NaNoRetRo: Write-ins (AKA BICHOK)

For those of you who don't know, I have a very active region for NaNoWriMo.  Very active -- every day but Thanksgiving had a planned event, and probably half of the days had more than one planned event.  Most of those events were write-ins.

I gather that the way my region does write-ins is different than many others.  We have a regimen that varies in details but is generally the same every time.  A number of writing sprints are performed during the write-in, during which everyone is supposed to be actively writing, and not talking or disturbing others.  These are broken by 5-20 minute breaks, followed by another sprint.  These sprints are usually between 15 and 30 minutes long and often have a word count goal for people to shoot for, though of course there's no recriminations for missing the goal, nor extra rewards for making it.

They also provide a live-stream for nearly all of the write-ins, with a chat window available for people to virtually discuss during the breaks, and we all write (and report back our word counts) even if we aren't there in person.

When I write on my own, I tend to sit in front of the computer and get distracted for a few minutes (read: couple hours) by Facebook, email, Twitter, and various other easily-found shiny things.  I don't tend to set time limits, nor goals, nor do I have the peer pressure keeping me writing.

How does it compare?  For approximately the same amounts of time allocated for writing, the weeknight write-ins that I attended virtually had me producing an average of 1730 words, while writing by myself I averaged about 1060.  That's 60% more words for the write-in days, and mostly (IMO) due to one main cause, and the acronym I used: BICHOK.

Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard.

That seems to be the secret to the success.  By actually having my hands ready to write, and using peer pressure to keep me from being distracted, I wrote many more words than I would otherwise.  It's a secret I've known for a while, though this year was the first I thought to quantify it.

Also interesting to note: the second-most productive time for me (or maybe first, since it was shorter time periods)? Writing in the car while my wife drove us somewhere.  Apparently having no wifi and also knowing that she could tell when I was typing and when I wasn't also kept me productively engaged.

So there you have it, one of the biggest secrets to writing success (or so I've heard).  Actually writing.  Who would have thunk, indeed.

Writing When It's Hard

So, a confession that most experienced NaNos will maybe relate to: sometimes the writing is hard.  Sometimes, you sit down to get your daily words written, and it's just a grind to get them all done.

But sometimes, you can let yourself get psyched out about it also.

Today was a case in point for that.  Yesterday was tough.  Today I wasn't feeling it; I was sure it was going to be a slog just to get the bare minimum of words in.  I wasn't sure how I was going to face tomorrow and the ISU write-in, other than by hoping that, somewhere in those 6 hours of writing, I'd manage to get a couple thousand words.

BUT, I sat down tonight to write anyway.  I hooked into the UStream link for a virtual presence at the write-in, and I made myself write.  And do you know what?

I did my two highest word-count sprints so far this month.

Not only that, but I also figured out what happens next, other than what I had planned, which just won't cut it anymore because now I know something worse to do to my protagonist.  (That's the beauty of having your protagonist think "I have to avoid this because there's no recovering from it."  Then you know what they think the worst that could happen is, and you can do it to them.)



So, what's the moral of the story?  I admit that some days are still a bit of a slog, but don't just give up because you think it's going to be rough.  Actually sit down and type.  You never know when good things might happen.

Brainstorming Setting: Airships

I was originally thinking that there are not airships, or at least not yet, since that might throw off my town geography.  Unless… what if there were more caves?  Or just that there are limitations to the ships… mostly that big haulers are bulky and ungainly.  Gee, what a surprise.  Dealing with the smaller ones, though… How to handle them with defenses?

The normal propulsion is slow.  That's the key. There are airships, but while it can get them fairly fast eventually, the acceleration is slow.  The bigger the ship the slower for one propulsion, of course, but bigger ships can have a number of them (always a tradeoff between the amount of cargo space and space dedicated to propulsion).  That means that the small ones, with one propulsion unit (which I'll have to name sometime, or ID at least) aren't much faster than a walk, and someone at a fast trot could overtake it.  On the other hand, a quiet one at night…

So there should be some way for the ships to be detected, probably by means of the propulsion.  I would like the propulsion to be silent to human ears, but emitting something that detectors can pick up when the ship is within a mile or so.  This will allow fortresses to be alert against airship raids, to the amount necessary anyway.  Until they realize some of the things I'm thinking up.  However, if even the fastest of the airships doesn't get much faster than, say, 30 mph after a good run-up, that means that an archer should be able to shoot them down if necessary, and pre-mounted ballistas or something like that should be able to make short work of all but the hardiest blimps (those would be made by armies, of course, as siege weapons).

This means that airships also travel high for as much as they can, in order to avoid piracy.  After all, if the pirate can't reach them with hooks, then they can't catch the ship except in fairly unusual circumstances (that should make the pilot or captain uneasy about doing, for that very reason).

I'm thinking there could be other situations that someone might be able to accelerate an airship more quickly than expected.  A rope/pulley system, for example, if there is someplace it could be anchored to.  I wonder if there's some other propulsive method that could be used for short term and light ships, something like a fire extinguisher in space, along those lines.  Perhaps pressurized water?  Or maybe by burning out the aether accelerators (good for a long slow burn, used up too quickly for a short blast).

