It's that time of year. The holidays are in full swing, snow is abounding (if you're in the right place) and consumers are swarming the malls to prove capitalism is alive and well. Ah... the holidays. But all these holidays have origins and, being something of a Christmas nut, I can tell you it's nothing like it once was. But I'm not here today to tell you about the paganistic origins of Christmas or how certain Christian sects banned its celebration for generations. No. I just want to bring those up to show that holidays change and evolve to fit the world that's celebrating them. If you're a fantasy or sci-fi writer, you better believe holidays will eventually work their way into your works. If you take time to contemplate them, let them grow naturally in your mind, you can end up with something that enriches your world and makes it that much more alive. If not... you may end up with the Star Wars Holiday Special. In all seriousness, don't watch that. It's hot garbage and it hurts your brain and, really, I don't want that on my conscious. But understand that just taking an existing holiday and renaming it isn't going to do anything for your story, anymore than taking an existing culture and renaming it. In the same way that "Space Romans" doesn't work because Rome evolved in a certain way under certain conditions, "Space Christmas" doesn't work because Christmas traditions evolved over a long time and under very strange circumstances. Want another example from the Christmas nut? The twelve days of Christmas START one Christmas and run until Epiphany in January. It's not a countdown. Christmas used to be a twelve day feast.
So how do you make your holiday? Well, look at the holidays around the world and figure out what connects them, not only to each other thematically, but to their own cultures. Does it celebrate a victory or the end of a war? Maybe there was a miracle that's being observed? Perhaps it's the celebration of the harvest or maybe the beginning of spring. Remember, the older the holiday is (or the more archaic your setting is) the most it should likely revolve around observable phenomena. When the first snow melts and the first flowers bloom. Boom! That's a marker for a holiday. When the constellations change and a certain star is in the right part of the sky. Boom! Holiday! When the entire village gathers together to harvest the crops! Boom! Holiday! As for traditions, those you can be even more flexible with. Perhaps your village harvests a lot of pumpkins because that's what was easy to grow when the village first started. So, despite other crops being part of the harvest, pumpkins might have a special place. Contests to see who can grow the biggest! Decorative contests. Foods based around pumpkin as an ingredient. What's if it's not food? Maybe a battle? Well, how hated was the enemy commander? Maybe he's evolved into a monster that scares children on that day. Maybe he lost the battle because of thick thorns that blocked his way, so now you chase the monster out of the village with thorns? Go nuts! The point is, like all my world building advice, is to use deductive world building. Sure, this happens, but why? What would make logical sense to lead to what you're doing? Or, if you want to go the other route, what would the thing being celebrated eventually lead to? How far can you stretch the original concept before it's unrecognizable? I mean, practically no one in the US knows about the Krampus, Santa's helper that kidnapped children and beat them with reeds. Maybe someone in your culture's history decided to forcefully introduce a new tradition like that? The options are limitless, so go wild. Just remember: build your own holiday or you'll end up with a weird, pointless "Space Christmas." George. DFTBA
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So I recently finished a game for DLH that I really liked. It was a strange little title that focused on puzzles and environmental manipulation to progress. The art, the music, and entire atmosphere of the game was gorgeous, but as I sit here typing this, if you asked me what the game was about I would draw a blank.
