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Today, while listening to Writing Excuses podcast on style editing, I realized that I tend to remove too much of my voice during the editing process. I took the advice to heart that I was going to want to leave everything in and that I was going to have to be super hard with myself to come out with anything good. Realizing that this was what I tended to do my writing made me stop for a moment though. I know I need a few classes in editing properly, but until I can take those classes, this was excessively useful. It reminds me that my style is what will get readers to stick with me and that by trying to remove my voice from my writing, all I’m really doing is a disservice to myself. By doing that, all I’m telling others and even worse, proving to myself are those dark fears that my style isn’t good enough. Telling myself “I am…” is the fastest way to make it so. Therefore I’m going to stop that immediately, and instead work on a plan to counteract the flaw.
It also reminded me that there are different types of editing, and that until I’m better at editing I may want to take the time to do all three instead of slopping all of them together. It’s something worth thinking about, and something that I think will help my writing immensely as soon as I puzzle out how to do it properly. More on this when I give it a try on my next bit of writing to come out, I’m sure.
I found the time to go see Inception as well, earlier this week, and I must admit that I was impressed. And even though I also gave Sorcerer’s Apprentice a good review, please don’t think that means I give most movies a good review. In general, I’m actually pretty tough on my movies and movies only get a really good rating if they were exceptional. Let me say now, that Inception is.
It’s not just the CG (which is amazing) or the acting (which was emotionally charged), or even the way it left you feeling (incredible and active)… no, what really stood out for me here was the story told and the rules given. You can’t carry a movie on CG or good acting alone… there has to be an engaging story and the movie can’t break the disbelief, otherwise it has failed in its task.
As an example, while I enjoyed the movie “Avatar”, there were a few moments that pulled me away from the movie. Why send in ground troops for an aerial bombing? Why not blast the area from space? Why “Unobtainium” and is that strange metal related to “Atmospherium” of The-Lost-Skeleton-of-Cadavra fame? Why were the aliens humanoid in shape when almost every other native creature had at least 6 limbs (a throwback of genetics, perhaps)? On the other hand, character motivations were good, the acting was good, the new technology succeeded. To quote Howard Taylor (Schlock Mercenary and Writing Excuses podcast) “It was the best ‘Fern Gully’ remake, ever!”
It was good, but it left me with too many bad queries, questioning the science, the intelligence of the enemies or the intelligence of the writers (Open Rant – Unobtainium… I still can’t get over that. Come up with something different. “Garonomium” or “Skotepinium” perhaps. I don’t care if it sounds silly, so long as it’s not an obviously understandable word with the last letter or three taken off and “-ium” tacked on the end – End Rant). Now, following the common book saying that a gun seen in the first act must be used in the second, I’ll compare this to Inception.
The technology in Inception, while not described fully, was good. It had its own jargon, equipment and uses which were explained as they became pertinent to the story. And they did this smoke and mirrors well enough that you don’t even notice it being done. The story is solid and even with the “apprentice” character introductions to what you can do with the technology and the inevitable “working montage”, the story wouldn’t have been complete without it. The characters were intelligent and even the apprentice caught on quickly. I can’t think of an instance where anybody got caught by the same mistake twice. Even the character whose flaws were noticeable compensated for their arrival whenever he could.
The movie didn’t break disbelief fortunately; the scenes looked awesome and were done brilliantly and they were all stitched together seamlessly. The only scene that almost took me out for a moment was a single gunfight near the end of the movie where I thought it was unreasonable and added in simply to hype up the movie goers. Even in that instance, directly after the fight they explained why the scene had been necessary and discussed how they were to deal with the repercussions drawn up from it. I loved the chance The characters all stuck to their motivations and yet, I don’t think any of them were obviously cliché. They looked, acted and felt real because the scriptwriters took the time to make them so and the actors furthered this by truly getting into their roles. Even Leonardo DiCaprio gave a worthy performance!
If you were wondering whether to see this movie, I would suggest doing so. If you only see one movie this summer make it this one.
