I found something via Penny Arcade today -- Ommatidia, a site where a guy writes 101-word stories every day. Like the silly person I am, I immediately became jealous, because I had a similar idea a few weeks ago, and here's a guy who has been doing it since 2003. "So much for that," I thought.
But that's a dumb thought. So some guy has a daily writing blog. That's awesome! Why should that I mean I can't do it? Because I wasn't the first to think of it? That's a horrible way to operate. Imagine what would happen if every person refused to do something that had been done before. There would be no new stories, no books, no movies, no music, nothing.
The kicker is that my idea really isn't the same as his. Sure, I'd shoot for daily, and definitely in a blog format. But mine would have been different. I wouldn't have wanted one-shot deals; I would have preferred a running story. I would be more lax with my word count, too: he chooses to limit himself to 101 words. I would be more lax and keep it "around 300". It would still be mine, not my attempt to steal his.
That being said, a daily writing blog isn't next on my list. I do have something in the works, and I do intend for it to be online, but I'm not ready to share yet. If I talk too much, I'll never actually act. And I want to act. I also have a lot of prepwork to do, but it's moving, and I'm hoping to launch this summer. I'm excited.
How about you? Do you ever find yourself wanting to trash a project because someone already did something like it?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Holy Crap, Reading is Awesome
So I haven't posted in a while. Oops...
I had a pretty amazing experience last week. It was almost like fulfilling a prophecy, since it was repeatedly foretold by writing professors and the guides by professional writers.
Let's travel back in time first. The class that sparked my desire to write was Children's Lit, back when I was still at the community college. I stayed in touch with the professor, even volunteered on his campaign when he ran for state representative. About two years ago, he loaned me a book called "The Pooh Perplex", and I don't think I've seen him since.
My wife and I just moved last month. We live pretty close to this guy, and I figured it would be inexcusable of me not to try and get in touch with him, so I shot him an email. I also decided it was time to read "The Pooh Perplex."
Between Children's Lit and Pooh, I took a few classes, attended groups, and read a bit about the writing process. One thing that kept coming up was, "Read!" For a while, I was reading quite a bit, but once classes ended and my job started, it got harder and harder to make time. My book queue is marginally smaller than it was a year ago, which is kind of depressing. It's not that I don't want to read, it's that I tend to relegate reading to the bottom of the priority list.
I was still trying to be a writer, though, and despite the fact that I identified several weaknesses in my writing, and that I knew a little field research was in order to correct those weaknesses, I continued to put off reading. So, imagine my surprise when, one day after reading half of The Pooh Perplex, I cranked out a really good start to something. Seriously. It was good. I liked it. I have no idea if I'll do anything with it, but I was impressed at the quality. My subconscious had stolen some things from the book and incorporated it with my existing style, and the result was pleasing. I haven't looked at the beginning since that day, so I'll probably think it sucks when I do, but I'm feeling pretty good right now.
Bottom line: Listen to the writers who tell you to keep reading. It really does make a difference.
I had a pretty amazing experience last week. It was almost like fulfilling a prophecy, since it was repeatedly foretold by writing professors and the guides by professional writers.
Let's travel back in time first. The class that sparked my desire to write was Children's Lit, back when I was still at the community college. I stayed in touch with the professor, even volunteered on his campaign when he ran for state representative. About two years ago, he loaned me a book called "The Pooh Perplex", and I don't think I've seen him since.
My wife and I just moved last month. We live pretty close to this guy, and I figured it would be inexcusable of me not to try and get in touch with him, so I shot him an email. I also decided it was time to read "The Pooh Perplex."
Between Children's Lit and Pooh, I took a few classes, attended groups, and read a bit about the writing process. One thing that kept coming up was, "Read!" For a while, I was reading quite a bit, but once classes ended and my job started, it got harder and harder to make time. My book queue is marginally smaller than it was a year ago, which is kind of depressing. It's not that I don't want to read, it's that I tend to relegate reading to the bottom of the priority list.
I was still trying to be a writer, though, and despite the fact that I identified several weaknesses in my writing, and that I knew a little field research was in order to correct those weaknesses, I continued to put off reading. So, imagine my surprise when, one day after reading half of The Pooh Perplex, I cranked out a really good start to something. Seriously. It was good. I liked it. I have no idea if I'll do anything with it, but I was impressed at the quality. My subconscious had stolen some things from the book and incorporated it with my existing style, and the result was pleasing. I haven't looked at the beginning since that day, so I'll probably think it sucks when I do, but I'm feeling pretty good right now.
Bottom line: Listen to the writers who tell you to keep reading. It really does make a difference.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Writing Excuses (dot com)
A couple of months ago, the creator of one of my favorite webcomics launched a website, with two guys I had never heard of, called Writing Excuses. I finally got around to listening to the podcasts yesterday, and I highly recommend checking them out.
It's basically just three guys sitting around and talking about writing, only the three guys happen to be a successful webcartoonist, a guy who received an offer for his first horror novel, and the guy who is going to finish The Wheel of Time. They make fifteen-minute podcasts to discuss an aspect of the craft. Each of them has a unique style, so the listener is presented with multiple approaches to the act of writing being discussed. I learned quite a bit (possibly more than I did in college, getting a degree in writing) from listening to them, and was able to scratch out a few notes to myself on how to improve the story I'm working on.
I'll give an example. I believe it was in Episode 6: Flaws vs Handicaps where a question came up of how to make a flawed character. This is something I've struggled with, because I always feel like I'm at one of the extremes -- either my character is flawless, or completely useless. Even when I think I've done an okay job in that area, sometimes I still think I have a boring person to read. There were two concepts in the podcast that jumped out at me:
1. A flaw is something you overcome; a handicap is not.
2. To know what flaws to give your character, figure out what the conflict is, and give your character the flaw that will make him lose that conflict.
