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Working Writers Newsletter
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Greetings!
Hi and welcome back to our old timers but a hearty welcome to our new subscribers. Delighted that you all are here. Hope you enjoy this new issue. Pat and SK have presented some food for thought and we have a guest columnist with us this time. Don't forget to check out our sponsors by clicking on their email links. And if the thought moves you, please feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and your lists. We would love to hear your comments, questions and ideas as well.
Thanks -- now lets get to the newsletter.
Billie
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Feature Article
Whodunit by Billie A Williams
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 BACK TO SCHOOL SLEUTHS
Whodunit by Billie A Williams
Do
you remember reading Nancy Drew books, or are you a new fan of Nancy Drew? A kid sleuth to rival the best, at least I
thought so. Way back when, she proved to be just as popular as she is today.
Why not a kid sleuth. Kids are intelligent, curious, creative and they love
solving puzzles.
When
I began creating Kitty Kapers I began with simple problems...who was the
culprit who was stealing Courtney Brie's lunch? Courtney was one of the staff of the middle school newspaper. First why?
How and then who? We know the what. We
know the when and where.
Katrina
(Kitty to her friends) teams up with Courtney and Dakota to try to solve the
dilemma of Courtney's missing lunches.
Journalistic
questions are perfect detective questions those are: Who, what, when, where,
why and how. The who covers who will be your sleuth as well as who is the
culprit doing the deed. Who would have motive, means and opportunity?
What
is the deed, in this case, stolen lunches.
Where,
and when the crime happenings? How is it being carried out? Why, may help you
nail down who. Remember from earlier columns, motives, the why usually gives
clues to whom.
Motive,
means and opportunity equal the journalistic line of inquiry. With a kid sleuth
we must ask a few other questions. Is the crime age appropriate? Murder would not be a subject I would expect
a young person's mystery to involve, but there are a myriad of others as
diverse as the young people who populate our planet. Perhaps you've even
designed a fantasy world, a Science Fiction adventure for your background.
Anything is possible.
Would
the young person have reason to be involved? How would the 'crime' be
significant to his or her life? Would
the villain/antagonist realistically have the means to carry out the 'crime'?
What
about opportunity? Is there sufficient
reason, room, ability first for the 'crime' to be committed and then for our
child sleuth to investigate and solve it without adult intervention? You must take into consideration societal
rules, laws, parental control and rules, school rules, if it is during those
months school is in session when your 'crime' happens.
The
danger with a child sleuth is making the crime trite or too simplistic, or
unrealistic. A child would or could be involved in the deed. It needs to be age
appropriate within their area of concern, live style or world as their
interests would allow.
In
the case of the missing lunches, you might think-so what? All schools have hot lunch programs. Her
friends could and probably would either share their lunches or loan her money
for a hot lunch. Can you come up with a reason why they wouldn't or why she
wouldn't accept their offers? Why would
anyone steal someone's lunch? It better
be more than someone hates her and wants her to starve. Or, they're doing it to
get attention or for a joke. There has to be something at stake even for our
young accidental victim, sleuth, perp.
In
my story the thief knows no other way to save Courtney's life. She must not eat
the sandwiches her step mother is fixing for her. He figures no adult will believe him if he
discloses the reason he is stealing the lunches. Courtney's family is too
important in the community.
So,
even if our accidental Nancy Drew Wannabee discovers the who and the why, they
may need to team up to either stop the threat or convince an adult to
intervene. Since in kid stories adult intervention or solution to the problem
is a no, no, our junior sleuth must find her own solution to the satisfaction
of the reader. I'll warn you, young readers are very discriminating.
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Pat's Corner
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 WELCOME TO PAT'S CORNER
OPINIONS
This past month I finished a screenplay and sent it off for
a coverage. A coverage is much the same as a critique as near as I can tell.
Actually, this particular screenplay had two different coverages. The first
time it was finished, I sent it to a friend, Rob Parnell, who is a writer of
much virtuosity. I received the document back in due time with what I felt were
constructive and valid criticisms. Okay so far. I reworked the screenplay.
Rob's suggestions made a big difference for the better in my unlearned opinion.
Thinking that a second coverage (read opinion) wouldn't
hurt, I submitted it to a person seeming to be more than qualified in the film
industry. All was well until I received the comments back from Mr. X. In
addition to being stunned, I wondered if it was my screenplay he had read. It
was hard to imagine how there could be such a vast difference of opinion in two
coverages of the same work. I learned what a major trashing of my work felt
like. I plead guilty to being a beginner, I don't plead guilty to being
illiterate.