Um, more airship thinking: They are most vulnerable for the loading/unloading parts (also known as landings)... and also near those landings.  That should play into the world a little bit, I think.  The way I consider it, there would have to be pirates trying to take the airships, but on the other hand there would have to be defenses against that.  The best defense is height, but the airships give that up for landings.  Therefore, the pirates are likely to be the biggest danger during the landings. Not immediately at them, but hiding close by.  It would be a risky business, because presumably the landings are also where the most powerful people, the ones who are able to maintain their own armies, would be looking out for things.  So I think there would probably be specific troops designated for patrolling for pirates, and also probably a crack team or two dedicated to getting out and attacking the pirates when they appear.  Of course, their appearance could be a bluff, etc., especially when more than one airship is nearby.

A pirate's best hope to take an airship would be to take control of it and fly it away from those who would resist them doing so.  That might mean trickery at times, though the more straightforward and risky plan is grappling hooks as it goes by, followed by a quick climb and a fight at the top.  If they succeed, they have it and are presumably so high up that nobody else will be able to catch them.  If they fail, they die (or at least are mangled by the drop to the ground).

I can think of a couple ways of working this in.  The first is to have those troops patrolling around the vicinity whenever there is an airship coming in or leaving, and I think that those may start to be more frequent around the time period this starts.  The other would be to have the priest mention intentionally not finding and healing those who drop from the sky, as opposed to the MC (whom I really need to name and write up a character sheet on).  Possibly due to the morals of the priest/shaman in that the pirates chose a life of crime and fighting for their own gain, and therefore chose to accept the chance this would happen.  The MC, on the other hand, had it forced upon her, and could therefore both be healed, and be taught the ways of fighting back.

Thinking Out Loud

Or more accurately, thinking by typing.  This is mostly a brainstorming post.

I think I've decided to go with an idea I had months ago, of a steampunk Zorro-type story set in Peru during the colonization.  More of an Antonio-Banderras Zorro, and less the older style, though I'm not sure how much difference that will make by the time I get to writing.

Note to self: rewatch the Zorro movies for tone, and maybe to review the beats.  The movie worked well.

Right now, I'm thinking my main character will be a bit younger than I recall Zorro being; I'm thinking around 15-16.  I might have him a bit younger to begin with, so that he can grow physically as well as in skill while he is "exiled" from his regular place.

My current plot basically consists of the MC being forced to leave the city for some reason, and half-unconscious and maybe hallucinating, finding his way to a tiny jungle temple where an old native shaman resides.  Training ensues with the shaman/mentor, after which he returns to foil the bad guy's plans.

The emphasis is going to be heavy on adventure and wonder, with some budding romance.  A 15-16 year old male protagonist means boys around 12-14 will probably be the readers, which is somewhere in that transition between girls are weird and girls are wonderful.  Should the romance be nontraditional?  I'm thinking that making him mixed blood and her pure european may be enough.

Alternately, would the roles work reversed?  The woman as the MC and the zorro figure, the man as the romantic interest?  How would it affect the story?  The main readers would become girls 11-14, with similar interests but more emphasis on romance.  I would have to do some setting changes to allow it, perhaps; slight modifications to mores due to the steampunk setting.  On the other hand, it would mean even less suspicions on the woman herself during the zorro parts.

What would a girl be doing that would be so bad she'd be driven from the city, though?  I can think of a couple things, which aren't pretty; but do those things fit in a YA adventure story like this?  I may have to think through this part, but in some ways I'm liking the reversal.  I especially like that the woman is more active, and in this modification (and social class) for the time period, that would probably work out well.  She'll be pretty, of course, though think herself plain.  The boy will have to be someone we can root for, but showing it may be tough.  I think he'll have to try to act nicely to those of lower status and be put in his place by his father.

Darn, but I seem to have a thing for mean fathers.  I may need to check on that sometime.

So from this I need to extract, in the next couple of weeks, a concept, a theme, characters, and a beat sheet/outline.  It would be good to have the outline in hand a bit before the start of November, in order to give myself time to look it over and make sure it's doing what I want it to, but that may be asking too much by this point.  In fact, I think I'd probably be happy with just having a solid set of characters and some sort of action plan I can refer to.

I'll go into more details later, I hope, but for characters I need: the MC, the love interest, the shaman, and the bad guy (for sure).  Those are the main ones.  There should probably be one or two other bad guy types, though the one I referred to was the main baddie.  I wonder if there should be one or two others that the MC has a relationship with, of some sort.  Something to show that the MC isn't just living life waiting to die.

I may need to come up with a map or two, just enough to keep my areas in the city straight.  I'm wondering if I'll need a b plot, and if so what characters will be needed for that, and how I'll work them in as well.  I should skim through my writing ideas to see if any of them will trigger more ideas to work on.

Concept... concept may be difficult.  I should do a post on that also.  Right now I've got something along the lines of "what if a kid in steampunk colonial peru became Zorro?"  However, I don't think that's quite enough of a hook for the concept... although it does have a few unexpected elements to it, combining steampunk and colonial South America as it does.  I'd probably lose the "Zorro" line after some further fleshing out as well, but there's a lot that Zorro conveys that I'd rather not lose.

