Oct 4, 2008 kickoff

Kick-off

  • Date: 4 October
  • Time: 1-3 pm (MLs will arrive by 12:30)
  • Where: 95th Street Library
  • Who is organizing: Katherine & Tim

Agenda

12:30 - 1:05 -- Greetings

Information sheets will be made available; there will be books to look at, posters to sign, name tags to fill out. Cookies and brownies will be available.

1:05 - Icebreaker

We're still considering what to do here. Options:

  • Fact or fiction
  • Share something your main char could do that you've always wished you'd done (small group exercise)

1:20 - Plot

A four step exercise in Plot development

  1. Create a character.
  2. Give this character a problem to deal with.
  3. Imagine at least three different ways this particular character might possibly deal with this particular problem.
  4. Pick one (or more) of these options, and imagine at least three different ways it
    1. wouldn't work, and
    2. would make the character's situation worse.

Write your plot in one or two sentences on an index card. Then we'll pass it to the right, and add a plot twist. Please note, if the book isn't SF, don't add aliens. If it's not magic, don't add a spell. Please keep the twists something within the realm of the author's plot, but go wild within that realm. (If stuck, bring in a sense--smell--cookies burning, cookies baking, etc)

1:45 - Nanowrimo information, answer questions, hand out hPDA's

Next events (10/18 at Panera in Ogden (2-4) and 10/23 at Barnes & Noble (7-9). Write-ins -- Saturdays at Warrenville City Hall 1-4, Sundays at 95th Street Library 1-4.

2:00 - Writing exercise on Characters

A character has choices to make. For readers to care about a story, the choices and the resolution must have consequences for the main character. Characters have goals.

Describe a photograph of a character (main or minor) in your story achieving his or her goal. What would the photograph contain, be specific.

Then pass it to the left. After reading about the character and his/her goal, add either a complication--something that stops the character from achieving his/her goal, or a quirk, something unusual that this character might have as a habit.

2:30 - Using Resources (Information Bazaar)

  • Charts, Word Count, Updating Status to keep motivated
  • How to plan--different systems different people use
    • Calendar planning (Katherine)
    • Freemind mindmapping (Tim)
  • Regional songs, word wars, challenging another region.
  • Details on signing up and using the webpages (if someone wants.)