By now you are all wondering why I'm whining on your
shoulders, aren't you? Save the Puffs, I'm not. The point I want to make is
that a coverage or critique is basically an opinion. Usually, we expect
suggestions and thoughts to help us improve our work. From Rob, I received this
in spades. From Mr. X, the message, loud and clear, was that I should
immediately scrap any thought of writing another screenplay. I simply had no
talent for it. Mr. X did give me a new perspective on my story after I dug
through the barbs and digs. And, maybe that is his way---he will make you so
angry that you will do your best to prove him wrong. I don't know. What I do
know is that this man won't have a second shot at me.
As writers, most of us have been the recipients of this type
of critiquing. It is pretty pointless it seems. Or maybe I live in what I hope
is a kinder and gentler world. Possibly
this is an unrealistic view. It doesn't happen only with screenplays. I have no
doubt that we have all had some sort of experience within a writers group where
something similar happened. I've read some in on-line groups and seen it in
live groups. The best path, in my opinion, is to smile and suck it up. Take any
pearls of wisdom you can glean and forget the rest. At a writers group I
belonged to one woman told me that the 'squiggles, etc' such as
* * * or ~*~ (you get the idea) to separate a
change of time or scene ' 'Just Wasn't Done' in publishing. I came home, and
went through some of my novels of multi-published authors. Quite a few of them
were using 'squiggles'. I emailed one of my favorite writers, Diana Gabaldon. Her
take was that it was up to the author. This lady sells a lot of books, to put
it mildly. The chuckle I did get from the "Just Wasn't Done" lady was that she
had never been published and hadn't submitted her manuscript anywhere up to
that time. I never saw or heard of her again.
The final touch to the episode of the trashed screenplay
came from two of the guys at InkTip, where I have posted my first screenplay.
This is a fine site for posting your screenplays for view by hundreds of media
moguls, film makers, producers, agents and so forth. http://www.inktip.com/index.php
The words of these two friends were, 'It is all opinion. In
the end, go with your gut feeling.' InkTip offers a wealth of help on how to
post, log lines, synopsis, pretty much all you need to get your work out so it
can be viewed.
Another huge help to writers is Rob Parnell's site. I've
been amazed at the level of help Rob offers the rest of us and has a wealth of
free to inexpensive writing tools. Check out his site at: http://easywaytowrite.com/
Have a good month.
Pat
http://www.patmccainworld.com/
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A Little Birdie Told Me
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 A Little Birdie Told Me
...that you've been waiting patiently for
another Working Writers Newsletter. Bless your hearts. We love you for that.
Really, I only say that because it's true.
So...let's get started
Harold
Ross told Birdie, and Birdie told me, and I'm telling you what
Harold Ross asked Mr. Lardner. Quote. "I ask Ring Lardner the other day,
how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated
words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces." If I understood what that meant, I might like
it.
What a
strange idea. But that's just the way it is sometimes. Divided though my
feelings were about this, I attempted the great feat, mainly because my daddy
always said, "Sylvia, don't knock what you haven't tried." Well, Bless
Pete, he was right. It worked. I'd
say give it a shot, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
Example:
The whole concept popped into my woolly brain while watching Law and Order on
TV the other night. It seems Olivia was pretending to be a hooker making out
with Elliot so as not to blow his cover but...oh, never mind. Anyway, I started
with a few wide spread words and phrases like Ring suggested.
1. On a
snow-white night, four days before Christmas... (This had to determine the time
of year)
2. "Blarney! Tis a terrible shame...(This had to
introduce an Irish character.)
3. Silence. (This had to arouse suspense.)
4. "Rebecca," he whispered. (This had to create a
woman character named Rebecca. Duh!)
5."I'll never forget this Christmas." (This had to initiate a moral to the story.)
Hence: Clancy's Christmas Blessing
Believe
it or not, I got a 1,176-word short story about Christmas out of this? And, to
make a long story short, I'm not even a short story writer.
I thanked
Birdie for introducing me to Ring Lardner, (Don't ya just love that first
name?) I've decided there should be a character by the name of Ring
in my Willow Walk series. I'm just waiting for him to show up.
Anyway...A little bit about Ring Lardner
From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
Ring Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his
satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre. Ring wrote for the Saturday Evening
Post and many other magazines, newspapers and so forth.
For his son, the blacklisted journalist and screenwriter, see Ring
Lardner, Jr..