In other news, I ran into a friend of mine from the Nanowrimo group here in Calgary yesterday (Hey Kai!). I was quite embarrassed since I had convinced her to participate in Julno, and then had done so badly at it myself. I haven’t done an actual count yet, but I think my total in fiction words is sitting at 2 – 5K for the month. Now, I know this happens every year at this time and I had been hoping to break myself out of the rhythm. While I wasn’t able to succeed, this gentle nudge (perhaps more of a trip since she managed to get about 25K and she started on the 16th) from my friend reminded me that I do have control of this, and that while I may like to say “I get Writer’s Block from May to September”, it’s not true. I get a severe case of procrastination and don’t WANT to do anything during this time.
I did manage to come up with a plan to help me out which mainly involves me listening to podcasts designed to kick my butt, get me thinking and therefore writing again. Writing Excuses isn’t quite as good for this (since I’ve listened to every episode 2-3 times now… What can I say… I get very bored at work), so I pulled out the big guns. An old episode of Tee Morris’s Podcast “The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy”, aptly named, “Easy Distrac- – Oh hey, A Butterfly!”. While the podcast is now over, I really enjoyed it and he’s been kind enough to leave up the audio files. This episode details how what I’m doing is definitely procrastination. And while Writing Excuses gets me eager to write, Tee’s way of slapping you in the face and reminding you that if you want to write for a living then you have to consider it a business is exactly what I need right now. Offhand (since I’m being distracted anyway), Tee Morris has the sexiest male voice ever. Give him a listen on Chasing the Bard, a podcast novel by Philippa Ballantine and I promise, if you like sexy voices, you’ll swoon (if you like the ladies, listen for Phillipa herself… Gods that woman’s voice could make me “curious”.)
Oh, I also heard the best quote ever today. “Disneyland is like falling in love, someone’s taking your hand and you go on this enchanting evening and you look into his eyes and its all romantic and nice. Six Flags is like being repeatedly fucked hard over and over again until you just leave shaking and exhausted, but ultimately better for having that experience.” Thank you Alex Day… I think you may have just made mine.
Posted in Blogs on July 29th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 7 Comments »
I did this over a year ago now, but when I wrote it, I had hardly a character in mind… something that comes through in the writing, I’m sorry to say. On the other hand, the moment I read it out loud, my mind started turning trying to learn all about who this young daemon was.
Nowadays, I’m still working on the first book with this character, now named Seirei (a Japanese word for ‘ghost’) and I’m about 2/3 of the way through the first draft. I’m hoping to finish the first draft this Julno so that I can start editing and have it ready to show at the SIWC later this year.
Here’s a picture I did of her, once I spent some time figuring out her personality.
Please, let me know what you thought of the writing and, of course, what you think of the art!
Sorry for the lack of posts this week, but my wrist has been in a lot of pain, and I still have to type at work, no matter how bad my wrist gets. To try make up for it (and get more skilled using the program), I’m trying to write this on Dragon NaturallySpeaking. While it is slow, I’m hoping this will help me in trying to get out more writing for you while my wrist is hurting. Now on to more interesting topics… I’ll talk more about the Dragon NaturallySpeaking later.
Today turned out pretty well, I thought, although definitely filled with frustration. For example, my success in (finally) finding out who wrote a quote that I found a few years ago and loved. I found it during my first Nanowrimo as someone’s signature on the site. The quote was “Trying to create a world, even in words, is good occupational therapy for lunatics who think they’re God, and an excellent argument for polytheism.” Today I was reading the “acknowledgements” section in “The Sunrise Lands”, a brilliant novel by S.M. Stirling, when I see this quote. Finding out who said it after all this time is good, but would have been better had I noticed it when I bought the book THREE YEARS BEFORE! **Sigh**
On the other hand, I actually chat with S.M. Stirling on Facebook, so he and I had a great time chatting about it and that really reminds me of just how lucky I am that a great author like him is willing to give me the time of day. Many of the big authors find they either don’t have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to respond to their fans personally… and I can understand why. They have deadlines like everyone else, and theirs may be worse than ours since the work they do is much more difficult… or at least, more difficult compared to most jobs where you know exactly what you’re doing and how to best do it.
Still, it adds a dimension of humanity to authors when you know that you can send them a message and they’ll respond back. It shows us little readers that we are not just dollar signs to our authors but are actually people. Okay, most authors probably don’t look at their readers as dollar signs, but I know that sometimes it can feel that way.