I need to work on broadening and deepening that, but perhaps that can wait for the dedicated post or two as well.

The theme seems easier to approach... I'm thinking something along the lines of racial prejudices and breaking caste settings, for better or worse (mostly better).  Maybe just prejudices and discrimination; not that I know much about being discriminated against, but that might work well with the MC being female as well.

Gravity Review

As a bit of a detour, while I was away being trained, a coworker an I went to see the movie Gravity in IMAX 3d.

My main impressions were as such, roughly chronologically: Holy cow it's cold in here.  How low do they keep the thermostat?  Wow is that screen big (I've been to IMAX movies before, but not that often).  Cold.  The pre-previews stuff was mostly dumb, and made my eyes slightly hurt while looking at the screen.  The previews all went as follows: Cold.  Oh, interesting.  I'd like to see that.  I wonder what happens next?  Oh, wait, the trailer is done.  Cold.

The movie itself took very good advantage of the 3d aspect, IMO.  Without going into too many details (at risk of spoiling the movie), it starts with some astronauts in space, and the panorama of the Earth, with depth, behind the crew is space was fabulous.  In many other occasions, the 3d effect added wonderful depth to the film, without being obtrusive to me in any way.  The only time I realized the effect during the movie was when I subconsciously tilted my head for a different view on something, and the movie went out of focus due to the glasses no longer being aligned.  It was a problem I quickly remedied.

The viewpoint was such that I had to close my eyes a few times, though I since that was due to the camera spinning around wildly I have to assume that would have happened without 3d as well.

Many shots were done in apparent weightless environments, and I found after the movie that it seems the filming didn't ever get to space.  I don't know how they got all the shots they did, but as a non-aerospace engineer, none of the physics rang false to me (one did appear to be false, but has an in-movie explanation within a couple minutes, so I'm willing to give that one a pass... for now).

As for the plot itself, again avoiding spoilers, it was a well-constructed work.  The plot wasn't the feature, IMO -- that would be the scenery and the visuals -- but it was completely serviceable.  It did tend toward the disaster-adapt-repeat formula, a little obviously at times, but as I said, serviceable.  The mentor figure is appropriately removed, going out on his own terms.  The emotional beats are there, including a spike of humor at times to help alleviate the tension -- or to prep the audience for an even bigger shock by swinging their emotions elsewhere moments later.

Overall I'd recommend it, but mostly for the visuals rather than the story.  If you do, try to see it on a big screen, with 3d is possible.  I doubt it will translate nearly so well to a TV screen.

NaNoWriMo Prep Forthcoming

I've decided to do an experiment and publish my NaNoWriMo prep here.  This will hopefully provide a few benefits, among them forcing me to get to my preparation work that I've been putting off.  As well, there's a chance that I would get some feedback that may help me as I go, and another chance that someone else may find the process useful for their own work.

Some concerns that play through my head, put out as if my subconscious is questioning my conscious:

• Are you worried that somebody will take your work?
  
  Somewhat, but overall I don't think that this is a reasonable fear.  This is only preparatory work; there is still a lot of effort to be done to turn it into a story.  In addition to this, each writer is going to be interested in and emphasize different parts of the prep work, so the resulting story should turn out quite different even if people work from the same source material.
  
• Are you worried that you'll flood your readers?
  
  You mean flood them with regularly blog posts instead of the occasional one when I remember?  Not entirely.  Google's new auto-publish means I can't just select the best to share and save the rest, but I trust my readers (if I have any) have made it to the level where they can skim past a published link to a blog if it doesn't interest them.
  
• Aren't you worried that you'll fail in public?
  
  Definitely.  However, I don't actually expect to.  One reason is that I've done prep for and tried NaNoWriMo multiple times, and am pretty confident in my ability to finish NaNoWriMo successfully, which is the definition of successful prep work as well, IMO.  Another is that I've always experimented with my prep work, trying to find new things, so if it fails, it might be kind of fun anyway.  Finally, I attribute the remaining fear to just the usual cause of author fright, and move on.
  
• What's the prep this year?
  
  I've decided to do a combination of Story Engineering and Million Dollar Outlines.  More specifically, I'm going to try and develop the prep work according to Story Engineering, and use Million Dollar Outlines to inform the process.
  
  This means a reader can look forward to rumination on concepts, characters, themes, and outlines, potentially all mixed together for the benefit of all... or at least the benefit of me.
  
• Does having your subconscious present as a separate entity worry you at all?
  
  Should it?  Hmm.... I may have to think this one over a bit more.

So there it is.  I'll try to label it all and hopefully not spam too much.

October Goals

As previously mentioned, I'm trying to keep these shorter and more defined so that I can better track done or not done at the end of the month.. and perhaps in between.

1. Write at least 250 words each day.
2. Finish the NaNoWriMo newsletters
3. Prep for NaNoWriMo this year.
4. More revision of my latest story
5. Post my latest story for critique.

