Thursday, July 16, 2009

More on Writer Wednesday

I'm trying to refine my "Writer Wednesday" comment chat idea. (Or should it be "Writer's Wednesday"?) I came up with something called a Featured Writer, and I just invited someone to be that writer for our first week. My only problem . . . what should a Featured Writer do? At first, I thought it should be someone agented or published, but I'm not sure if I want to go that far because then I'd have to define "published" and what a pain that could be. So I'm just thinking about letting the concept evolve however it wants. For now, I'll just invite people who 1) I think will participate and 2) who I think have something to offer.

A. Gray thought of a good first subject--a story where the main character is not necessarily of sterling moral fiber. She also expanded it to include bad guys in general. I love my bad guys so I think that's a great topic.

Any other thoughts?

9 comments:

Todd Newton said...

I think it's a cool idea, whatever direction it goes.

I also like writing about characters with moral ambiguity (or just plain amoral characters).

Artemis Grey said...

Love the idea of a Featured Writer. The 'published' thing could get tricky, but we could just go with someone volunteering to mediate, maybe use their own works as examples to start things, like a roundtable discussion. I'll be leading one in Vail at Sirens, and I could use the practice, and the experience of observing others. I'm not volunteering for first go or anything, just throwing it out as an idea.

K.C. Shaw said...

I love hearing what different people's favorite books are, especially writers' favorite books. Maybe that could be a fun topic for Writer Wednesday too.

Merc said...

It does sound like a really fun idea, Tia. (Plus, I agree--the topic of villains and anti-heroes is awesome fun!)

I'm always interested in hearing how people deal with various aspects of writing--anything from developing ideas to figuring out what to keep and what to toss to revisions to... well, you get the idea. :)

I also like the idea of a roundtable discussion--maybe each of the featured writers, picking a topic, offer examples of their work or snippets from published novels to get things moving?

ETA: AH! I see A. Grey already mentioned that. ;)

Definitely this sounds like a fun (I know, I'm overusing the word, but it's late and I'm tired :P) concept here... I definitely am looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

Anonymous said...

Some topic ideas I had:

outlining
critiquing
structure
dialogue

Not very creative, I know. I did have a good idea, but it was while I was without a pen and paper, so the thought was gone almost as soon as I had it.

Tia Nevitt said...

Wow; thanks for all the ideas. Maybe I ought to find some sort of chat software that I can either install on this blog or redirect everyone to.

Big drawback to that: we would have to set up a specific time for the chat. We'll have way too many time zones to deal with. So scratch that idea unless someone can think of a way to make it work worldwide.

Maria Zannini said...

I like the idea of Writer Wednesday. Any writerly topic is fair game for me. I especially like to hear about the things writers do to build a plot, heighten suspense or deal with story middles. And series! How do you turn one novel into a series.

Ref: chats
Oh, noes! My internet connection is outright hostile with chat rooms. I get kicked out all the time and have to reenter. It becomes a major hassle. And as you said, there's the time difference for some folks.

Anne said...

Time difference problems are why I like conversing in the comments. The conversations are distinctly slower, but I can throw in an observation after most folks on North America are in bed asleep. Like I'm doing now. {SMILE}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Tia Nevitt said...

It's settled then. We'll keep it a comment chat.