Daemon Books is doing a book give away, seems pretty cool. Here is a link if you want to enter:
http://www.daemonsbooks.com/2010/12/29/giveaway-daemons-books-favorite-things-of-2010/
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Aphoristic Dangers of Show Don't Tell
On a recent paper for a philosophy of religion class I had a distinctly new comment about writing:
"My only significant problem is stylistic. Because of your aphoristic style, you often leave many things unsaid."
Now this is in no way a bad thing to be THE only thing wrong with a paper, but it got me thinking. On every writer's tips list I have seen they usually list "Show Don't Tell" as a major style problem of many writers today. I have tried being diligent to this, but now I see that as with pretty much everything else; moderation is key.
Let's expand on aphoristic style real quick (from Answers.com, Webster's Dictionary):
Aph·o·ris·tic·al , a.In the form of, or of the nature of, an aphorism; in the form of short, unconnected sentences; as, an aphoristic style.
So I was in a way showing too little and saying too little. I have seen authors (Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, Robert A. Heinlein, and Oscar Wilde) use this style with success, but this is a slippery slope to walk. If we, to burrow a page from Kolakowski (the guy the paper I got this comment on was about)--should we take show don't tell too far eventually we can end up saying too little.
This is not suppose to make you go out and stop warning about show don't tell problems (I know it is more common than too-little-tell problems). This is just an observation that falling too often into an aphoristic style can lead to disjointed sentences that lose their original meaning.
Writing is communicating with someone else. In a way writing is laying your soul and mind open for someone to pick through--hopefully with the intent of transferring something. Be that Something love, anger, memory, or a fart--a writer's foremost importance is being a communicator.
That's all I gotz on that thought for now, but I had another...
I think I want to start a writing project. Instead of writing on it once a week very intensively (like my current projects have been) I want to do a very minimal amount of writing but do it daily. So I am proposing to start writing 250 words everyday on a novel project for 90 days and posting it here. I know I won't do it every day probably, but my hope is to do it enough that after 90 days I can be proud of whatever I make.
--Because of finals this week I will probably start doing it on Sunday.
On that note, hope to see you back here on Sunday!
*Edit/Update April 5th, 2011--yeah let's reschedule the one-page-a-day-novel till life is not insane...
"My only significant problem is stylistic. Because of your aphoristic style, you often leave many things unsaid."
Now this is in no way a bad thing to be THE only thing wrong with a paper, but it got me thinking. On every writer's tips list I have seen they usually list "Show Don't Tell" as a major style problem of many writers today. I have tried being diligent to this, but now I see that as with pretty much everything else; moderation is key.
Let's expand on aphoristic style real quick (from Answers.com, Webster's Dictionary):
Aph·o·ris·tic·al , a.In the form of, or of the nature of, an aphorism; in the form of short, unconnected sentences; as, an aphoristic style.
The method of the book is aphoristic.
So I was in a way showing too little and saying too little. I have seen authors (Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, Robert A. Heinlein, and Oscar Wilde) use this style with success, but this is a slippery slope to walk. If we, to burrow a page from Kolakowski (the guy the paper I got this comment on was about)--should we take show don't tell too far eventually we can end up saying too little.
This is not suppose to make you go out and stop warning about show don't tell problems (I know it is more common than too-little-tell problems). This is just an observation that falling too often into an aphoristic style can lead to disjointed sentences that lose their original meaning.
Writing is communicating with someone else. In a way writing is laying your soul and mind open for someone to pick through--hopefully with the intent of transferring something. Be that Something love, anger, memory, or a fart--a writer's foremost importance is being a communicator.
That's all I gotz on that thought for now, but I had another...
I think I want to start a writing project. Instead of writing on it once a week very intensively (like my current projects have been) I want to do a very minimal amount of writing but do it daily. So I am proposing to start writing 250 words everyday on a novel project for 90 days and posting it here. I know I won't do it every day probably, but my hope is to do it enough that after 90 days I can be proud of whatever I make.
--Because of finals this week I will probably start doing it on Sunday.
On that note, hope to see you back here on Sunday!
*Edit/Update April 5th, 2011--yeah let's reschedule the one-page-a-day-novel till life is not insane...
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Max McCoy, live from Dogwood
I went to a journalism/writing/word-nerds convention in Kentucky a few weeks ago (just now getting things settled from the trip) and I am going to transcribe and talk about some of the seminars I went to on Concerning Fiction.
The seminar that really got me going and pumped about writing was by Max McCoy. He is the guy who wrote the Indiana Jones books, some westerns, but above all novels with mystery elements. In the seminar he told about how he became a writer and (without saying it all out loud) what it is like to be in the word-writing industry.
