Art, Pretentiousness, Intention
In the comments of my post about
Creative Freedom,
Melly raised a great point:
"Not all art is pretentious and not all pretentious creations are art."
This is true. Unfortunately, however, there is guilt by association. A lot of unassuming, genuine art is tainted by pretentious creations. The bad apples.
As I said in the previous post, the root of this pretentious art is an obsession with creative freedom.
Most creative people have high respect for creative freedom. So when you add these things together, you begin to see the problem.
If pretentious creations come from an obsession with creative freedom, and most creative people value creative freedom as being extremely important, then creative people need to watch out for this.
Intention plays a large part as well. When you let the reader or audience know that you are
"Doing whatever I want," you are sending them a message that you are
intentionally disregarding their interest or enjoyment in the piece. Personally, when I see a piece of art, read a book, or watch a movie that does this I get angry. I become offended.
The audience is
not there for the creator's a
musement.
The medium can be a sandbox of creativity for the creator while they are simply practicing, or playing. Sometimes this happens during the creation of 'real work.'
But when it's done well, the audience won't be aware that the author was playing, or toying, or goofing off. To them it'll just seem fun or well-crafted.
The exception is when the audience is meant to participate in the work, such as in standup comedy. Magic shows are another example. Video games are yet another.
Comedy, magic shows, and games get away with amazing degrees of nonsense simply because suspension of disbelief is easier when the audience participates.
To be sure, a lot of art relies on interpretation. When the interpretation of the entire composition becomes the responsibility of the audience, that's pretentiousness.
As the creator, you have to provide some direction. Otherwise, what have you actually done? What work have you done? What 'creativity' has taken place?
There should be clear and obvious direction somewhere within the composition.
I buy a product because it imparts some benefit. I watch a film to be interested, informed, or entertained. I read a book to either be informed, interested, or entertained.
Audiences are fickle. We're just human. We like to see order and a point to things.
As a writer, defy that at your own peril.
Freedom = Want, Challenge = Need
To clarify on my last post, creative freedom is good and healthy too. My point was that it's no guarantee of quality work.
If you ask any creative person, they will tell you how important creative freedom is, to them and others. Few talk about creative challenge and constraint.
Creative challenge would say,
"Let's write a story set only in a phone booth." Hence the movie Phone Booth.
This is what I mean by the difference between freedom and challenge. Le Artiste would say,
"Nah, the whole thing a phone booth? That's too constricting! I need 500 locations. Or the 18th Century English Countryside! The American West! Ancient China! Outer space!"Of course sinking into relativism--all choices are equal. But a phone booth lends immediate creative challenges that compel the writer to be innovative. The differences between 'anywhere' and a phone booth are vast. With the phone booth you've got to think of every conceivable option to keep the setting fresh and alive. How will it be compelling? That's not stifling. That's creativity itself grabbing you by the shoulders, shaking you and screaming,
"You think you're creative!? Yeah? Well, creatively solve THIS!"We all
want creative freedom. But we all
need creative pressure.
Otherwise we'd never get anything done.
When starting a new project, do you run towards creative freedom? Or do you stop and ask yourself,
"What would really challenge me?"
Freedom vs. Challenge
In the great debate between art vs. entertainment you encounter the root of the issue, which is creative freedom vs. creative challenge.
I'm going to propose something that might be controversial;
The two are mutually exclusive.If you are pursuing creative freedom, you're opening up the field or playground. You're avoiding concrete choices. You're just playing. You're being whimsical. Following your muse, or fancy. Whatever your heart's desire.
When you choose a creative challenge, you are confining yourself to a structure. You are picking a certain problem to work on. It is the opposite of opening the playing field; You're closing it. You're narrowing things down. You're making choices. Each choice you make rules out another. Of course, you can change your mind at any time if you choose, but this is
moving towards creative freedom again and
away from creative challenge.
As I've posed in the past, it's like quantum entanglement and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. You can't have both creative freedom and a creative challenge at exactly the same time, on the same item.
Now of course, in any area of your writing you can choose a creative challenge in one area, like plot, and choose creative freedom in another such as prose--choice of words. But these are two different elements that make up the story. You cannot choose a
highly structured plot, and then decide you
don't want a highly structured plot at the same time. You have to choose right there and then between creative freedom and creative restraint.