The first goal is the same as I've been doing, and I'm happy to say I haven't broken my streak yet.  That's over 120 days for me so far.

The second and third goals tie together somewhat.  The newsletters need laid out, and that's just going to take time.  There's no way around that.  Also potentially taking time is figuring out my prep this year.  I want to experiment with other styles of planning to see what works, but I'm running a bit low on the time I have left to plan.

The fourth and fifth goal are also related in that I want to have a story polished and out for critique by the time we hit November and I'm completely distracted by a novel.  I'd like to do a couple revise/crit passes on the story, since it will undoubtedly be harder to pick up in a few months, but such is life.  

Reviewing September's Goals

Here's what I wrote then:
Write at least 250 words each day.
Finish and submit a short story.
Critique at least 6 stories.
Write NaNoWriMo newsletter articles.
Revise 1 short story for critique.
1: Done.  In fact, I think I made it through the month with at least 400 words each day, but that all still counts.

2: Done.  This was a close one, because I got some more insightful feedback on the story I had been working on, and almost didn't submit it.  However, I got a round of revisions in, and out it went.  I can only do so much, and now it's time to move on to the next one.

3: I didn't count to be sure, but I'm counting this as done.  I can recall off the top of my head at least three, and given the way things have been in my life lately, if I can even remember last week that's pretty good.

4: Done, mostly.  I have to revise them slightly, but they are indeed written.  I'll transition the next part into next month's goals.

5: Done. I have revised a story two times, once for more critique and once for submission after that critique.  I also revised another story to prep for critique, one that I've been enjoying lately.

So, overall, mission accomplished on my September goals.  I think keeping the shorter list helped, though I nearly didn't submit my newly revised piece after the gut-check of a really useful critique.  I'll try to keep October's goals similarly constrained.

Writing and Tiredness and Pain

I continuously find myself surprised by how much being tired saps my desire to write -- or to do anything, really.  If I didn't sleep well, I may be able to fake things for a few hours, but by the end of the day I'm ready to crawl into a corner and cover myself, not make myself spend some of my extra time writing.

Not to my surprise, I've also discovered that pain makes me tired.  Certain types of pain, especially so, like those sore backs or aching shoulder muscles.  I've done a number of things to try and keep myself healthy (which occasionally cause those aching muscles), but sometimes the pain just comes in and wears on me.

Key in that is wearing on me... wearing the body down.  Pain can wear someone's physical energy down as the body fights to right what's wrong, but it can also wear someone's mental energy away as they fight to ignore the pain, to struggle on with what they feel they should be doing rather than just concentrating on the pain and how to manage it.

I've not made the direct connection like this before, but this means if I want to do well at writing, or at least if I want to continue to consider it a hobby and not a chore, I should try to make sure I'm as well-rested and pain-free as I can be.  Some of this might involve changing when I do my writing -- mornings perhaps instead of evenings -- but a lot of it has to do with two things.

First, I need to pay more attention to those small pains when they are small, and at a minimum do something to keep them from growing if I can't eliminate them entirely.

Second, I need to stop my bad spiral where I stay up too late to write, so I'm tired the next day, which  means it's hard to get the energy to write, which means I stay up too late in order to get the writing in.  That's just not good.

Writing, Editing, and Critiques

Two stories, both related, about me having a story critiqued, and critiquing another.  Similar outcomes.

First, a friend sent me a short story she had sold, and was settling in to revise.  I read it over and had a generally good reaction, and sent her some of my comments.  Soon after, I got an email that primarily read "THESE COMMENTS ARE AWESOME".  (That's a nice feeling, by the way, when your efforts are so appreciated.)

So as a follow-up, I took the short story I thought was in the best, most sellable state, cleaned it up a bit more, and sent it to her for comments.  She... well, she didn't tear it apart, but she pulled it into many pieces, and explained how those pieces kept the story from being as effective as it could be.  In particular, I had extra exposition at the beginning that was probably unnecessary, I could introduce more conflict and handle the exposition by having an oppositional character (rather than just the circumstances), and the ending could be more life-altering, maybe.  I'm really not sure about the last one yet, but the others are advice gold.

Of course, that means the story I thought was in good enough shape to submit for potential sales, I have serious doubts about.  On one hand, I need to wrap it up as best I can sometime, and send it along.  On the other hand, I don't want to send less than my best work, or at least work that I feel fully realizes the story... and I now know how much better the story could be.  I don't think I can send it like that.  I will be missing my goal to submit a story, unless I somehow both revise that story and get another round of critique in somehow, but after some other discussions about how magazines can now easily track a submitters previous submissions and how they improve (or not), I'm pretty sure I don't want to put anything too terrible out there.

Not that this is, but still.  Goal officially abandoned, for another month.

On the other hand, I also recently did a critique where I didn't see much of a story in the short story.  Others disagreed, which is their right.  It's good to remember that some critiques aren't just what the story needs either.  Writing them out may help me figure out my own stuff, but that doesn't mean they will always be helpful to the recipient.  It's when it is helpful to neither that I should really be careful about even posting the critique.

