Sage Advice and Duck-Billed Platitudes

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” – Linus Pauling, chemist

This quote reminds me of Bickham's advice in Writing and Selling Your Novel to list at least ten ideas as fast as you can when stuck. He says that this forces the brain to work past the obvious possibilities and move on to more interesting ones.

So much for waiting for the muse...

PW Lounge Open!

The Professional Writing lounge (Copeland 209) is open weekdays noon-1 pm. Come by to study, read, or check out books from the lending library.

We're also accepting donations for the library--books, screenplays, DVDs, magazines, etc.

Books That Sell...Cars?

Read Any Good Ads Lately? in the Washington Post explores a new trend to pay authors to write books that sell. Sell cars, luxury products, and Twinkies that is.

Apparently, Lexus hired Los Angeles writer Mark Haskell Smith to write a serial potboiler novel featuring its newest car for the company's quarterly magazine.

An excerpt from Smith's "Black Sapphire Pearl" reads:

"The Lexus loaner turned out to be a GS Hybrid. To say it was an upgrade from the battered Crown Vic I'd driven with the LAPD would be an understatement. For one, you don't need a key. You keep the remote control thing in your pocket and to start the car you just push a button on the dash. Like on a computer. In fact the car's more like a super-powered laptop on wheels than anything else."

According to the Washington Post, "There was little the company did to encroach on [Smith's] artistic freedom in writing the serial novel, other than to question his assertion that you can't find a good taco outside of Los Angeles and to nix a sex scene."

The Post mentions several other cases of advertising in fiction, pointing out that this trend started years ago with Charles Dickens and was often seen in comic books thirty years ago.

Some consider this is unethical, but product placement is commonplace in movies. Remember E.T. and his Reese's Pieces?

Whatever your opinion of product placement, this is definitely a trend for authors to keep an eye on.

Writing Romance

Need help writing romance?

At the library book sale last week, I picked up an older edition of Writing Romance by Vanessa Grant. Overall, I found Writing Romance to be a great resource for learning how to apply many of the techniques we learn in class to the romance genre.

Grant has some great ideas about developing the hero and heroine to create conflict, researching the setting, and using a computer in planning and revising. She even references Jack Bickham to explain stimulus and response and pacing.

A couple points I found helpful:

• When developing a character, think about how that character behaves in the different relationships in his/her life. Grant says, "A man behaves differently to his sister than his secretary....Looking at how my hero behaves in all his relationships enables me to understand how he will behave in my novel."
• "When your characters fall in love...their vulnerability will cause them to lose their customary mask of behavior, to react more emotionally, with less conscious control of their words and actions."

Grant provides lots of examples although most of them are from her own writing. I would have liked more examples from other authors, but I did find helpful how she walks the reader through her own process of developing characters and plot for some of her novels.

The newest edition is available on Amazon.com for about $12.00.

New Courses Posted

Looking for more help on writing? Don't forget to look outside of OU.

Gotham Writers Workshop just posted their new schedule of online classes. Here's a sample:

How to Freelance With a professional freelancer as your guide, learn strategies for selling magazine and newspaper articles on a regular basis. Now available as a four-week online seminar.

Start Writing Nonfiction Explore six popular forms of nonfiction writing — memoir, personal essay, features, profiles, travel writing, and reviews — in this six-week class.

Creative Writing 101 This is the ideal class for anyone who wants to write, but doesn't know where to start — a six-week exploration of creative writing that is sure to inspire.

Advanced Article Writing Learn techniques for crafting professional-calibre articles and pitches. Now offered online.

They also have Master Classes, which require you to submit a writing sample and apply for admission, that are geared to more serious writers. Their spring courses are:

Memoir Writing Master Class with memoirist Ana Maria Spagna
Screenwriting Master Class with screenwriter Max Adams
Science Fiction Writing Master Class with Nebula Award-nominated author Marta Randall

I have taken an introductory screenwriting course from GWW. I recommend them as a cheap, affordable way to supplement your PW studies. --- Will Prescott

Looking Under Rocks

Last Saturday, Jocelyn and I attended Mel Odom's writing workshop at the Norman Public Library.

Both of us were blown away with his knowledge and his ability to teach. As you know, he is currently teaching a section of Short Story at OU this semester.

However, you can also take classes from him at the Moore-Norman Technology Center for a fraction of OU's rates.

Or, if you prefer, you can take free classes on the internet. Click here for more information.

Point is, we all know resources are limited in the PW program at OU. However, if you broaden your sights a bit, there are other resources in the Norman/OKC area.

Any other ideas?

Sage Advice and Duck-billed Platitudes

Under this heading, let's list quotes and things that make you go "Hmm..."

Here's one:

"Great writers love to read." --Ron Stahl, 2007

Let's see what other quotes and ponderables you've run across!

--Jocelyn Pedersen

Hardest Part of Writing

At the Romance Writing Workshop held at the Norman Public Library on 2-10-07, one of the questions posed to the Panel of Romance writers was "What is the hardest part of writing?"

Here are the responses from some well-known Oklahoma authors:

Mel Odom:
o The big words.
o At first, you fall in love with the book—like bringing the baby home—at first it is cute and wonderful, then you get sick of changing the diapers (revisions!).
o Hardest part is finishing the book

Crystal Inman:
o Waiting for the check to come
o The time lag involved in the whole publishing process

Sharon Sala:
o The money thing and also the whole process of writing
o Has to challenge herself to keep herself going

Christine Rimmer:
o Editing
o Feels like “I’ll accept your child if you cut his hair and buy him shoes”

--Jocelyn Pedersen

A Blast from our Past

The Professonal Writing program at OU started in 1938. Here's how our founders envisioned our program. Let's work together with our faculty to continue PW's tradition of excellence!

