Thanks in advance!
How would Magellan measure latitude if the sky were filled with clouds all the time? I’m thinking of measuring Coriolis effect, but I’d hate to dive into that if there’s a more obvious answer.
Archive for ‘Writing’
Introducing a new way to track quality in the fantasy genre.
If you read fantasy novels, you already know that there are a lot of writers who aren’t able or can’t be bothered to create settings and characters of their own. Perhaps even more annoying are the ones who just take the same old tired characters and put some transparent and irrelevant ‘twist’ on them. It doesn’t take a detective to unmask these efforts. In fact, it only takes a few questions. It’s a bonus if the questions are funny.
In the top section of the sidebar over there you will now find a link called Fantasy Novelist’s Exam Scoreboard. If you’ve been around a while you’ve heard me refer to the exam before; it’s a list of questions all aspiring fantasy novelists should ask before they get too far writing their epic. It’s a tongue-in-cheek list of seventy-five reasons to drop your project and start over. If you answer ‘yes’ to any question, it’s time to scrap the story.
Alas, there are dozens of stories published every year that do not follow this advice, and are riddled with lazy world-building and tired clichés. The creatures that occupy those worlds are defined in Dungeons and Dragons manuals.
Often as I’m reading these stories I’ve wished that I could have a checklist on hand to tally up the score as I read. Orc – check. Mysterious parentage – check. As the party for the quest (check) assembles, a few stock characters appear (check, check, check). There have even been a couple of stories I’ve read to the end only to see how many more recycled ideas drift through.
Now I have the technology! I can add a story to the database and as I encounter each example of literary laziness I can fire up the iPad or any other handy computer and add to the tally.
And you can, too! I’ve got it mostly set up so other people can add novels to the scoreboard as well. If anyone asks nicely, I’ll get them set up to add their experiences to what promises to be an important database in the world of literature. Or something like that.
As I write this, the only novel in the database is my unfinished fantasy parody, which weighs in at a whopping 17 points (so far). I’ll be adding a couple more titles shortly, and I also intend to integrate the code with Amazon, so the covers and other info will display automatically. That’s going to have to wait for a bit, however.
Anyway, take a look! I’ll probably put up a notification here or with a comment when I add a new novel, and you can watch the score increase as I read. What fun! The questions (the actual creative part of this endeavor) are from here; I just added the buttons.
Also known as "Already behind on my word count day."
November twoth is a big day on the Muddled Calendar, the day I (and tens of thousands of others) wake up and realize we’re already behind our word counts for NaNoWriMo.
In years past part of the tradition has been for me to publish the product of my first night of scribbling here. This year, I’m not going to do that. The product of my first night was more like sketches of three scenes than any sort of coherent narrative. The scenes aren’t even sequential; one is from the first act and two from the second. Alas, the elusive third act remains too ill-defined even to sketch a scene.
So, no excerpt this year. I know you all are devastated at missing out on the prospect of reading a long rough draft of a scene with no hope of ever finding out what happens next. Lost is off the air, after all.
Good luck to all my fellow NaNoWriMo participants, and I’ll see you on the other side of 50K!
Yep. Really.
Just a quick note to those who might have been waiting to start reading Allison to make sure there would be an end. I understand completely; I rail consistently about stories with no clear scope yet they expect me to join in and follow every word. And when you throw in my irregular update schedule, all the more reason to not get caught up.
I’m happy to announce that Allison in Anime: White Shadow is wrapped up in a neat little (anime-style-inscrutable) package. It reads like a not-bad first draft; there are plenty of opportunities I see looking back, but overall I feel pretty good about it.
I hope you enjoy.
Sometimes you see it coming, a special type of melancholy that means it’s time to find the heart of the story. It’s the time to write the scenes that reveal the souls of the participants, and give them the power to change the world.
Even in a comedy characters strive to relieve sadness, to end loneliness. When you touch the sadness, you find the character, from Ann Boleyn to Zapp Brannigan. And even Deek, the stoner mom’s-basement-dweller dropout from life. What’s he hiding from? It’s time to find out. I’m in that place.
And it's about time, too.
Just finished rebuilding the ending to a story and getting it off to a publisher. It has been, I think, six months since I submitted anything, let alone to a pro market. I really like this story but the ending has never been as strong as it is now. I hope.
Over the next couple of days I’ll be getting another story out to an anthology. It’s a story I wasn’t sure would ever find a home, but this might just be its chance.
There’s another very short story I might send over to Piker Press, so they don’t forget me completely, and because it’s fun to share.