September Goals

Let's keep this short and sweet for the goals.

1. Write at least 250 words each day.
2. Finish and submit a short story.
3. Critique at least 6 stories.
4. Write NaNoWriMo newsletter articles.
5. Revise 1 short story for critique.

I'm going to write about about why, in the hopes that writing my thoughts down will help keep me on track to accomplishing the goals.

The first one is pretty obvious.  I've got a good streak going so far (approaching 100 days), and I'd like to keep it going.  I've been using the Magic Spreadsheet, which has been good, but I may need to cut back on the whole level-up idea due to the number of extra words it adds to my "should do" list.  I'm not sure I need that pressure.

The second is because, while I've been "finishing" short stories for a while, they sit in various states of editing, and I never mark it as done enough to send it off for submission (recently, anyway; at one point in my college career I was submitting some stuff that should never have left my computer, as well as one piece I'm still proud of).  I need to get on the ball for submissions, or decide that I'm not really in it for publication, which is entirely wrong.  I'm just scared of negative feedback at this point, which is a phase I'm pretty sure every author goes through.  In fact, according to some, they never get over it.

The third is to keep up the goodwill I think I've developed among some critiquing communities.  I hope this goodwill allows me to get good critiques of my own stories when I submit them.

The NaNoWriMo newsletters is a task I took on very early this year.  I've got some of it in hand, but I need to write my own articles for the newsletters to help out.  In fact, I need to poke a few others who might write as well.

Finally, I want to keep the critique pipeline going.  In fact, I think that should be one of my big goals this weekend: start editing my next short story for critique.

Hugo Results and Thoughts

So, the Hugo awards were announced this past weekend, and I thought it would be amusing to look back at how I ranked things, and how they ended up in the voting.

First up, short stories:

	My Choice	Award Order
1	Mono no Aware	Mono no Aware
2	Immersion	Immersion
3	Mantis Wives	Mantis Wives

Interestingly, I pegged this category. I have a feeling Mantis Wives struck others the same way it struck me, and hten that leaves a 50/50 chance for the order.


Novellettes:

	My Choice	Award Order
1	The Girl Thing Who Went Out for Sushi	The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi
2	Fade to White	In Sea-Salt Tears
3	In Sea-Salt Tears	Fade To White
4	The Boy Who Cast No Shadow	Rat-Catcher
5	Rat-Catcher	The Boy Who Cast No Shadow

This one was pretty good as well, with me getting the correct winner, but flipping around a couple of places below it.


Novellas:

	My Choice	Award Order
1	After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall	The Emperor's Soul
2	San Diego 2014	After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
3	The Emperor's Soul	The Stars Do Not Lie
4	On a Red Station, Drifting	On a Red Station, Drifting
5	The Stars Do Not Lie	San Diego 2014

I would talk about getting it completely wrong, here, except that I correctly placed the #4 story. Not much of an accomplishment, that. Interestingly, except for Stars, I personally enjoyed all of these and don't feel like the voting is out of line as much as reflecting a different overall enjoyment factor for the stories. I know I'm supposed to gripe about politics or the poor taste of the voters, but I can't bring up the bile right now.


Novels:

	My Choice	Award Order
1	Redshirts	Redshirts
2	Blackout	Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
3	Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance	2312
4	Throne of the Crescent Moon	Throne of the Crescent Moon
5	2312	Blackout

Again, I somehow managed to call 4th place (and first). I've talked to enough people to figure out that apparently Redshirts can be polarizing -- some love it, and some don't. Some people, of course, gripe about it winning (or blame it on political factions and the fix being in). But my review stated my reasons for the vote; I won't repeat all of them here.

I will say that it is interesting how different the rest of the order was. I'd truly like to know what those who loved 2312 and voted for it to be first place saw in the novel, as I apparently missed it.


Graphic Novels:

	My Choice	Award Order
1	Grandville	Saga
2	Schlock Mercenary	Locke & Key
3	Locke & Key	Schlock Mercenary
4	Saga	Saucer Country
5	Saucer Country	Grandville

Does this count as completely wrong? I think so. I share no special insights into the category.

I'm skipping my rankings of pro and fan artists, since there is little I can learn from them to apply to writing... at least at this point in time, for me. Also, I think the overall point has been proven that I don't necessarily align with the general fandom's rankings when it comes to these stories. This is something I've known, but it then reinforces the point made in Million Dollar Outlines that I should be studying the other, well-ranked stories to look for things I might want to include in my own.

August Goals Retrospective

At the beginning of last month, I said my goals were:

1. Read at least one book on writing.
2. Continue to write every day (at least 250 words)
3. Summarize my notes from a writing book (this month's or last)
4. Critique at least 6 submissions
5. Apply lessons from a writing book to at least 2 stories
6. Get at least 2 submissions critiqued
7. Revise two stories
8. Do a title exercise on at least 1 short story

How did I do?

1. I read Story Engineering by Larry Brooks and loved it.  I'll have a review written sometime (cue goal for this month).
   
