Writing

More comics soon and novel plotting

Appendix or no appendix?

The last poll about whether or not I should put an appendix with all the “magic rules” at the end of my fantasy novel as a resource to readers only got two votes, 1 yes, 1 no, so that’s no help! (I guess I might have gotten more votes if one of the choices was “Who cares?”) So the issue remains open for now… not that it’s really an issue, or something I should even be worrying about at all… it’s just blather really…

Plotting The Designers has begun!

Now that the rules of magic are just about all in place (there are a few little issues I haven’t quite worked out, but I don’t think it’ll matter for the purposes of this story), I have begun plotting. Act 1 is pretty much done, easy intro stuff, the conflict starts, seems like fun to write. Haven’t outlined specific scenes yet, but the overarching story is all there, I don’t foresee any problems with it. Act 2 and 3 however are quite tricky. I have a bunch of Act 3 done, and I pretty much have half of the climax figured out, but I still need to decide what exactly will happen to certain characters. And I still need figure out Act 2, how they get from the end of Act 1 to the beginning of Act 3. I’ve got some of it, but the details are tricky to work out.

Anyway, that’s how I’m plotting, just kind of going all over the place (though I like to get the ending set in stone as soon as possible, as it helps figure out what should precede it).

And, as I said before, I’m resisting the urge to turn this into a huge long epic (since I don’t trust myself to actually finish writing an epic). The rules of magic allow for tons of possibilities, but I must resist the urge to allow all those possibilities to be explored, which, I must admit, is hard! But I can always write sequels, I keep telling myself. KISS!

Hannifin World – Season 2

I’ve been continuing to draw comics for Hannifin World, it’s just a pain to scan them all in and resize them, upload them, etc. so I think Hannifin World will be a season thing; I’ll save up comics, then scan them in and upload them all at once.

So Hannifin World Season 2 will start on September 1st! I have about 70-something saved up, so it will run daily until sometime in November.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Rule making

The Designers progress

I have just about finished the planning for my novel. Not the plot planning, just the “rules of magic and stuff” planning. Which, uh… I might’ve gone a bit overboard. I mean, it’s not extremely complex, but there’s still quite a bit of info the reader will have to understand for the story to make much sense. On the one hand, all the rules give me quite a lot of possible scenarios to play around with, and it will be fun to create dangers and complex situations for the characters. On the other hand, it will be quite a lot to explain to the readers. One must be careful of infodumps or long expositional conversations.

I think the characters could have a book they refer to with all the rules in it, and then I can make that book an appendix or something. That way readers can read through all the rules if and when they want, and when characters refer to the rules, readers will know exactly where to look if they want clarification. Yeah, I think that’s the idea I like best. And, again, it’s not like there are really that many rules, but I like the book within a book idea. Do you think publishers would necessarily like it though? Might be a tough sell. Then again, I’ve seen it, or at least things like it, before, so maybe it’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m inventing a new language.

What do you think?

Is an appendix book a good idea?

  • Yes (50%, 1 Votes)
  • No (50%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 2

Loading ... Loading ...

(poll ends on August 21, 2010 @ 23:59 PM EST)

Three Uses of the Knife

In other matters, I recently finished reading David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama. Um… I definitely agreed with some of it, some I didn’t quite agree with, but through most of it I had no idea what he was talking about. His writing is kind of weird and clunky. My parody of his writing:

We take for granted the anomalies of consistent redundancy. Ever estranged from the drama of everyday life, we look for blessings mixed with enemies among the anachronistic alternatives. But it’s useless, and we cheat ourselves into fulfilling the gluttony of the temptations we seek.

A couple annoying things about his writing:

1) One of the most annoying things is that he doesn’t speak as an author to an audience. Instead, he always uses this all-encompassing first-person plural “we,” as if what he says is true for everybody whether we like it or not. But then when he says something (such as “we abhor introductions to the truths we don’t believe”*) you can’t really tell if that’s what he truly believes or if he’s being sarcastic, if he’s really including himself in the statement or if he thinks that readers and himself are above whatever he’s talking about. We don’t understand why he writes like that… we find it annoying and we want it to change!

*Not an actual quote.

2) Big words. I know, I should pretend to like big words to make myself look smart. I know, they weren’t big words to you because you is smarter than me! But I think it makes the writing clunky. If you’re going to use the confusing first-person plural, at least stop using three or four syllable words when a two syllable word will suffice. Sometimes using a bigger less well-known word is good because it’s more precise. Sometimes you’re just being annoying.