The other night the light of my life was far distant, so I stayed up into the wee hours watching a Japanese cartoon. She’s not a fan of the idiom, so I took the opportunity to grab a few episodes. Heh. A few episodes. I had watched the beginning of the series long before, and all I remembered was that I was confused. This time I closed out the story.
I’m not going to name the show, though if you’ve already seen it, you’ll recognize it.
Pf. Like anyone is gong to read this and then, sometime in the future, while watching a Japanitoon say, “Dammit! Jer spoiled this one!” I shall forge ahead, then, and stop worrying about that stuff. The actual show really isn’t that important. My observations apply to just about every Japanitoon ever created.
The point of my ramble: This particular Japanitamation reminded me of a lot of things I need to take to heart as I lampoon the genre:
- People you like can die. No one is too important to take a bullet. The free pass that the main characters get in American dramas is the biggest weakness of the form.
- The name of the bad guy must be ridiculous, and western. Meet Mr. Monday Friday. Seriously. Personally I have a lot to learn, coming up with bad guy names. There’s something that holds me back, prevents me from turning up the ridiculometer to eleven. Mr. Monday Friday. Knives. The End of the World. Cumbersome names are quite all right, because…
- Mon…day… Fri… day… When you run out of dialog, Just find a key phrase for someone to say in an agonized whisper. Usually the name of another character, but let’s not limit ourselves: Stevo… Jobsu! or hu….mili…ating in…fect…ion
All that notwithstanding, I have to give the cartoon some credit for good writing. There’s a point where a guy is told, “if you go though that door your existence will be erased!” But on the other side of the door is truth, and our boy really wants to know the truth. He makes a decision, and a guy that up until then had been clearly one of the bad guys is redefined. That’s not a trivial storytelling feat. The incident also defines a rule of the universe that is critical to the conclusion of the story. Let’s face it, we’d all like to write a scene like that.
Overall a fair assessment.
Although the organizers never sent me my final score and feedback, I was able to go hunt it down on their Web site.
First reaction: My score is higher this time! Hooray!
Second reaction: The average score is higher this time, too. Awww…
Still, I think I moved up in comparison to the average, so that’s nice. The prompt this time was to write dialog with subtext – the characters seem to be talking about one thing, but actually they were discussing something else altogether. My entry is here.
This is the feedback I got:
Very interesting take on the scene prompt. Tons of energy, strong tension level. Good job of putting us on edge and keeping us there. Dialogue could have used a little more punch though, as it really seemed to be the characters talking about the wrong things more so than talking about the right things through subtext. But still, a pretty solid bit of work with great energy.
Overall, I’ll take that. I can see ways to improve the scene now; Mrs. Simms should be there yammering into Helen’s ear about Scooter’s sins just to make her even more frazzled, and to get the conversation onto Scooter’s behavior more naturally. I considered and discarded a couple of lines intended solely to leave absolutely no doubt that it was not Scooter’s behavior that angered Helen, but in the end I thought it was pretty obvious. Reading back now, maybe a line about Scooter running off and getting in trouble would have tied things together nicely without being too overt. Something like “How do I know he won’t be off chasing rabbits when I need him?” after which Jake struggles to apologize for his own misdeeds while keeping the conversation about Scooter. It could have anchored the subtext, and might even have been funny.
Overall, then, I think the criticism is fair, and “Tons of engery” is the kind of phrase I can live with.
The prompt for round two is already out but I’ve only glanced at it. Not getting my score for round one kind of pushed the whole event onto the back burner, and this has been a crazy-busy weekend already. I’ll still take a shot at it, probably pulling characters from Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy to get it done with less time devoted to character development.
And… once more I’m on the outside looking in.
I do recognize at least one name on the list of winners, however: Congratulations, fuego! 96 points! Not too shabby at all. Later I’ll be scanning the list more carefully for other names I might recognize from the comments here.
When I get my individual feedback I’ll share it here, of course, and I’ll still write to the round two prompt on Road Trip Day.
Congratulations to all the finalists!
Wouldn't you like to know?
Were it not for a recent comment, I would have forgotten that today is the deadline for the organizers of the Cyberspace Open to announce the entrants who proved with grace and skill that they deserve to move on to the second round.
So when an email from them arrived today, I was excited. There are certainly things to improve about my entry, but overall I think it’s pretty solid (I felt that way before, too, so grains of salt are called for). I looked forward to getting some feedback, even if it was just a rushed paragraph. I opened the email and found… advertising. They wanted me to subscribe to their magazine. Note to Creative Screenwriting: That’s not how you win friends.
Once more the contestants, who hit their deadline or were disqualified, wait for the organizers, who have had a hell of a time returning the favor. You know what would be a total win-win? Creative Screenwriting should outsource the contest to people who could give it the attention it deserves.