In regards to 1, I immediately thought of an error I made when I hit the reset button on my novel. I decided that, in order to make him more interesting, I would give Gabriel chronic health problems, and make him bitter because of that. Then, once I started writing his interactions with his sister, I thought, "Well, she's really kind to him, so he wouldn't grow up angry." The result was an un-flawed character with a handicap. By taking away his bitterness toward life, I removed the only thing that could potentially serve to mark his growth as a person.
As for 2, this concept was like being handed a solid gold key to good storytelling. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. What makes a conflict compelling? When you think the main character could actually fail. The best flaw to give a character is the one that could potentially spell doom for him and/or everything he holds dear. Is the conflict a final showdown with the bad guy? A common flaw is to let the desire for revenge cloud judgment. A negotiation with a hostile foreign leader? Make the person racist. It makes so much more sense now than when professors kept repeated, "Flawed characters are interesting. Flawed characters are interesting. Flawed characters are interesting."
I'm a better writer for having listened to these guys. Go check out Writing Excuses and report back with what you've learned!
It's basically just three guys sitting around and talking about writing, only the three guys happen to be a successful webcartoonist, a guy who received an offer for his first horror novel, and the guy who is going to finish The Wheel of Time. They make fifteen-minute podcasts to discuss an aspect of the craft. Each of them has a unique style, so the listener is presented with multiple approaches to the act of writing being discussed. I learned quite a bit (possibly more than I did in college, getting a degree in writing) from listening to them, and was able to scratch out a few notes to myself on how to improve the story I'm working on.
I'll give an example. I believe it was in Episode 6: Flaws vs Handicaps where a question came up of how to make a flawed character. This is something I've struggled with, because I always feel like I'm at one of the extremes -- either my character is flawless, or completely useless. Even when I think I've done an okay job in that area, sometimes I still think I have a boring person to read. There were two concepts in the podcast that jumped out at me:
1. A flaw is something you overcome; a handicap is not.
2. To know what flaws to give your character, figure out what the conflict is, and give your character the flaw that will make him lose that conflict.
In regards to 1, I immediately thought of an error I made when I hit the reset button on my novel. I decided that, in order to make him more interesting, I would give Gabriel chronic health problems, and make him bitter because of that. Then, once I started writing his interactions with his sister, I thought, "Well, she's really kind to him, so he wouldn't grow up angry." The result was an un-flawed character with a handicap. By taking away his bitterness toward life, I removed the only thing that could potentially serve to mark his growth as a person.
As for 2, this concept was like being handed a solid gold key to good storytelling. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. What makes a conflict compelling? When you think the main character could actually fail. The best flaw to give a character is the one that could potentially spell doom for him and/or everything he holds dear. Is the conflict a final showdown with the bad guy? A common flaw is to let the desire for revenge cloud judgment. A negotiation with a hostile foreign leader? Make the person racist. It makes so much more sense now than when professors kept repeated, "Flawed characters are interesting. Flawed characters are interesting. Flawed characters are interesting."
I'm a better writer for having listened to these guys. Go check out Writing Excuses and report back with what you've learned!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke died. I don't consider myself a rabid fan of his (I haven't even read 2001), but I own one of his books. I still haven't even read the whole thing, which makes me feel weird for saying he has had an enormous impact on my imagination and the way I approach writing.
My first encounter with Mr. Clarke's writing was a story called "The Nine Billion Names of God". It was in one of my lit textbooks, though it was not assigned reading for the class. I was flipping through the book to get to the forgettable classic I was required to read that night and the title caught my eye. The author's name looked familiar, but I didn't know where I'd seen it before. I decided to give the story a go.
Obviously I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't been mesmerized. The story was short, but the characters all had the kind of depth that lit professors gush over. On top of that, and probably the reason it wasn't included in my class, the events that took place were a few levels beyond ordinary. This wasn't another politically-charged story about a guy who experiences the same things I go through every day -- this was an exploration of our assumptions about reality, played out in some unnamed mountains, with an unspecified religious order and a couple technicians from a computer company. It was different from the drivel that is force-fed to English majors. It was fresh. I wanted more.
Of course, school being what it is, I soon found myself swimming in papers and readings and forgot about the concept of "leisure reading." It was more or less an accident that I stumbled upon the massive tome of Clarke stories. As I said before, I haven't read the entire book. The thing is huge, and I had some other things I wanted to read -- things that fit more neatly in my backpack. What I did read, though, was amazing. It's been over a year now... I hope I can find that book when I move.
My first encounter with Mr. Clarke's writing was a story called "The Nine Billion Names of God". It was in one of my lit textbooks, though it was not assigned reading for the class. I was flipping through the book to get to the forgettable classic I was required to read that night and the title caught my eye. The author's name looked familiar, but I didn't know where I'd seen it before. I decided to give the story a go.
Obviously I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't been mesmerized. The story was short, but the characters all had the kind of depth that lit professors gush over. On top of that, and probably the reason it wasn't included in my class, the events that took place were a few levels beyond ordinary. This wasn't another politically-charged story about a guy who experiences the same things I go through every day -- this was an exploration of our assumptions about reality, played out in some unnamed mountains, with an unspecified religious order and a couple technicians from a computer company. It was different from the drivel that is force-fed to English majors. It was fresh. I wanted more.