In my experiences being around creative people, nine times out of ten creative people will rush towards creative freedom. Many creative people even dislike the idea of creative challenge. They don't like constraints or structure. They don't want to be limited in any way, even if such limitations would
make their work better. They just want to be free.
But as we all know, freedom is a great responsibility. In being free, we are
free to be ignorant, free to be wrong, free to create poor work, free to be lazy, free to be egotistical, free to... well, you get the point.
To reign some of these things, it means we need to sacrifice some of our freedoms.
I think it is worth it. In fact,
creative excellence demands it. To take creative freedom to the extreme, you could write a novel in a completely fictional language without ever providing a legend or translation to the reader.
Imagine a novel written in a gibberish language that no reader can decipher. This is an extreme example, but it is in fact a creative freedom that a writer might choose. It is safe to say that nobody would read this novel. Few people would even care about it aside from the author. And this is exactly the problem most authors have with their creative freedom. They take it as a war cry, an absolute decree.
The reader must suffer for the artist's creative freedom! It's art, damn it!
I'm going to go off on an example of a film I recently watched. The film was Silence Becomes You, starring Alicia Silverstone. After sitting through 2 hours of this film, I still didn't know what it was really about. The only summary I can give you is this;
There are two sisters who live in their parents house. Their dead parents were magicians or artists, or both... it's unclear. The sisters try to seduce men into the house where they engage in a love triangle of mind games.
There are all kinds of mystical scenes and sequences. Strange visual effects, and strange things happen. If this sounds really vague, that's because it is. You see the camera go in and out of focus on objects around the house, like glass ornaments and knick-knacks. There is a sense of color and art through the house. The wallpaper looks like desaturated and distressed tie-dye. The winter outside the house is beautiful, I must admit. There are several shots that fade in and out of focus, showing snow and ice. Lots of just random, artsy imagery. In fact, much of the film is composed of this imagery. Visual poetry.
The sisters have visions of their dead father and mother, in between interacting with this man. The sisters say cryptic things to each other, like "You can never leave the house!"
I was led to believe maybe this was a ghost story. But the writers and filmmakers never really make that clear. To be honest, I don't know what the story was about.
All I know is, somebody spent a lot a money ($6 million) and filmed something very artsy. It's undissectable. Inscrutable art.
To me, this is the highest definition of what art is--it's something that is impossible to interpret in any 'pure' sense.
It's elusive.It is the fascist dictatorship of absolute creative freedom! Without creative constraint or challenge, it is impossible to convey any one specific thing. It is impossible to have definition. It is impossible to have any kind of fixed, defined, or
meaningful communication.I don't know what I got out of Silence Becomes You. I feel like I wasted two hours of my life. I'd like those two hours back, please. Art or not. I respect the creator's artistic license and sense of freedom. But I expect them to define
something, to communicate
something. I didn't get a single thing out of that film. I'd rather slit my wrists than read an 800 page novel of Silence Becomes You.
A reviewer on IMDB.com agreed with me fully when he said:
"Things I would rather do than see this movie: 1. Shoot myself in the foot 2. Eat shards of broken glass 3. count grass blades in the yard 4. Have an enema 5. See the proctologist"
Maybe I get too worked up about this stuff, but I feel it's important to have a thesis or a point for the reader to take home with them after finishing your story. Is this reviewer, or I being too extreme and judgmental about art?
Maybe.
As the writer you have to say something. It doesn't necessarily have to be deep or profound. It just has to be there. A definition. A thesis. A statement. A question. A provocative idea. Even if it's just mindless entertainment, a catchy yarn. Especially if it's casual entertainment!
In order to do that you need creative challenge and restraint. Creative freedom leads you in the other direction; Into the murky depths of
ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty.
A good question would be, why do creative people love ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty? Why do creative people enjoy the avoidance of definition, avoidance of classification, or of categorization?
Is it pure love of irrationality? Or is the the conscious and unconscious desire for pure freedom from any kind of constraint? Including the freedom from recognizeable subject matter and a story with a point?
Working More, Accomplishing Less
There's an
interesting article on Yahoo/Reuters that describes how in this modern age we seem to be working more and accomplishing less. One of the reasons cited in the article is technology.
Sadly, I agree with most of what the article says. In my writing process, I have to consider how much of my work is done away from the computer. I would say a majority of what I do isn't in front of the computer at all.
I'm always crunching on plot and plausibility issues, character motivations, and how I might improve the emotional depth of my story. I hate to say it, but figuring this stuff out doesn't happen on the computer, hammering away in Word or Writer.
