Finding the time

It's one of those things that people sometimes say, 'Oh if only I had the time I'd write'. Now leaving aside the implication that somehow time is the only requirement for creating story, characters and dialogue there is the question of how hard is it to find time to write? My own personal experience is that the mechanics of writing has gotten so much easier than it was in the days of pen and paper, or the typewriter. I personally could never get the hang of the latter, especially as I'm the sort of writer who likes to blast out a chunk of text then go back and fix any mistakes or sections that just don't flow. The arrival of the word processor was a god send, although of course at first that meant your were still tied to the desk where said word processor lived.

The advent of the laptop computer may have made it theoretically possible to write anywhere, but in practice I found them clunky and awkward. The only time they were really useful was when you were sat in a hotel room somewhere. the devices that have really freed up writing time for me are the smart phone and the tablet.

With these two devices I can write anywhere whenever I have a free moment and I can make what I write accessible on my computer via cloud storage. It just opens up whole knew opportunities with devices that you really can take wherever you go and are genuinely convenient, so my advice as far as computing goes is have a desktop for home and use a tablet or a decent sized smart phone for everywhere else.

The other thing that's changed is that you used to have to be a little bit anti-social when it comes to writing, you are going to want to spend those spare moment tapping away instead of discussing sports, movies, or what you did last weekend/are going to do this weekend. Again the smartphone and the tablet have come to the rescue here. At lunch time I often walk into the canteen at the office and find a dozen people there. The overwhelming majority of them with headphones on, glued to a screen and watching YouTube, or a video downloaded from Netflix or Amazon Prime. Now it's easy to sit there obliviously typing away, so long as you don't succumb to the blandishments of YouTube yourself.

An added bonus of the inability of people to put down their smartphones is that nobody ever asks what your doing and then follows up with an endless string of questions about what your writing. I find nothing is more likely to kill your enthusiasm for a story than having to repeatedly summarize it for people who have zero interest in your genre of choice and will inevitable utter the words 'Oh if only I had the time...'

Covered

And yes this one is about cover art, a topic that if you look back at the old blogs has plagued me for as long as I have been working on the 'last' draft of Secession Campaign and here is the final version of the cover:

And if you've checked the name of the file, yes there were indeed versions A through O. Now the question is was it really worth all the effort? I have to say I think it was if only because I can recall a couple of instances where a really bad cover out me off a book. Now lets be clear about what I mean by a bad cover, I mean something that looks like it was thrown together as an afterthought. The two instances I have in mind were the opposite of one another stylistically, one was very simple and one was quite busy in terms of visual elements but both were lacking in any creative effort and like it or not falling down on one part of a creative effort doesn't inspire confidence in the rest.

My cover is a mixture of 3D rendering and postwork in a paint program and given that this book is about space war something like it is almost mandatory in the genre. On the other hand if your book is a Victorian romance then maybe some text and a few 'curlicues' are all you really need so long as its clearly yours, not just some piece of clipart from the internet with some Comic Sans text on it (Comic Sans is just a no, trust me).

Would you...???

I'm going to start this blog by proposing that you as a writer are faced with one of the three opportunities:

A - A film company is remaking movie X and wants you to write the script

B - A publisher wants you to write a new addition to popular fiction series Y

C - Famous author Z left an uncompleted work and their publisher wants you to finish it.

Each of these offers of course with the requisite promises of fame and fortune, so the question is would you take any of these offers?

So here's my take. As far as A goes the response has to be, 'which movie?' If someone is planning to remake Casablanca or Citizen Kane then it has to be a big fat no. The simple truth is that the best you can hope for with a classic is that the critics and film buffs won't call for your summary execution. On the other hand there are plenty of movies that had the potential for greatness and fell flat, that might be a challenge worth taking.

B is another 'maybe' scenario. There are series that have enough 'white space' in them that a new story could fit in easily, consider James Bond or Sherlock Holmes, new stories have been created around those characters for years and some of them are pretty good. On the other hand there are series with a tight narrative structure where a new story would be downright ridiculous, who in their right mind would take on creating a fourth chapter of 'The Lord of the Rings' for example?

C is by far the easiest to answer, basically no, nyet, non. This option is a poison chalice. The fundamental problem is that whatever you do, however brilliant you plot and dialogue and it is never going to match up with what the fans of the author imagined, you are doomed to disappoint whatever you do.

So would your answers be the same or would you bravely throw yourself into the fray?

All In The Game

So movies based on video games have not had a shining history, regardless of the quality of the cast, the effects, the cinematography, they all seem to fall down when it comes to story telling. What is the apparently insurmountable problem with writing a good video game movie?