2. I wrote every day, using the Magic Spreadsheet, which continues to be magic and full of spreadsheet-y goodness.
   
3. Half marks here.  I did do a review of Million Dollar Outlines, and I finished my notes from the book, but I didn't summarize it yet.  Soon!
   
4. I easily beat this one out of the water.  This was one of the things I ended up emphasizing this month, and I believe I critiqued 3 a week, on average.  Many was the day I felt like I didn't have the mental energy to write (or edit *shudder*), but finding the problems in other people's works... that doesn't seem to be so hard.  Now if only I'd be able to translate that to my own works more easily.
   
5. I've applied some of the lessons to 1 story.  In this case, I'm going to give myself a fail.  I'm sure I'm internalizing some of the lessons, but not as many as I'd like.
   
6. Oh, look, another fail.  I might give myself half-credit for 1 story critiqued 2 times, but I'm not sure.  The good news is that I'm starting to feel pretty good about the story again.  (This probably means it's time for somebody to tear it apart again, but I'm enjoying the feeling while I can.)
   
7. There is a theme here, and that theme is that I've been working on one story.  I need to improve that, and soon.
   
8. Complete fail.

So how did I do?  3 succeeds, 2 halfsies, and 3 fails.  That's not the way to get my goals met, is it?

My take-away from this is actually to dial back on the goals for a bit.  I felt kind of pushed for this past month (the daily writing is part of that, I know, and I shouldn't be leaving it for so late at night, but I'm not ready to give that up yet).  I also don't like seeing the halves and the fails.  So, I'm going to trim the list and really focus on meeting those goals.

Million Dollar Outlines Review

Million Dollar Outlines, by David Farland.  In short, I'm very glad I bought it.

In more detail, then.  David Farland starts off with what might appear to be a digression -- why do people read?  In reality, he gets to the heart of why people read in order to figure out what authors need to do in order to deliver to people what they are looking for when they read.  His conclusion?  Without nuance, to be put through an artificially stressful time for a good emotional payoff.

Emotional payoff is a theme that recurs.

He then covers audience research, including a lot of information from his days as a movie consultant.  This includes the emotions different audiences want to experience (statistically, at least), and how to look at what is selling well now in order to try and figure out what audiences are looking for.  This can be done with movies, TV shows, and books, though caveats apply to all of the analysis.

Also included are some ideas and tips on characters and plotting.  I thought the tips sections were well done in general, though of course they weren't the primary point of the book.

Then the outlining sections start.  Farland walks you though why outlines might be needed and the benefits they bring.  He continues with developing the outlines, including working on them over multiple passes and rearranging them at times in order to make them work better.  Near the end, he takes you step-by-step through the process he uses to develop an outline.

He then finishes with an appendix containing tips on moving from the outline to the completed novel, and a few items of note -- including some analysis of Lucas and Speilberg's discussions when trying to develop the concept and plans for the first Indiana Jones movie.

The book has me excited to try out some of the techniques, and also to try and combine them with another book I recently read, Story Engineering.  I have little doubt that my stories would be better with some more pre-planning and a little less seat-of-the-pants writing.

Some minor critiques I have would include the fact that the story plot graphs aren't very well explained (or perhaps I missed the reference to the book that would explain them).  I have a feeling I've been missing something with these, as I've seen them referenced more than once.  Then again, I might be able to pick up the idea from the book itself.  Also, reading the book on my b&w kindle made some of the graphics included for the plot graphs be less than illuminating, though the main points were easy enough to follow.

Mistakes Waiting to be Made

I seem to be referencing articles talking about movies a lot lately, but another one came to my attention the other day.  From tor.com, a number of mistakes movies make that can throw people right out of the movie:

I’m not talking about the “sound in space” problems or never-ending ammo. Just weird niggling details that remind you all too easily that what you’re watching isn’t remotely real.

Some of them, of course, are very movie-centric -- sounds in the wrong place or the wrong sounds is one -- but it's possible that any of them might show up in writing as well.  After all, a writer is describing the sights and sounds to the reader, and if the writer describes a metallic ringing as the hero draws her sword, well, that's the same error as listed in the article.

The cash problem mentioned is another that some novels do well, some novels gloss over well enough you don't notice, and a number of them somehow have the heroes with enough money to stay at inns on an extended voyage with nothing bringing them income.  It may be slightly easier for written works to fix, also, unbound as they are to the visual medium that is movies, and thus able to add in an aside or two that takes care of the problem.

One of them hit directly home for me, however.  Number four, about the lack of smoke for many blazes.  I'm currently editing one of my short stories that, wouldn't you know it, takes place inside a burning building.  And after reading the article, I realized I don't have enough smoke in the area.  Granted, for most of it I don't have open flames visible either, but the smoke is an insidious challenge -- and therefore something great to add to the story to make the hero's life even that much harder.  Needless to say, I'll be making another pass through the story to cover that as well.

Be sure to read the comments as well, as they cover some other points related to, or even not mentioned  in, the article.

The ones that stood out for me in particular, other than those mentioned:

• Getting beat up should have lingering repercussions.
• Parchment is too valuable to burn in most cases, and much harder than paper to burn anyway.
• Characters running around with their fingers on the triggers of weapons -- or, alternately, cocking the gun/chambering a round too many times.  This is beyond the classic six-shooter with 13 bullets problem.

