This Week's Practice Exercise

Imaginings (Verison 2)

Prepared by: Don Mackenzie

Posted on: Sunday, 25 November 2012

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, show us a character whose imagination has a particularly significant effect, either within the story or on the reader.

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Dreaming or imagining is a natural function of ordinary and creative life. A person may be trying to take him or herself out of an uncomfortable situation, or imagining the steps she or he needs to take to achieve a victory.

Dreaming/imagining can also be an activity that sneaks up on a character. It may undermine intentions or point the way to new success.

Dreaming/imagining is a powerful force that writers should be encouraged to explore, but caution is needed. The revelation "it was all a dream" is one of the most offensive devices in fiction. Readers object when they feel they have been tricked and the contract between writer and reader has been broken. Surprises are wonderful, but the reader must feel properly prepared and the surprise must be appropriate.

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."--T. E. Lawrence, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, show us a character whose imagination has a particularly significant effect, either within the story or on the reader.

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When critiquing, explain whether you found it easy or difficult to  draw the line between what was real and what was imagined. Did you find the writing believable or insightful? Are the characters and the setting well drawn?

These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.

This Week's Practice Exercise

Animal World

Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: Sunday, May 30, 2010
Reposted on: Sunday, November 3, 2012

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In 400 words or less write a scene from an animal's point of view, have the animal want something from either a human or another animal.

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Is a dog waiting and waiting for his walk? Is a cat plotting to catch and eat the canary? Is a deer being hunted? What does the fish, swimming back and forth in his little aquarium, think of what he sees? The hamster--where does he think is he going in his running wheel? Perhaps the thoughts of a pet in a carrier on the way to the vet or going on a trip . Is this the voice of an old animal, tired, ready to die? What about the pampered 'accessory' dog who goes everywhere in his mistress's purse? Tame or wild, your choice.
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In 400 words or less write a scene from an animal's point of view, have the animal want something from either a human or another animal.

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In your critique consider whether the writer has given us a believable animal 'voice.' Is the fictional animal wiser and wilier than humans, or simpler? Does the animal's view of other animals or humans give us insights that we might not otherwise have had? If the piece is successful, tell us why. If it could be better, tell us how.

These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.

To Blog or Not to Blog

An Essay by Ally E. Peltier, IWW member

Will blogging or having my novel available to readers on my website disqualify me for consideration by book publishers?

There is no hard and fast rule, as it all depends on how much material you are making available to the public and how different it is from the finished version.

Let’s say that you've written a novel. Generally speaking, publishers do not want to purchase rights to material that has already been made widely available or been overexposed. If you have posted a few chapters of the novel you’ve just finished in hopes of either getting feedback or building a potential following (with further hopes that a book publisher will be attracted to your work and impressed by your marketing efforts), you’re probably safe. If you’ve been blogging about your book topic, or writing about the process of writing your novel, but not actually writing the book “in public,” you’re still okay. In fact, being able to say that you have an audience of several hundred people to whom you would market your book is a plus. It's a very small number, not likely to deter a publisher.

If the entire contents of your book are available online, and if you have thousands of readers on your mailing list, you might have a problem. During contract negotiations you will most certainly be asked (and you should offer) to take down all of your material once a deal is made so that it is no longer available anywhere but in the finished book form. When books have been self-published, for example, authors typically agree to stop selling their copies on an agreed-upon date before the publisher's copies come out.

Furthermore, when self-published authors try to get bought out by big publishers, there is a general guideline for just how many sales is a plus and how many a detriment. It isn’t a hard and fast number, but more of a marketing issue. For example, if you’ve sold 1,000 copies of a mainstream literary novel by yourself, publishers will likely be impressed. They may feel that they can expand your audience in a way that you are unable to alone. If you’ve sold 1,000 copies of an instructional manual on collecting 19th century dolls, and your book is already available at all the major doll conventions and advertised in all the appropriate publications, publishers will likely be impressed—but feel that you have already done everything that they would do and exhausted the potential market. They will likely pass on your book. If you’ve been blogging about 19th century doll collecting, publishers will ask, "Why would someone buy this book instead of just reading your blog?"

