Today I threw together a last-minute lesson plan that turned out to be an amazing thing. I made a worksheet which everyone filled out, that involved selecting a type of poetry, a word to include, and a tone. Then we put the sheets in a hat and passed them around randomly. The resulting poems were amazing.
Go see some of them on the club works page.
This weeks writing prompt is to just fill out another worksheet for next week.

Today we did something a little different for club, rather than just give you a prompt and hope that you do it, we did a prompt together as a class. Together we built a character, using a combination of personality flaws, skills, fears, setting, motivations, relationships, and dreams. We created Harrod, a 47 year old docksman of the 1800s with ironic taste in everything, especially lovers.
There wasn't much to take away from this lesson in terms of notes, but it was a helpful exercise. As writers, we must never underestimate group thinking as unoriginal, because in fact it can be very inspiring.
This week's writing prompt is: Write a story for today's character or create a character of your own.

So there wasn't club today and things have kind of been busy, by which I mean not all that busy but I found a great new show on Netflix. With the end of November coming all too quickly, and inspired by my own procrastination, I thought I would share with you all an amazing example of completing Nanowrimo despite personal obstacles.

Do You Believe in Lief After Loev  is a novel written by author Caden Lovelace, who completed it for Nanowrimo a year or so ago. And no, I did not type that wrong. Here's the cover:

Although described as fiction, the book is many things, and personally I would call it a memoir. It is a collection of personal thoughts and memories and hypotheticals and even song lyrics. So why is there two typos in the title? That's what makes it interesting: it was written without hitting backspace.

This includes every bit of keyboard smashing, copy pasting, misspelling, rephrasing, and regretable writing, Here is just a small excerpt:

As you can see the result is hilarious but powerful. I feel like we can all be inspired by this. It brings out a sincerity that most people are ashamed of. Lovelace was already a published author, but was brave enough to let the world see every bit of bad writing he could manage. Although I will say that this book is only really selling for its shock value so if you wrote your own I doubt typo novels would become the new young adult science fiction. Also apparently Lovelace starts to panic every time he gets an Amazon payment because it means someone is going to be reading his book.

This week's writing prompt is: Write a full page with pen or with no backspace, and give yourself only 20 minutes to do it. 

Hey guys, sorry about the late post, but expect another extra lesson tomorrow just on the blog, because there are no clubs then. Last Tuesday we talked about world building, and we discovered that while very interesting in practice, talking about world building without examples can be tiring. Even still, Julia and I found this article very interesting.
We also have arrived at the end of NaNoWriMo. Personally I did not reach my goal, but it did get me started on a project when I would not have otherwise done so. That's progress.
Keeping the theme together, this week's writing prompt is:

Hey guys, sorry for the late post.
Yesterday we learned about finding a writing voice. Julia's notes were based on this and this article. Among the key things we discussed were the difference between voice and style, as we as what makes voice what it is. For example, even common characters or plots can make up a writer's voice, but style, with things like word choice and structure, can be a part of voice as well. For developing voice, mimicking other author's style is not ok, but using that style as inspiration is a great idea. Also, try to avoid the style of bad authors.

This week's prompt: Create a character, then create a character from their past and their future. Try to fully create these characters, and if you want to try something new perhaps draw them or cast celebrities to play them, or make just their voice.

Welcome to another "there's no club today" installment of the writing club vlog.
For today's topic there were 4 topics we had talked about in the last club meeting, 1 of which I couldn't remember and another that I was pretty sure was meant for an actual club topic. So I decided to talk about CHOOSING WHAT POV TO WRITE IN.
This is a great struggle because it is something the writer has to choose early on in the writing process but will probably want to change at some point.
First, there are several different points of view, and most people think there are 3. First of all, most people never use the 2nd one and second of all, there are more than 3. There are 5:

1. First Person Point of View - The narrator is "I" or "we." A writer only reveals things the narrator sees, hears, thinks or knows. 
2. Second Person Point of View - The narrator addresses the reader. 
3. Third Person Point of View, Panoramic - The narrator sees all the action, but doesn't read minds. Think of this like a movie camera--describe anything you see or hear, but not thoughts. 
4. Third Person Point of View, Controlled Consciousness - Like first person, the reader sees all the action through the eyes of a single character and can only see what that character sees. The difference is the writer uses "he" or "she" instead or "I" or "we". 
5. Third Person Omniscient - God-like; the narrator knows and sees everything, and can move from one mind to another. 

