Author Archives

by

Map of my world

This is the (poorly drawn) map of one part of the world in which my story takes place. I also have two others to go along with this. The general scale of the land mass is something like 400mi east to west and 500 north to south. The darn scanner cut off the right hand side, but not much is missing, just a long mountain range. Yes, it’s busy and got lots of stuff. Part of the purpose of this map is to serve as notes, but part is to serve as inspiration to myself. This is why everything is mostly written in the languages I created. Anyhow, world-building really is my favorite part, and having an interesting and unique place for my story to take place seems essential. Plus it’s sort of an expected thing for a fantasy, right?

IMG_20150101_0001

by

New years resolution

I’m writing this post at about half-past ten on New Year’s eve (Alaska time, so most of the rest of the world has already passed into the new year). The rain and wind has let up from our rather earlier than usual mid-winter tropical storm warm up, and from my living room window, I can see the bright explosions of color from the neighbor’s fireworks and also the reflected orange and gold flashes of light against the birch and spruce trees from yet another neighbor’s fireworks. It sounds vaguely like a shooting range where naval artillery is being tested. After work today I’m tired enough to go to bed now, but I’m staying up because I bought some (cheap) champagne special for the occasion, and I’m not going to drink it at any other time so…

Anyhow, for the past several days I’ve been thinking about new year’s resolutions. It would be easy to say, I’m going to finish my story this year work on getting it published and start on the next one. The thing is, I don’t want to make that the one goal for the year I promise myself tonight. Sure, getting my story done a goal, has been for a while, but I’ve never managed to keep a new year’s resolution, and I don’t want to taint my effort by calling it a resolution. I think I’m going to settle for my resolution to be losing a bit of weight. If I manage to finish my story this year, then yay! Otherwise, oh well, it’s not a big deal, I can keep cracking away at it – no pressure. I will finish it sometime, I don’t need a new year’s resolution to get it done, I just need to keep at it.

by

More hobbit movie

Last weekend I was talking to a friend about what he thought of the most recent hobbit movie. Without going into too much detail the short story is that he hated it. He thought the fight scenes were far too long and took up too much of the movie, he also felt that there was little connection to the characters. I’ve got to admit, I fully disagree with the perspective, but it’s totally valid. So, from the stand-point of story telling, I thought about it. Why should he come away with an opinion so totally opposite of mine? I think it boils down to expectations. I went in half-expecting the movie to suck, but hoping like hell to be entertained – I wanted my fifty-bucks worth of entertainment. I felt like it was delivered. My friend however, and this is a bit of speculation, was expecting to be absolutely blown away. Impressed by the movie in a way the book had.

With that in mind, I can see how folks, especially critics, felt let-down. A lot of people were going in expecting to see the movie with the same eyes they saw the Lord of The Rings. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, it rarely does with books turned into movies. What this highlights to me is the importance of properly setting expectations in your story. Over-promise, and don’t deliver, it doesn’t matter how well done the story is, people will say it sucks. Set expectations properly, and you’re likely to succeed in entertaining your reader without making them feeling like they’ve been the subject of a bait-and-switch scheme. I think my point here is to consider how much any given plot element or character or conflict is built up before you get to the end.