Once upon a time games had zero narrative, no one felt the need to provide a detailed backstory for Pong, or Pacman or Space Invaders. Over time though narrative began to creep in even if it didn’t amount to much more than ‘the princess has been captured jump around all these platforms to save her, which of course brings up one of the earliest, and most infamous, game movies, ‘Super Mario Bros.’ This set a something of a template for future failure decent budget, decent cast (Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper included) and yet rejected by critics and the paying public alike as a disaster.  There are plenty of versions of what went wrong, but it can all be stripped down to a fairly simple issue. The makers of the film had a story in mind, however it had nothing much to do with Mario and Luigi. The film effectively applies a thin veneer of Mario Bros. over a generic story to little or no effect, appealing neither to Mario fans nor the general viewing.

This set something of a pattern for video game movies, a few name checks from the game pasted into a generic movie plot in the hope of a quick pay day before anyone notices how poor the film is. Now to be fair stripped of the gameplay elements the narrative of a game could quite often be comfortably fitted on a post-it note. In recent years though narrative has become a much richer affair in gaming, games like Bioshock, Prey or Red Dead Redemption are to a large extent driven by their story rather than simply treating it as an excuse for the action. This would seem to make things easier when it comes to creating a game movie, but I think it's actually made things worse.

For one thing more complex narratives has gone hand in had with the development of 'open worlds' and multiple ways to play the game. it wasn't uncommon in the past for what looked like open maps to contain 'invisible walls' to make sure the player stuck to where the designers had actually filled in the details and allowed interaction. Now the trend is towards games where you can wander where you like and interact with everything. This goes hand in hand with offering the player multiple options to complete a particular objective, you can kick in the doors and shoot everything that moves or slip in and out without anyone knowing your character was ever there. This makes for entertaining gameplay, but a nightmare for anyone trying to write an essentially linear film script. You may create a good script, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the experience of the majority of players and unless your story can resonate with those completely unfamiliar with the game, well lets say that to date it seems no one has managed that latter achievement.

There may though be a more fundamental problem at work though, when you've lived a character's life vicariously, whether it's Max Caulfield from 'Life is Strange' or John Marston from 'Red Dead Redemption' is there really enough appeal in simply sitting back and watching someone else's take on the same experience to ever make a successful box movie?

Bullet Time

I've done a couple of blogs about some of the social issues in a future universe, but this time I'm turning to the topic of future firearms and why there may never be 'a last bullet'

Whether its called a blaster, a phaser, or just a beam weapon science fiction loves what they like to refer to in modern military parlance as directed energy weapons. Stripped down to its basics a directed energy weapon does away with a projectile in favour of a focused beam of energy, lasers being the best known example. Science fiction stories assume that you can turn something like the HEL MD into a rifle or pistol sized weapon. While we're all familiar with the way all manner of technology has been miniaturized to the point of being handheld, but in doing so the power requirements have been massively reduced. For a DEW this is obviously not a viable option, the power it can deliver to a target is the whole point of the thing. This is going to not only require a battery with quite astonishing storage density, but there is also the issue of converting the charge into the battery into a beam of energy. The laws of physics dictate that is not going to be 100% efficient, there's going to a be certain amount of waste energy, and waste energy usually manifests itself as heat. So now your DEW needs either active cooling, fans or refrigeration, or some kind of radiator and if you want dissipate that heat quickly it's going to be a big radiator.

Now in a science fiction universe all these problems can be resolved, infinite storage and perfect energy conversion are a snap if you can imagine a universe with teleportation and FTL. The thing is though why would anyone put in the effort to begin with? Turning HEL MD into a rifle is going to be a long evolutionary process and what we have right now works pretty well, indeed you can argue that from a caveman throwing a rock at an animal to the state of the art railguns being developed for next generation warships is an unbroken line of projectile weapons. Simply put guns work, they get the job done so why would anyone want to spend the time, effort, and money on making your blaster/phaser possible?

The Star Trek phaser actually illustrates one of the better reasons to invest in a handheld DEW, the power can be dialled up or down depending on the situation. Now the nice neat delineation between a stun and lethal setting is a little unlikely, but the idea of a weapon that could be varied from simply inflicting pain at the bottom end of its range to a lethal shot at the top end is not unreasonable is not unreasonable and offers more flexibility, particularly valuable in our current day world where combatants are often hard to tell from the innocent bystanders.

