Starwalker: have your say!
I’m looking to change things up in Starwalker during Book 2. Things are going to get rocky for the crew – and complicated. There are going to be new characters, and some of the existing ones may well be leaving. (Method of exit is yet to be determined, but it doesn’t necessarily involve dying.)
I’m curious to know what my readers think about the characters, and which members of the crew they would like to see go (if any!). I have plans for most of them and there are some that I won’t get rid of, but I’m not going to tell you which ones they are. I’m curious to know what others think. Tell me. Better yet, tell me why.
I’m also curious to know which characters people most want to stay. I think I can take a stab at one or two of the most popular ‘must never leave’ characters, but always happy to be wrong!
But don’t tell me here! Head on over to my forum and dive into the thread.
Also, keep an eye on the forum, as I will probably be doing more reader polls soon.
Writing like crazy: this year’s NaNoWriMo
I can’t believe it’s nearly the end of November and I haven’t talked about NaNoWriMo yet! I need to get better at updating this blog. Bad me, no biscuit.
This is my fourth year taking part in NaNoWriMo. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s a mad challenge to write 50,000 words in November. It’s the best fun, completely exhausting, and wonderful for ploughing through that project you’ve been putting off all year.
Of course, I crank the pressure up to a hundred by acting as an ML (Municipal Liaison) and organising all the local events and get-togethers. Yes, on top of working full-time, writing 50,000 words, and dealing with my CFS. Yes, I’m nuts.
This year, the turnout has been astounding. Over 950 people in my region for me to look after, and event attendance is up to double what it was last year. It’s all a bit bewildering at times, but we’re making it all work and having a great time doing it. I’ve met so many new people that my ability to retain names is completely retarded, and I caught up with lots of familiar faces from previous NaNos.
My co-ML and I have been ambitious this year, organising prizes and competitions and all kinds of extra stuff for the writers in our region. We’ve had several write-ins every week, all over the city and surrounding areas, and big BBQs to organise.
We even had one write-in on the local trains, travelling around the city, collecting writers as we went and writing like mad. It was hilarious and everyone enjoyed themselves, and I actually got quite a bit written. Definitely one we’ll try again, and I have another idea for a similar roving write-in for next year.
The past few weeks have been a blur of organising, travelling, working, and running events, but it’s all gone great so far! What’s terrifying it that I think we might try to top it next year. At which point I suspect my head might explode.
On the actual writing side, things have been more mixed for me. Due to the crazy schedule I’ve been keeping, I’ve wound up having blitz writing days, and then gaps when I was catching my breath or too tired to form sentences.
I had a pretty clear idea about what I wanted to do this year. The timing actually worked out pretty well for me – I finished the first book of Starwalker early in October, and took a break in the lead-up to the NaNo madness, and then ploughed into Book 2 on 1st November.
But when I got into the meat of the first section of Book 2 (nominally named ‘Slave’), I realised that I hadn’t planned it out anywhere as much as I would have liked. Normally this isn’t a problem – I work a lot of stuff out as I go and see where it all takes me. But with the momentum of NaNo behind me, driving me to up that wordcount, I didn’t have time to stop and ponder. And because the bulk of my writing (in fact, all of it so far) has been done away from an internet connection, I couldn’t stop and research the little details like what star system they are visiting next.
It isn’t going to plan. Just like Book 1, Book 2 has six sections or chapters planned out. I’m almost to 50,ooo words and I haven’t finished the Slave section yet. I had to stop a week or so ago and go back, adding in notes about things I wanted to put in or change. Book 1 was just over 100,000 words.
Yet again, it looks like the story is not taking the shape I thought it would. And, actually, that’s fine. When I realised where it was all going, I took a pause to think about it, and I think it’s all just fine. ‘Slave’ looks like it will end up being the majority of Book 2, along with the section that is due to follow it. Which leaves the remaining four planned sections for Book 3.
Holy crap, there’s going to be a Book 3.
With that decided, I now have lots of scope to go back and fill things out. I will probably end up breaking down ‘Slave’ into several smaller parts, but that’s something I’ll worry about later. Right now, I’m excited to hit the NaNo target, so that I can go back and edit the guts out of what I’ve got. And by ‘edit’, I mean ‘rewrite and expand’. And fill in the details that I had left, like the names of new characters and that star system that I still have to look up.
And, just to be annoying, I heard of a magazine that wants horror scifi stories. Which got my overactive imagination going, and so I’ve been working on that when I get too braindead on the main Starwalker run. The story I’m working on is set in the Starwalker universe and connected to the events in Book 2. Never done horror before, so this is a new endeavour for me.
In all, I am doing okay, and looking forward to December. I have the last two days of November off work, and can’t wait to sleep, recuperate, and come back at it all fresh.