The Founders' Principles
by Walter S. Campbell and Kenneth Kaufman

The University of Oklahoma considers Professional Writing to be a highly skilled art, comparable with law, medicine, or education. It is suggested to prospective students that at least one school year of hard, intensive study is a minimum prerequisite to professional competence. If at all possible some of the work should be taken in residence.

Mere education in reading and writing, the ability to spell and use correct grammar, is no more competence in professional writing than the ability to push down keys on the piano is mastery of music. This University endeavors to supply a complete regime of training to prepare competent professional writers.

The highly successful record of the program over a period of many years indicates that its methods are sound. No promises, no guarantees are made to any student. It offers only honest judgment and the soundest professional coaching methods it is capable of delivering.

Our founders were on to something. Visit the links on Famous Former Students who have come out of our program.

--Jocelyn Pedersen

Romance Book Sale

The Norman Public Library is holding a romance book sale this Saturday and Sunday, February 10 & 11.

--Elizabeth Childers

Short Course Information

Wondering what the Short Course is?

The Short Course was the first conference on professional writing in the nation. Started in 1938, the course began as a one day public event and over time expanded to five days.

Students could attend the course at a discount and get academic credit for doing so. Many PW students signed their first contracts at the short course.

The course was held annually for 64 years until it passed away in 2002. To see information about the last course, click here.

We are committed to resurrecting the Short Course by late spring/early summer of this year. This year's Short Course will be small one-day affair where students, PW alums, and local writers can get together for workshops on professional writing.

In order to do this, we need your help. Please contact oupwsa@gmail.com to volunteer. Or, come to the next PWSA meeting on Saturday, Feb 24th at 2pm in the PW Lounge.

--Elizabeth Childers

Next Meeting Saturday, February 24

The next PWSA meeting will be Saturday, February 24 at 2:00 pm in the PW lounge in Copeland Hall.

If you don't know where the lounge is, wait by the SE doors and Will or I will meet you there. We will plan bringing back the PW Short Course and starting the first book club.

Questions? Our phone numbers are:

Elizabeth 405-650-7390
Will 405-343-4096

See you there!

--Elizabeth Childers

Living Large

One of us is making it big...

Last month, the Sci-Fi channel premiered a new series The Dresden Files. The show is based on the successful fantasy series of the same name by former PW student, Jim Butcher. It's in a prime timeslot too: Sundays at 8pm, right before the network's most successful show Battlestar Galactica.

I read a book in Butcher's series for Chester's Category Fiction class two year ago. The man has a killer concept - mixing the fantasy genre with pulp detective fiction - and it works.

Currently, you can see the series premiere on iTunes for free. Or, set your DVRs for Feb. 28th at 6pm for the five episode mini-marathon.

Watch the show and support one of our own.

-- Will Prescott

The Ins and Outs of Outlining

Darcy Pattison, a children's writer (and not a OU alum), has a good resource here on outlining.

She calls the various outlining strategies propagated in craft books as a "continuum that goes from a minimalist approach to a very structured approach."

Among the approaches that she details is Dwight V. Swain's, who served as PW professor from 1952 to 1974. Current PW students should recognize the structure:

Some writers want the maximum amount of structure before they begin to write. Dwight V. Swain in Techniques of the Selling Writer recommends that fiction writers plan each scene before writing. Each scene begins with a goal, goes through a conflict to a disaster. Scenes are followed by sequels which detail the reaction to the previous scene, a dilemma, and a decision that leads naturally to the next scene. Before you start to write, Swain says, you should have your entire novel planned as a series of scenes-sequel units.

Swain's outline structure would look like this:
I Scene/sequel one
A Goal
B Conflict
C Disaster
D transition to sequel
E Reaction
F Dilemma
G Decision
II Repeat

Classical story structure is considered "classical" for a reason; the times change, it doesn't. -- Will Prescott

Former PW'ers Who Done Write: David McGee

Our first profile is about...

David McGee, a famous rock critic and music writer, whose work has appeared in Rollling Stone, Spin and countless other music magazines. He has also written acclaimed biographies on B.B. King, Cat Stephens, and Steve Earle.

McGee went to OU and cites the late William Foster-Harris, a PW professor from 1939 to 1974, as his writing mentor:

He was a crusty old fellow at that time, in his late 60s or early 70s, and had been at Oklahoma a long time--the joke was that they had built the journalism school building around him... In addition to classroom lecture, I had one-on-one sessions with him that required me to write a new short story every week and bring it in for him to "edit." What he did was to take a red pencil and rip each story apart--he wrote as many words in the margins as I had written in the story, and there were angry red streaks all over the manuscripts from changes he had made.

I endured this for two years until I finally worked up the nerve to ask him if he would tell a student to consider some other course of study. He answered that sure, he was always up front about things like that... He explained that all those red streaks and the margin commentary were meant to instruct me in matters of structure. "You’ve got the one thing that can’t be taught," he said, "and without it you can’t be a writer: Imagination."

...He wrote a wonderful book on fiction writing called Basic Formulas of Fiction, which was our text in the professional writing curriculum at that time. The title is deceiving: Foster-Harris’s theories about writing were rooted in Aristotelian philosophy, and his book elucidated those theories and provided practical instruction in clear thinking and, hence, clear prose. I loved that man, and was sorry he didn’t live to see me published in Rolling Stone.

As I wrote earlier, this is the first in many posts on successful writers from OU's PW department. Any nominations for future profiles? --- Will Prescott

Welcome!

This is the humble beginnings of the almighty PWSA.