The other big attraction is ammunition, both the weight of it for the soldier and the logistics of supplying it. Modern firearms can eat through ammunition at a frightening rate and despite the tendency towards smaller calibre ammo with lighter rounds the weight is still a burden for the soldier who faces the dilemma of carrying enough into battle for extended combat or risk running out because supplying ammo to a fast moving front line is a challenge for any military organization, especially if your means of delivery is liable to come under attack and you can't just make more out in the field. Now with a DEW the soldier effective can make their own ammo, they just need an energy resource to tap into, that might be anything from a solar panel to a power socket in some home or factory. Lifting the burden of worrying about ammo would be a major incentive to adopt energy weapons on a wider basis.

Now this isn't a matter of one side of this being right or wrong, really it's just to show that you can make an argument for whichever approach you want to take with weapons in your story, you can justify sticking to the tried and trusted bullet or go with a light show of different types of DEW. Only thing I can't come up with is an explanation for why so many beam weapons in TV and movies seem to fir a burst that travels at about walking pace...

Critiquing Critcism

Be warned this is more of a ‘this really annoys me’ blog than a discussions of themes and ideas. A couple of years ago a multiplayer online game called World of Warplanes(Here after referred to as WoWP) was launched. The company behind had previously had great success with a WWII Tank game and would go on to have further success with a WWII naval warfare game. WoWP though became the black sheep of the family, meeting devastating criticism on it’s launch and being generally regard as an unplayable mess. Most people who wanted to multiplayer air combat action stuck with a rival game called War Thunder, WT for short. Fast forward to last week and the makers of WoWP release a brand new revamped version of the game. Several well known youtubers who were painfully familiar with the original bit the bullet and gave the new version a try. Their opinions were by and large favourable, 2.0 might not have the depth of WT, but it was playable and more importantly fun.

This would seem a pretty innocuous conclusion, however the comments sections for these videos were flooded with people vehemently insisting that WT was far better, that the youtubers in question should be discussing WT instead and that WoWP 2.0 was clearly garbage, the latter based not on playing the game but simply on looking at a Youtube video of the game. 

 

This unfortunately is pretty good example of the kind of criticism you see far too much of on the net. Firstly a robust effort to ‘protect’ some cherished book/movie/game in the face of the mere suggestion that something else in the same genre might be worthy of people’s attention and secondly the willingness to attack, or praise, a work based on nothing more than second hand information or peripheral issues.

I may have been very negative about Star Trek Discovery in my blog Retcon Factor 5! But that was based on sitting down, watching the show and seeing what the show delivered in the way of characters and story. I hope at the very least I expressed a coherent view of why I didn’t like it. And that’s the thing about criticism, if enough people take the time to explain why they liked or didn’t like a work that can be good thing, a way for the creator to learn what did and didn’t work with the audience they want to connect with. That’s what makes it so frustrating when online communities seem to want to praise/destroy a work based on everything about it except it’s actual content.

The Last Word Part 2

So here's the concluding part of 'The Last Word'. Remember, if you liked it tell your friends, if you didn't tell your enemies. :)

The Last Word-Conclusion

“I am afraid you will have to settle at seven Mister Gray,” the words were delivered by a cool female voice that came from the hallway behind Carmichael.

Carmichael turned slowly and saw a red haired woman stood there, smartly dressed and more importantly holding a small revolver pointed at Carmichael with a steady hand that suggested some considerable experience with firearms. The light in the room suddenly increased as the lamp on the bedside table was turned up.

“I would move very carefully Mister Gray; you wouldn’t want to unsettle Miss Collier.” Luscombe’s voice had lost its querulous and rasping tone, except that Carmichael now realized the man in the bed could hardly be Luscombe.

Cautiously Carmichael turned back to face the figure in the bed and now he could see that the lines in the face and the sunken cheeks were the product of skilfully applied stage make up and the white hair nothing but a wig, one that the man in the bed began to remove along with the whiskers and uttering a sigh of relief as he did so, “Who are you sir?” Carmichael demanded.

“My name is Augustus Fancy, perhaps you have heard of me?”

“I have of course heard of the most famous private detective in the country, I have an obituary prepared for you in my files.”

Rosalie Collier let out a snort that might have been a suppressed laugh but Augustus Fancy looked far from amused, “Under the circumstances you will forgive me if I do not find that particularly flattering.”

Carmichael ignored that, “Clearly you have uncovered me but I am at a loss as to how you could have done so.”

“Have no fear Mister Gray Augustus will be only too happy to explain.”

The words were uttered in a tone that seemed affectionate rather than disparaging and Augustus Fancy smiled in response.

