Three weeks on

So things on the writing front have not gone quite as planned.

In the first week of January I made a crack at continuing Monster Hunter, I had a case of knowing what I wanted to happen but getting the words on paper just didn’t work. So I got sidetracked with the later half of the week by making a start on a comic. I see it as another medium for story telling and if it wasn’t for comic books my reading comprehension probably wouldn’t be where it is today, plus trying to write through the eyes of a man with complete amnesia is a pain. But I’ve decided to only do it over weekends.

I’m starting to think Monster Hunter would work better as a comic, interconnecting stand alone stories. But for now I’ll leave it as is.

The past two weeks I’ve been working on Commandos. The first week went exceptionally well, meeting the 500 words a day mark. Before New Years I tried writing the first scene of this story where Twitch (space prince turned student turned soldier) gets captured with his platoon but I got bogged down in detailing the otherworldly stuff, which was one of issues that came up in a writing courses I did in 2007 at the critique. So I started writing with Swift (sexually frustrated commando) in the shower and built up the world from there. Yes, I overcame writers block with wet nakedness.

The weekend after this I had a Farscape marathon (an Australian made sci-fi show that was one of the inspirations for this galaxy) so I decided to continue with Commandos in the following week. Things didn’t quite go so well, I suspect it had something to do with me reading the Strain. Vampires, Guillermo Del Toro, its zombies apocalypse mets Blade 2 in literary form! But I figured as long as I did some writing each day then I’m making headway. The Commando leader butted heads with the soon to be villian and I changed Twitch to a tech instead of a soldier but that doesn’t save him from getting captured.

And to give you an idea of what Farscape was like, trailer:

2012 update

I’m almost through the first day of 2012 and I can report zero apocalyptic activity. However my current fitness training has a focus more on performance than body building so I can outrun zombies if they start popping out of the ground.

Anyway, for the time being the focus of my writing will be on Commonwealth Commandos (last year’s Nano redone) and Monster Hunter (the series of short stories – and yes, that’s the one title I could think up of that didn’t sound overly corny or gave away what the main character really is). I’m thinking of aimming for the 500 words a day again and alternating each week between what story I’m doing.

Monster Hunter has been interesting. It’s different putting a full story in a tighter word count than I’m used to, so I’m jumping straight to the action instead of building up to it. It could go either way but I’m picking and choosing what fights need to be shown. This first part of Monster Hunter is sort of an introduction, at this point the the main character Kyle will probably make a bad situation for himself over the series by killing people he probably shouldn’t or collecting  magical items for someone he shouldn’t. I’ll let you know how Commandos go… whenever.

I’m debating putting my current stories on this blog as I get them written, so if there’s any interest for that let me know and I’ll get onto that.

During my unemployment I spent a long time on a training course and for their 2010 magazine I wrote a short time travel  story, over the Christmas/New Years period I’ve been thinking how I could do it as a novel. This led to complicated ideas and the need for extensive planning and research; an alternate reality where Colonial New Zealand developed into a present day super power, an immortal samurai who knows things aren’t quite right and the things he does over the centuries to correct them. This might be something for SoCNoC or NanoWriMo, but we’ll see.

Catch up

Yeah it’s been a while since I posted, the reason for that is it wasn’t fair to post on this while I procrastinated on Heather’s blog about long distant relationships. I could say something about me sucking but that never ends anywhere wholesome.

So last time I was building up to Nano, which I did by hand. Things were going well. But then I suspected that I was developing carpal tunnel from writing 1,500-2,000 words a day. I got around 20,000 done before taking a few days off before changing stories and doing 500ish a day. Why change stories? Because I found there were things I wanted to come back to and change. So I “failed” Nano but had fun doing it.

I’ve started two new projects. The first is a redo of my Nano. I’m still doing the far away galaxy adventure thing, except the main character starts off in the military instead of working for smugglers and the villain is a knight turned rogue instead of an evil emperor. I’ve scribbled the first scene but I’ll probably wait until new years before starting a routine with it.

The thought behind the second one is doing a series of short stories instead of trying one long story. Any TV show could have inspired this but of course it had to be anime (Japanese animation which tends to have violence, gore and exaggerations in the female anatomy), in particular Devil May Cry and Blood Trinity. I’m going down the urban fantasy route with a half faerie wizard working as a mercenary, each story covering a different mission. I just want to see what I can do with this.

And just because I mentioned them, anime trailers…

Nano ’11

So over the past while I’ve been trying to get my 500 words a day for The Witches Way while working nights. It’s worked well, most weekdays I get the 500, some days I hit under the mark and some I don’t write at all. At the moment I’m making headway to the climax where three of the main characters are trying to con the bad guys, so I’m happy with the progress. The only issue is there’s a huge gap between what I’ve written and what I’ve typed.