I gave the game a good review because, as a game, it was fun. Fun is the first thing I care about in a game, with everything else coming after. But I'm a writer. When you read The Paladin, there's no interactive sections or light and shadow puzzles to play around with. It's a story. That's it's purpose. This game's story was lackluster, to be completely honest. It was silent and had no text. Everything was contextual, but despite that, a story could've been told. They chose to keep things vague and lean heavily on the mechanics and the aesthetics of the game. There's nothing wrong with that in a game if those aesthetics are that good, but I wonder if that doesn't happen in novels and films, too. Okay, obviously it happens. I'm sure we can all think of movies where the action was non-stop excitement from beginning to end, but you probably couldn't name the protagonist. This is a little less prevalent in books, but I'm sure it's still out there and that's why I'm wondering what the balance should be. Books that introduce a new world, something different and unique, have an edge in that they can get away with a weaker story because the reader is busying ooo-ing and ahh-ing at all the set dressing. This is why movies like Men in Black or Harry Potter usually have less successful sequels because they've spent all their aesthetic currency on the first movie. Half of those films charm comes from seeing what's around the next corner. What new spell, new alien, or weird contraption might be in the next scene? Some obviously handle this better than others, but I hope this illustrates the point. If you don't have a solid story and focus too much on your atmosphere, you'll burn through things quickly. Once there's no more new shiny things to reveal to your audience, you'll have to keep their attention with good ol' fashioned plot. So what do I think of atmosphere myself? I mean, I obviously use it. I'm an urban fantasy writer. I have monsters and gadgets and spells and secret organizations to illustrate. But I like to think that I balance that with a good story. I try to think about how it would be if I removed the fantastic elements. If you pull out all the monsters and vampires, it still has a mystery and adventure. It'd probably be more of a police drama, I guess, but I think it'd still stand without the mystique of monsters and magic. And that's what I feel is important. Let your atmosphere enhance your story, not be your story. Be Excellent to Each Other So this week I've knocked out another game review (should be up shortly, I hope), researched some publishing sites, and did a bunch of plotting for the backstories of several of my characters. I'm still waiting to hear back from a few agents that I've queried, but once I get their responses, I'm likely to try cutting more from The Paladin, and mapping out the backstories is going to help me figure out what's important and what can go.
It's kinda disappointing, actually. I did a lot of work, ran it past betas, got very favorable responses, but I know that despite that, the word count is going to scare off any potential agents. I knew it before I submitted to betas, I knew it while I was waiting for feedback, and I know it now. Tough decisions are awaiting me as I go over the manuscript one more time, figuring out everything that can go. I had already considering one scene that might be able to go, but after my last rejection letter, I'm contemplating not just that scene, but the entire plot arc it's part of! Still, I know that if I can cut those words, there's likely to be a better version of the story waiting on the other end. I know there's parts I can't touch (the betas voiced their opinions on it) but... I don't know. Maybe if I can rearrange the information I can drop out the extra 20,000 words I need to lose. Aw man.. it just hit me how much that is. I'm averaging around five thousand words per chapter, so this is roughly like having to cut out four whole chapters! How do you even make a decision like that? I'm going to have to not only figure out what I can lose, but identify all the important info in those sections and figure out where I can put them without dramatically increasing the word count. I was hoping for a calmer, less anxiety-inducing night, but thinking about all this editing and cutting just killed it. Oh well. No point in worrying about it until the rest of the agents get back to me / ignore me long enough to be considered a "no." Time to dive into those side projects! DFTBA When is it right to kill off a character? I was listening to the latest Writing Excuses podcast and they actually had quite a lot to say on the subject. When should they die? When should you use plot armor? Who should die? When?
I think the biggest thing to take home is that death shouldn't be a given. Several of the hosts mentioned times when they read a book or watched a film and just knew that a character was going to die. You know the ones. The story spends just a few too many moments talking about how they're just a couple days from retirement. Or in one specific instance, how they want to go live in Nebraska. Mary, one of my favorite hosts, stumbled upon what may or may not be an amazing little trick for writing the death of a character. To put it bluntly, she didn't know the character was going to die until she was writing them. She had mapped out an entire character arc, had ongoing plots tied up in the character and then -- bam! They're gone. It hits you really hard in the gut and, most importantly, it leave a lasting impact on those that survive. The character had unfinished business. Things were left unsaid, undone. That's real. Having lost both my parents, I can say there were a ton of things left unfinished. Ambitions on their ends... words and deeds on mine. The overall sentiment, I think, is to make sure that killing your character off is the most impactful thing. Sadness is not a real consequence. The death needs to mean something to those that have to live with it. If it doesn't, well, one of the other hosts mentioned that there are lots of things worse than death. So, what do I think? Well, obviously I'm not going to contradict the advice of a roomful of highly successful authors, but if I'm giving my two cents, I suppose it's this: Death shouldn't be a token gesture. You shouldn't kill off a character just because it seems like the right thing to do. Look at your story. Look at the full narrative, stretching before and beyond your manuscript. What will it mean to have the character die? I want to get the most I can out of my characters. I put a lot of effort into creating them and I want to see a payoff. Personally, I'm going to follow that payoff, whether it leads to them living or dying. DFTBA Spent the day on my latest game review. Puzzle game. It's frying my brain. I feel like I need to play something dumb and senseless now but I can't find my copy of GTA5. Oh well. I suppose I'll have to work on productive things, instead.
