Chapter Three Newsletter issue #71 (09/14/2021) 📜

COLA III Meeting Recap for 09/14/2021

9 of us made it to the meet. 5 read for critique:

This was our eleventh anniversary meeting and everyone brought snacks.

2021 anniversary food spread

Carolyn kicked off our meeting with a drawing for an artificial, Autumn-colored potted plant. Abby won.

The five of us reading held it to three pages. I took a break from apocalyptic SciFi to read the intro to my revised Christmas fantasy. Lindsey stayed with her solid fantasy story. Dea delved into a magical realism short. Phil continued his true-story-based novel, and Abby read a short based on her early life. All were good, I thought.

The SCWA recently put out another issue of their newsletter, The Quill. It contained a number of items that should be of interest to members. Those that struck me were:

All SCWA members are eligible for a 10% discount on writing programs offered by SCWA’s partner association The Pat Conroy Literary Center.

SCWA has joined a “Statewide calendar” sponsored by the South Carolina Humanities. Writers now can go to one source to learn about literary arts programs, events, and activities across South Carolina.

The SCWA website has been updated to make it easier for SCWA members to share information about their accomplishments and promote their publications on the Publications & Awards page under the revised Member News tab. It seems anyone can update it. That could get interesting.

You can find the latest issue of The Quill here.

At this point, we have five working meetings scheduled for 2021 (see the calendar). We usually end the year with a Christmas party that is tentatively scheduled this year for 12/14 (a Tuesday). We canceled last year’s party since it seemed attendance would be way down due to the lock-down and general conditions. I sense another lock-down coming, and I thought it not too soon to begin thinking about what we want to do regarding the party this year.

Our next meeting will be on September 28th.

Ray

PART I: STORYTELLING

LESSON: 28 ENDING WITH CONSEQUENCE

PRINTED BOOK PAGES: 35-36

READING EXCERPT: The Lame Shall Enter First by Flannery O’Connor

…He jumped up and ran to his room, to kiss him, to tell him that he loved him, that he would never fail him again.
The light was on in Norton’s room, but the bed was empty. He turned and dashed up the attic stairs and at the top reeled back like a man on the edge of a pit. The tripod had fallen and the telescope lay on the floor. A few feet over it, the child hung in the jungle of shadows, just below the beam from which he had launched his flight into space.

MY NOTES ON THE LESSON

The endings noted in these last lessons in the STORYTELLING section are not necessarily for a whole book, but rather for a dramatic whole (arc). This lesson’s example turns on a character’s realization (how much he loves his son). It would be the Turning Point noted in the dramatic arc as described by Shawn Coyne (The Story Grid). In the reading excerpt, that point leads to a decision by the protagonist (the father) to go to his son and make amends. His decision also leads to the climax where he finds his son has hung himself. In the larger story, O’Connor tells us the son’s suicide is a consequence of his father’s emotional absence.

The exercises take us through making the same kind of construction: a character’s turning point revelation, an initial misdirection, and then a climax/resolution that has consequence for the protagonist. This is not a bad sequence and is worth considering in our writing.

MY ANSWERS TO THE WRITING POSSIBILITIES

1. Write three sentences like O’Connor’s first. Notice how the sentence grows.

1a. He broke away from his buddies, note still in hand, ignoring curses from the crowd he pushed through until he could reach Beth and tell her he feels the same way.

1b. Jake leapt from the Gooney Bird’s hatch, communique in hand, streaking across the airfield, knowing that Sarah was alive.

1c. Marsha burst from the freight elevator, clutching the small body to her chest, heedless of danger, looking for the morgue.

2. Move to the second sentence. Notice how O’Connor pauses here, achieves some distance. Select one of your sentences from above and continue with a sentence like O’Connor’s second.

A light shone in the shack’s window ahead, but no movement to suggest he was right.

3. Continue. You must decide how this will turn: for the good or the bad?

But he had to be right. With the hotel’s tower down, only Sarah had the equipment to radio the USS Lincoln. She was protecting him. He burst through the door in front of a table holding a kerosene lamp. Its light revealed Sarah’s portable radio but no sign of Sarah. But only for a moment. The gasp from the dark corner came from her in the arms of Carl Belnap, the government spook.

COLA III Meeting Recap for 09/14/2021

CALENDAR