I completely forgot about making a post to the blog because I had almost forgotten clubs existed at all, what with them being cancelled for most of April and May. So I'll be making two blog posts today. Last Tuesday we talked about tips for dealing with writer's block. Or rather, Julia P. did, and I was there. We all know that just telling yourself to get over it and write is not the best strategy, especially since student writers like us are self-motivated already. That is why we turned to the internet and found a number of amazing websites. They range from short prompts to tips and tricks and they are if nothing else very inspiring.
I'll put them all here:
http://writeordie.com/
http://www.webook.com/911writersblock
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-websites-writers-cure-writers-block-freewriting-exercises/ 

Today we did sort of an introduction to a lesson about humor writing, with a joke writing activity. We pulled randomly from 2 categories, one would be a common situation/place/event, such as "airport" or "stubbing your toe" and a random person such as "pizza guy" or "Beyonce." Then a joke would be formed about the two of them, such as Jordyn's with hipster and a fire: Why did the hipster beat up the fireman? Because he wanted to see the house before it was cool!
The results were not that amazing, because the situation was rather forced, but it teaches a lesson about how comedy works, by taking familiar concepts and making odd connections or observations about them, We will go more into how comedy works next week!

Today we looked at a wonderful literary project for inspiration, called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, by John Koenig It started out at this website, which is actually a Tumblr with a purchased domain, meaning you can follow them easily. Essentially what it is is a collection of words invented to describe unnamed and pointedly obscure human concepts. Each one is defined beautifully.
They recently made a youtube channel, which you can look at here. They are masterful in their command of cinematography which just adds to their intelligent concept. It's awesome and you should check it out.
In case you aren't sold, here's an example:

lachesism
n. the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.\

How awesome is that?
This serves as inspiration in several ways. The first is that it inspires us to create our own words. From Shakespeare to Dr. Suess, authors have created their own words to describe things that they feel don't have the proper existing vocabulary for them.
Second, this is all an example of how abstract writing can be. This is not a book nor is it poetry. It is not fantasy nor is it non-fiction.
Finally, we've been talking about short films, and just look at the YouTube channel. It's brilliant.

This week's writing prompt: Invent a new word and use it in a current work of yours or write its definition.

Last Tuesday in coordination with the opportunity to write scripts for short videos, we talked about what it takes to write a short story. We look at this article in combination with this one. They are more oriented towards written stories, but had helpful tips. We especially liked the idea of the logline, which puts the premise of your story into one sentence (without spoilers).
Then we compared the similarities and differences of short films and stories. For example, while a short story is limited by word count so details may not be in the writer's best interest to dwell on, films are lengthened only by adding plot, with the exception of film techniques like slow motion or prolonged scenery shots. Also, short stories are viewed by an audience with a fair amount of suspended disbelief, while films are expected to seem real.
This week's writing prompt: write a script!!!

This is a very very unofficial post to the blog, but I should update you guys with the fact that we will be talking about short stories next week for anyone who wants to write a short script for Ty. We had planned to do this today but, robbed of a venue, we just hung out instead which was cool too.
See you next week guys.

Today we talked about writing scripts!  ...Well, sort of.
We did take photos! And Julia and I performed a scene for everyone to write in their own script versions. If you need a good reference for how to write a script you can look here. However we didn't have this reference in class to work from, because we thought we had one from previous years and... we didn't. We did manage to find an example to work from, thanks to our generous club members!
The reason we bring up scripts now is because Ty Leet, who makes short films, is currently accepting scripts if anyone from writing club has one. His films are around 10 minutes long, and have characters with clear relationships. They can be any genre. Good luck!
This week's writing prompt: write out the scene Julia and I performed in the style of your choice!

Today we learned about making maps as a method of world building. This, like mythology, can either be for your own purposes or for publishing. We discussed several different effects a map can have on a story, like travel time and character culture. We also gave tips on what good fictional maps have, from focusing on small areas to natural land masses to infrastructure.
We worked on drawing our own maps during the lesson, and I hope to see more maps next Tuesday!
This week's writing prompt is: finish your map, and swrite abut the meaning of the different parts of it.

Once again, a busy week results in a late post.
This week we reopened the discussion of world building to talk about writing mythology. Whether you have things laid out mentally or actually have your mythology written out and published with your story, it will have huge effects on the world of your story. With that in mind, it's important to make it good.
We read this article which gives 5 tips for good and ultimately believable mythology. These rules included having a "no-nonsense" tone, using well-known story themes, and having stories with great, even epic impact.
We also compared mythology to religion, and discussed things from both religion and mythology that can be replicated for a story, such as the realism of the new testament created by historical context.
This week's writing prompt: Write a myth using one of these 20 prompts.

Ok I;m very busy tonight so I'll make this quick! Today we talked about romance. We gave general tips from this article here: http://www.harlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=1425&chapter=0 And we discussed tropes from this article here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceNovelTropes

This week's writing prompt is: find an "Imagine Your OTP" meme that inspires you. You can write something based off of it or even write your own version of the meme. Have fun with it!

Hello again! Today we discussed dialogue punctuation again. We talked about dialogue tags, and putting quotes within quotes. Remember to always keep your end punctuation with the quote! However, BREAKING NEWS!! I'm sure this will surprise Julia P, whose writing gravitates towards British things as often as possible, but they have a different way of punctuating quotes over there! instead of using commas inside of quotes like "this," they put them outside like "this", which is totally weird! This still does not solve the problem I was trying to research, which was "How do I punctuate sentences that are declareative, but end with a quoted question,?".",!'

We will finish up next week with some notes on 'said is dead.' 

This week's writing prompt: First, draw a monster. Why is it a monster?

I'm really excited about this prompt, and I plan to finally start doing things again with my own prompts! What a concept!

Hey guys! Another late post, just before the next club! At the last meeting, Julia P led a discussion about having proper punctuation in dialogue. It was based on a great article which you can check out here.
We talked about direct and indirect dialogue, dialogue tags, and starting new paragraphs between speakers, amongst other topics.
This week's writing prompt: Write up some dialogue and check the grammar, either from your own story or from real life!

Today because we were kicked out of the computer lab we did another goofy poetry thing. Inspired by the presence of universal but modern human themes in poetry, we used Google to find out the world's FAQs. We typed in a few question words and then used the top results to inspire poems. The results were once again amazing, and you can check them out on the club works page!!
This week's writing prompt is: to do this same prompt, but to take it seriously and do some good work with it. Or if you need a more serious prompt, Facebook message the other Julia who had a lot of great and legit ideas for club today, which I super ignored after I thought of this Google thing. Sorry Julia!