4 Levels of Art Consumption

So, I've been going through the Hulk Smash articles (at least some of them) since my enlightening discovery of his confusing blockbuster article.  In this article on the levels of art consumption, Hulk talks alot about spoilers (in various non-spoileriffic* ways), but how he groups the levels of consumption (or appreciation) are interesting to me.  Paraphrased, the given levels are:

1. Experience [art] with childlike naiveté.
2. Callused by repetition, but still seeking the experience from 1.
3. Transcended above 1 & 2; able to contextualize the emotional experience and think about why it is so (the "critic class").
4. Those who understand the craft of creating the [art].

I've always enjoyed reading, and in good stories I'm still in group 1.  I may sometimes be in group 2 (those are the biggest complainers about spoilers, according to the article), but I don't think I'm often there.

However, as a writer, where I want to be when reading a good story (fiction or "true-life", the important part is the story) is in group 4.  Group 3 is good, and a nice step toward group 4 if necessary, but if I want to create stories, I want to be one of those who understand the craft of creating the stories.  It's where I aspire to be, and when I'm in my critique groups, trying to fulfill the function of group 3 as best I can, is when I try to practice actually being in group 4.  However, I should practice on other stories, even or perhaps especially on the ones I love.  It may be hard to avoid being pulled in to the story, but if I take it slowly and work on it, hopefully I can pull it off.

It's also important to note that group 4 for writers can still be applied to movies and TV shows, since it's the story that matters, though there are obviously some techniques that don't work well on the screen, and some techniques that don't work well in novels.  It's still a source of practice for understanding the story and how it's constructed, and I should take advantage of that as well.

Finally, one of the best bits from the article, about group 2:

THEY LONG TO FEEL THE EMOTIONS THEY ONCE HAD SO EASILY AND CHERISH MOVIES THAT CAN MAKE THEM FEEL THAT WAY ONCE AGAIN. [...] BUT THERE ARE ONCE AGAIN MORE CONCERNS. LIKE THE  FACT THAT THIS IS THE LITERAL PATHOLOGY OF DRUG ADDICTION (IE, CHASING YOUR FIRST HIGH AGAIN AND AGAIN TO DIMINISHING RESULTS).

Yes, perhaps it's best to stay out of group 2 as much as possible.


*"non-spoileriffic" and "non-spoilerrific" both pass the spell check filter, but "alot" doesn't?  What computerized world do I live in?

HULK SMASH: Blockbusters

From Film Crit Hulk Smash: THE AGE OF THE CONVOLUTED BLOCKBUSTER:

ALL OUR BIGGEST POPCORN MOVIES SEEM DESPERATE TO STRIVE FOR OBFUSCATION. AND AS HULK RECENTLY WALKED OUT OF A SCREENING OF STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, THE DEPTHS OF THIS REALITY HIT HULK DEAD ON… 

WE LIVE IN THE AGE OF THE CONVOLUTED BLOCKBUSTER.

I'll say it right out: this is a wonderful demolition of recent blockbusters that end up making little to no sense, either in the movie theatre or after (I'm not versed enough to call it a trend, though Hulk might be).  The impetus seems to be Star Trek: Into Darkness, which I saw a couple months ago and had a few problems with (pointed out superbly in this article as well).

Still.  Some of the main points from the article can easily be applied to writing novels as well as the screenplays.  Such as:

SO WHEN WE LOOK AT THE STORIES IN ABRAMS’ WORK WE DON’T FIND MUCH IN THE WAY OF STORY AT ALL. WE FIND PLOTS. IT’S ALL MASTER SECRETIVE PLANS BUILT ON REVEALS UPON REVEALS UPON REVEALS. [...] WE WATCH FILMS WHERE THE MECHANICAL PLOT DICTATES CHARACTER REACTIONS, RATHER THAN CHARACTER’S ACTIONS DICTATING THE STORY.

and

BY OBFUSCATING CLARITY IN THE NAME OF A GRANDIOSE PUZZLE, WE CAN’T HELP BUT GET IN THE WAY OF THE OPTIMAL EMOTIONAL RESONANCE IN OUR STORIES. WE MAKE THEM FEEL LIKE CONSTRUCTIONS.

and

THERE'S CAUSE. THERE'S EFFECT. AND THOSE TWO THINGS ARE  GROUNDED IN A THROUGH-LINE OF TRANSPARENCY BECAUSE IT STEMS FROM LASER-FOCUSED OBJECTIVES THAT GUIDE THE SHIFTING NARRATIVE. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, THERE’S ALWAYS A POINT TO ALL OF IT, AS THE ENDGAME OF ANY GOOD MYSTERY HAS TO RESONATE.

and... and... and just read the article, alright?  I can't keep quoting it or I'll just be reprinting the whole thing here, practically verbatim.

But on to the practical parts.

Which has more inherent drama, a stranger telling you he is your long-lost brother and being chased, or your actual brother you've known your life telling you he is being chased by cops?  By analogy, when a mystery person has things happen to them, we care less, but when a character we've come to know has things happen to them, we're invested.  This requires setup.