Aside from my brain, the other tool I use more than I use the computer is a 3x5 Moleskine notebook. Whatever gets crunched gets written in the Moleskine as well. A lot of the actual writing I do happens with my Moleskine laid open right in front of me, which I use for reference to keep the ideas in focus as I write.
My headspace and the Moleskine are where most of the real accomplishment happens. I sometimes find the more time spent on the computer, the less productive I am.
Do you ever feel that you work more, and accomplish less?
Do you accomplish more away from the computer than in front of it?
How much of your writing work or storycraft takes place away from the computer?
Game Development Needs Writers
Dave Perry who recently resigned from Shiny had this to say about the writing in video games:
“It saddens me a lot that many video game companies don’t hire triple-A writers and that they use their game designers instead. That’s why, when real writers look at video game stories, they kind of roll their eyes. But that’s something that I see changing, I really do.”
First, let me say I agree with him. Most of the stories featured in video games are ridiculous at best, downright awful or non-existent at worst.
However, I have my doubts that 'Real Writers' can help the situation. Writing stories for video games requires an understanding of the medium. Things are not cut N' dried linear like in a novel or a film script.
Do most 'Real Writers' understand the effective vehicles for storytelling within games?
Do they understand that what they write is not the divine word of an almighty power, but something that may get hacked and chopped, and put into what's called a scripted sequence?
Do they understand that certain scripted sequences or dialogue might be called at any time or place in the game?
This is just one of the many technical issues in writing for games. I can't even begin to get into all the dilemmas here and now. That's another article in itself.
The video game industry, like its siblings the film and music industry, is a hit-driven business. An understanding of marketing and what drives the top selling works is something a writer for video game stories should absolutely have.
Many writers cannot compete in a hit-driven business. Some of them don't even want to! All of this is fine and good, but that still leaves game stories in a sad state of affairs.
Now we get to the real meat of the issue;
Game developers need to learn storytelling.Why? Because there aren't enough Real Writers who understand games. And there isn't much incentive for a lot of writers to become familiar with games or the game industry. This isn't going to change anytime soon.
Either more writers need to become familiar with video games, or more game developers need to become familiar with writing and storytelling. Because this is a
game developers' problem, the burden in solving it is on game developers.
Even if you hire an excellent writer who has a good grasp of video games, as the game developer you still need to understand what makes the writing good and how to best incorporate it into the game.
How do game developers recognize a good story?How do they determine what works best in the story of their video game? Some command of storytelling will be required to do this. So even with the use of an external writer on game stories, the game developer still has to know his or her StoryStuff.
That said, there will probably be good money to be made for writers in approaching video game companies for years to come.
Whether the writers come from inside or outside of the industry, game development will always need good writers.
When It's Done
My extra research for Cameron Fields coming to an end. I've begun making significant changes to the story. There are some serious problems lingering from the first draft. They will take some time to correct. I'm looking at a rewrite. I'm going to pull any useable sections and put them in the new draft. The rest will be discarded.
The story will be better for it. I feel good about making the changes.
Because the three novels involve different characters that are connected, I've also been making notes as I change and add details for the subsequent stories. What I change in the first story inevitably affects elements of the second and third story.
This sometimes makes the process more complicated than I'd like it to be, but I decided from the beginning that I do not want a 'one-off.' I am investing in a world that I will be able to use over and over throughout many stories, featuring as many characters as I want. Connectedness and consistency are important.
The next couple months of writing should be interesting. Everyone keeps asking me "When do I get to read it?"
When it's done.
A great novel is late once. A poor novel stays poor forever.
Finding Your Form
Norman Spinrad
comments on creating the right voice for your story in his essay Building a Starfaring Age:
"But how to convey the consciousness of my Second Starfaring Age Void Captain's attempts to explain his actions to himself in his diary?
How else?
Through language. Through his language, not my own.
This, of course, is what a lot of fiction tries to do a lot of the time, tell the story in a prose that mirrors the style of the viewpoint character's consciousness. It can be as basic as having Quakers think in thee and thou and street thugs in crude unprintables, as dumb as a long, boring dialect joke or as subtle as Flowers for Algernon or as raygun-blasting sheer powerful as William Burroughs.
This is ordinarly a matter of writing talent and perhaps the current evolutionary state of one's craft; this is the art of it, over which you have little volitional control. You either find the voice you need for the story or you go write something else until you do.