November is coming up and I wasn’t going to do NanoWriMo but I think having a month from Witches Way could be useful. This week I made a list of story ideas and I’ve narrowed it down to my two older ideas. The first is a military science fiction story with some fantasy mixed in, or Star Wars from a soldier’s point of view and the other is Forgotten/the superhero story I’ve been meaning to get started. Forgotten might be the easier choice because I have more of the story thought out for it but whenever I do try it I might start it with the main character Ghost getting into the heroics rather than him waking up with amnesia, the powers and working out the situation from there.

I spent last year’s Southern Cross Novel Challenge and Nano trying to start Ghost’s exploits so going with the Commonwealth (the name of my sci-fi galaxy’s big government so that’s what I’ll refer to it from now) might be a nice change. At the moment I’m thinking of getting away fr0m the original idea (main character Twitch being a scientist on board a space station that gets invaded) and taking inspiration from Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 (a 1997 video game that I loved as a teenager) where a mercenary had to master his hidden force powers and stop a group of Dark Jedi from achieving their dastardly goals. While Twitch comes from the same gene pool as the Jedi-like beings in the Commonwealth his lack of their special abilities means he would have some difficulty in a straight fight with one of them. So I’ll have some fun working out how the conflict would play out.

This month I’ll probably make plans for both stories and make a decision based on which has more material to write with before November.

Bumps in the road

Last weekend the stomach flu/food poisoning cut into my writing.

I had the worst of it on Saturday night, wasn’t in any mood to write on Sunday and had Monday off from everything. Did my 500 words for Witches Way on Tuesday. Wednesday I got my hands on the second book in Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Ledger series (The Dragon Factory).  It’s about a cop turned special forces agent dealing with super soldier mercenaries, two groups of evil geneticists and a conspiracy that would decimate the world. So I took a few days off to read.

It got me thinking about how I was doing Forgotten, which has the amnesiac main character narrating through first person as he deals with his newfound super powers and the groups coming after him.

The interesting thing about the Joe Ledger novels is that the main character’s point of view is told in the first person and everyone else is told in third. I haven’t seen this done before. Maberry goes to the other people in the agency that Joe Ledger works for, the people behind the conspiracy, the people in the conspiracy that don’t know what’s really going on and a few character who get a narration for a short chapter to show the scope of what’s going on.

I don’t think I would go to that many point of views, or alternate between first and third person (I could with the latter but to me it seems like I’d be ripping off Jonathan Maberry) but I do think for Forgotten it’s important to get in the minds of the different factions in the story (the superhero team, the secret organisation creating superhumans and the Police) since in the long run it saves the amnesiac needing to be in every major event.

A line the amnesiac thought gave the bright spark of him being genetically engineered but I probably should stick to the backstory I gave him.

This week I’ll probably try to get back into the swing of writing 500 words a day and put Forgotten on hold, scribbling an outline and decide on the best way to write it.

’11 goals.

Real life seemed to conspire against me during HalfNoC. After restarting the story I didn’t manage to reach the 25K mark so I’ve decided to forget about Nano this year and take a new approach to writing, focusing on the stories I should get done.  I have two, the first is The Witches Way(at the moment it has 26K to it) and the other is Forgotten, the introduction to the superhero I talked about last post.

I’ve had The Witches Way going in some shape or form since late 2007. The history is that years before it I role played with Heather (girlfriend) and a few other friends on the forum to a TV show called The Tribe. The series ended (albeit somewhat unofficially) and we lingered until a small group of us moved onto a slew of free forums over the mid to late 2000s. By 2007 the group got smaller and we moved away from The Tribe setting (dubbed Tribeworld) so I decided to do an origins to some of these characters in the real world… or as real as my stories get.

Despite purely being a young adult post apocalyptic drama the Tribeworld role plays tended to draw in characters made from other fandoms and genres so The Witches Way is about a group of high school students who inadvertently get drawn into a war between angels and demons by one of their friends who happens to be a witch.

In my younger days I had the bright idea of writing this as series with the characters in Witches Way dealing with supernatural adversity and the rest of the series having them overcome it while kicking some demonic/divine ass. Obviously this story is taking me a while. I’ve restarted it numerous times, either to put in or take out a story element (creatures and characters) or because I hit a creative block. As of the start of July the current version was at 22K. I knew I needed to finish this story so I made a plan.

For me 500 words a day is achievable, even with job hunting or employment. So 500 words a day. 2,500 a week. Roughly 10,000 a month. By new years I should have done about 65,000. Yes, that’s excluding weekends. The idea is down time from the story should keep my motivation from burning out.

Of course… that could leave time for other projects.

No writing on  Saturday for reading, gaming or Doctor Who. 1000 more words every Sunday for Forgotten starting last week works out to 26,000 by New Years.

Behold my goals!

By new years I want to have either finished this draft of The Witches Way or have at least 87,000 word written and have Forgotten at 26,000. Achieving this hopefully I would have finished Witches Way and have a good chunk done on Forgotten, working on that during the early weeks of 2012 while starting another new story in the weekends.

Writers assemble!