Starwalker Villains: Sneak Peeks!
As promised, the sneak peek excerpts of the villain shorts have gone up on the Starwalker site. I’ve been poking through them a lot lately, editing and adjusting things, and the opening sections to the villain series are now up.
They’re quite different pieces, and I love them both for different reasons. Delving into the dark side of stories is fun! I wanted to make them understandable without making them overly sympathetic. I wanted to make them real people without making them good people. It’s surprising how hard that distinction was to make.
Henry started out in my head as a thug. Standard musclebound, red-shirt-wearing, mercenary, ham-fisted thug. But as I wrote him, he grew into something else – he’s smarter than I first imagined him. And he has a quirk of belief in his perspective that I wasn’t expecting, but I’m enjoying it the more I get to weave it in. The first part of this story doesn’t give much away, but there is much more – and much worse – to come.
Keida is much lighter, and in some ways, worse. She’s a hybrid of a few characters I’ve written before, a thief with her own moral code and goals that are all about herself. She was originally a throw-away piece I did for my writing group, set in another world entirely. She didn’t even have a name until I had to post her piece up yesterday.
It didn’t take much to adapt her to fit into Dyne (the super-powers in the original piece were easy to merge over into abilities gained from cybernetic implants and prosthetics). I’m not entirely sure where her story is going yet, but I can’t wait to find out.
I have one other potential villain piece, but I’m still trying to work out how to fit it in. The main character is naughty, but not exactly villainous. Yet. That one’s going to take more pondering.
In the meantime, it’s nearly NaNoWriMo, and almost time to get going with the main stream of Starwalker again. Back to planning and organising stuff!
Starwalker Villains: Coming Soon
Over the past few months, an idea has been slowly growing in the back of my brain. Like a mushroom.
It started when I did a couple of pieces for my writing group. We were writing scenes based on general themes and I wound up doing a superhero-type piece, but from the villain perspective. I’ve written lots of superhero stuff before (in the online RP I used to do), and felt like taking things from the other side of the struggle for a change. The next one involved a barfight – again, sliding away from the ‘heroic’ side of things.
Then I started to ponder if I could do a full story (those pieces were just fragments, really – scenes in longer stories I have yet to write) from a villain’s point of view. Without turning the character into an anti-hero. Is it possible? I honestly have no idea. But it sounds damn fun to try.
So, of course, my brain spun it on. What about a series of shorts – not full novels/blogfics/huge monstrosities, but something more like a short story or possibly novella (I do like to go on). Different characters, different styles of writing. I could play around with it.
This led to: what if I set them in the Starwalker universe, and placed each one on a different colony? I did a list and came up with eight or nine possibilities. Loads of material to pull from there. A chance to explore not only the Starwalker world, but the dirty side of things at the same time.
It’s not the kind of thing I usually write, and that’s also part of the appeal. It sounds like fun! I’ve done a handful of pieces since I started noodling this idea about – nothing is complete yet, but I have some promising beginnings. Characters are taking shape. Stories are poking their heads out of the dirt and searching for a spotlight. Here, kitty kitty, and don’t mind the claws.
I’ve pencilled the project in for next year. I’m not sure how long Starwalker will run – my plan is to write it until I run out of stories to tell with the ship and her crew – but I’m not planning to wait until it’s finished before I start posting the villain shorts. I want to build them up over the next few months, trickle them along in the background until I’ve got enough for a half-decent (and possibly coherent) posting schedule.
I’m also tossing up ideas for how and where to post them. Do I do it on the Starwalker site? Interrupt the regular story with random shards of something else? Set up a new blog for it? I’m not sure which way I’m leaning on that yet, but there’s plenty of time to figure it out.
Next year is still a ways off, but I don’t plan to make everyone wait quite that long before I show you what I’m babbling about. As the regular Starwalker run is currently between books (and I’m taking a much-needed, if short, break), I’ve decided to post up excerpts from the existing villain shorts in the meantime. They’re not finished and I’m still honing the details, but they’re ready enough for you to get a taste!
The first sneak peek goes up on the Starwalker site tonight. I’d love to know what you all think!
Starwalker: Book 1 complete!
Huzzah! After much deliberation, I have decided that last week’s post is the end of Starwalker: Book 1 (ignore the dates, I’m backdating them all at the moment to keep the realtime aspect alive). At just over 100,00 words, it’s a good size, and worked out well, I think.
I’m going to be writing Book 2 for my NaNoWriMo project this year. Can’t wait to get going – I can feel the ideas bubbling away in the back of my brain already – but I have a couple of weeks to ponder them and catch my breath. So, a brief hiatus for me!
With all of the NaNo preparations going on at the moment, a hiatus is exactly what I need. More on that soon. Also, there will be more on my other upcoming Starwalker project. For now – yay Starwalker! Book 1 done!