Instead I'll be working on some of the side projects I can't quite share yet. Fun stuff, but I need to get things secured before I mention them. And I suppose there's still the prequel stuff to research, too. So with all the research and writing I'm working on, I've been thinking about what is really important to a story. I mean, there's a good chance I'll need to cut even more out of The Paladin if I want an agent to give me a second glance so I suppose it makes sense. That's why I'm doing this "prequel" story. It's very unlikely to ever get released, but by writing out everything that happened before my MS, I can get an idea of where everyone was, what everyone wanted, and the path that things would logically have to take. It'll help me figure out the stuff that's key to my main story and what's fluff. I think just about any writer would like to think they don't really have fluff, but that's really unlikely. I need to sort through every scene, see what motivations the characters have, what their actions would do to things that are "offscreen," and figure out how crucial each and every scene is to the overall picture. I need to ask myself, "does this serve the greater plot?" Is someone's motivation revealed or pushed forward? Can this information be revealed somewhere else? Does it make logical sense for this even to flow into the next, especially with the "offscreen" scenes. So yeah. Gotta prepare for the cuts. And in the meantime, figure out if WattPad is a good idea or not. And if not, there's a new site that's dropped onto my radar called Curious Fictions which seems like a cross between Patreon and WattPad. Not sure what to make of it at the moment, but I'm curious to learn more. Until tomorrow.... Be Excellent to Each Other As of the posting of this blog, my PitMad total stands at... 0. Yeah, I didn't expect too much. Technically, some agents will keep checking through tomorrow, but I didn't expect much. I got a fair amount of retweets, so many thanks for all the support, but no interest yet from agents or publishers.
That's okay. I have other stuff to focus on. Two game reviews sitting in my inbox, a personal Christmas project, and I'm still trying to decide if I want to drop my short stories on WattPad. Fortunately the artist that I worked with on these stories gave her blessings for me to share them off site. On the bright side, working with this has helped me get more involved with my writers' group. Those guys are awesome and I really appreciate the feedback they have and how supportive they are. I can't remember if I mentioned it here, but I'm working on another side story. In order to more easily understand what elements from The Paladin are important and what could potentially be cut, I've decided to write a prequel of sorts. Basically everything important leading up the start of the manuscript from the perspectives of the core characters. Obviously I can't release that here, so it's more for myself (though my lovely wife reminded me that if The Paladin takes off, I can release it as supplementary material on Patreon or something.) That's all I've got for now. Until tomorrow... Don't forget to be awesome! Oh boy. Tomorrow's the big day. PitMad. I'd be lying if I said I used my time as well as I think I could have. I have at least one good tweet to use, which if you want to see, just check out yesterday's post. I'm rushing to knock out at least one more but I'm not sure it's going to happen.
So what's happening tomorrow? Well, here's how the whole process works if you haven't been keeping up with the blog. Three times throughout tomorrow (morning, afternoon, and evening) I'll be posting my book's pitch condensed into 280 characters or less. Agents will be scanning through tags all day tomorrow and if they stumble across mine and click that little like button, I have an in! Am I expecting huge results? Honestly, no. I try to be pragmatic and realistic about these things. Thousands upon thousands of authors and would-be authors will be posting their tweets, so it's going to be a miracle if my pitch is seen in the first place. Then why do it? Because there's a big payoff for very little effort here. If I passed this up, I'd be stupid. Imagine if someone was giving away free lottery tickets. Sure, the chances of winning aren't that high, but the risk on your end is negligible. There's no reason not to. Beyond this, I need projects. I need to keep busy while I'm waiting for all my replies from agents to come in. If you're keeping track at home, I have two rejections thus far. Obviously if I'd been picked up by now I wouldn't be doing this and the site would be absolutely plastered with news of my getting an agent, so... Point is, I'm keeping myself busy while my queries wander around the globe attempting to entice an agent. If nothing else, having this twitter pitch (and a couple others) will certainly help in giving me something to tweet out every day. Maybe I'll still catch someone's attention down the line. Until then, I'll be working on a few things. First and foremost, a backstory that I can't even publish. Yes sir, I've started work on writing a (short?) story to help flesh out the back story of some of my characters in The Paladin so I can figure out what's crucial and what's expendable. Naturally, it would give away everything from the main novel, so I can't publish it until The Paladin is out there and successful. Le sigh. Okay. Back to condensing my pitch into 280 characters. To anyone else participating, good luck! DFTBA Okay, before I get into it, I just wanted to update ya'll with my first PitMad tweet. I'm