Of course, school being what it is, I soon found myself swimming in papers and readings and forgot about the concept of "leisure reading." It was more or less an accident that I stumbled upon the massive tome of Clarke stories. As I said before, I haven't read the entire book. The thing is huge, and I had some other things I wanted to read -- things that fit more neatly in my backpack. What I did read, though, was amazing. It's been over a year now... I hope I can find that book when I move.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
What the H are you doing, Stan?
My last blog entries seemed like a long time ago, so I think I need to explain why I'm still a writer despite my apparent lack of...you know, writing.
Obviously I've been doing some brainstorming exercises on here, to kind of showcase my writing process. It's kind of misleading, though, because my standard process doesn't involve my blog, so I'm already straying from the norm. You could say this is another type of process for me.
That is still happening. Usually I push words around for a week or more before posting them. The result is typically a long blog -- but I prefer that to a two-line piece. I also like to have things slightly polished before presenting them. Yes, the result is a less-than-genuine mind dump, but it's way more fun for me.
I do need to confess to some downtime, but I got over that. I started drawing again. I intend to take a story I started in one of my college classes and adapt it to the comic medium... if I can increase my art skills. I want to do this because it will force me to think about backgrounds and setting and all of that, which is typically weak in my writing. The goal is to go way outside my normal mode of operation and force myself to think in different ways. I hope it works. I've begun laying out the structure of that story, and I'll begin some sort of scripting in the next few weeks.
I put Gabriel down for a nap and sent what I have to a few people to read over. I'd rather rewrite this chunk than finish the whole story and have to rewrite everything at once. Then, yesterday, I started having ideas for where that story should go. It should go without saying that those got written down. People are taking their sweet time getting back to me, so I may end up pressing on soon anyway.
Anyway, the point is that I'm still writing -- just not always in my blog!
Obviously I've been doing some brainstorming exercises on here, to kind of showcase my writing process. It's kind of misleading, though, because my standard process doesn't involve my blog, so I'm already straying from the norm. You could say this is another type of process for me.
That is still happening. Usually I push words around for a week or more before posting them. The result is typically a long blog -- but I prefer that to a two-line piece. I also like to have things slightly polished before presenting them. Yes, the result is a less-than-genuine mind dump, but it's way more fun for me.
I do need to confess to some downtime, but I got over that. I started drawing again. I intend to take a story I started in one of my college classes and adapt it to the comic medium... if I can increase my art skills. I want to do this because it will force me to think about backgrounds and setting and all of that, which is typically weak in my writing. The goal is to go way outside my normal mode of operation and force myself to think in different ways. I hope it works. I've begun laying out the structure of that story, and I'll begin some sort of scripting in the next few weeks.
I put Gabriel down for a nap and sent what I have to a few people to read over. I'd rather rewrite this chunk than finish the whole story and have to rewrite everything at once. Then, yesterday, I started having ideas for where that story should go. It should go without saying that those got written down. People are taking their sweet time getting back to me, so I may end up pressing on soon anyway.
Anyway, the point is that I'm still writing -- just not always in my blog!
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Mrs. Man X to Join Sven!
Yes, yes, the rumors are true! My lovely wife has decided to throw her hat into Sven's ring and write one of the stories I've been bugging her to write for the last year or so! This is good, because I'm going to be way to freakin busy to participate this time around.
Pop over to her blog and nag her!
Pop over to her blog and nag her!
Friday, February 22, 2008
Building the Stage: Nuravol and Soravol
All right, we've got Vilhelm the Nuravol, Olwen the Vesna, and Nathanael the Soravol. We know that the Nuravol and the Soravol are rival tribes with ancient history in common, and we know that each has a "mirror" tribe on a higher plane -- the Hild and the Vesna. We also know that Nathanael was raised as a Nuravol, and that he is gone. Vilhelm and Olwen are looking for him.
There needs to be more. Well, okay, some people might think this is enough to start, and that's fine. But I live for this stuff, so I want to write some ancient history for these people.
Since this writing exercise is being contained on this blog, I'm going to keep things small and manageable, with room for expansion if I ever decide to develop things further. History begins shortly after the world is utterly devastated. A few groups of people survived, but they wound up isolated. The people in this story all live in the middle of a ring of mountains. Anyone who climbs the mountains and looks outward will see nothing but devastation, so there is no reason to try exploring. Enough time has passed that no one remembers that life used to exist in the outside world.
Inside this ring of mountains is a forest and a lake. A river runs into and out of the lake, from the northern mountains to the southern ones. For the first several generations after the crisis, the people who lived in this area were able to live peacefully. They cleared out some of the trees for farmland, built homes, and looked to the future. Eventually, economic classes developed -- people with money on the top, people with skills on the bottom. While it wasn't ideal, most people accepted it as life.
Then there was a long drought. The river grew weak and the lake level dropped. The rich hoarded water, even hiring guards to patrol the river and prevent others from drinking. Everyone else suffered. Before long, there was an uprising, and after a bloody conflict, everyone had water again. Things were relatively stable until the drought ended, when the unifying desire for free water became irrelevant and different people had different ideas of how to run things. Thus the Nuravol and the Soravol are born.
Not bad so far. The next question, of course, is where the Vesna and the Hild came from. I'll save that for another time.
There needs to be more. Well, okay, some people might think this is enough to start, and that's fine. But I live for this stuff, so I want to write some ancient history for these people.
Since this writing exercise is being contained on this blog, I'm going to keep things small and manageable, with room for expansion if I ever decide to develop things further. History begins shortly after the world is utterly devastated. A few groups of people survived, but they wound up isolated. The people in this story all live in the middle of a ring of mountains. Anyone who climbs the mountains and looks outward will see nothing but devastation, so there is no reason to try exploring. Enough time has passed that no one remembers that life used to exist in the outside world.
