Speaking at this month's meeting is Malcolm Wood. Malcolm is a most familiar figure at West Side Writers. For the past three years he's assisted his wife, Mary, in management and organizational activities at West Side Writers and for the past eight years he's presided over its fiction critiquing group. Malcolm's very much personally involved as well, counseling attendees and members, often advising fresh faces to "remember the first rule of writing— write!"
Not one to ignore his own advice, Malcolm has penned a series of economic analyses, several short stories, and seven suspense novels. Selected chapters from the latter, along with advice to writers, and other of his writings can be found at his website, malcolm-wood.com. Malcolm's eighth novel, MTA and Rapid Transit, is currently under review by members of the fiction critiquing group and is expected to be completed shortly.
The subject of Malcolm's talk this Saturday will be Outlining Your Novel. This presentation, he explains, will cover the "process of organizing and structuring a novel so that you tie up all the loose ends and write efficiently." Included will be techniques for controlling point of view, setting, chronology and sequence of events. Malcolm notes that the use of an outline can be beneficial to all genres of writing, even to some forms of non-fiction writing. For attendee's perusal, Malcolm will bring outlines he employed recently in his own writing.
As is customary, critiquing groups will meet at 9:15 a.m. and at 10:45 the general meeting with Malcolm's presentation will begin.