3) No organization. There are a few headers here and there, but overall it’s more of a long essay than a book. Which I guess I just find annoying because I’m not used to reading nonfiction books like that.

4) Politics. If he actually makes any political points, his clunky rhetoric hides it, but now and then it seems like he might be trying to say something political, but then he just sort of tiptoes around it instead of just saying something clearly.

Overall… I guess I’d have to reread the book to take anything away from it. There are some other Mamet books that look interesting, but this one didn’t really do much for me. It was quite short at least. It might be a great book, I just don’t know why Mamet writes as if he doesn’t care if people will understand him or not. He might blame me for this circumstance, but I blame him.

I’m sure I could understand the book better if I went through and made a bit more of an effort, though I’m not sure I’ll do that anytime soon… also, reading some of the 5-star reviews on Amazon, the reviewers tend to write more like he does (as opposed to how I write), so this is quite a subjective matter. I’m not sure the target audience for Mamet’s book is just any wannabe writer though. Not that it’s for more serious (i.e. snob) writers, just for writers with different rhetorical tastes.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Novel plotting and stuff

Midway through week 8 of Animation Mentor! This week we’re studying the basic walk cycle, so by Sunday I’ll have a basic walk blocked out; next week I’ll do the inbetweens. There’s a lot of stuff going on in a walk, so it does get a bit complicated, especially if you’ve never done it before, but it’s fun!

In other news, I’ve started plotting out my novel, The Designers, which won the poll a few posts ago. Of course, I don’t think I’ll call it that, but that will be its codename. I think it’s quite a strange book. I wouldn’t say it’s innovative, because nothing is innovative, especially if you think it is. But I guess I could say it’s innovative to me… there are a lot of thorny storytelling issues to deal with… how do I create danger for this character? How do I get this character to seem important to an audience? I’m kind of trying to challenge the traditional answers to these questions, though I don’t think I can really escape them. It will be interesting. (But not that interesting.)

(The other novel I was plotting a few months ago was The Protectors, which got no votes. That one still needs a lot more plotting anyway. For now, it will be put aside, along with all those plans I had made. Though I did say at the time I made them that I didn’t think I’d follow them. See, I was right!)

I’m also trying to keep the overall plot nice and short. My last few novels that I’ve planned or started writing (I’ve never finished one) were huge epics. OK, maybe not huge, but probably too complex for a first novel. So I’m trying to keep this one really short and tight. Just two or three character storylines with short overarching plots. Hey, I can write sequels if I want, let’s actually finish something first. For now, nice and short and to-the-point. I’m going to try to make the “epicness” come from the ideas, the plot, not the length.

To help me plan out the novel, I created a private wiki for myself, kinda like Hanniwiki, except it’s a top secret private one that I can’t tell you anything about. The secrets within would just blow your mind, you can’t handle the truth! Anyway, it’s been quite useful so far; if you know how to install it and set it up, I think it’s a very useful tool for writers, great for keeping notes and stuff all organized and in one place.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Poll: What novel to work on?

Hey, I finally installed a WordPress plugin that allows me to post polls… took a while to get it to work; a lot of plugins seem to have problems with WordPress 3.0, but I think this one should work OK.

So, as sort of a test of the new poll plugin, my first question is: what novel should I work on?

Over the past year, I’ve been working on plotting out at least three novel ideas. They all need more plotting and planning before I can actually get to the writing, but they all seem like fun to work on. (Not that I really have any time for this, maybe just 1 hour a week.) Here are the three ideas:

1) The whodunnit solvers: It’s about solvers of a whodunnit mystery. Only this takes place in a Hannifinesque fantasy kingdom. Really, all these ideas take place in fantasy worlds, and I just love the idea of writing a mystery.

2) The protectors: It’s about children (though this is not necessarily a children’s book) who receive certain magical powers to protect a kingdom from evil-doers.

3) The designers: It’s about people who have the magical power to design magical things. Only one of the designers is evil, oh no! And, alas, the only designer who has the power to stop him doesn’t even know he’s a designer! Woah, amazing! I won’t call them “designers” of course; that makes it sound like they belong on HGTV. And it would be less cliche than it sounds.

So which novel should I work on? They all seem like fun ideas. Of course, I probably still won’t actually get around to writing any time soon; most free time goes to my animation studies. But if I can spare one hour a week, on Sunday nights perhaps… that short story sale last week just really makes me want to write some more. (Though I have to remember to do it for the fun of writing, and not the prospect of money, which is always tempting.)

What novel idea should I work on?