Inside this ring of mountains is a forest and a lake. A river runs into and out of the lake, from the northern mountains to the southern ones. For the first several generations after the crisis, the people who lived in this area were able to live peacefully. They cleared out some of the trees for farmland, built homes, and looked to the future. Eventually, economic classes developed -- people with money on the top, people with skills on the bottom. While it wasn't ideal, most people accepted it as life.
Then there was a long drought. The river grew weak and the lake level dropped. The rich hoarded water, even hiring guards to patrol the river and prevent others from drinking. Everyone else suffered. Before long, there was an uprising, and after a bloody conflict, everyone had water again. Things were relatively stable until the drought ended, when the unifying desire for free water became irrelevant and different people had different ideas of how to run things. Thus the Nuravol and the Soravol are born.
Not bad so far. The next question, of course, is where the Vesna and the Hild came from. I'll save that for another time.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Random Name #3
For the record, I decided a few things about this character in advance of picking a name:
Hmm.... we have VENUS and ŚWIĘTOPEŁK (Polish form of SVYATOPOLK). Not entirely digging the results... The female name gives me the first woman James Bond sleeps with, who probably gets killed 30 minutes in (it also gets that Bananarama song stuck in my head...er, what?!). The male name is cool but a tad unwieldy, but I really like the meaning -- "bright folk."
That led to me cheating and getting sidetracked. I thought "bright folk" would be great for another race, so I started looking for names that had "bright" in their meaning. Long story short, I took "Nuray" and "Sorin" and came up with the Nuravol and Soravol -- two tribes or factions that split from a single group long ago. Perhaps in a different story...
Now it's several days after my initial search, and I still don't have my third character. My wife has given me permission to look for a new name, so here goes...
Name: Nathanael
Meaning: "God has given" (Hebrew)
The website mentions a guy named Nathanael in the Bible. I looked him up and discovered "in [him] there was nothing false." Awesome. We have an honest and upstanding guy to work with. That makes sense, being that I just now decided he is best friends with Vilhelm (I think their names are too different linguistically to make sense as brothers).
How did they meet? Suppose Vilhelm is a Soravol and Nathanael is a Nuravol. Nathanael was transplanted as a child (perhaps even an infant), either because his parents were killed and he was taken, or he was abandoned in an area where the Soravol might find him. In either case, he was raised as a Soraval, but was frequently mistreated because (obviously) he looked like a Nuravol. We already established that Vilhelm has a tendency toward protecting the weak, so it was only a matter of time before he witnessed several people beating on Nathanael and came to his aid. Blah blah blah they became friends and then one day Nathanael was gone.
Olwen wants them reunited because she wants to guide them both to the higher plane and grant them supernatural abilities. The Vesna have their own tribe, and she believes that a Soravol and Nuravol working together would be able to turn that battle in the Vesna's favor.
By the way, the female name that popped up when I got Nathanael was "Hildegard," so...
Race: The Hild
Meaning: Battle
For now, anyway. The Hild exist parallel to the Soravol, while the Vesna exist parallel to the Nuravol. I'm not sure if I'd say they are allied, or just that their existences seem to line up nicely in a mystical sort of way, but that's not important now because I'm building a foundation.
The Hild are warriors. I don't mean to imply that they are "the bad guys" or anything like that, just that they take pride in physical strength. Their magic is meant to weaken their opponents or strengthen themselves. If the Soravol have a connection to the Hild, then Vilhelm is a model Soravol.
In contrast, the Vesna are less interested in combat. Their magic will be more geared toward avoiding conflict -- they would rather sneak around, making themselves invisible or confusing their enemies' senses. Nathanael isn't exactly the penultimate Nuravol, on account of being raised among Soravol, but his peaceful nature is definitely a Nuravol trait.
I think that's enough for now... I'm starting to get really pumped about where this could go.
- This character has some connection to Vilhelm. I'm leaning toward "last surviving family," but I'm open to other possibilities.
- This character disappeared from Vilhelm's life, and he is searching for this person.
- For Vilhelm, locating this character means accepting guidance from Olwen.
- Olwen has a vested interest in the two characters reunion. I don't feel like figuring that out at the moment, though.
- This character will be a sharp contrast to Vilhelm -- where he is strong, this person is frail; Vilhelm prefers to fight evil, this person prefers to nurture good; and so on. Seriously, it would be so boring if they were both Lawful Good!
Hmm.... we have VENUS and ŚWIĘTOPEŁK (Polish form of SVYATOPOLK). Not entirely digging the results... The female name gives me the first woman James Bond sleeps with, who probably gets killed 30 minutes in (it also gets that Bananarama song stuck in my head...er, what?!). The male name is cool but a tad unwieldy, but I really like the meaning -- "bright folk."
That led to me cheating and getting sidetracked. I thought "bright folk" would be great for another race, so I started looking for names that had "bright" in their meaning. Long story short, I took "Nuray" and "Sorin" and came up with the Nuravol and Soravol -- two tribes or factions that split from a single group long ago. Perhaps in a different story...
Now it's several days after my initial search, and I still don't have my third character. My wife has given me permission to look for a new name, so here goes...
Name: Nathanael
Meaning: "God has given" (Hebrew)
The website mentions a guy named Nathanael in the Bible. I looked him up and discovered "in [him] there was nothing false." Awesome. We have an honest and upstanding guy to work with. That makes sense, being that I just now decided he is best friends with Vilhelm (I think their names are too different linguistically to make sense as brothers).