“Well since I have listened to Mister Gray’s account of his actions it seems only fair he listen to mine, and after all he did ask.” Fancy had been wiping the make-up from his face with a cloth and now he cast it aside and all traces of amusement disappeared as he fixed his gaze on Carmichael, “I was hired by the brother of a gentleman named Clark Morris to investigate his death, I trust you are not going to be so crass as to deny knowledge of him?”

Carmichael decided to say nothing and Fancy continued with his explanation.

“As it happened there was a quite venomous sibling rivalry amongst the three Morris brothers, the one who approached me wished to prove that the other surviving brother was guilty of the murder. Needless to say I was able to swiftly prove that Clark Morris had not fallen victim to any familial jealous, whilst at the same time proving to my own satisfaction that he had indeed been the victim of foul play.”

This time Carmichael was spurred to respond, “But I was most careful to ensure that Mister Morris’ death would appear accidental.”

The look that drew from Augustus Fancy was one almost of pity but his words were harsh, “And there lies the eternal mistake of the amateur criminal. You entered a place, you committed a dastardly murder, and whatever you may have done to mask that fact cannot eliminate the imprint you have left behind you. That imprint may go unnoticed by others Mister Gray but not by me.”

Being permitted to see past the normally affable and charming exterior of the detective to the ruthless analytical mind that lay beneath shook Carmichael but he did his best not to give the detective the satisfaction of showing it, “But even if you found this ‘imprint’ you speak of it could not have pointed to you to me.”

“It did not,” the detective admitted, “But it caused me to seek out every piece of information I could obtain on the life and times of Clark Morris, including reading his obituary, and there I found your written confession to the crime.”

Now Carmichael could no longer continue even the pretence of composure, “What nonsense is this? I did no such thing!”

“Oh but you did sir, in five simple words you revealed everything, ‘recently engaged to be married’, you do remember the words your ‘higher power’ compelled you to write I trust?”

Carmichael did remember all too well and dread crept over him as he admitted, “it was not the spirit that commanded me, I added that detail at my own volition.”

“Because of course you could not deny your drive to craft the most precise and complete obituary, even if meant including a detail that had, according to my investigation, been known only to Mister Clark Morris and his intended as he had yet to seek permission from the lady’s father. A detail I have no doubt he revealed to you as he pleaded for life, a detail that turned my entire focus upon you Mister Carmichael Gray and a detail that leads directly to my discovering your next intended victim and concocting this ruse to ensnare you.”  

Carmichael was immune to the venom in the words, all he could think of was how he had finally failed the muse that had called him to action, “And now you have had your say I imagine you intend to summon the constabulary?”

“Naturally, the body of circumstantial evidence I have amassed, plus the statements that myself and Miss Collier can bear witness to should be more than adequate to see you charged and convicted; assuming that you choose to prolong the agony by protesting your innocence. However if I judge you correctly I do not believe that will be an issue.”

Carmichael shook his head, “No I will not sully my calling with such falsehoods. I have failed in my duty and I must be punished for that.” He reached for the inner pocket of his coat, and halted as he sensed Miss Collier gun hand tensing, “I am not reaching for a weapon, simply an item that I wish to pass into your custody rather than the churlish hands of some dim-witted constable.”

“Very well Mister Grey but be quite sure that if you try any trick Miss Collier is an excellent shot.”

 Slowly Carmichael drew a long white envelope from his pocket, its condition immaculate despite the length of time he had been carrying it with him.

“And what does that contain Mister Grey?” The detective enquired.

Carmichael’s lips quirk into what might have been a smile, “Can you not surmise that for yourself?” Without another word he let the envelope flutter to the floor and lunged. He did not throw himself towards Miss Collier in an attempt to escape, nor did he try and grapple with Augustus Fancy in some undignified effort at petty vengeance, for if the detective had been the instrument of his downfall Carmichael Gray knew he had been its architect. Instead he threw himself towards the large sash window that looked out on to the street.

For the last time Carmichael Gray felt the power reach out to aid him and he was oblivious to the pain as he crashed through the glass and plunged downwards, instead he felt a brief moment of satisfaction before he met the pavement and oblivion claimed him.

*****

Augustus Fancy climbed out of the bed and walked to the ruined window, a brief inspection of the figure lying on the pavement confirmed that they would require the services of a pathologist rather than a physician.

Behind him Rosemarie Collier has retrieved the envelope, “And have you deduced the contents of this my dear?”

Augustus turned to her, trying not to appear smug and not entirely succeeding, “It was not any great feat to do so; it can only be the obituary of Carmichael Gray, written by the only hand he would ever trust to do it justice.”