Adrian Faulkner's Blog, page 8
September 7, 2021
THE FIRST DRAFT – Pre-Season Episode 3 – Characters
I had just two hours to create all the characters for The First Draft! Whilst I normally take weeks and months thinking about interesting protagonists, I had to use a few hacks to get everything done. First I used a character template to start gathering some insight into their personality, and then cast actors in the role of the characters to save me time working out what they looked like.
Of course, one of the fun things about writing is that you can do loads of great planning and then decide...
WRITE PRODUCTIVELY – What Is ToDoist? (And Why Writers Should Use It)
For some of you writers out there, the idea of having a task management system more complicated than writing a list on a scrap of paper is something quite new.
There are a lot of Task Management Apps out there but ToDoist is my favourite and in this video, I explain why. I’ll take you through all the various features and what they do. I’ll explain why having the app on such a wide range of devices is a real help. I’ll explain the difference between the free and paid versions.
I have a video comi...
September 6, 2021
Adrian, The Grumpy Pokemon – The Climb #926
I was in such a bad mood today.
For what feels like months, I’ve wanted to get traction on a few new projects. I’ve discovered that whilst I’m not really a procrastinator, I do like the comfort of planning to ensure everything is in place and ready. Work gets done, work gets promoted, work gets cross-promoted. And time after time, one element or other of these grand plans have had a spanner in the works and everything grinds to a halt: Twitter is suspended and I n...
THE FIRST DRAFT – Pre-Season Episode 2 – Worldbuilding
THE FIRST DRAFT is a web serial where its entire creation is livestreamed, allowing you to get to see how stories are created, ask questions and join in. After every session, the results are posted here on the website, together with a replay of the Livestream. We are currently running three pre-season episodes where we plan out the story focusing on plot, worldbuilding and characters
Following on from our first livestream on Thursday about the plot of this new web serial, on Friday we took a ...
September 5, 2021
Curveballs – The Climb #925
How do I know I’m busy? I realised today that I’ve not played Minecraft in several days, despite really wanting to. I said I’d do my weeklies in Warcraft this week as well, and it’s Saturday and somehow I’ve not found time. I even didn’t get to watch Marvel’s What If…? until last night.
My plan for today is to keep momentum going in written projects – little and often is my buzzword for this week – whilst trying to get my WP videos done for most of next week. The...
September 4, 2021
Juggling 5 Writing Projects – The Climb #924
I worked on 5 different writing projects today, some of them commercial, some of them for fun.
Because I really want to get the ball rolling with the video series, I’ve really given them a lot of time this week, trying to get a new video out every day. That’s taken a lot of time, and I’m thankful I was bright enough to say every weekday rather than every day otherwise I would have been dead today. Hopefully I can find time to record 4 or 5 videos for write productiv...
WRITE PRODUCTIVELY – A Look At My System
We writers tend to be quite protective of our work, whether it’s our current manuscript in progress, or our pipeline of work, so I’ll admit that this is the video I’ve been most nervous about sharing. Why? Because it’s my actual workflow. It’s how I balance out all my work. It shows that I have tasks overdue, trackers I’ve not yet fully built. I’m far from perfect when it comes to productivity, unlike just about every other “youtuber” in the space.
BUT, I’d be lost without my systems. They...
September 3, 2021
Output Overload – The Climb #923
Today was a ridiculously busy day.
For the first couple of weeks I’m trying to really push out content on my two web series. I want there to be a bedrock of content from which I can build. But trying to do daily uploads on not one, but two different series… is challenging.
I’m just glad I opted to only do weekday.
Once I get over this initial hump I can settle to once a week and be a little calmer.
However, I’m also trying to write. But I realised when I came ...
THE FIRST DRAFT – Pre-Season Episode 1 – Planning
The first livestream for The First Draft happened yesterday, where we started planning out a rough idea of the story. Lots of audience participation and going back and forth on ideas. I’ve included both a tidied-up version of the notes I took during the livestream as well as a copy of the original notes. There’s also a replay of the livestream for anyone who wants to watch it.
Next Livestream will be today at 3pm BST (i.e. UK time) where we’ll be delving into worldbuilding for this story. It...
Write Productively – Life Pillars
One of the key things I use to help me organise both my notes and my ToDo list is something called life pillars. It might sound all new-agey but there’s some real fundamentals here that are not only going to help you as a writer but as anything you wish to accomplish. Check out the video below to find out more about what they are and how they can help you.