How did they meet? Suppose Vilhelm is a Soravol and Nathanael is a Nuravol. Nathanael was transplanted as a child (perhaps even an infant), either because his parents were killed and he was taken, or he was abandoned in an area where the Soravol might find him. In either case, he was raised as a Soraval, but was frequently mistreated because (obviously) he looked like a Nuravol. We already established that Vilhelm has a tendency toward protecting the weak, so it was only a matter of time before he witnessed several people beating on Nathanael and came to his aid. Blah blah blah they became friends and then one day Nathanael was gone.
Olwen wants them reunited because she wants to guide them both to the higher plane and grant them supernatural abilities. The Vesna have their own tribe, and she believes that a Soravol and Nuravol working together would be able to turn that battle in the Vesna's favor.
By the way, the female name that popped up when I got Nathanael was "Hildegard," so...
Race: The Hild
Meaning: Battle
For now, anyway. The Hild exist parallel to the Soravol, while the Vesna exist parallel to the Nuravol. I'm not sure if I'd say they are allied, or just that their existences seem to line up nicely in a mystical sort of way, but that's not important now because I'm building a foundation.
The Hild are warriors. I don't mean to imply that they are "the bad guys" or anything like that, just that they take pride in physical strength. Their magic is meant to weaken their opponents or strengthen themselves. If the Soravol have a connection to the Hild, then Vilhelm is a model Soravol.
In contrast, the Vesna are less interested in combat. Their magic will be more geared toward avoiding conflict -- they would rather sneak around, making themselves invisible or confusing their enemies' senses. Nathanael isn't exactly the penultimate Nuravol, on account of being raised among Soravol, but his peaceful nature is definitely a Nuravol trait.
I think that's enough for now... I'm starting to get really pumped about where this could go.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Random Name #2: Vesna
Ok, I've started some extra-curricular projects that are going to be eating up all of my free time. What that means for this blog is a whole bunch of silly updates involving random names from BehindtheName (which I still highly recommend).
So what's with the V theme? That's twice in a row I get a name that starts with the same letter. Oh well.Name: Vesna
Meaning: "messenger" in Slavic. Name of the goddess of spring.
Hold the phone! A long time ago, I wanted a name for a race of immortals, but couldn't dig up anything satisfactory. Perhaps I'll use Vesna (or a modified form of it) to refer to them. That makes for a really boring blog, though... but I don't want to get attached to a character if I want the name to be associated with a concept. Hmm...
Name: OlwenMeaning: "white footprint" (Welsh)
This name also comes with attached mythology. Sweet! Here we go:
Name: Olwen the Vesna; Olwen of the Vesna; the Vesna, OlwenSo we've identified a race of beings, and named one of those beings. Great! We don't actually know anything yet.
Let's start with the Vesna. We have "messenger", "goddess", and "spring" to start with. My mind always runs to "angel" from "messenger," so we'll say that Vesna are capable of interacting with two different planes of existence. Does that sound cool? I think it does. How about "spring"? That's the time of year that stuff comes to life, so perhaps their presence brings life and/or healing. Maybe grass or flowers grow where they walk. Whatever. I'll leave that as a placeholder for now and come back to it later. I will say that I don't want it to be something they control, just something that naturally occurs in their presence.
How about Olwen? "White footprint." Great! It sounds like it goes with the healing thing. What else is significant in this? White footprints would be pretty conspicuous, almost like they were leading somewhere. That means she could be a guide of some sort, or maybe a teacher (to go along with the "messenger" concept). Footprint implies that she is always walking, so she has no home.
Wanderer, healer, guide, messenger... people may follow her for a time, but her name is singular, so she is generally alone. She is always searching for someone to deliver a message or to take them somewhere. My mind keeps going to an "angel of death" kind of place with this, but I'm not entirely sure of that. Perhaps she can guide mortals into the supernatural realm. That will require further development of the duality of the universe, but I don't think that's such a horrible place to start. The next question would be how to take that idea and make it fresh. Perhaps next time...
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Character: Vilhelm
Okay, I'm going to try something new today. Maybe it will rock, maybe not.
I went over to BehindtheName and used their random name generator to give me a name. With the meaning of the name as a starting point, I'm going to attempt to create a character. I went into this with no preconceived ideas of what kind of character I wanted. If this ends up sucking, blame Elen, since she sparked the thought process that led here.
Name: Vilhelm
Meaning: derived from wil "will, desire" and helm "helmet, protection"
Implications for the character:
- always wearing a helmet or hat
- intrusively defensive of others (think of awkward sitcom situations)
- not many friends, on account of that being a bad strategy for self-defense
- hell, he could play a "defensive" position on a sports team, if he ends up in a story that would have sports. otherwise, he could make armor or something.
Appearance:
- needs to be physically strong
- descriptive language should have some sort of defensive undertones when possible (i.e. "towered above his enemies", or "brought the wall of hurt down upon this suckah")
- can't be pale - needs to look like he's been outside
- if he wears a hat, a beard should hide his face. If we wears a helmet, the beard is optional. I guess a hood is an alternative to either, because hoods are badass
- scars
- frowns often
Background:
- primary parental-figure needs to exemplify self-sacrifice in a way that he isn't quite imitating
- perhaps he feels guilt for the eventual downfall/failure of said parent-figure
...and there we go - a first stage character sketch. It's pretty generic, obviously, but I think it's a pretty solid foundation to build a more nuanced character on.
From here, I think the next step is choosing a setting for mister Vilhelm, as that will help me nail down the details of his life. But that's for later. In the meantime, he can act as the writing equivalent of a coloring book page -- feel free to supply your own colors to suit your own fancy!