The biggest effect that POV has on your story is going to be information. A character's thoughts, an impaired or skewed ability to observe an event, and personal bias are all factors of POV that affect the information your reader gets. Both your plot and your genre should help you make this decision, for example if your story is a mystery of contains a mystery.

The different POV's have their own pros and cons that you should also consider. The following are some points that I found interesting and relevant:

• 2nd person is not used commonly and can be unsettling and intriguing.
• 1st person and controlled consciousness are greatly affected by tense. Is/are your narrator/s  explaining an event with the knowledge they have after these events have occurred, or are they naive and biased in their account?
• Panoramic is like a movie. Pay attention to methods used by book adaptions to portray internal thoughts
• When using a controlled consciousness point of view, choose one character, called the viewpoint character, to experience the story through. A writer can have more than one viewpoint character in a novel. The viewpoint character should change only at chapter or scene breaks and should never change without good reason.
• Viewpoint characters should somewhat exist in every POV 
• Omniscient is the most flexible POV but the hardest to maintain. Readers can have access to lots of information that none of the characters do.

While it does not include panoramic, I found this chart very informative:

Finally, here are some articles with tips n how to write each point of view:

First 

Second

Third Panoramic - I couldn't find a good one so just check out these POV Tips

Third Controlled Conscience

Third Omniscient

The writing prompt for this week is:

Describe your morning in a perspective that is not your own. This means no 1st person form of you and no controlled conscience of you. 2nd person is not technically you so that is allowed. Try writing it from your pet's perspective or a god-like observer. Have fun.

Today was the first club meeting of November, thus being the official writing club start of National Novel Writing Month! We signed up online and talked about some tips for writing a novel in 30 days. If you didn't sign up yet, go here, and if you would like some amazing links and tips go here. 
This week's writing prompt was this picture:

Today we welcomed back Julia P, and actually got to talk about horror writing. Some general tips were researched and delivered by Julia and if I get my hands on them I will post them here. They included staying scared as a writer, creating new monsters, using urban legend, let likeable characters make bad decisions, and bringing the ending as the final blow to the torture of your reader.

This week's writing prompt: Take a childhood fear and turn that into a mature short horror story.

aaaaand NOW it's time for more SPOooO0o00oooOoOoKY  stuff

Today I will use the tool of mystery to enhance fear, by posting 2 unlabled links. One will be to the first episode of an anime based on the scariest video game to ever exist. Actually, it's still the most haunting thing I have ever seen. It is called Corpse Party. All the trigger warnings on that one. The anime is a dumbed down version that is only 4 episodes, so if you want the actual full gut-wrenching experience look up a playthrough of the game. The other link will be a video about a celebrity cannibal, and I won't spoil anything but it's way less scarring. More like life changing.

                                                                       Link 1 Link 2 

So due to the earthquake drill today we did not have a club meeting. But that won't stop writing club! Not today!
If we had had a meeting the topic would have been horror. We would have started with this quote from Stephen King:

“The three types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there …” — Stephen King

Then we would have looked at some writing tips for horror, via this tumblr post. I found this article to be interesting but also debatable. Tell me what you think in the comments! That's what they're there for!

Finally, I would have revealed our first picture writing prompt! The prompt for this week is:

As Halloween approaches, we must sustain the skeleton warlords with more spooky stuff.

The scariest thing I read in the last 7 days was actually from a Wikipedia article. I saw the trailer for "In the Heart of the Sea," a movie Chris Hemsworth is starring in. I heard that it was based on a true story that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. The Wikipedia article tells the story of the Whaleship Essex here. 
This is a true story, so here are some trigger warnings (that are kind of spoilers):
whales, stranded at sea, death, drinking pee, starvation, cannibalism
This was horrifying to me even without the flair of descriptive writing. And I mean, 2 first-hand accounts were written. I cannot imagine reading them. This is a really good example of something to inspire realistic horror writing.