McCoy wore a plain dark navy suit, his hair was slicked back, and he wore a smile that said the milk in his coffee was a little sour, but he would drink it since it was free. He spoke in a dull timbre. He made sure to remind us that he had a day job, and at the end he told us the books on the table top were for sale.
I want to be Max McCoy when I grow; a shameless self-promoting writer/journalist who does and writes pretty much whatever he feels like.
Just to point out, these are his personal ideas, I cannot attest to any of these for sure--all I can say is I have heard a lot of these before so some of them are more than likely true.
But I digress. Here are the important bits straight from his talk:
The seminar that really got me going and pumped about writing was by Max McCoy. He is the guy who wrote the Indiana Jones books, some westerns, but above all novels with mystery elements. In the seminar he told about how he became a writer and (without saying it all out loud) what it is like to be in the word-writing industry.
McCoy wore a plain dark navy suit, his hair was slicked back, and he wore a smile that said the milk in his coffee was a little sour, but he would drink it since it was free. He spoke in a dull timbre. He made sure to remind us that he had a day job, and at the end he told us the books on the table top were for sale.
I want to be Max McCoy when I grow; a shameless self-promoting writer/journalist who does and writes pretty much whatever he feels like.
Just to point out, these are his personal ideas, I cannot attest to any of these for sure--all I can say is I have heard a lot of these before so some of them are more than likely true.
But I digress. Here are the important bits straight from his talk:
Thursday, October 7, 2010
World Building: Designing a People
When building worlds from the ground up it is very important to design who will live in that world. For worlds this is "simply" creating a culture of a people. In this case however I would be creating new races.
When writing fantasy the usual picks are humans, elves, dwarfs, orks, and trolls (or some mix & match). These races have generally well defined rolls already before the writer ever touches them. I for one started no different.
I wanted to have the basic rolls that elves, humans, and dwarfs offered to each other. One race to be smart and mystical and others to be strong and brave, but this got to be too much like every other piece of work in the field. I wanted to bring something new to the table. So I made a few rules:
To this end I wrote out a list of probably around 100 creature ideas. I played with the roles of the classical races. Then I thought about it in terms of a game.
When I thought "How would I make an online MMORPG about this?" my ideas and how I should build things seemed simpler. Designing my world to be lived in my more sense than designing it to look pretty. This also gave me a lot of perspective the people.
On an online game having hundreds of races would be just plain annoying. Also trying to talk about too much in a book would bog down the important stuff of the story. So I settled on around 7 races as being optimal.
As I created religions for these groups a lot of the story fell into place for me. Thinking about how they would interact created how the races should be like.
I settled on taking the function of the fantasy race I needed (example orks) then combined them with the attributes I found interesting (such as pachyderms) and combined those thoughts with a real-world country of the same time period as the book (the Spanish Empire) and created a race of creatures I felt was not a complete rip off of one thing, but a combination of several ideas.
Next time religion building.
When writing fantasy the usual picks are humans, elves, dwarfs, orks, and trolls (or some mix & match). These races have generally well defined rolls already before the writer ever touches them. I for one started no different.
I wanted to have the basic rolls that elves, humans, and dwarfs offered to each other. One race to be smart and mystical and others to be strong and brave, but this got to be too much like every other piece of work in the field. I wanted to bring something new to the table. So I made a few rules:
- No humans allowed. I wanted to make something new and humans are too relatable.
- All races could not be one of the usual fantasy races with just something extra. No long tailed goblins or furry elves.
- All races could not be an animal morphed to look like people. I did not want this to become a montage of furry-ness.
To this end I wrote out a list of probably around 100 creature ideas. I played with the roles of the classical races. Then I thought about it in terms of a game.
When I thought "How would I make an online MMORPG about this?" my ideas and how I should build things seemed simpler. Designing my world to be lived in my more sense than designing it to look pretty. This also gave me a lot of perspective the people.
On an online game having hundreds of races would be just plain annoying. Also trying to talk about too much in a book would bog down the important stuff of the story. So I settled on around 7 races as being optimal.
As I created religions for these groups a lot of the story fell into place for me. Thinking about how they would interact created how the races should be like.
I settled on taking the function of the fantasy race I needed (example orks) then combined them with the attributes I found interesting (such as pachyderms) and combined those thoughts with a real-world country of the same time period as the book (the Spanish Empire) and created a race of creatures I felt was not a complete rip off of one thing, but a combination of several ideas.