As a definite “ding” I would suggest that if you haven’t checked out S.M. Stirling’s books that you should do so immediately. He allows you to read up to ten chapters online for free. And let me say, very few books match the perfection of his Emberverse series. (It starts with Dies the Fire, check it out, and I guarantee, you’ll be hooked!)
In other thoughts, I’ve been thinking a lot about characters, and in particular, Character Motivations. Most character problems can be solved by thinking about what those persons motivations are. In particular, I remember a few months back when a friend of mine on a chat site I frequent said that she was going to be running a game that afternoon, but she didn’t know where the game was going. I asked her what her storyline was and she said that the party had to defeat an evil wizard who had been locked in a tower for being an evil wizard. There were very few specifics beyond that. Working together, we brainstormed an entire storyline together to take her players to 16th level or higher starting just from the question, “Well, what did the evil wizard do to get him locked up in the tower?”
I think that a lot of new authors (even me, occasionally) forget exactly how important character motivations are in writing as well. With the proper motivation for all of your characters, you’ll know who/what/where/why and how for everyone. For me, this is the keystone behind properly designed fully-fleshed people, rather than simple archetypes in your writing. In general, although out of character stuff can still happen, it’s much more likely you’ll figure out what wrong with a scene early and have ideas on how you can change it for the better!
Now for that quick bit about Dragon NaturallySpeaking… it’s a good program, but so far, training is obviously the key. I need to figure out how to make it note my commands (when I say things like “Question Mark” or “Open Quotation Mark”, it actually writes out said commands) and I’m still teaching it to understand my voice. Apparently the program was smart enough to favour speed over accuracy for me. Not that I talk extremely fast by any stretch, but I’d rather spend the time correcting it and training it in the beginning instead of… talking… like… this… for… the… rest… of… my… writing… career. 
Have any of you used Dragon NaturallySpeaking or a similar program before? Any tips or tricks for a newbie like me on it? What do you think about Character Motivations? Are they the most important or do you scoff at me placing such importance on them? As always, I’d love for you to leave a comment. Also, watch for my writing later tonight. This piece is a short story I did, based off of the anime Spice & Wolf and a single character that eventually became worthy of a full novel (okay… I lied, I have the first novel almost finished and the second one in mind).
P.S. – One final comment… My total for Julno as of yesterday evening was 681 words. It sucks, I know, but I’m hoping to get a bit more writing done this weekend. If I could count my blog posts I’d be higher… probably up around 2-3K. Anyway, let me know what your total is for the month, and I’ll keep you updated with mine!
Posted in Blogs on July 10th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 18 Comments »
Well, I’m back after way too long an absence. It’s been nearly a week after all. I only got one post up and no writing up this week either. I do apologize. I was supposed to have more time than I ended up finding. On the other hand, it turned out to be an odd week all around, so perhaps it’s just par for the course.
Unfortunately, I found out that the weekend long game that I mentioned previously had been cancelled. So my weekend plans died, to be replaced by other more regular plans, although still busy enough that every day had something (for instance, Saturday officially became “recover/sleep day” from the party the night before). Speaking of which, on Thursday my husband and I went to see The Last Airbender.
It was a really fun movie and I’d suggest going to see it. However, I do suggest that you go in with low expectations. Expect a great action movie, with wonderful element-bending effects, but don’t expect much else. The acting was terrible (generally, at least. Assif Mondi did a great job as a villian, and the woman who played Princess Yue was exceptional. Uncle Iro was great, although true to the original he was not, and yet his character motivations were definitely still in place.) The story, unfortunately, turned into one big info dump and Aang decided that scaring an army without ever hurting a man, was the best way to deal with them… ‘cause you know, when army men get scared they always turn tail and run away instead of desperately attacking the thing that threatened them. I’d actually suggest watching the cartoon instead. It was much better in the places that mattered like plot and story, even if it wasn’t so cool in the “3-D/live-action” end of it.
Other than the movie though (and a new book I’m reading… don’t worry I’ll be posting a review of it next week), all I’ve been doing is gaming recently.