Whether or not the judges say I have earned round two, I’ll be writing to the prompt. Theoretically, round two is the first weekend in April. I hope it is; I have a good feeling about writing a scene on Road Trip Day.
Sometimes the entertainment value of a show is not what what its creators intended.
There are nights when it would be smarter to go to bed or more productive to read, but TV appeals. On those nights, there’s no guarantee that anything good will be on. We tend toward Food Channel and Adult Swim, but there’s another category of programming we enjoy. Some shows were just made to mock.
CSI: Miami is a favorite in this category, between David Caruso chewing up the scenery and preposterometer levels in the danger zone, an episode of CSI: Miami is good for 44 minutes of snarky comments and laughter.
The other night as we were looking for an excuse to not be productive, my sweetie saw Star Trek: The Next Generation in the listing. “We can mock that!” she said with enthusiasm. Immediately I saw the potential and we selected that channel. We were not disappointed.
Take the scene in the bar with Whoopi Goldberg and the kid crew member. “Do you want some Blagaturian Tea?” Whoopi asked (or something like that). “How about some Hoobajoobian cocoa?” Just about every object on the show has a polysyllabic adjective to improve its exoticness. They settled on “Gogorotarian soufflé.” Or whatever. And even after the first time, does Whoopi take the easy way out and just say “soufflé”? No. Time after time she says, “Gogorotarian soufflé.”
You know what she’s really saying? “Space soufflé.” “You want some Space Tea? How about some Space Cocoa? No? Ok, I know you won’t say no to some Space Soufflé.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation becomes much more watchable if you simply replace all those silly adjectives with “space”.
This particular episode hinged on a Really Freakin’ Huge Coincidence. The Mysterious Visitor and the Deadly Cargo were incompatible, so the Mysterious Visitor left. That’s the whole story right there. No cleverness or ingenuity on the part of the crew of the Enterprise required at all. The thing is, it would have been easy to create a causal relationship between the the Mysterious Stranger being there at the same time as the Deadly Cargo. It would have been relatively simple to have one of the main characters actually accomplish something, rather than just watch events unfold.
Lazy writing.
Yep, there’s a new show on our WatchenMocken list.
Here we go, writing a pivotal scene over the weekend! My history in the contest isn’t great but I keep doing it for two reasons: first, it’s good practice for the crucial moments in a story, and second, because it’s damn fun. This is a habit I enjoy.
As always, I encourage everyone to play along, even if they’re not formally registered. It’s good practice dealing with the moments that the audience will always remember. In previous contests I’ve given more advance warning, but this time, there were so many “This is the deadline for registering! We really mean it!” followed by “Deadline extended! But this time it’s the absolute last deadline!” that I wasn’t really confident the contest would actually happen even at the revised time.
But it has. It’s on, baby!
For those who aren’t paid participants, there’s nothing stopping you from using this as a writing exercise. As usual, the prompt is for one of those key moments in a drama that will make a story float in the starry heavens of genius or wash up on the shore of mediocrity, where it will be used as kindling by natives. The natives on the island of mediocrity have no shortage of fuel.
So, here’s the prompt:
Your PROTAGONIST and his or her LOVE INTEREST are at odds. One of the protagonist’s schemes has gone terribly awry, and the love interest has had it. Write a scene in which they have it out – but in an unconventional way. Their words seem measured and reasonable; but the subtext says another thing entirely. You may use additional characters other than the ones specified.
The prompt also comes with this note:
This is going to take some crafty, non-on the nose writing here. For example, they can talk about boiling water, but it’s clear they’re really talking about something else. Use sarcasm or body language or timing or other means to convey your true meaning.
If past history is any guide, I’d not get too caught up in the note. What they say they want and what wins are not the same thing. What wins is a scene that kicks ass. If you can kick ass and achieve the secondary challenge, great. But it is better to never have been crafty at all, than to be crafty and not kick ass.
So, go forth, nascent screenwriters, and kick ass! I shall endeavor to do the same. As always, I will post my effort here. As always, I will write to the round 2 prompt even if I’m not officially a contender any longer. This whole exercise is about recognizing the key turning points in a story and rendering them well. You can’t practice that too often.
The Cyberspace Open is a pretty cool contest, but there seems to be a gap between what they say they want, and what they actually want. The rules are evolving as the organizers have been moving from rewarding high-speed output to giving writers the time they need to create something more memorable (and marketable).
I’ve done the contest a couple of times now, and I’ve seen what wins and where I consistently fall short.
Four categories of scoring? Not… so much.