In other words, the material you intend to publish should either be significantly different than what you’ve made available online, or it should only be available to a certain, well-defined audience in terms of number and scope. You need to leave room for your would-be publisher to see growth potential.

Assuming that your first step will be to get an agent, this is a question you should definitely ask him/her--if you are advised to take it all down immediately, the publisher won't even know about it (unless your agent feels it's a plus to your marketing pitch that you already have X subscribers to your blog/website, as I imagine they would).

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Ally E. Peltier is a writer, editor, and publishing consultant. She is also a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and Master of Arts in English and Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of places, including Circle magazine, Writers Weekly newsletter, and J3tlag.com. She divides her time between New York City and Maryland. Learn more here.

IWW to Have Member Link Page

We'll be using the IWW web page for links to member pages. The page is now under construction.

To give it meaning, we're using the format of:

(Line 1) URL link.
(Line 2) A brief description of the site / purpose.
(Line 3) A maximum of 20 keywords by which users can find links of
value. We feel it's much better than just a list of links.

Here is an example of one member's proposed link, as that person might send it.

http://carterj.homestead.com/

Carter Jefferson, listing new and old publications, things writing students need to know, his family history, and useful writing links.

writing, teaching writing, publications, stories, essays, humor, memoir, writing links

If you'd like to be added to the page, you should submit your information, as noted above, to Greg Gunther.

Our link, in that format, is:

http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org
A free workshop where writers can get and give critiques. Our motto:
Write - Critique - Learn.
Keywords: fiction, lovestory, novels, non-fiction, poetry, writing
practice, script writing, flash-brief fiction, yawrite, essays,
marketing writing.

We can also provide a copy of the IWW logo in 150 or 200 pixel dimensions.

Resources For Writers

by Mel Duval

Resources for writers abound on the Internet. Email, bulletin boards have been with the Internet since its inception. Chat rooms soon followed. Any search engine will provide a long list of writing chat room, just be sure to eliminate sex, singles, and marriage from your search. Most ISPs offer a variety of chat facilities.

For a long time AOL provided chat rooms and host training. In an effort to reduce cost and add other services, AOL cut writing groups loose. Some floundered, some went elsewhere and others continued. The Children's Writing Chat continues on Thursday evenings and multi-published author Brenda Hiatt has her chat/critique group on Tuesday.

Most of the AOL writers wanted to continue and formed a new group AOL Writers and began chats again. They now have an extensive schedule that covers all most all aspect of writing. They have a website at http://www.freewebs.com/writersonaol/weeklychatschedule.htm. Two of the best chats occur on Friday evenings at 8 and 9 pm EST respectively, the Writer's Launch Pad, and the Commercial Novelists chat. They also have begun a new chat on Sunday evenings focused on beginners.

From time to time, I'll provide tidbits from various AOL chats that may interest others. The most recent Commercial Novelist chat covered creativity (or how to get rid of writer's block). Much of the formal presentation by Linda Vernon came from the work of Timothy Perrin with a nod to Writing the Natural Way by Gabriele Lusser Rico. Gary Provost's method using 3 x 5 cards for scene ideas also received mention. Anyone interested in the full presentation can contact Hillwithit@aol.com (screenwriter John Hill) for a log.

While useful for information, techniques, and market news, chats consume a lot of time, time I could spend on writing. Finding and selecting the most useful chats also takes times. I narrowed my list down to a few each week and sporadically add others when the topic interests me. Between my ordinary life and my writing, I haven't time to spend it all in chats, tempting though they may seem. So I share information with others on the chats I find useful, hoping to free some of their time for more writing. The next posting on chats will contain a more extensive summary of the chat content.