Ring Lardner
Born
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner
March 6, 1885(1885-03-06)
Niles,
Michigan, USA
Died
September
25, 1933 (aged 48)
East
Hampton, New York, USA
Occupation
Writer
Journalist
In case
you're interested, my two published books are: The Kahills of Willow Walk
and the sequel, For the Love of Willow Walk. Birdie said he'd never
speak to me again if I didn't tell you, so I am.
Wouldn't
that be awful if Birdie never spoke to me again? We'd never learn a darn bit of anything anymore. What uncultivated, uneducated, unschooled, unenlightened, uninformed, untaught,
untutored, poor souls we'd be without Birdie.
Oh, my!
You have just witnessed a serious writing NO! NO! Six adjectives too
many. I'm grinning here because Carolyn Howard- Johnson, if she could get to
me, would slap my knuckles with a ruler for using all those adjectives. When I
first met Carolyn, (HoJo for short) a prolific writer and an excellent editor,
I thought she owned Howard Johnson's. Wrong! She doesn't. Far be it for me to show my butt and ask her.
Anyway...
I'd rather be an intellectually productive lady like her any day than own
Howard Johnson's. If you're smart and want some interesting, first class
reading you'll visit her website and leave a comment. www.howtodoitfrugally.com It's full of good stuff, resources for writers and...well,
see for yourself and be quick about it. You probably think I'm being sassy
when I say that, but actually being quick about it probably won't hurt
nothing.
If you
like my column, say so-if you want to, that is.
If you
don't like it, well, just don't tell too many people. We don't want it to get
back to Birdie. He doesn't deserve negative remarks. I'm open for thoughts,
ideas, suggestions, you name it--I'm open. But I'm not open for meanness,
unless you want to draw attention to yourself and get into trouble.
"Time
to say--Bye- Bye, Birdie."
Thanks
for visiting. Until we meet
again...Whatever you do, don't let the right thing stand in your way.
Pee
Wee and Birdie
To
sign up for the newsletter please go to one of the following. Remember...you
don't have to do a rain dance or send out smoke signals to join Working
Writers Newsletter. Try to remember that.
S.K. Hamilton (aka Pee Wee) www.willow-walk.webs.com
peewee2234488@yahoo.com
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Guest Column by Ron Berry
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 Did
you have Breakfast this Morning?
By
Ron Berry © 2010
Most Americans eat something in their day's
beginning. Some people work nights, so they break their fast in what is
otherwise known as early afternoon. Children are encouraged to eat a healthy
breakfast each day before school. The first meal for some may only be a granola
or cereal bar. But, it is food. By days end, many in this great country of ours
will have consumed a decent amount of nourishment. Yes, even junk food counts.
But...
Let's look at what happens at many meals. There is a stack of hotcakes and everyone has
their fill. The one or two left on the plate end up in the garbage, or in the
disposal. Not everyone eats the crust on the bread, so this is also discarded.
Bones from the meat may not be totally cleaned off. More food wasted. In fact,
we waste more food in a week than many countries peoples see in a year. So,
what's the answer to this ethical question?
We could save all our scraps and send it in a bag to
some tribe in India. By the time it arrives, not even the vultures would touch
it. How practical would it be for every American to take one pancake or one
pork chop, freeze it then send it to a food bank that could ensure a safe
arrival? This too is a most impractical solution. We are now faced with the problem of too much
food here and not enough over there. It
leaves us with only one possibility.
We can't send our precooked food. We can send our
surpluses and we do. But that still leaves the problem. We are giving them
food! We need to send people and tools to help these people grow their own.
This is not just an American problem. How many developed nations waste food? I
think it's time to offer encouragement to our leaders to get these
underdeveloped countries up to speed.
The words I live by
http://unwriter1.wordpress.com/
http://twitter.com/unwriter
http://www.roncberry.com/
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I hope you have enjoyed our newsletter. Please feel free to email any of the authors with questions, comments or ideas. I hope if you feel the urge you will pass this along to those who might be interested and if you would like the opportunity to be a guest columnist please email me at Working Writers and we will consider you. Thank you, now enjoy your read. And remember when you join our newsletter you get the serialized version of three authors current WIPs (works in progress) July Heat, by Billie A Williams; Torch In The Mist by Pat Cerise McCain; Willow Walk by SK Hamilton. One chapter a week, from one author a week in a rotating fashion. See you next time!
Sincerely,
Billie A Williams, Pat Cerise Mc Cain and SK Hamilton
Working Writers
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