In the case of The Void Captain's Tale, it took me about ten years to find the form and voice for the story I wanted to tell, so don't get discouraged by concepts beyond your current ability to handle. Let them age a bit in your mental wine cellar."
In a normal context, writers probably wouldn't associate voice with form, as the two are often defined differently. But I like that Spinrad uses the terms interchangeably. I also like how he ties voice and form to world-building, as this is something in my own work I've found important.
For the three novels I've got planned, I've spent about five years on the world-building process. My first impetus to create this world started around 2000. Ever since then I've slowly been brewing the details. Back then, I didn't even know how to write/tell a story. I knew how to write, but had no idea how stories were structured, or how one went about creating something anyone else would bother to read. Knowing that I didn't know what I was doing, I simply began aggregating details and pushed the plan for actual writing off into the future.
Some writers may call this a mistake, because I wasn't,
"getting all the bad ideas out by simply writing." But as Spinrad says,
"You either find the voice you need for the story or you go write something else until you do." I found something else to do--something which was related to those same core ideas.
I started asking myself questions like,
"How does the central concept or theme of the world affect its politics, religion, or the culture itself?" These were heady and difficult questions to answer, and required some time of their own for sorting out.
All of these things affect the voice, form, and themes of the story. If you don't have all of these things worked out, my advice would be the same as Spinrad's. Don't get discouraged if your concepts are beyond your ability to handle. Let them age in your mental wine cellar. If I could add to that, I'd say that there are plenty of other things to focus on in your worldbuilding to keep you busy while you figure out the voice and form of your story.
Conveying Background Material
One of the challenges for sci-fi and fantasy writers is getting across all the background information about the world and setting without messing up the narrative or slowing down the story.
You've got this unique world where your story takes place. It has all kinds of interesting and unique details that make it special. How do you describe it to the reader without boring them to tears?
What makes this such a challenge for writers is because they often fail to think outside of their own medium--writing. If you watch a movie or play a video game, you will notice that information can be conveyed in a wide variety of innovative ways that don't interfere with the story.
In films for example, they often show TV news reports, computer screens, or audible radio broadcasts. They are using other mediums within the medium of the film/script to give the audience information.
Games sometimes do this by using radio and news broadcasts to explain what is going on in the world around the primary characters. Some games use emails, PDAs, or notes found throughout the game as clues to solving both puzzles, and unraveling the mystery or the story.
The key with writing out the background material is showing, not telling. It is far more boring to go off on a several-page explanation of the things that exist in your world than it is for a main character to glance at a TV screen, read an email, or hear a radio broadcast.
Your fictional world is filled with interesting people, events, history, politics, etc. That means the people in your world will be talking, reading, watching, and writing, filming, broadcasting information about that world. Use that to convey background information.
Using other mediums within the story to create a rich background is much more efficient and compelling than giving the straight explanation.
More on the Inadequacy of Imagination
Here is a bit more from Mr. Gardner Dozois on writing good sci-fi:
"To write good SF, then, you must learn to perceive the hidden relationships that most do not; to pinpoint the trends just emerging in the present that might become prominent in the future, and to extrapolate logically their results in fictional terms, in terms of what they mean to people."
The future bits apply more to sci-fi, but extrapolating things out in a logical manner, in terms of what it means to the people and characters--this is something that all writers must do regardless of genre.
Another way to describe it is this; As writers, we all must think out our story, be the themes, events, or relationships. But thinking it out logically is not the only thing we must do. We must take that perception of hidden relationships between things, and we must force it upon the characters in human and emotional terms. Because if it does not hit the characters in some human or emotional context, then it will not resonate with the reader.
Some of this is just plain old common sense. But sometimes common sense gets washed away in the torrent of creativity!
Imagination is Not Enough
Gardner Dozois was the editor for Asimov's Science Fiction magazine for many years. In an essay titled Living the Future: You Are What You Eat, he had this to say about writing science fiction:
"Everything changes: this is the central philosophic vision of good science fiction; if you cannot adjust to it, cannot believe it, cannot feel it and see it in everything around you and in yourself, then you're wasting your time trying to write the stuff.
Nothing is simple. Everything changes. Things connect.
You are what you eat.
And want, and do, and think, and fear, and dream.
You live in an organic surround, an interlocking and interdependent gestalt made up of thousands of factors and combinations thereof: cultural, technological, biological, psychological, historical, environmental. For all practical purposes, you are that surround; if the things that make up the surround are altered, then you will be altered with them.