Monday, January 21, 2008
What to Write
I've been kicking this post around for a while, and I'm never really sure what it is I want to say with it. Bear with me while I ramble.
My degree is in English with a specialization in Writing. Here's a brief summary of what I learned in school that I didn't also learn from Stephen King's On Writing:
- Literary fiction is better than genre fiction
- People who write genre fiction are hacks
- Literary writers never wrote bad stories, and if you dislike something, it's your fault
Okay, so that's a cynical assessment (I'll give a fair one someday), but that seemed to be the prevailing attitude among people who liked the canon. You were of sub-par intelligence if you liked Harry Potter, and doubly so if you disliked Shakespeare. Granted, most of this came from students because none of the professors actually bothered to read anything that wasn't pre-approved by Conclave of Literary Overlords (again, a cynical statement -- I'm about as fair and balanced as FoxNews today), but it was a horrible atmosphere for us fantasy writers.
Anyway, in the two creative writing classes I took, we were told not to write genre fiction. The intro professor was actually lenient about this, since we were keeping up a journal of daily writings -- I was able to write a fantasy story because she got to see all of my notes and was able to understand the world. There were no exceptions in the advanced class, but rather than complain about it, I threw myself into it and wrote some pretty good stuff. It was the first time I had taken any of my attempts at "literary" fiction beyond a first draft, and I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit.
But then, somehow, I started morphing into one of those elitist assholes who writes because he "has something to say." I started channeling all of the hurt and frustration gathered between 1996 and 2004 and aiming it at all of the churches and churchgoers who caused it. It was a slow process, and the stories were decently well-written at first, but as things progressed, I became angrier and more heavy-handed, to the point where my wife actually told me to stop writing those stories and go back to fantasy.
It was a sobering moment for me. I had been telling myself I could write a great critique of Americanized Christianity in the form of loosely interconnected short stories -- in short, I had ceased writing because I loved telling stories in order to use stories as a weapon. Malevolent and didactic, I had completely forsaken what drew me toward writing in the first place.
Which sort of gets to why I'm writing this blog. Sometimes people like to pretend they have two options: Doing what they love, or selling out. I think that's a completely fictitious dichotomy, but that's not even the point. My struggle was between two types of writing I was passionate about -- one that allowed me to be stretch my imagination, and one that allowed me to make a point. Both were fueled by my love for writing, but one was clearly capable of leading me astray.
The question, then, is how to decide the "what" and the "how" of the writing, and how to avoid using fiction as a glorified blog. I don't have an answer to that yet, because I haven't tried leaving fantasy in a few months. The idea scares me. I don't want to become an angry person in order to write, and I certainly don't want to become one of those beatniks with "something to say." If I'm going to write, I want it to be because I like writing, not yelling.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
A Taste of WIP
Alright, then, here's a chunk of the current WIP, as promised. I've conveniently made it available as a rich text file and as a PDF. Enjoy!
In other news, I'm thinking of abandoning Blogger. I've also noticed that all the cool kids use Wordpress. Any thoughts?
Friday, January 18, 2008
Fear and Apprehension
Over a month ago I said that I would actually post something I had written. I'll try and make good on that over lunch today, provided I don't freak out and think it's utterly worthless like the stereotypical writer has a tendency to do. I'm actually going to get my whining and insecurity out of the way now: Even after I make corrections to the part I'm going to post, I won't consider it "as good as it could be" and will likely go through another five revisions before I decide to leave it alone... blah blah blah etc whine complain.
In this instance, most of my insecurity is due to the fact that I use this blog to talk about the act of writing -- what I've learned about it and would like to share. My horrible, dark secret is that I don't follow all of my advice (at that moment, all of the writers in the room rolled their eyes) and I certainly don't write good first drafts (and, grinning, shook their heads). In my head, I know writers get this, but I still harbor the irrational fear that when I serve up the pudding, I'll be mocked for not having the cup of proof that is supposed to be in there (or, in some cases, substituting said proof with two cups of BS).
Anyway, coming up at some point today will be a snippet from my work in progress, which still doesn't have a title. It might be modified slightly to make sense as a short story, or I might just leave things as they are and see what happens. Who knows.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Hackers and Crackers: A Linguistic Dilemma
A group of hackers wired a bunch of money to a foreign account. Someone hacked into the school's database and gave A's to everyone. Put up a firewall to guard against hackers. What is a hacker? Well, according to the news, entertainment, and most people you talk to, a hacker is a person who circumvents computer security. Works for me.
But one day, a kid on a message board made a post to clarify: crackers are people who break into computers; hackers are people who modify their computer's software to improve performance. Also, hackers don't like that their title is applied to people who do illegal stuff.
Ok, that's cool, too. I guess. I mean, it makes sense -- "cracker" seems to hearken back to safe-cracking, so that's cool. I don't know where "hacker" comes from, but I can accept it. It's nice to have a distinction.
So what do you call them in your fiction? Do you go with definitions, or with common usage?
I bring this up for the benefit of new writers, those who are relatively new to the peer review process. The hacker/cracker issue may not apply to your current project, but I think it exemplifies a general concept I'm just going to call the "proper/common" issue. Now it's story time...
Writing fiction is far different from writing a research paper. I know that should go without saying, but I really want to stress it: Writing fiction is far different from writing a research paper. It is not the same as doing homework.
When I first started my adventures in fiction, I attended a couple writer's groups (Borders in Flint and Auburn Hills, for you Michiganders). One week I invited a friend from my Japanese class to sit in and maybe read something of hers. I read a section from something I had written (it was about eight or ten pages, double-spaced). The feedback I received from the regulars was pretty standard -- You don't have enough description; Your dialogue was good, but you should describe what they're doing; I have no idea where the hell your characters are because you don't describe it very well. I was pleased with the response, because they didn't find anything glaring that destroyed the story.