One of the things emphasized is that you are scored in four different categories. “Originality is 25% of your score,” they say. When you get your scene back, you get a breakdown of how many points you get in each category. Last time, out of hundreds of scores I checked, NONE had a difference of more than two points between categories. You would expect some entries to be wildly creative but very poorly executed, and for the scores to reflect that. Instead, it seems the judges arrive at a gut-feeling score and then divvy up the points fairly evenly between categories.
Don’t worry so much about the one-scene rule.
According to the rules, you’re supposed to submit a single scene. Part of the difficulty with this edict is that a “scene” is a technical movie-making unit, not a storytelling unit. They soften the rule to say that if your “scene” continues between rooms of a house during the course of a conversation, that’s ok. (Technically, every time the scenery changes, it’s a new scene. Changing rooms is a new scene.)
I’m all for this relaxed interpretation. How I would write the rule is, ‘continuous action that cannot be interrupted by cutting to another scene with different characters’. That lets you move your action, but keeps the “scene” as a fundamental storytelling unit.
However, even by that definition, two of the three top finalists last time had multiple scenes. One of the finalists used a brief scene at the start to establish the story, while another jumped scenes (and skipped ahead a couple of hours) halfway through the action. So it would seem the one-scene rule is not enforced at all.
Tell the Whole Story
The contest clearly states that they want a single scene that is part of a larger story. They don’t want a short film. The prompt they give is for a key moment in the arc of a story already under way. The thing is, judges can appreciate the scene more if they have an understanding of the context. Last year’s winner had an extra, short scene at the start with no other purpose than to supply context. One of the first-round winners last year included an extra little scene at the end that provided closure. In both cases the judges rewarded writers for breaking the letter of the law. Both of the other finalists last year had as-you-know-Bob-style dialog to provide context. fuego was specifically chided for not including more backstory in his scene.
You know? That’s OK with me. I think of my first (losing) entry and the really cool car stunt that happened immediately after the scene I submitted. I should have included it, even though it was technically another scene. My most recent (losing) entry could have benefitted from more context as well, but it also needed…
Action!
This is my mantra this time: make every moment crackle. I honestly thought I had that last time, but it was a verbal confrontation (they said they wanted dialog) and without a better understanding of the characters it failed to sparkle. If my dialog had been combined with bloodshed, things might have been much different.
Make every phrase one that could go into the movie trailer, every motion filled with peril. All the other rules and guidelines above take a backseat to this simple axiom. Whatever they say they want, whatever restrictions they impose, all will be forgiven if you write a taut scene with intensity – and it has to stand on its own. Of course the judges couldn’t see the tension between my characters since much of it was based on things that had come before.
Three to Five Pages
While the text on the Web site sounds flexible, they’re really hardcore about this now. Five pages and one line was not acceptable last time around.
Don’t lose on a technicality
As much as it sucks to get a low score, it would suck even more to get zero points because you didn’t submit your work correctly. There are things you can do before the contest that will allow you to save time and worry when submission time comes around.
You must submit your entry in a document named in a particular way, with specific formatting and a cover page with the proper information. Why wait until the last minute, when you’re tweaking the last few words as the clock ticks down? Go ahead and make the document now. Set up the formatting. Name it according to the submission rules. Write the cover page. Check it all twice. Now you’ve got all the ticky-tack stuff out of the way and when minutes count you can focus on the work, not the submission.
Have Fun!
I don’t participate in this contest with dreams of megabucks movie producers knocking on my door, I do it because it’s a challenge that appeals to me on a fundamental level and I’ve learned a lot from my previous failures. I like sharing my output here and getting feedback.
There’s another reason to have fun: It shows in the work. If you’re smiling while you’re typing, chances are the judge will be smiling while reading. Give it your best go, but have a good time and let your own quirks show through.
Just so long as you don’t push me out of the second round!
WritingCyberspace Winter 2011 Early Registration Deadline Tonight
December 31st, 2010 The time is nigh...
This is just a reminder to those out there who enjoy the Cyberspace Open that registration closes tonight. It’s a fun contest, and a good way to spend a weekend. In a nutshell, you are given a prompt and you have a weekend to write a scene that would fit in a a feature-length screenplay that fits the prompt.
CORRECTION: Originally in this episode I said tonight was the deadline for entering. It turns out tonight is the deadline for early entry, which is cheaper. You can still register after today.
Even if you don’t pay to participate officially, I encourage the writerly types out there to play along. Just because you won’t be judged doesn’t mean you can’t have fun writing to the prompt.
As usual, I’ll be posting my round-one entry here. Even if I don’t make it to round two, I’ll write to that prompt as well, and post that here for the amusement of all.
See you in the winners’ circle!