Alehandra, my priestess/summoner(also known as the Scourge of Lirr), has been saving people left/right and centre and had to make one of the harder decisions she’s had to make in a while. We found a torturer and one of his victims… not a pretty site, especially since the girl was still alive. Alehandra realized that she couldn’t save the woman, so she killed her out of mercy. The men in the group had tried taking on the guy, but were getting their asses whooped… and even when that’s due to insane roles on the GM’s part, it’s scary. Knowing that my character could die, especially if this guy was higher level than us, I decided that Alehandra still would insist that this evil man had to die. So, my character healed up the party and started the attack against him again. By a wonder we succeeded! My character is so energized about it. Now if we can just get these rescued people out of here, we’ll have it made.
Talia, the kick-ass swords-genasi-woman, has a just found out about a meeting arranged with her superior at work. She’s busy wondering what she could have done wrong lately, though it’s more likely that they’ll be commending her on getting Dremere to turn himself in and getting him to join the watch than wanting to punish her for something… maybe another job that they’re having trouble with? Also, her date with a Dwarven priest has been postponed, which means she may end up choosing Dremere accidently, even if as a guy he’s all wrong for her. Mind you, the dwarf did mention that it was clan matters calling him back… I’d hate to not give him a fair chance due to family concerns.
Rapture, the cheerleader sorceress, may be having the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with her boyfriend… which is surprising in that it’s not Rapture dumping him, but him dumping her. Not that this relationship has been a match made in heaven by any means. He got out of a bad relationship about a year ago, and hasn’t really gotten on well since. And right now, Rapture seems pretty damned perfect since she’s a nympho who he can actually talk to about metaphysical stuff. The real problem is that his old fiancé is still holding a torch for him and trying to ruin the relationship. She’s smearing Rapture’s reputation by calling her a whore, and her boyfriend just made the situation worse by getting drunk and “buying” her away from her boss for an evening. On the other hand, I suppose she has just cause. Not only did Rapture steal her guy, but she also smashed the girl verbally at a party, before she knew who she was. In fact, if memory serves me, she told the girl that while Rapture’s dress may have been bought by her boyfriend, that at least she hadn’t needed her father to buy her a date. Yeah… A great smack-down, considering I had no idea who she was at the time. **Sigh** Good times, good times.
I don’t have my new brothel owner finished yet, but as I won’t get a chance to play her for a few more weeks, I can work on finishing it.
I will be putting a few of the pictures I’ve drawn up soon… I do give everybody some warning though. I’m only a hobby artist at the best of times. On the writing front, I am doing Julnowrimo, but as of Day Three, I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any writing yet. Not that I expected much more, since I knew that this week was going to be insane. I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow though… hopefully some before my game (yes, more D&D. This time I’m playing a catgirl Battle Dancer named Mmrumbra or ‘Rum for short) and definitely some afterwards!
Posted in Blogs on July 4th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 6 Comments »
Music : According to You – Orianthi
Mood: Distracted
As a treat for you today, I’ve decided to detail some information on the writings and workings of my first Nanowrimo and the novel that came out the other end.
I have been taking part of Nanowrimo since 2007. Like nearly everyone who does Nanowrimo, my first year was a failure, with me forgetting that I was going to do it until November 13 and then giving it up when I realized that I was already busy enough that I was sleeping less than 4 hours a night. I promised myself that the next year I’d do better, and when Nanowrimo came about in 2008, I cleared most of my calendar and decided that this year I would be a rebel and work on a previously existing novel that I had lying around. I finished the month with a novel, mostly finished, at 67,306 words for the month, and approximately 92,000 words total. I was ecstatic with my progress and actually had very high hopes of publishing that novel… until I actually sat down and read it, three months later. Then I realized that the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated to what had gone onto the paper. I was missing an over-arcing plot, a villain, and my story was (all told) a collection of short stories about the characters. It was meant to be a romance novel, but when I read it, I realized that even that had been over-done, turning it into the only thing the novel was about.
Although I was discouraged, I decided that to look at it logically. Okay, so the story sucked, the plot was non-existent and I had no villain. Most people would have considered that a complete failure and I would have as well, if I had not decided to do something that most people don’t. I also looked to see what I did well.
That was when I realized that the characters that I’d come up with were engaging, entertaining, and all had their own voice. I decided that the novel itself may have been a failure, but in trying, I’d inadvertently discovered where I shined as a writer.