This is why imagination, although it's vital, is not by itself enough. One must have the vision to see the connections, and the sense to make them consistent. Much science fiction has failed on these grounds."
For me, this is the greatest and the most difficult part about writing science fiction, or any fiction for that matter! It almost requires a video game designer's understanding of emergence and the way a wide confluence of things interact with one another to produce sometimes unexpected results. In theory, game creators would make good sci-fi writers--if more of them knew how to write, structure, and tell a good story.
This is a reason I favor near sci-fi or 'hard sci-fi' as some dub it. Space ships and galactic travel doesn't seem like a challenging stretch of the imagination for me. It's like magic--as the writer it does whatever you want it to do and exists ipso facto.
For me it's much more fun and challenging to imagine our world 150-200 years from now. Everything that exists then, all the social, psychological, cultural, or even religious implications of that. This also allows for the author to brand the story a little better--it's their own personal take on the near future.
Anyone can imagine laser guns or space ships. But can you imagine the United States in 2150? Canada? Italy? Great Britain? China? Japan? Mexico? Given their history, society, cultural traditions, current power or resources, what will they look like in two hundred years?
To me that is a much more interesting proposition than mere spaceships.
What do you think?
Sci-Fi Story or Sci-Fi Essay?
Robert Heinlein had this to say about writing for sci-fi:
"Much so-called science fiction is not about human beings and their problems, consisting instead of a fictionalized framework, peopled by cardboard figures, on which is hung an essay about the Glorious Future of Technology."
Do you think sci-fi stories lack character and human interest? Are too many sci-fi stories just tech essays?
Failing Zen & Being Crazy
The doctor
is back over on
Buzz, Balls & Hype counseling an author who is enduring the hardships of a book tour. Since I've never been on a book tour, I can't vouch for what it's like. However, I have lived and moved all over the U.S. and been away from my family and friends for a long periods of time. It's hard--there is no other way to describe it. But the truth of writing itself stings a little more in this bit:
And, unlike Zen monks, authors tend to be self-flagellating, perfectionistic control freaks. We are used to exercising complete autonomy through creating entire worlds and populating them with characters who live and die by our whim. We give ourselves a task—write a mystery that’s impossible for the reader to solve, but which makes perfect sense at the end; illustrate the futility of war through a doomed intercultural romance; invent a humanoid species with its own codes of behavior and morality that nonetheless resonates with the reader. We obsess over how to accomplish our goals. We ruminate over each detail, changing word order, chronology, and the names and hair colors of our characters. And when we are done and the work is out there, even if it is well received, we continue to torture ourselves with visions of what we could have done differently, to make the story work better.
*Sigh*
That sounds familiar. Too familiar. Not even when we are done or the story is out there, but even during the process. Writing and creation are very much a process of beating myself up over things not being good enough. Maybe we're all crazy?
I'll speak for myself. But I also know that I'm not alone!
The Mystery of Hits
There's a
story out on the AP wire about a study being done by Duncan J. Watts on music hits. If the name Duncan J. Watts sounds familiar, that's because he's the guy who wrote the brilliant
Six Degrees; A wonderful book on networks and emergence. Here's a snippet:
"In the social influence groups, once some songs started to be downloaded, others would try out those songs too, sort of the way a best seller list gets people to try out a new book, Watts commented."
It's not being on the best seller list alone that causes a book to sell--it's the fact that other people are reading and talking about it. That mysterious phenomenon often referred to as 'buzz' in the marketing world. Here are a few significant points to draw from a study like this:
- A poorly written book can do well if people are talking about it.
- A well written book can do poorly if nobody talks about it.
- You can create buzz without being on the best seller list.
As for Duncan J. Watts? I'm sure I'll be one of those people talking about his next book.
Discipline & A Trip Through Blogsville
Melly shared some of her blogroll the other day. On it was a blog called
Writer Unboxed.
Writer Unboxed has a
great post about novelists taking cues from Hollywood. I know I've
blathered about it in the past. It's nice to see others picking up on it.
All writers could stand to be a little less self-indulgent in the character headspace. Choose between action or dialogue. If neither, then maybe it shouldn't be there?
There's also a strong argument what happens in the character's mind is indirect narrative according to the definition by Peter Rubie and Gary Provost in
How to Tell a Story.