My friend asked if she could hang on to her copy for a few days. I said that was fine, since I had eight other copies to look over and decide which suggestions to follow. She gave it back to me a few days later, in class.
I think there was more of her writing on that thing than mine.
My first thought was that she spent a lot of time really analyzing the piece, and had written every single complaint and compliment that crossed her mind. That was not the case -- the margins were packed with things like, "incomplete sentence" or "missing words", even "don't start a sentence with 'and'". I was astounded. Not only did she apply the rules of grammar to the narrator, she hit all of the dialogue as well. Each page's margins were overflowing with rules-oriented comments, and the half-blank last page included a long note about how she expected good writers, but that everyone missed all the basic rules of grammar, so she couldn't take them seriously.
I'm not making this up. I still have that copy somewhere, because it was too beautiful to throw away.
The point of all of this is that prescriptive rules of grammar are pretty meaningless in fiction. If the general populace says "hacker," then it makes no sense for the characters in your story to say "cracker" -- unless they are real-life hackers who care about such distinctions. The characters in my story are not going to speak with perfect grammar because no one speaks with perfect grammar. Even my "narrator," who has no discernable personality because the story is told in the third person, will not speak with perfect grammar because he's telling a story. This isn't an academic paper.
Do we still have to put our verbs in the middle of the sentence? Of course -- that's a descriptive rule, whose purpose is to describe how our language already works. To say that we shouldn't end sentences with prepositions is silly -- people do it all the time without creating confusion. That's a rule that was invented by a bunch of dead guys who wanted to sound smarter than everyone else. English worked fine before that rule existed, and it continues to thrive in spite of it.
Write your stories. Damn the rules. Let your characters speak like real people, not textbooks.
Final Sven
Beginning Word Count: 10,948
End Word Count: 23,364
Words written: 12,416
Notes taken in editing stage: 2,482
Words added to WIP so far: 356
WIP-related writing (notes, scrapped scenes, etc.): 4369
Total words written for Sven: 19,623
End Word Count: 23,364
Words written: 12,416
Notes taken in editing stage: 2,482
Words added to WIP so far: 356
WIP-related writing (notes, scrapped scenes, etc.): 4369
Total words written for Sven: 19,623
Yeah, that's less than a third of my goal at the beginning of this...oh well. It's more than 0, and that counts for something. I blame the holidays, my apartment flood, and....uhhhh..... something else?
Monday, December 17, 2007
Status Update
While most people doing Sven seem to be writing more each day than I've done in the whole thing so far, I'm pretty pleased about wrapping up the first main arc of my story. I rewrote the end over lunch today, and it's much better. I'm not sure if I should press on and finish the rest of the story, or take a breather and touch up what I have a bit before moving forward.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Throwaway Drafts
I don't want to use numbers for fear that they'll increase the pressure, but I will say that I've hit my goals recently and I've been pounding away at my story this week. I'm about to wrap up the first arc of the story, and I'm really excited about it.
This whole "starting from scratch" experience has taught me something that I think is valuable: the throwaway draft (should I capitalize? The Throwaway Draft?). This sort of thing gets covered in writing classes and books (in "Bird by Bird," a book I don't recommend, Ann Lamott has an entire chapter dedicated to "Shitty First Drafts"), but the idea is always "Don't worry about if it is good! Just write and fix it later!" With my next longer writing project, I'm going to approach it a bit differently -- deliberately write something with the intention of throwing it away. Maybe this won't apply to other types of writing, but for fantasy, it has been amazing. I fumbled through my first version of this story with too much of my focus on the "cool stuff" -- magic powers, non-standard environment, epic conflict -- and wound up with a lot of junk. I didn't pay enough attention to my characters, so everything that sounded cool in my head wound up being lame on the page. Nobody cares if a bunch of really boring people have cool powers and are trying to kill each other under two moons.
When I read over the story, a few months after finishing it, I hated it. I needed to get to know my characters better, so I spent some time revising them, giving them more interesting histories and real pain in their pasts that would drive them to make stupid decisions periodically. I axed some characters, brought in some new ones. Then I sat down to rewrite, and things were much better.
I have some ideas for being for deliberate about this in the future. I have no idea if they will be effective, but hey, it's worth a shot.
Babysitting
Pick a couple of characters and write a few pages of what would happen if they had to watch someone's kid(s) for an evening. This kind of exercise would separate the characters from the environment, which I think would help immensely in a fantasy story, since the environment can often be a distraction. Even though the situation would be weird, it seems like a great way to find a character's voice.
Grocery Shopping
This is similar to the first one, only I would take one character and have him or her try to pick out stuff to make for dinner. This would provide an opportunity to focus entirely on what goes on in the character's head -- how he reacts to food he hates, how he thinks about other shoppers, etc.
High School
Dear heavens I hated high school -- would my characters hate it? Would the villain shake down the hero for lunch money? Would the hero pine over Suzie in chem despite the fact that she's totally out of his league? This type of arrangement could provide benefits from the first two examples.
Visitors to the New World
Put "normal" people into your fantasy world. No, don't make them "aware" (as in, "Wow! We're in a strange land!") -- just don't make them any different than someone from the real world. This will help you get a grip on the implications of whatever fantastic element you've added to your environment to make it special, and will help you understand how your characters might need to be different to fit in properly (an exaggerated example of what I mean would be putting an oxygen-breathing human in a world that is entirely aquatic).