Review: 10 Rules of Writing
10 Rules of Writing by Elmore Leonard
Anyone who has talked to me – or heard me talk – about writing books knows that I always start with one piece of advice: if you’re going to read one writing book, read three. Then I usually go on to say: there are lots of ways to write, and you need to find what’s best for you.
If I was going to recommend some writing books, Elmore Leonard’s wouldn’t be in the list. I had to think long and hard about this, but ultimately, there are many more useful places for you to spend your time and money.
I read it because a friend had borrowed it from the library and I could get through it in a lunchtime at work before she had to take it back. This is because of the first issue I have with the book: it’s very short. Yes, you get the ten rules of writing, but they’re a sentence or two each, and there is rarely any explanation given for why these are good rules to follow. There are some interesting pictures used to fill up the pages, but little substance.
I can nod and agree and fill in the gaps myself, but I’ve been studying writing for most of my life. Honestly, I’m not sure who this book is aimed at. Beginner writers are in danger of being bewildered by the statements and will wind up following them blindly, if at all. Experienced writers aren’t likely to find them of much value because they’re just surface rules.
And because there’s no notion about why they’re good to follow, there’s no hint about when or why it might be good to break them. As always with writing, breaking rules is just as important as following them, but you can only do that if you understand them first.
So, then we move on to the rules themselves. I will say that it is all good, solid advice. There are a couple of points that I don’t agree with (as hard and fast rules – with some explanation, context, or caveats, they would be fine). For example, Mr Leonard says not to use detailed descriptions. Some genres and styles of writing have this as a norm, so I don’t think you can apply this rule universally. In some writing, it fits the flow of the story rather than breaks it.
Context is king.
The rules themselves also overlap in a few cases. Take the description one – that’s actually two rules, one for characters and one for places and objects. Why split them up? Then there’s the last rule, the one we’ve stuck with the book long enough to reach: “Leave out parts the readers tend to skip.” Well, that covers several other rules which could have been rolled up into a single bundle.
So what you actually get is about 6 or 7 rules of writing.
Once you’ve got that far – to the end of Rule 10 – you should be at the end of the book. Right? Wrong. There’s more! At the back of the book there’s a whole splurge of information and advice about writing. It’s good stuff too, and explained better than most of the ‘rules’. Why these points weren’t made into rules, I don’t know. It’s great to have in there, but bewildering considering the construction of the book and its information.
I feel like somewhere in those pages, there is a good writing book hiding. Replace the pretty pictures with some explanatory text and you might just find it. Sadly, that isn’t what was produced.
Overall, I would advise you save your money rather than spend it on this book (I’ve only seen it in hardcover and therefore not cheap!). Borrow it from a library if you’re desperate to read it, but you’ll find many more useful writing books out there.
Brisbane Writer’s Festival
I started writing this a while ago, but then work exploded and I’ve had a hell of a time just keeping up. So. Let’s try to get this finished while I have a few spare minutes.
My third Brisbane Writer’s Festival happened at the beginning of September (a few weeks ago now). I almost didn’t go this year (I was supposed to be down in Melbourne for WorldCon), but when work made it impossible to go, I wound up at the festival instead.
I’m glad I went. Lots of interesting talks, and I wound up buying a handful of books – mostly non-fiction for research purposes. The people I went to see talk were all well worth seeing, and gave me plenty of food for thought. I even paid for tickets for some of the talks – which I’ve never bothered to do before – and I don’t regret it.
The festival was not as good this year as it has been before. This is mostly because of the aforementioned WorldCon, and also because of the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. All three events happened on the same weekend, and that means that a lot of potential guests went down to the events in Melbourne, especially those in the scifi/fantasy genres. Great for them, not so great for those genre-lovers stuck back in Brisbane.
We had a full complement of authors anyway, mostly crime, romance and non-fiction of various stripes. I saw Michael Robotham and Val McDermid in a couple of different talks, and they’re well worth seeing. Sensible, entertaining, and honest. I’d sit and have a drink with them any time (sadly, I didn’t have time at the festival, but next time!).
I picked up Robotham’s Shatter, and thoroughly enjoyed it. May do a more complete review if/when I get some time. I will say that the level of craft displayed in it was much higher than I was expecting, and I will happily pick up another of his books when I’m done with my current list (I’m waiting for a friend to finish The Suspect so she can lend it to me, before I go hunting for another one).
I also plan to pick up one of Val’s books and see what they’re like, too. She’s a great character and I don’t doubt that at least some of that has leeched into her work.
I bought a handful of books that I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up, some of them random non-fiction that just looked interesting (like one about particular mental disorders, and another about how the brain heals itself). The festival was also a great chance to hang out with friends and meet new writers.