trying to work out three total as my writer group suggests, but I really like how this one eventually turned out. Ahem... Losing your father figure is hard. Learning who you are & what you believe is harder. Doing both while being forced to slay werewolves & hunt demons may be impossible. Humor, self-discovery, mystery, & the occult. #PitMad #NA #A #UF #P #SPF Here's hoping that intrigues an agent. But today I promised a review and a review you shall have. And I have to say, I was super stoked about this one. WWE 2k19 is the biggest game I'm reviewed to date, not to mention a series I'm a huge fan of. Don't forget to check out the official review over on DLH.net I've been playing wrestling games since WWF Wrestlemania back on the NES. In the beginning it was certainly because I wanted to be Hulk Hogan, but as time went on the games got stories. Then those stories were expanded with create-a-characters. I was sold. And so began the ever-repeating journey of Jeff Goddard, wrestling god. Let's take a look at the biggest thing for me: the created character. Now this technically comes in two flavors. If you want to bring someone through the story mode or MyCAREER, you'll see some differences from the normal create-a-character mode. First off, they'll give you a quick wizard to zip you through the process. If you don't know what it's doing, you'll swear it's just taking away all your options. Don't fear... there are TONS of options. Next, you'll notice that your moves, clothes, and other general options for making an awesome wrestler are severely limited. I was upset until I understood to point of this. Your rookie wrestler has to fight through the ranks, getting more skilled and earning new abilities as they go along. This is done by earning in-game currency that you spend on skill trees and loot packs to gain new moves and clothing. Is it a bummer? Sort of. Does it make sense? Yes. And if you really want an awesome character with Bret Hart's glasses, the Undertaker's robes, and who hits everyone with the Stone Cold Stunner AND the Rock Bottom... you can make that in the normal create-a-wrestler mode. Okay, let's take a look at the story. How is it? Well... it's a story. As you can imagine it follows your character from the indies all the way to Wrestlemania. No spoilers, every WWE story mode does that. I recall one from a few years back that ended with your character forcing Vince McMahon to dance in a chicken suit at Wrestlemania for all the stuff he puts you through in the story. Your character this time is Buzz. Didn't name your guy buzz? Doesn't matter, everyone calls him Buzz regardless. Why? Because he's "all the buzz" on the internet and the indies. Yes. This is how we start. But despite that, the early story has charm. It's dumb and funny and it's chocked full of wrestling inside jokes (my personal favorite: "Wakey, wakey, Jake the Snakey.") There are lots of hubs within the game where you can check your cell phone for messages, update your character, listen to podcasts about the story, and other things. You also have the opportunity to interact with characters you meet, making decisions and possibly engaging in side matches. These decisions, however, are a little deceiving. They rarely have a large impact on the overall story. Maybe you'll get to decide a match option, but don't expect to play through multiple times for different endings. There's just the one. Here's the issue. You have to win every match. And you have win the way they say. Or lose in a cutscene. Or win in a cutscene. This can be really frustrating if you know you can beat a character but the game forces you to lose. Or worse, your win doesn't affect anything and the game continues the same either way. In previous games your wins and loses were part of the story. They either moved your closer or further from your goal, but here... press X to try again. Another point of frustration is the stat trees. They're a fun experiment, but once you pick a specialty (like technician) you're locked in. You'll have a specific stat tree to unlock talents and abilities on and if you want to do something that's not there... too bad. You're a technician. No lucha stuff for you. And while the story mode gives you a fair amount of experience to grow your character, you'll need to play the other modes with your character if you plan on passing some of the harder matches later on in the story. Circling back to the story, let me just say this: it starts of charming and kinda of funny, but once you hit the WWE, it becomes a grind. The story becomes predictable, though it does try to give you fun moments. Personal favorite? Matt Hardy and the multiverse. Okay, lightening round. Let's zip through the rest of the game. Roster? Huge. Especially if you get the DLC, you'll have everyone from Roddy Piper to Ronda Rousey. Universe mode? It's back! Run your own shows, make your own titles, the whole spiel. Daniel Bryan mode? If you love Daniel Bryan and want to play through his career, it's amazing. If you're not a Daniel Bryan fan... eh. It's a lot of goal based matches where you'd not trying to win, you're trying to recreate the same conditions from his matches. Loot packs? Annoying, but could be worse. Unless you count the DLC, you don't spend any actual money. Unfortunately, it is a road block between you and the features you want. Earn currency. Buy some loot packs. Hope you get what you want. Rinse. Repeat. And of course there's the online community. I'm not a huge fan of playing online, but the creators are amazing. You can find and download customized belts, characters, and so much more.
