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

• 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!

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!

With NanNoWriMo just wrapping up and Christmas looming, I’m sure we
all want to take things a little easier this month. Given that, and
the next scheduled meeting time, you have 51 days to write another
50,000 words… No, wait Dana, it was just a joke!

This month’s writing prompt is to show some event or tell some story
from more than one point of view. You can accomplish that in any way
that you like from explaining a character’s internal revelation to
literally telling a story more than once with different narrating
voices.

I gave several examples at the meeting. I mentioned Tales From the
Mos Eisley Cantina which is a book about the stories of all the faces
the camera pans across during the famous scene in Star Wars, Rand’s
battle with the Seanchan in book eight of The Wheel of Time in which
both sides decide they lost, and the British TV sitcom Coupling which
uses the shared story telling tactic heavily for hilarious effect
throughout its second and third seasons.

I forgot to mention, and should probably be punished for doing so,
Ender’s Game, which is easily a science fiction masterpiece. If you
haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It’s an easy
read you can knock out in a weekend and you will be deeply rewarded
for doing so. The entire story is about point of view.

That’s the task. The writing from multiple points of view part, not
reading Ender’s Game. Unless you haven’t read Ender’s Game and then
maybe you would be better off to reverse them. OK, we will call
having read Ender’s Game by the next meeting extra credit, but it’s
worth major points.

We decided not to impose any limits on the prompt, so run wild if you
like. We may need two meetings in January though, the normal one and
the other to read Tim’s submission.

We’ll talk about the experience of writing a book in 30 days and the challenges it presents. See who completed the challenge, who came close, and who pulled their hair out due to unfair real life time constraints.

If you didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo this year, don’t worry; we’ll still have plenty of fun stuff to cover in the meeting, such as information on self-publishing and a new writing prompt. I look forward to seeing everyone there!

Don’t forget to submit your writing prompt before the meeting! Even if you can’t attend the meeting join up with our mailing list and take part in the group virtually.

One last thing: The guys at the CoCo are being generous enough to provide a cool opportunity for people participating in NaNoWriMo. Check out the promotion here!