The Brisbane Writer’s Festival is held at the Queensland State Library, where the Queensland Writer’s Centre has its new offices (they moved earlier this year). I finally managed to pop in and say hello, and because I’m a member of the QWC, I got a tour and a card, and free drinks in their Writer’s Lounge. My friend and I recuperated between talks there, and met a string of writers, all coming to do the same as us.
So, overall, a good weekend in good company. Hectic and exhausting, between trains and running to talks and all the rest, but well worth it. I am sorry I missed the craziness of WorldCon when it was visiting so close, but I had a great time anyway. Looking forward to next year’s offerings already!
Video: novelling talk
I think I have managed to make this work! Here’s the video of my novelling talk, all 45mins of it. I believe the sound is crappy, but make of it what you will.
If you want to see the presentation I was using, you can download it here (warning: in Office 2007 format).
Novelling talk
As those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook will know, I gave a talk on novelling at my work recently. The kind lady who organised it emailed me a few days before to ask ‘do I mind if she videos the talk’? Caught flat-footed, I couldn’t think of a good reason to say ‘HELL NO’ like I wanted to, and now there is proof.
The talk went well! I had well over 30 people come along, and lots of questions. It was more fun than I was expecting, but about as terrifying as I thought it would be. Especially when the head of my entire department came along to sit in. They’re all good people, so I was fine once I got into it. Public speaking is not exactly my forte.
The video is huge – 200MB – and 45 minutes long. YouTube apparently doesn’t like anything over 10 minutes and flickr doesn’t like anything over 8MB. I am looking into self-hosting the thing, and will link to it on here as soon as it is ready. Apparently the sound isn’t so good, but I’ll let you make of it what you will.
Will post again when the video is all uploaded and good to go, hopefully with happy embedding/links.
In the captain’s head
The end of the current section of Starwalker is proving tricky to handle. I’m trying to work it around to a place where I can neatly tie off one story arc and move towards the next. My characters are fighting me a bit, and balancing all the plot elements is a challenge.
Let me say now – I’m loving it. This is part of what I love about writing in this serial write-and-post format. I can’t go back and change things, so I have to surge forward with what I’ve got. I have to juggle characters, plot points, foreshadowing, continuity, and future plans, and make it all make sense. It is hard work sometimes, but it’s also the best fun.
Most of the time, I let the characters lead the action. Their backgrounds, personalities and purposes push them forward in their own (occasionally annoying!) direction. Sometimes, the hardest work is getting them to come around to the position they need to be in to make a section of the plot work (I can’t have any of them blowing up the ship, after all – not yet, at least). I’ve had to rewrite several posts because one character or other has gone off on a tangent that isn’t maintainable, or is just plain awkward. But I’m careful about trying to make them all behave true to themselves – my aim is to have my hand in guiding them be as invisible as possible.
When I got to the end of last week’s post (Last Ditch), I was disgruntled with how things had turned out. Not with the plotting – we were in exactly the position that I wanted us to be in. Poor Elliott, he finally got the guts to go stand up for Starry and confronted the captain. Awesome for Elliott, but I thought the captain came across very closed. So far, the leader of this crew has been in the background, almost invisible, and sometimes passive. That didn’t feel right to me.
That’s not to say that it’s out of character – it’s not. John has his reasons for being the way he is. Part of it is his style of captaining – he sits back and listens to people, lets them talk, weighs up the options and then tells them what his orders are.
Part of it is that he’s not entirely in charge on the Star walker – there’s the mission and the demands of the experiment pulling strings, dictated by Cirilli and her people. I don’t honestly know who would win in a throw-down power-struggle between Cirilli and John.
Part of it is also the weight of recent and past events in his life. It’s this latter part that I don’t think the reader has had a chance to see or understand yet. John hasn’t really made himself known yet, not even in his own log posts.
When I finished editing and posting Last Ditch, I sat and pondered how best to tackle this. The solution was startlingly simple: the next post had to come from him. How he deals with this crisis and the decision that he makes about Starry’s fate is going to define a lot about him. It’s also a good kick in the pants that should pull him out of his passivity.
So that has been this week’s task – delving into John’s head and watching him come around to his decision about Starry. Glimpses of his pain and an inability to deal with it. Seeing the rest of the crew through his eyes (and, curiously, who came to speak up for Starry and who didn‘t). It’s been fun!
I’m pleased with how it came out, overall. I think (and hope) he will be more sympathetic from now on, and a more proactive character in the scheme of things.
This section isn’t going to finish too soon, I think – the idea is to identify all the ‘players’ in the story of Starry’s short life, and there’s one or two more still to be revealed. We’re one step closer now. Onwards and outwards, I guess!