  • The designers (75%, 3 Votes)
  • The whodunnit solvers (25%, 1 Votes)
  • The protectors (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 4

Loading ... Loading ...

(poll ends on Sunday, August 15, 2010 @ 23:59 PM EST)

This is all kind of self-indulgent I guess, but that’s what a blog is for, right? I mean, I guess I could post helpful stuff, like stock tips or how to improve your golf game, but what fun would that be?

Anyway, that’s the poll. Now I’ll have polls more often, woohoo!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Sold my first short story!

This week, I made my first fiction sale! I sold my short fantasy story Maker of the Twenty-first Moon to Daily Science Fiction. They are a new market, so they’re not quite well-established yet, but they pay pro-rates (currently they pay 8 cents a word; pro is 5 cents and up, so 8 cents is quite good), and, from the few author names they are currently listing on their site, it looks like my story will be in good company! So I’m obviously pretty excited!

Unfortunately it will probably be a good long while until I ever write (or sell) more, as just about all my energy is currently focused on studying animation. But whenever I do write some more, I think this sale will affect me in two ways:

1) I’ll have more self-confidence. I’ll say to myself: “You sold a story before, you have it in you to do it again!”

2) I’ll have less self-confidence. I’ll say to myself: “Is this work good enough? Is it as good, if not better, than that story you already sold?”

Maybe those two effects will cancel each other out. And it probably shouldn’t affect me that much anyway, since in the grand scheme of the world, this sale isn’t of particularly significant historic importance. But I suppose one’s first ever sale will naturally go to the head just a bit.

Woohoo!

By S P Hannifin, ago

To self-publish or not to be?

Good tidings!

If you are an avid reader of this blog (and if you’re not, you should be, because my words are full of much beauty and wisdom), you will know that I have criticized e-books for their high prices, and predicted that they won’t become very popular until those prices go way down. However, I realized earlier this week that Amazon allows writers to self-publish their books on the Kindle (and other e-readers that can interface with Kindle books). It seems to me that if a writer were to price his self-published books nice and cheaply, at $1 or $2, he actually has a great opportunity to get some sales. Probably not nearly as many as he might get if he got professionally published and his book sat on physical book store shelves, but I think he’d have a much greater chance of making any money at all (since getting published in the first place is quite difficult).

So I’m quite tempted to try this out. I reckon my first novel, if I can finish it, would take years to try to convince a traditional publisher to publish it, and who knows if it’d ever get published or not? So I might just skip that step and go straight to self-publishing. There are already some print-on-demand services that allow writers to self-publish their work for free, such as Lulu and Amazon’s CreateSpace (I think it’s called), but print-on-demand books don’t attract a huge audience in and of themselves because they end up costing slightly more than regular books. With paperless e-books, readers can now try out new writers for $1 or $2 (or in some cases for free), so the risk is much lower. So I’d really like to try self-publishing on Amazon for the Kindle, and pricing my book at $1 or $2. It might allow me to get some reviews and make a little money. Most importantly, though: it would give people an easy and convenient way to access and read my work. Which is why any writer wants their work published in the first place, isn’t it? So that other people can experience it?

Of course, there’s one huge disadvantage with this self-publishing system, which is also it’s biggest advantage: anyone can do it. There’s a TON of competition, so you still might not attract any readers or make any money. But at least the opportunity is there, and to me it looks worth taking.

That said, time is of the essence here. Everyday, other writers are finishing their novels before me, and putting them up for sale. The longer it takes me to finish my novel, the more competition it will have.

I don’t want to rush, of course, that would obviously make the quality of the work suffer. But, as a commenter suggested a few posts back, I’ll have to at least try being more disciplined, and set some deadlines for myself. I won’t keep to them too strictly, since Animation Mentor is coming along, and I’ll be dedicating most of my time to that (the chance of Animation Mentor helping me find a full-time job afterwards is much greater than the prospect of being a full-time author, obviously). However, here are my suggested deadlines to myself to help myself make progress and self-publish a novel as soon as I can without sacrificing quality:

Firstly, I’d like to have the entire novel completed by Friday, September 10, 2010. (That is the day I’ll be seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at Wolftrap with a live orchestra playing the score. It will be amazing. I might be crying at the end. And if I can have my first novel finished by that time, it will be even more amazing.)