Like all novelists, it is my fervent hope that the writing that happened for that book never sees the light of day (I’d probably die of embarrassment). I also came to the decision that the characters still deserved their story, and that the best way to do this would be to rewrite the story during the next Nanowrimo. A silly idea? Perhaps. I decided that this year would not be quite so haphazard.
I continued to write different stories and work on a separate novel for the rest of that year, and kept those characters on the back burner. Two weeks before Nanowrimo started, I began to do some basic work for my story. I wrote up the over-arcing plot I thought I wanted, answered some basic questions for each of the main characters and came up with a set of villains.
I didn’t finish that novel during November, but I did succeed at Nanowrimo, ending the month with a few hundred words over 83,000. I planned to finish it in December, but predictably, I was exhausted and somewhat burned out. So, I put it to the side, and now, 7 months later, its Julnowrimo, and I’m determined to finish the book. I’ve gone over the stuff I wrote during Nano, and I have an idea of what I need to write to fill in the gaps.
I’m attacking it with a plan, and hopefully, I’ll succeed. What about you guys? If you’ve taken part in Nanowrimo, have you guys won? What was your word count? How well did your first novel turn out? Do you think it’s good enough to get published or will it take a tweaking and rewriting before you’ll be happy with it?
On a final note, I’m going to be gaming all weekend! So, you might want to expect my next blog to be about gaming in some way shape or form! It should be an awesome weekend!
Happy Canada Day!
Posted in Blogs on June 30th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 9 Comments »
Today is a day of triumph… minor triumph, to be true, but still a triumph. A bit of history though, last year, my company was short workers for a while and in a desperate attempt to keep up with a work overload, I over-worked my tendons and developed the very sucky tendinitis. I needed a full 2 weeks off work, and even when I got back, I had another week and a half of easy duties that didn’t require me to use my hands to type. Nowadays I still have pain, but usually only if I’ve been over-working my hands on work stuff (Since if I can’t type, I don’t have either job, I make certain to try to take care of them).
For the last 2-3 days now, my hands have been killing me, and today they finally feel better enough to type. I am super pleased even though they are still a bit swollen. Basically the reason I’m so pleased though is so that I can blog to you guys. My mind has been racing through story ideas in the meantime (I have a new character history that I’m working on), but most of my planning has actually been in preparing for Julnowrimo.
Julnowrimo, a derivative of Nanowrimo, takes place in July and the challenge is the same as in November, with less rules. 50k words in 31 days (1612 words per day). You can write just about anything, so long as it is fiction (even if it’s not fiction based), but in general, even things like memoirs get the nod in Julno. This year I’ve decided to work on my novel from the last Nanowrimo and finish it up. To get this done, I’ve been writing up my plot in a three act format. When I finish that, I’m going to highlight all the scenes I’ve already written so that I know going into the month which scenes I need and where my plot is going. No guarantees that it’ll help me stay on track, but at least I’ll have a better idea starting out (what is it people say about having the best of intentions?). If you want to do it with me, I’m on the boards as Feytouched… If not, then please follow me on here, and I’ll try to post a daily (or near daily) word count, perhapfs talking about what I wrote that day.
Other than that, I haven’t been doing much actual this week, but neither have I been gaming. I have my writing office nearly finished (it’s a horrible mess right now) so it should be available for next month.
I’ve also been setting up (although I haven’t made use of it yet) is my Dragon Naturally Speaking program. It’s one of those awesome “talk-to-type” programs which should make next month a breeze, even if my hands start seriously hurting. It will also really help me get used to using it, which should make November easier as well.
I’ve only used it a few times, but it seems pretty good. The only words it gets wrong on a usual basis are my fantasy words and fantasy names (strangely, words like “Seirei” or “Khorevash” aren’t in its English database). It’s even prepared for this eventuality though, and Dragon comes with a correction/addition program. If it types in the wrong word, you tell it the word you want to correct and it asks you to type (or spell) the correct word and say it. Then it asks you to repeat the new word memorizing how the word is pronounced and spelled by you. Great program, and I can’t wait to start using it more often.
What do you guys use to write with? Do you? What tech toys do you have on your comps to make things easier for you?
I should have the next part of Dual Melodies – Chapter 1 up tomorrow. Keep an eye out for it!
Posted in Blogs on June 25th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 5 Comments »