With HalfNoC coming to an end (or more accuately with me not caring about reaching the 25K mark) I’ve been thinking about my non-challenge writing. I’ve got three story/series ideas (series because it seems I can never have a self contained story), one has 19K to it and the other two have yet to be started. There’s an urban fantasy apocalypse, a superhero one and a military sci-fi. The urban fantasy has the 19K to it so I’ll be going back to that in July because I’ve had it going in some shape or form in since 2007.

So that leaves either one of the other two to have going on at the side. I’ve done more galaxy building than plot making for the sci-fi so I’m going with the superheroes.

I first got the idea in 2008 after watching an excess of superhero films and television shows in one weekend and after brain storming characters I’ve done several attempts. I’ve set it in the present, in the future… I’ve done it in third person with multiple POVs, first person with the main character… it’s been a SoCNoC and a Nano. I’ve been pretty persistant with doing this story.

I’ve settled doing the first person, taking a page out of urban fantasy stories such as the Dresden Files and the earlier Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novels with the crime detective elements being brought into fantasy… but instead of wizards and vampires it’s superheroes. The last batch of planning had it set in an alternate New Zealand where 10% of the world’s population had super powers and North Dunedin was a quarantine zone to seperate the superhumans and the ordinary people, the main character wakes up with amnesia and the whole situation would be explored from that. This week I’ve been thinking of keeping the amnesia but setting it in the real world with less super powered individuals, no 10% and no quarantine zone.

So that’s the feedback I want from you, if you were going to which would you rather read? A story in the world as we know but with a few unique individuals, or is that a little typical now? An alternate reality with a feared minority or would I just be ripping off X-Men… keep in mind my ‘research’ has consisted of reading a load of comic books and graphic novels.

Thoughts?

When I go back to planning I’m going to take out the series idea and just focused on a story with a proper ending.

I might blog about the other stories later on.

Screw the word count

So a change in my work situation over the past couple of weeks has thrown a wrench into my HalfNoC writing. Lately I’ve struggled to fill out a page while earlier in the month I could do that within half an hour. I also didn’t like how my HalfNoC story was unfolding so I restarted it. Same cast of characters but a different situation. Instead of faerie trying to take over the UK and a secret organisation recruiting a wizard to stop them it’s the wizard investigating his serial killing brother and the not so innocent magical family he’s targeting.

I decided not to panic over the word count and just went with the idea, I like how it’s turning out.

Next month I’ll be going back to my old stories, hopefully I’ll get one done.

Progress

A week into HalfNoC I’ve decided the problem is having enough time in the day to write my daily amount (835 words). Saturday and Sunday really isn’t an issue for me, especially if I can get to the library (where I can do 200-250 words in half an hour).

The weekdays are another matter. While on my course during the day I can write for half an hour in the morning break and for another forty minutes at lunch (granted that’s while eating lunch, so closer to another thirty minutes). While there and with everything going around I get about a page done over that hour (200-250 words again). After getting to town I usually end up with forty minutes to just write before work, which ends up being another page and a bit. So last week I got about 500 words done during the day, a little more after work but I’d rather talk with my girlfriend at this time.

That’s a little under my estimated 835 a day.

On the upside over the Queens Birthday weekend I got roughly 2,400 which bumped my total word count up a little.  So my aim is get into the 800s each weekday so by the weekend it will be easier for me to get my word count up to where it should be. Just to give you an idea of where I am, according to the excel file I made for HalfNoC yesterday if I got 835 words a day I would’ve had 5,010 but roughly I’m around 3,790.

Let’s see how it goes.

 

Adapt or die

With the change in my HalfNoC game plan I’ve spent the past week or so thinking how to tackle the start of this new story without actually making a proper plan. This involved lots of walks and brain storms and I have an idea of what’s going to happen at the start of the story. Deciding on this I’ve come to realise that this story is going to be a lot like the kind of thing I wrote when I first started. Those were fan fictions that had guys with swords going on adventures. Yes it’s set in my take of the real world, so it’s not a fan fiction, but the sword adventure part does apply here.

To be fair the stories I do haven’t really changed since 2002, aside from me publishing them wouldn’t lead to a legal dispute with George Lucas’ representatives or Cloud 9 productions. My stories are the same fun adventures they’ve always been, hopefully more thought out and better written.

Now. For me, things have changed.

This week I’ve started a new job (after nearly two years of unemployment, following two in a half years of study) which while it will be great getting paid it does put a little obstacle with HalfNoC. For last year’s SoCNoC and NanoWriMo I would try to write on paper during the day and then type in the evening, aiming to reach the daily 1667 words after my scribbling had be converted to digital form. Why can’t I do this now? I’m working nights and at the moment I’m on a training course, which takes up most of my day but I’ll probably get out of it now with having a job.

That just leaves the choice of trying to type away at what I get written during the day after work or attempt to type up 5-7K words over the weekend. So my battle plan for SoCNoC and Nano won’t apply this time around, I’m hoping to get 1K written on paper during the day. Either way I should learn something for November.