So today we talked about science fiction again, and when I say talked about I mean we read an article by Max Barry that was amazing and can be found here. It was awesome, but there weren't many thoughts from the group, so we moved on. We discussed how we would talk about horror, because I'll probably just want to discuss American Horror Story the whole time. We also discussed having more inspirational prompts, because as Max Barry pointed out that not feeling inspired to write is to the fault of bad ideas, not bad writers. With that in mind, I came to the conclusion that written prompts were not inspiring enough, and I decided that starting next club meeting we will have picture prompts for a change instead of writing prompts. I forgot to put the prompt on the blog last week as well, so for this week we will use up the last 3 prompts on the list:
  “I didn’t walk all the way here just so you could yell at me”  “She’s gone mad.”  “I just wish there was another option.”

TIME FOR MORE SPOOKY

Today's horror sample will be a creepy pasta,  The Russian Sleep Experiment . As of writing this post I have yet to read it but to make sure that you would not be scarred for life I found this article  proving that it is not true nor based on a true story.

Today we talked about science fiction: both what to do and what not to do.
Our most discussed tip was to know what you're talking about. Seriously. Don't play around with vacuum properties guys.
Now it's time for more spooky stuff!!

Today's story is I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

There is also a video game that goes with this, but it is definitely scary enough on its own.

Due to that story's very dark nature I will recommend something a little bit more "jump-scary" in the form of PewDiePie playing my favorite horror game. It's called Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, and it is kind of steampunk and not as scary as the first Amnesia game but I love the story and it's historical nature, as it is inspired by the horrors revealed by muckraker journalists in the early 20th century and the events leading up to WWI.

I'm a huge nerd.

Sorry for the late update guys!
On Tuesday we talked about mystery again. Julia gave tips for outlining a mystery plot.
I can't remember any of the tips at the moment because I apparently can't remember things after 24 hours.
Next week we will be talking about sci-fi dos and don'ts. We might use your favorite or least favorite sci-fi books/movies/shows/what have you.
IN OTHER NEWS IT'S OCTOBER. I'M GOING TO RECOMMEND SO MUCH SCARY STUFF FOR YOU.

Today's selection is the short horror manga: Enigma of Amigara Fault This messed me up and it will mess you up.
In response to the prompt James once again wrote something awesome that will take me a while to type so be patient. I also wrote a very short dumb thing, because you guys deserve something less intimidating to look to when answering these prompts. Look for them on the Club Works page!
This week's prompt is: "...And if he says no?"

First and foremost, today we passed out club passes. If you need one come see any one of the Julias. You can even ask a Julia who isn't part of writing club, just to be silly.

Secondly, today's topic was mystery. We discussed the rules for mystery writing from this about.com article.

Some of the things we elaborated on were not worrying about realism as long at it is realistic in your universe, not messing with your readers, having interesting crimes committed, and focusing on plot first. Also CSI puns. A good tip from Noah was to think of your plot in a chronological set of clues, and then scatter those clues.

James was the first to complete a writing prompt! Go James!!!

This week's writing prompt is: "She had memories to forget."

In today's meeting, the club was introduced. Additions to the club this year are an end-of-the-year pizza party, book movie-adaption viewing trips, and weekly writing prompts. Also, the regular updating of this blog. The prompt for this week was "Don't worry, everyone does that on the first day." Next week's topic will be on the mystery genre.

Hey guys, this is Julia (the one that isn't club president).
We mentioned making a blog a few times, but today I decided to finally make one.
I will be the admin, but it will be a group effort to provide the content.
What will that content be you ask? Well, there are a few ideas so far:

• Reporting what we talked about in different club sessions
• Notifying everyone about when the club changes location
• Giving writing assignments when the club can't meet
• Sharing the work of fellow club members
• Sharing helpful writing materials
• A possible book club (as suggested by Pennington at the last club)

If you have any more ideas, just email me: julachan@gmail.com

Thanks, and keep writing!