Rain Magazine Event

Writing and artistic contributions from throughout Western Oregon and Washington are compiled by Clatsop Community College each year. These submissions are put into magazine/review form, and the College invites the authors in for an event to debut the magazine. The audience gets to hear the authors as they read their articles.

This is the information from the Rain Magazine event coordinator;

Clatsop Community College invites the community to celebrate the release of the 2015 edition of Rain Magazine at a free public reading and reception,Friday, May 29 from 6:00pm to 8:30pm in the Towler Hall 3rd floor Commons, 1660 Lexington Avenue, Astoria. Gather at 5:30pm for an author meet-and-greet and reading signup before the program begins.
Many contributors will be on hand to read excerpts from their works, and original artwork from the magazine will be on display. Light refreshments will be served, and copies of this limited edition Clatsop Community College publication will be available to the public.
This year’s Rain Magazine includes new writing from Robert Michael Pyle, Alex Autio, Tricia Gates Brown, Nancy Cook, Wayne Downing, Tim Hurd, Lucien Swerdloff, Florence Sage, Jan Bono, Jim Dott, Reba Owen, John Ciminello, Richard Mack, and more. Artwork by Terry Shumaker, Vicki Baker, Stirling Gorsuch, Kerri Zell, Laurel Fleet, and many others is included. This year’s cover features an oil painting by Astoria artist Darren Orange.
Event contact: Alison Ruch, aruch@clatsopcc.edu

Prompt: From Two Points-of-View

The prompt was based upon a fictional perspective between the thoughts of a dog and a cat, telling the same story from two points of view. Other suggestions were with a doctor and patient, husband and wife, police and prisoner, and mother and child.

The children’s book, I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat by Donald Hall is a good example of a story told by alternating points of view. A famous alternating point of view is Gary Larson’s famous Farside comic strip featuring what the human says and what the dog hears.

Gary Larson comic strip: What the human says and what the dog hears.

The prompt is to tell a story from two opposite points of view.

Senses by Susan Schmidlin

April 20, 2015

The earth between my fingers
Dark loam that crumbles at the touch
Warmed by the spring sun
Just moist enough to dampen my knees.

Visitors in the form of potato bugs,
Worms, bees, and slugs
Come and go as I toil
Leaving mere bits of memories in the stillness.

I notice something in the breeze
That distracts me from my work
Makes me pause and I breathe in
As the lilacs begin to sing.

Inspired by the Prompt: Senses.

Prompt: Words Have Texture

The prompt is based upon “Hiatus,” a poem by David Feela published in LabLetter in April 2015.

A pot of tea steeping
on the marble sill, its steam
clouding the window.

Sunrise on the counter
like the yolk of a broken egg,
oh happy disaster of morning…

Write a descriptive poem or short prose. Edit it to focus writing with texture adjectives and verbs. Choose words that are visual, painting a textural picture such as marble sill not just window sill, steam clouding the window not just steam rising, sunrise on counter not light, etc.

The Inciting Event

The Monday morning workshop recently focused on scriptwriting, specifically tracing inciting events and the patterns of storytelling for television, film, and even books.

An inciting event in a plot is the shift forward in a story, the twist, hook, and plot points of the story.

K.M. Weiland, author of the book, “Structuring Your Novel,” helps us understand the confusion in and around an inciting event in a story in “Your Book’s Inciting Event: It’s Not What You Think It Is” on Helping Writers Become Authors.

What the heck is the Inciting Event? That’s a question just about any writer can answer. The trouble is that sometimes we all have a different answer.

Is the Inciting Event the first thing that happens in the story?

Is it the moment that kicks off the plot and the conflict?

Is it the First Plot Point at the end of the First Act?

Is it something in between?

Is it something that happens before the story ever starts?

The chief trouble with identifying the Inciting Event is that the term is used rather wildly to apply to just about any of the above. One writer calls the Hook the Inciting Event, another calls it the First Plot Point. Argh! No wonder we’re all so confused.

Weiland demonstrates three examples.

  • The Hook: The opening moment in your opening scene, the first moment something happens that keeps the reader reading or “hooked.”
  • The First Plot Point: The thing that happens at the end of the first act that changes the course of the story. She calls it “where your story really begins…the moment that fully engages your character in the conflict. He couldn’t walk away now, even if he really wanted to.”
  • First Act Turning Point: This is the moment that is the “call to” adventure or action, the no-turning-back point, the lit-match moment. She explained that most writer’s don’t include nor think of the turning point in the first act as the inciting incident, but it is. It is the moment that can be pointed to throughout the rest of the story, the moment when everything was shaken up and decisions needed to be made and action inspired. This is the inciting event.

Weiland explained that the first act turning point, or inciting event, should be placed at the 12% mark or 1/8th the way into the story. The first eighth of the story is character development, the time the audience needs to connect with the main characters, the time, and the place, the set up. (more…)

Lend an Ear 2015

The annual Lend an Ear, Come and Hear event sponsored and produced by Writers in the Grove is set for July 11, 2015, Saturday from 11am to 1pm at Plum Hill Winery in Gaston, Oregon. Mark your calendars!

July 11, 2015
Saturday 11am-1pm
Plum Hill Vineyards
6505 SW Old Highway 47
Gaston OR 97119

The event is free and open to the public.

If you would like to participate as a reading writer, please see the instructions and submission application on Lend an Ear Come and Hear Submission Guidelines and forms. Submissions must be able to be read out loud lasting no more than 4 minutes.

Prompt: Conflict in Third Person

The prompt was to explore conflict from various perspectives.

Setup: Two children at playground

First Prompt: Write in third person, omnipotent

Second Prompt: Rewrite the story in first person

Third Prompt: Rewrite the story from the perspective of one of the mothers

Fourth Prompt: Rewrite in second person