So... if you're fan of series, 2K keeps it on par with what you'd expect. If you're on the fence and wondering if the series is for you... maybe hold out for 2k20. The story has no replay value and is a little disappointing, but has enjoyable elements. The create-a-wrestler options are good, but limited in for the story. Over all it's a decent title. Nothing super amazing, nothing super terrible. A solid B. Maybe B+. DFTBA So I've been going over my pitch for PitMad today. It needs work. Fortunately I still have a couple days, but those are going to be gone sooner than I'd like. (Side note: thanks to my Twitter writers' group for the help with my pitch.)
Fast forwarding through less important matters, I came the conclusion that I need to ready myself for inevitable cuts to the novel. Like... big cuts. I've already picked out a single scene that I think can go without damaging the overall plot too much, but now I'm considering whole chapters. Entire side plots that I could potentially restructure. Remove plots, reassign the integral plot points to other sections of the novel, and use that space to flesh out Jonathan (my protagonist) a little. It's not ideal, but in a frantic, fevered frenzy of phrasal formatting I think I might actually see a sleeker, refined Paladin. At the same time, I'm worried I won't actually be able to cut this down significantly more than I have without losing what The Paladin is. Man... editing and revising sucks. I wish I could just do the writing thing forever. When you're imagining being a successful author, you think about writing, staying up late, plotting, maybe signing books and getting sweet deals. You never think about trying to wrangle together beta readers, keeping track of dozens of emails of people who never get back to you, seeking out other writers, and trying not to feel like a fraud when everyone else talks about how far they are in their writer's path. Okay... that's out. Feeling a little better. Time to get back to work. Not abandoning this life any time soon. Gotta go review the outline for The Paladin scene by scene. Be Excellent to Each Other Feeling better. Time to get back to work. So what's on the docket now? Well, I'm still investigating this WattPad thing. It's still up in the air at the moment. I've had a few chats about it and there are certainly pros and cons to be had. The platform itself seems to be rather amateur. I'm not knocking it, but it's so open that it's filled with thousands of works that are nothing but mish-mashes of typos and grammatical errors. I saw one that had no punctuation. Another was two paragraphs worth (they didn't break up the paragraphs) in a single sentence. And of course, let's not forget the best example of that platform as discovered by awesome YouTube Jenny Nicholson. At this point, you may have stopped reading. But if you've continued, I'll try to list out the pros for this particular platform. Well... Um... let's see...
There's... a lot of people? I mean exposure is good, right? Theoretically, if I got more eyes on my stories, that could only be good for me, right? If they like Wolves and Wild Roses or Val's Blog, then they should love The Paladin, right? And so many of the fans on there are super fans. Though... a good chunk of what that site offers is fan fiction so... there's that. It was brought up that the people there will be brutally honest with critiques, so I guess that could help. My beta list was never terribly big and I could always use more critiques. I just don't trust that the critiques will be anything more than "u suck." Jeez, this was supposed to be the pros section. I guess that should be telling. Still, there's very little risk for moderate to good reward. I suppose that's really the reason I'm still considering it. Yeah, I probably won't get anything great from this, but I'm risking very little. I don't know. I guess it'd just be nice to focus on writing again instead of editing and querying. Speaking of... I gotta finish getting ready for PitMad! DFTBA |
Matias TautimezKeep your eyes open for my debut novel, The Paladin. Archives
January 2023
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