Obviously, revision will always be necessary, and I don't mean to imply that I'm trying to eliminate that step from the writing process. The point here is to help figure out your characters before you have to start dealing with how the events of the story change them. Notice I said "help" -- almost every time I write a new scene, I learn something about one of my characters, so I don't want to give anyone the impression that a few prewriting exercises are going to solve all of your story's problems. They won't. They're meant to provide a few more tools at the front end that will breathe life into your characters.
This whole "starting from scratch" experience has taught me something that I think is valuable: the throwaway draft (should I capitalize? The Throwaway Draft?). This sort of thing gets covered in writing classes and books (in "Bird by Bird," a book I don't recommend, Ann Lamott has an entire chapter dedicated to "Shitty First Drafts"), but the idea is always "Don't worry about if it is good! Just write and fix it later!" With my next longer writing project, I'm going to approach it a bit differently -- deliberately write something with the intention of throwing it away. Maybe this won't apply to other types of writing, but for fantasy, it has been amazing. I fumbled through my first version of this story with too much of my focus on the "cool stuff" -- magic powers, non-standard environment, epic conflict -- and wound up with a lot of junk. I didn't pay enough attention to my characters, so everything that sounded cool in my head wound up being lame on the page. Nobody cares if a bunch of really boring people have cool powers and are trying to kill each other under two moons.
When I read over the story, a few months after finishing it, I hated it. I needed to get to know my characters better, so I spent some time revising them, giving them more interesting histories and real pain in their pasts that would drive them to make stupid decisions periodically. I axed some characters, brought in some new ones. Then I sat down to rewrite, and things were much better.
I have some ideas for being for deliberate about this in the future. I have no idea if they will be effective, but hey, it's worth a shot.
Babysitting
Pick a couple of characters and write a few pages of what would happen if they had to watch someone's kid(s) for an evening. This kind of exercise would separate the characters from the environment, which I think would help immensely in a fantasy story, since the environment can often be a distraction. Even though the situation would be weird, it seems like a great way to find a character's voice.
Grocery Shopping
This is similar to the first one, only I would take one character and have him or her try to pick out stuff to make for dinner. This would provide an opportunity to focus entirely on what goes on in the character's head -- how he reacts to food he hates, how he thinks about other shoppers, etc.
High School
Dear heavens I hated high school -- would my characters hate it? Would the villain shake down the hero for lunch money? Would the hero pine over Suzie in chem despite the fact that she's totally out of his league? This type of arrangement could provide benefits from the first two examples.
Visitors to the New World
Put "normal" people into your fantasy world. No, don't make them "aware" (as in, "Wow! We're in a strange land!") -- just don't make them any different than someone from the real world. This will help you get a grip on the implications of whatever fantastic element you've added to your environment to make it special, and will help you understand how your characters might need to be different to fit in properly (an exaggerated example of what I mean would be putting an oxygen-breathing human in a world that is entirely aquatic).
Obviously, revision will always be necessary, and I don't mean to imply that I'm trying to eliminate that step from the writing process. The point here is to help figure out your characters before you have to start dealing with how the events of the story change them. Notice I said "help" -- almost every time I write a new scene, I learn something about one of my characters, so I don't want to give anyone the impression that a few prewriting exercises are going to solve all of your story's problems. They won't. They're meant to provide a few more tools at the front end that will breathe life into your characters.
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Track is Below Me (you could say i'm on it)
Between scheduled slacking and genuine distractions over the beginning of "the holiday season" in addition to the actual Thanksgiving weekend being totally freaking awesome, I haven't gotten much writing done. However, I'm ready to once again force life to talk to the hand while I get busy and make some progress. After a chat with my wife last night, I realized I need to completely BS my way through the part of the story I'm on and fix it later -- the important thing is to get the skeleton in place so I know what to flesh out later.
Edit: I realized I talked about a job I was going to pursue and never gave an update on that. I spent a couple of hours brainstorming and playing with the software, and basically concluded that I don't currently have the skills required for the job. I'd rather take my sweet time to get a feel for it, focusing most of my efforts on my fiction, and be capable of delivering something awesome next time a job opens up, than to bust my hump to crank out something mediocre and forgettable, while neglecting the stories that sometimes keep me awake at night. That might make me sound like a quitter, but I really don't care. If I'm going to apply for a job where I get to be creative, I'm going to make sure they get the best I have to offer.
Also, 338 words at lunch today.
Edit: I realized I talked about a job I was going to pursue and never gave an update on that. I spent a couple of hours brainstorming and playing with the software, and basically concluded that I don't currently have the skills required for the job. I'd rather take my sweet time to get a feel for it, focusing most of my efforts on my fiction, and be capable of delivering something awesome next time a job opens up, than to bust my hump to crank out something mediocre and forgettable, while neglecting the stories that sometimes keep me awake at night. That might make me sound like a quitter, but I really don't care. If I'm going to apply for a job where I get to be creative, I'm going to make sure they get the best I have to offer.
Also, 338 words at lunch today.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
70 Days, 11/13/07
Well, I'm taking something of a hiatus from my WIP to put together a resume. This isn't a normal resume, oh no -- a video game company is hiring writers, and they want applicants to create modules for a game that showcase dialogue writing abilities. I'd like to get this thing sent off by the end of the week, at which point I'll be completely focused on my story again. I'm posting this so no one thinks I'm slacking off.
Monday, November 12, 2007
70 Days, 11/12/07
No words today, but my wife helped me hammer out what's going to happen next, so I won't be flailing around aimlessly tomorrow. I'm pretty pumped about that.
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