Here are the novel-writing steps I decided upon earlier (again, just a guide, not an overly strict plan), now with suggested completion dates by them:

1) Clear beginning and clear ending, with character motivations and plans figured out (almost finished now) Due Monday, June 7, 2010
2) List of important scenes (this is the step I usually stop at and just start writing, but not this time, I hope) Due Monday, June 14, 2010
3) Details of how each scene begins and ends, adding connecting scenes when necessary Due with step 4
4) Purpose of each scene – make sure each scene is important and accomplishes something plot-wise and theme wise (not just one or the other (but plot-wise is more important)) Step 3 and 4 due Monday, June 21, 2010
5) Details of all scenes – details on what exactly happens between each scene’s beginning and end, including dialog (like writing each scene into a little screenplay) Due Monday, August 2, 2010

Complete rough draft due Friday, September 10, 2010

Complete final draft due Thursday, November 25, 2010 (Thanksgiving, and my birthday! Yay!)

And then it should be up on Amazon’s Kindle marketplace in no time! Yay!

OK, this probably won’t work at all; I’m bound to fail with lack of self-discipline, discover things take a lot more time than planned (especially since Animation Mentor will become my main focus), lose interest, etc., but it will be worth a try.

I think I finally have an outline for an ending though, so I need to start plotting, working backwards from the end, and forwards from the beginning. It will be fun! Especially with my new Piccadilly notebooks!

23 days left until Animation Mentor begins!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Plans on planning to plan to write

Yo, word up! Whatever that means…

June already… soon the year will be half way over… and what have you got to show for it?

I finished reading a short science fiction novel called Mass Effect: Revelation … yeah, it’s based on a video game, so I guess I’m a dork. But it was a very easy read, and helps kinda flesh out some of the back story to the game (which I thought was great), so I enjoyed it, whether you like it or not, and maybe I’ll read more, haha!

I’m continuing to plan out another fantasy novel. I’m going to try to resist starting to write until my plans are as detailed as possible. So far, all my attempts at novel writing have failed. With The Game of Gynwig, I diverged too far from my outlines and ended up not knowing where to go next. With The Book of Harbringer, my outlines were too loose and vague, and I didn’t put enough thought into how scenes connected with each other. I could (and would like to someday) revisit the stories and try to get them right, but in the meantime, some new ideas are floating around in my mind. But I’m going to try to spend most of my time planning and planning and planning this time around, so that I won’t be having to figure out any plot whatsoever when it comes time to actually write. It might take years, decades, I might even give up, as I often do… anyway, right now I’m trying to get a sense of the overall idea: how it begins, how it ends, and what all the characters’ main motivations are… in fact, here’s my plan:

1) Clear beginning and clear ending, with character motivations and plans figured out (working on now)
2) List of important scenes (this is the step I usually stop at and just start writing, but not this time, I hope)
3) Details of how each scene begins and ends, adding connecting scenes when necessary
4) Purpose of each scene – make sure each scene is important and accomplishes something plot-wise and theme wise (not just one or the other (but plot-wise is more important))
5) Details of all scenes – details on what exactly happens between each scene’s beginning and end, including dialog (like writing each scene into a little screenplay)

Then flesh it all out with description and whatever, and I’ll be done!

Really, I hate to blog about my own future plans, because I hardly ever follow them, but I still think it’s good to have a goal in mind when working on something on the scope of a novel (a novel I’m personally satisfied with, that is; I could write a crappy novel any old day of the week).

My new glasses are waiting for me at Walmart, so I get to go pick them up tomorrow, woohoo! The world will be less blurry!

26 more days until Animation Mentor classes begin! Getting nervous!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Movies and stuff and stuff

Been really loving my new Piccadilly notebooks (cheaper but just as good versions of moleskines)… if you want write or sketch or keep track of all your brilliant ideas that will never come to fruition, I recommend them. I mean, you could use ordinary paper just as well, it’s not like the notebooks will replace any talent you don’t have (though I’m sure you probably have some)… they’re just so aesthetically pleasing that they encourage you to use them. So I’ve found myself starting to plan out another fantasy story that I’ll probably never write…

Um… what else? It’s the start of a 3-day weekend, though I spent most of the day today sleeping, so my sleep schedule is completely off now. I’ll have to try staying up all night tonight to try to correct it.

I just went through one of my bookshelves and made sure all my books had my property stamp in it. It reminded me of all the books I bought but haven’t read yet. Meanwhile, I have all these books out from the library… and I keep getting half or a third way through a book and then moving on to another interesting looking one. So I’m going to purge my checked out library items and return some and see if I can read some of the books I actually own this summer. Then again, maybe not; I read out of interest, not ownership guilt.