About reveals:

ALL A WRITER NEEDS TO MAKE A REVEAL WORK IS TO ASK TWO SIMPLE QUESTIONS: “WHAT IS THE SPECIFIC CONFLICT BEING CREATED BY NOT KNOWING THIS INFORMATION?” AND “WHAT IS THE SPECIFIC CONFLICT CREATED BY NOW KNOWING THIS INFORMATION?” AND DEPENDING ON THE STRENGTH AND VIABILITY OF THAT CONFLICT YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWER ON WHEN TO REVEAL.

...and in the course of reading the article find out how Finding Nemo could have been a huge flop.

So what do you think?  What are the best pieces of writing advice you find in the article?  Or can you convince me it's wrong, somehow?

August Goals

Herewith my writing goals for August.

1. Read at least one book on writing.
2. Continue to write every day (at least 250 words)
3. Summarize my notes from a writing book (this month's or last)
4. Critique at least 6 submissions
5. Apply lessons from a writing book to at least 2 stories
6. Get at least 2 submissions critiqued
7. Revise two stories
8. Do a title exercise on at least 1 short story

For (1), I've got a bit of a head start, since I finished one writing book while on vacation, and got the first couple chapters of the next started.  I can't remember if it was at the very end of last month or the start of this one, but I'm going to count it as this month.

I'm excited about the books, both last month's (Million Dollar Outlines) and this month's (Story Engineering).  I'm ready to start analyzing my stories again, and trying to figure out how to improve them even more.

I do plan on submitting at least one story, though I'm not making that an official goal because I don't know how long it's going to take me to work through all the issues found in my current frontrunner for submission.  Now that I have another of my favorites finished, though, perhaps it will get some love as well.

July Goal Retrospective

I initially typoed the headline as "gaol", and while that may sometimes be an accurate indication of my feelings toward goals I set up for myself, in this case I don't think so.  As Freud would no doubt say, sometimes a typo is just a typo.

• 250 words written a day -- Done!
• Revise 3 stories -- 1 revised twice, and 1 finished.
• Clean up email -- nowhere close
• Critique >= 6 short stories or submissions -- Done!
• Get >= 2 stories critiqued -- 2 stories, but one of them again after revision.
• Renaming exercises for story titles -- 0.
• Submit >= 1 story -- 0.

Regarding submitting, I had big plans and had the story picked out (the one I revised, got critiqued, revised, and got critiqued?  Yeah, that one).  Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view) when I returned from vacation, it was to an evisceration of how I used a given profession in a modern setting, but somebody who obviously knows more about that profession than I do.  It was great, and it gave me much to think about, but in the meantime I don't feel I can submit something that I know has flaws that I can fix.  It will just need a bit of time, that's all.

Hugo 2013 Reviews: 2013 by Kim Stanley Robinson

The last of the Hugo-nominated books that I read, and in many ways one of the largest.  I haven’t read any of Kim Stanley Robinson’s other books, so I don’t know how common this style is for his writing, but I gather that they generally span quite a range of places and people.  What I would call epics, though the term is usually used more with fantasy than with sci-fi.

The world-building was far and away the strongest part of this book, in my opinion.  The many ways that people might adapt things in space to allow humans to live there (and adapt humans as well) were considered, and by the end of the story large amounts of them had been shown.  So far as I could follow it the science (of the parts we can know right now) was accurate, and I trust that people who can follow more than me probably verified it as well.  It’s that kind of story.

What it isn’t, as much — again, in my opinion — is anything much of an actual story.  To me, it read a lot more like “stuff happened” than “connected events leading to a revelation or change.”  As presented, changes happened aplenty, and the POV characters may even have been integral in some of them happening, but for the majority of the novel the POV characters weren’t acting toward causing many of those things to happen.

Analyzed from a promises/resolutions point of view, the novel started with Swan’s life disrupted from losing a family member, and you could say that the rest of the novel was her gaining a new one, forging a new connection in the world.  On the other hand, you could say the inciting incident was Swan’s grandma dying, and the resolution being the fruition of her plans.  So far as I recall, neither was given much prominence by Swan herself, which means that neither played strongly.  It might have been a novel of Swan finding herself, or finding her way, but again Swan doesn’t appear to be dissatisfied with much that gets resolved by the end of the story.  She doesn’t appear to change, and with the majority of the book from her POV, that gets rough for me.

Other side characters, and even POVs, eventually get woven into the end of the book, but I will admit to heightened expectations after seeing the good reviews the book had received, and so I was kind of expecting a bigger bang of colliding plot-lines at the end.

In the end, 2312 reads more like “a year in the life” book, with a few other POVs thrown in and some pastiche material added from the world-building notebook, than it does a story with a defined beginning and end.  There must be people that this appeals to, but I am guessing I’m not one of them.  The ideas were grand, but the story did nothing special for me, so in the end it falls to the bottom of my rankings.

1: Redshirts
2: Blackout
3: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
4: Throne of the Crescent Moon
5: 2312