From James:

Dana set the writing prompt last night as, “Select a tabloid headline and write a piece assuming it’s totally real.”

The tabloids are pretty much all star gossip these days, which is certainly fine to use if you find something inspiring in that. If you prefer though, there are several ways to go back in time to the more bizarre headlines.

First, you can do a Google Images search for “tabloid headlines:”

http://images.google.com/images?q=tabloid%20headlines

There are also some sites out there that collect some of the classic
headlines:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/anniversary/35th/n_8568/

http://www.rockthelist.com/2008/10/02/the-35-most-bizarre-tabloid-headlines-ever/

http://www.manofest.com/Content/the-40-funniest-tabloid-headlines-of-all-time.html

Finally, there are tabloid headline generators:

http://tabloidheadlinegenerator.com/

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/standard.php

Just thought I would share the gems I found in my search for the
perfect headline.

James Edward Gray II

As promised, here is a list of links for items from yesterday’s meeting covering the writing (and playing) of interactive fiction.

• Inform 7 – Cross-platform, English-based game authoring environment
• Baf’s Guide to the IF Archive – A ton of downloadable IF games
• Abandonia Download link for Planetfall
• Infocom – Zork downloads
• BBC Radio 4 – Play the Hitchhiker’s Guide game
• My github repo – The source of the sample game we played
• Inform 7 IF interpreters – List of interpreters you can use to play these games
• TADS – Another game creation engine

As a side-note: Some of these games come with old DOS executables. You can safely ignore most of those and just use your interpreter to load the z-machine code.

If you have any more IF-related links you’d like to share, post them as a comment!

It’s almost time for our January meeting and a chance to start a new year off with a bang! In order to make it easier for the OKC CoCo guys to schedule events in their ever-growing list of groups, we’re changing the date we meet from the clear-as-dishwater “next-to-last Wednesday of the month” to a clear-as-tapwater “4th Wednesday of the month”. This will change the date of a few of our meetings, including the January meeting. So now our next meeting will be held: JANUARY 27th, 2010 at 6:30pm.

You can always view the full OKC CoCo calendar

A few people expressed a desire for an easier way to keep in touch with new meetings. I try to remember to post reminders to the Facebook group, Twitter, the mailing list, and the website itself but if there is something you guys would prefer I’m all for it. I could set up a shared Google Calendar for meetings and local events pertaining to writing, we can migrate off of Wordpress to Meetup.com, or I can unleash a flock of White Ravens to carry the message from the Citadel and pray they are not shot down by enemy archers.

I look forward to seeing you all again later this month, and hopefully we’ll see some new faces!