         Edit/Delete Post 
Thought about challenge prompt strategies. Then, oh! invite participants to prompt those, otherwise, I do the challenge setup and facilitation.

Prompt areas include craft, expression, and appeal focuses, one each to a participant; first prompted, first posted for challenge prompts.

Say, craft: third person remote, simple past tense, indicative mood narrative point of view; expression: detached tone, external sensations only, no thoughts, no narrator attitude, the external sensation action solely carries dramatic movement of a portentous subtext; appeal: a pertinent event, setting, or character motif, for example, a contentious ceramics crafter, science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller, or etc. All optional, of course, in any case.

Might be of interest to post a poster rundown of the craft, expression, and appeal facets along with each entered challenge fragment and title? Again, optional.

Portentous: "1 : of, relating to, or constituting a portent <suspense, portentous foreshadowing, hints of sinister and violent mysteries --- Francine Prose>
2 : eliciting amazement or wonder : PRODIGOUS
3 a : being a grave or serious matter <portentous decisions> b : self-consciously solemn or important : POMPOUS <portentous declamation unsalted by the least trace of humor --- W.H. Pritchard> c : ponderously excessive <that discipline's overwrought, portentous phrases --- R.M. Coles>" (Webster's, bold and italics emphases part of original) Synonyms: ominous, omen, portent, portentous, fateful; suspense, tense subtext, pompous, prodigious, auspicious or inauspicious menace or harm, foreshadow.

Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
walexander
Member
Member # 9151

 - posted      Profile for walexander   Email walexander         Edit/Delete Post 
remember when we would all be doing nano and exchanging wotf. The times they are a changing.
Posts: 634 | Registered: Jun 2010  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
extrinsic
Member
Member # 8019

 - posted      Profile for extrinsic   Email extrinsic         Edit/Delete Post 
It would be portentous of us to work our craft development in isolation, little, if any, notice of breakthrough given beforehand.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Grumpy old guy
Member
Member # 9922

 - posted      Profile for Grumpy old guy   Email Grumpy old guy         Edit/Delete Post 
I have spent my hiatus in a self-imposed Fortress of Solitude trying to codify a process to help me find the exact, right and essential dramatic moment when a story should begin.

I am close to a resolution. Yet, at times, I feel I am worlds away from a definitive solution.

Phil.

[ November 28, 2018, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]

Posts: 1937 | Registered: Sep 2012  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
extrinsic
Member
Member # 8019

 - posted      Profile for extrinsic   Email extrinsic         Edit/Delete Post 
From my likewise solitary sojourn efforts, I've realized that theme, message, and moral are the hardest challenges and highest appeals, made hardest yet by artfully realizing those on the page, especially starts, too; and best practice is those are covert, the deepest subtext, so as not to overtly preach, lecture, castigate, caution, or instruct from a superior to subordinate register. Else, the natural instinct for vigorous refusal of sage advice ensues. For heck's sakes, let me do it myself!?

For starts, those are ironic incitements and foreshadows of the maturation crisis-contest action soon to unfold. Those emerge, piecemeal, from want and problem motivations, and proportionate, conflicted stakes risked attach.

No use telling an agonist the vice of, say, insistent want for acceptance not easily satisfied is of the self's demanded desire and, therefore, certain to be refused, or superficially bought by shallow flattery and coattail temptations of wealth and power. As like a race car attempts a hairpin turn at 120 miles per hour velocity -- the laws of physics refuse. No use telling up front the oblivious driver it is impossible. The driver must self-learn or be self-devastated, albeit, external blame assignments transpire. Trial and error.

Rather, that the action teaches the agonist to self-learn how to be accepted in the face of certain rejection or otherwise be utterly rejected. This is practical irony, the most subtle of narrative arts; plus, dramatic irony attends.

We who know, know that a hairpin turn cannot be negotiated at 120 miles per hour. Do we readers who observe wish success to the driver? Do we vicariously urge the driver to be cautious? Do we want the driver to fail? Too stupid to live? Do we have any ability to alter the outcome? No? Would the outcome differ if we could advise the driver and alter the circumstances? Yes? No? Only productive if the life lesson be genuinely learned by the self. Practical irony; dramatic irony attends -- we know.

Practical irony (Roger Tucker blog, UK): not definition nor explanation of, rather, descriptive illustrations of, is the narrative method for a deep-covert subtext moral truth discovery, a basis for a theme, message, and moral development from start to end. An individual self-learns a life lesson, or refuses outright. This is satire, narrative expression's highest obtainment. (Practical irony, a coin by Connop Thirlwall, subset of tragic irony, 1833, "On the Irony of Sophocles", The Philological Museum, volume 2: pages 483–537, Wikisource excerpt.)

Otherwise, without those, from start to end, a narrative is a mere and mediocre history report of ten thousand or more similar accounts. Also otherwise, if those are too overt, reader alienation is certain. What, Damon Knight's daydream writer-surrogate, self-idealization prose instructional lecture, too? Wisest course to do as I say!? No. Think responsibly for the self, otherwise, others will, to their detriments and the self's. Greatest rewards and sincerest life lessons obtain from self-realizations.

When, where, to whom, why, how, and what a moral complication subtext presents for readers, an agonist perhaps blissfully unaware though soon to self "wise up," or not and know not why, is the start of the day of a year, or of a life, of a larger-than-life transformative action, of a start of a narrative.

And this is instruction imposed, not practical irony's let others self-learn: likely to be resisted and refused. Such is the human condition.

[ November 29, 2018, 03:57 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2