Next time religion building.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
On Planning of a Novel: World Building One
My first thoughts for my novel was a jumbled mess of concepts and ideas. To put it lightly I knew I wanted fantasy adventures and I wanted ultra-action. That is to say I wanted to write something fun and to have fun writing it.
I started by thinking some random things I would want in a novel for me to have fun with. I decided that magic, steam-based technology, and zombies would be pretty sweet to fit together. I let my interest guide my ideas.
After running these ideas over and over again in my head I started to think about how all those things could fit together as I wanted them to. I started off with a single idea--the airship. This single thought acted like a seed. After I started thinking of my world like a swash buckling adventure.
I asked questions like: how would you defend a city from a floating fortress? How would an army with magic and technology fight? What would people in a would like this look like?
From there I started studying, collecting, and cataloging pictures from the internet to reference as I created my world. I would Google image search things like: steampunk, fantasy, dragon, magic, troll, airship... etc. I also started looking into art from the 1700's (an era I choose to set my technology on). So I went to the local library and read everything that I had a gap in understanding for.
For example I read a book of 18th century navy ships. I contained drawings of ships by floors, uniform descriptions, and history of important battles. From this I gained a detailed look at how the warfare of the time would work.
The end result was something workable and interesting to me, but it was nothing more than a series of concepts.
To put them together I would need the people to live there and how they would look and interact...
I started by thinking some random things I would want in a novel for me to have fun with. I decided that magic, steam-based technology, and zombies would be pretty sweet to fit together. I let my interest guide my ideas.
After running these ideas over and over again in my head I started to think about how all those things could fit together as I wanted them to. I started off with a single idea--the airship. This single thought acted like a seed. After I started thinking of my world like a swash buckling adventure.
I asked questions like: how would you defend a city from a floating fortress? How would an army with magic and technology fight? What would people in a would like this look like?
From there I started studying, collecting, and cataloging pictures from the internet to reference as I created my world. I would Google image search things like: steampunk, fantasy, dragon, magic, troll, airship... etc. I also started looking into art from the 1700's (an era I choose to set my technology on). So I went to the local library and read everything that I had a gap in understanding for.
For example I read a book of 18th century navy ships. I contained drawings of ships by floors, uniform descriptions, and history of important battles. From this I gained a detailed look at how the warfare of the time would work.
The end result was something workable and interesting to me, but it was nothing more than a series of concepts.
To put them together I would need the people to live there and how they would look and interact...
Monday, September 20, 2010
First is First
Last time on my mind:
Freshmen year of college at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, I figured out that I did not want to grow up. Short one Never Never Land I decided to create my own. To that end I created Bard's Blade.
I took more writing courses and extra-curricular English classes. I even managed to get the okay from a professor of infinite awesomeness to let me write this novel for English Creative Writing credits--it was a good intersession.
Now I have joined several book/literature clubs and a writing forum (Legend Fire) to help further my reading, editing, and writing skills. I have also taken to editing an online magazine to help learn how publishing, marketing, and editing/compiling all work.
I am about eleven chapters in, and just started rewriting to check how the other nine (goal amount of chapters is twenty) should be written.
Bard's Blade is a fantasy-science-fiction story about the wars between good, evil, and the in-between parts. The main focus is on human(-ish) struggle against what is right. In its finished state it should be nine to twelve books (possible more depending on printing avenues).
In up coming blogs I will tell how I came to the decisions I have and what I have learned since I started working on this project. Also additional news about my project.
- I have decided I want to be a writer. This has been a dream of mine since I was very young, but now I have grown up and remembered who I was.
- I have a multitude of projects on my mind, but I will be focusing on my main novel, Bard's Blade.
- I plan on trying to get published. So in a way this is my written memoir and steps taken to that end of being published.
Freshmen year of college at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, I figured out that I did not want to grow up. Short one Never Never Land I decided to create my own. To that end I created Bard's Blade.
I took more writing courses and extra-curricular English classes. I even managed to get the okay from a professor of infinite awesomeness to let me write this novel for English Creative Writing credits--it was a good intersession.
Now I have joined several book/literature clubs and a writing forum (Legend Fire) to help further my reading, editing, and writing skills. I have also taken to editing an online magazine to help learn how publishing, marketing, and editing/compiling all work.
I am about eleven chapters in, and just started rewriting to check how the other nine (goal amount of chapters is twenty) should be written.
Bard's Blade is a fantasy-science-fiction story about the wars between good, evil, and the in-between parts. The main focus is on human(-ish) struggle against what is right. In its finished state it should be nine to twelve books (possible more depending on printing avenues).
In up coming blogs I will tell how I came to the decisions I have and what I have learned since I started working on this project. Also additional news about my project.
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