Oh, I also started watching those old mystery movies I got, from the Mystery Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection. Watched the first one, so I’m 2% done! The quality is pretty terrible; these movies haven’t been restored or anything. But the first one, Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge, was actually pretty funny; I suppose it’s equivalent to one of the comedy detective shows that might come on nowadays like Monk. But it was made in 1937, when TV series weren’t really an option, obviously. Anyway, I think it will be fun to watch the other 49 of these…

Oh, I also watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus last night. My next few sentences might contain SPOILERS so look away if you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want to be spoiled…

The imagery and the uniqueness of the story and its world were pretty awesome. Some of the effects were a bit cheap, as in you could tell they were using blue screen sometimes with those fuzzy edges you get on cheap blue screen effects, but it’s amazing what they were able to do on such a limited budget. The thing that really annoyed me though was the ending. The ending was visually appealing, but story-wise, I just didn’t get it. The motivations and actions of the characters just became unclear and chaotic. It was just weird and unsatisfying.

Remember, writers, the two most important parts of your story (in my opinion) are the beginning and the end. (By “the end” I mean the story from the climax to the absolute end, not just the last scene.) The beginning should hook people (Doctor Parnassus definitely had a fun beginning), and the ending should satisfy them, revealing all mysteries and making *everything* clear. (I know some audiences don’t mind some ambiguity here and there, but I don’t prefer it.)

OK, that’s my blather for now…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Uh… poetry

God, I Want to Live Again

I stood before God’s front
and I prayed and said amen.
God said: “What do you want?”
God, I want to live again!

I’d wanted to be dead
with the pain I went through then.
And yet I somehow said:
God, I want to live again!

The fears, the hate, the why’s,
the dark places I had been,
and yet I somehow cried:
God, I want to live again!

And I looked down at the earth,
at where I lived back when.
Now I know what it was worth.
God, please, let me live again.

——————–

I’ve been feeling kind of bleh lately, too mentally tired to do much.  It’s probably my terrible diet and lack of exercise.  And I’m still waiting for the manufacturers to finish making my album.  I wonder how dads feel waiting for their pregnant wives to give birth?

Anyway, I wrote that poem.  I’ll probably be embarrassed by it later, but for now I like it, since I just wrote it and am feeling sappy.  I’ve written far worse anyway.

I was looking for some of the old horrible poetry I wrote back in middle school.  I had posted it on a website called Poetry.com, but it looks like the self-publishing company Lulu has taken it over.  And thus, my poems from back then are gone.  Which I think is mostly a good thing.  I think there was only one poem out of 10 or so that I was really proud of.  The old Poetry.com used to also sell self-published poetry books, but they were much more schemish about it.  They’d send you a letter congratulating you, making it seem like your poem went through some difficult selection process and if you gave them around $50 you could have a copy of the poetry book they’d like to publish you in!  Of course, unless you are knowingly self-publishing yourself, being published should never cost you money, but I think plenty of people fell for the scam.  Still, it wasn’t a bad site for just hosting your poetry, except you couldn’t edit or delete your work once it was posted, which was dumb.

Anyway, I went ahead and posted the poem to the site for a chance to win $5000.  Oh yeah!  Woohoo!  I can’t wait to win!  Maybe I’ll post a couple more later.  By the way, I usually detest poetry, but when I’m feeling sappy, and I mistake myself for happy, my mind will get all snappy, and though I might write crappy, I won’t sleep or take a nappy until I get my thoughts unfurled and write a poem for the world.

OK, that was lame.

Does anybody want a peanut?

By S P Hannifin, ago

Wrote a new short story

I just finished reading Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (v. 1) — a collection of short stories from his online magazine.  I haven’t read that many short story anthologies, but of the ones I have read, this is definitely one of the best.  Plenty of really awesome sci-fi and fantasy short stories in here.  I really enjoyed all the stories, but the ones I especially thought were awesome were Audience by Ty Franck, The Box of Beautiful Things by Brian Dolton, and Taint of Treason by Eric James Stone.  And, being an Ender fan, all of the Ender universe stories by Orson Scott Card were great.

While reading Taint of Treason, I got a sudden idea for a short story myself, and quickly wrote it while it was fresh in my mind.  It’s only about 1,900 words; I think that’s that shortest short story I’ve ever written (not that I’ve written very many).  It’s called Maker of the Twenty-first Moon and is about a man who sets out to kill a wizard before he takes over the world.  Doesn’t that sound great?

I guess that’s really all I wanted to say today.

By S P Hannifin, ago