You and Your Research
This was passed along to me at a very opportune time. I'm currently slogging through tons of research on private and criminal investigation. Desperately mining for ideas and the structure for those ideas to rework my novel into satsifactory condition.
There are some very awesome quotes from this piece, I'll highlight a few of my favorites.
"Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime."
This is especially important to acknowledge among writers. In my journey through life I've often encountered bitter or envious people who say,
"But why does that Sally Success always get the prize? I work about as hard as she does! I should be the one receiving all the accolades!"Sure, but that Sally Success probably puts in the extra hour each day. And if it's not a case of putting in the extra hour, then Sally Success just knows how to game the system a little better. What does she do that's different? It's important to ask yourself those kinds of questions on the road of life.
Here is a bit that hit home on being too much of a punk and a rebel:
"By realizing you have to use the system and studying how to get the system to do your work, you learn how to adapt the system to your desires. Or you can fight it steadily, as a small undeclared war, for the whole of your life."
Are you a victim of the system? Give it some thought. Maybe you can make the system work for you. But you'll never find out if you don't think and try. Here's a bit on creativity and synthesis:
"Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, ``creativity comes out of your subconscious.'' Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you're aware your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there's the answer. For those who don't get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn't produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free."
This applies to writing just as much as it does science, or any other field. Go read the whole Hamming bit
here.
Be Your Subject
"All detectives have their own personal style. Some are gruff, some are smooth, but all the good ones have the practical knowledge of a seasoned street officer, a grasp of the forensic sciences, the legal knowledge of a prosecutor, and an ability to place people, events, and tangible and intangible evidence in space and time in order to put together an investigative scenario of the criminal event."
Incredibly long run-on sentences aside...
If the detective has to know these things, then the writer of the detective has to know them just as well. How well do you know your subject?
Blahbalicious Update
Not done with the site redesign, not sure when I will be. Couldn't stand the old template any longer so I just picked another one. Sure it's just another Blogger template but it'll save my eyes the pain while I keep working on the new site.
Speaking of which, I'm having some formatting troubles. Tables are evil and I can never seem to iron out all the kinks. I think I need to learn CSS. Oh well, something to do while I continue my research.
Idiot's Guide to Criminal Investigation is ok so far. The first half of the book is on criminology. This makes it less useful towards my particular story. I'm not sure how feminist and marxist criminologies are going to provide much help. Hah! I need to start reading faster.
Authors Need Branding
Too often writers think their job is only writing.
This article mentions the flipside to that viewpoint, one I wholeheartedly agree with.
The author is also the marketing expert and the entire marketing department. The sooner authors understand this, the better their books will start selling.
The books will be better too. Branding requires focus and exaggeration of certain memes. In the case of fiction that means enhancing or strengthening the core memes of the book. How would that ever be a bad thing?
Thanks to
Grumpy Old Bookman for that article link.
Build Your Own Props
If
this isn't the coolest thing I've ever seen. Scroll down.
I have to say I'm tempted to try it.
Thanks to
SF-Signal for the heads up on that one.
Progress...
I finished
Idiot's Guide to Private Investigating. It had a lot of useful info. I'm now onto
Criminal Investigation. I have a
forensics book after this. Good stuff. My novel is definitely lacking these details. Incorporating some of these details will change the plot a little, but I'm willing to work with that. All for a good cause, right?
As an aside, the Idiot's Guide books are just what I need in this case. I just want some basic facts about procedure and what people in these professions actually do. I'm sure there are better or more authoritative books out there, but I'm in a bit of a rush. The embers from the fire of National Novel Writing Month are dying cold and so is my novel. I need to invigorate it quick! Get out the shock paddles! Anyway, the Idiot's Guide stuff has to follow a format which means it's clean and concise. Perfect.
Website stuff...
I'm dog tired this morning. Was up til 3AM making animated knobs for the new website. Yeah, it's that fancy. Hooray. I'm not sure why I'm bothering with the intense custom graphics job. The Atom feeders aren't going to see it anyway.
BUT, it's fun, and I've never designed anything this custom before. I'm learning, which is the best reason I could give for doing any of the things that I do!
I still have some technical challenges to solve with the new design before I'm willing to put it online. If any of you have experience in javascript,
let me know. I might need some help.
P.S. I realize sidebar comments look atrocious in Internet Explorer right now. I've always had formatting problems with this blogger template. Rest assured, the new site design fixes all the old woes and more!
