Zachary Ricks's Blog, page 14

GSG NaNo Gaiden #9

Cross-posted at Geek Survival Guide.

You should be 15,000 words in. Yeee-haw! You're now out of act 1, and moving to act 2, where your protagonist should be trying to beat the bad guy, and meeting obstacle after obstacle. He should be falling down on his face. Think, Flash Gordon being hauled off to the executioner… then to the tree stump… then in prison… etc. Sure, he might beat a small obstacle, but that should lead to a bigger obstacle up ahead!

Also, never underestimate the power of good entertainment.

Go read David Farland's post that I mentioned in the cast, and then go write!

Enjoy!

Download GSGNaNoGaiden9.mp3

GSG NaNo Gaiden #8

Cross posted at www.geeksurvivalguide.org.

OBSTACLES!

We hates them, precious. But sometimes things just get in the way of your writing.

Muscle past them. Grab a keyboard and your headphones, and write in your righteous fury! Or… you know… whatever. So long as the writing happens.

Enjoy!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden 8

GSG NaNo Gaiden #7

Cross posted at geeksurvivalguide.org.

Ever feel like you have to justify your writing?

Screw that. You write because you want to, and you write what you want to write. Absolutely, without hesitation. That's what this month is all about.

So go write!

Or, you know, you could listen to this episode first.

Enjoy!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden #7

GSG NaNo Gaiden #6

From Jim Butcher, (h/t Monica Valentinelli - BTW, you should read her blog. She is awesome).

YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO CAN KILL YOUR DREAM.

In particular, this is a good reminder for those of us who may have been writing for some time, and are having a difficult time finding our audience. It can be frustrating. Maddening, even. But I'm not giving up. Taking today to rest and recover, to recuperate and regroup.

And tomorrow, I am going to write like crazy. CRAZY, I TELLS YA!

Go write!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden #6

GSG NaNo Gaiden #5

Better late than never. Had a five-hour write in today, which is a totally new thing for me. I've never done write-ins before. Took a rather sizable break in there, where I started reading some more Darths and Droids… anyway…

Here's ep 5! Enjoy!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden #5

GSG NaNo Gaiden Ep 4

This Ep brought to you by… here, and flyingislandpress.com.

Everyone has conflicts. You have 'em. I have 'em. Your bus driver, boss, kid, significant other, and even your lunch lady has 'em. So if you're wondering what to do with a scene, or something feels lifeless, take out a card and decide on a good conflict for one of your characters. Remember, you're still in act 1, and this is where you're laying the groundwork for everything to come.

Now, go write!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden #4

GSG NaNo Gaiden #3

The FATEFUL DECISION (bum bum baaaaaaah!).

You're 10% into your novel. Or at least you're at 10% of your time. Here's where your main character makes a decision to have a story! Red pill or blue pill?

Enjoy!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden #3

GSG NaNo Gaiden #2

Day 2 of NaNo, and already some people are starting to freak out. Don't do that. Trust your instincts, know that you do have something to say, sit down, and start moving those fingers over the keys.

There is always something in the box. Trust that there is always something in the box.

And enjoy Day 2.

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GSG NaNo Gaiden #1

Yup. 30 days of podcasting fury, brought to you by the fine folks at… GSG, which basically means me.

Hi.

I'll be cross posting these here and at the old site – geeksurvivalguide.org – so you only need to follow one feed to get the episodes. I hope you enjoy them!

Download GSG NaNo Gaiden #1

NaNoWriMo – Crazy Stew

NaNoWriMo has always been my most successful writing, if by successful you mean word count and time spent. Three years in a row, I've yet to fail to hit my 50k words, even if I'm not quite at "The End" by the end of thirty days.

It's also successful because you don't have time to edit. You don't have time to second guess yourself, or to worry about whether you're putting in enough subtext, or if you correctly referred to one thing or another. You just have to get the words out, and you don't worry about quality. That's a freeing thing.

My NaNo books have never really seen the light of day, though. They're all there. But I've yet to go back and really edit one and set it loose upon an unsuspecting world. I still think the first one was my best story, and a lot of that was because I had no expectations. I was planning on writing the craziest thing I could think of, and I knew exactly what the climax at the end of the book was. I haven't had that clear a vision the last two times out, and I think the books have suffered a little because of it.

Also, the first year I put in a LOT of crazy stuff. I occasionally refer to it as my Science Fiction / Shaw Bros. Kung Fu Epic. It had kung fu. Cyborgs. Shaolin monks. Religion. Snipers. Insane, sword-wielding female psycho killer women. Nanobots. It was a fun book to write.

This time around, I'm taking snippets of the Book of Mormon's historical record (and I know a lot of people will have a problem with that sentence – insert "story" for "historical record" if you prefer), which I've always thought was just begging to be told as a story. We have a character in Ether 8 and 9 that puts Lady Macbeth to shame – plotting the assassination of her own grandfather by seducing his best friend and making the price for her hand in marriage granddad's head to restore the throne to dear old dad. Grandpa gets a warning and leaves town with the rest of the family, leaving the traitor son to rule – and then the conspiracy kills him and puts our Lady's man on the throne. Civil war ensues as the society breaks down, and war turns into annihilation. Grandpa eventually comes back after the dust clears and picks up the pieces.

That's pretty crazy, but it's not crazy enough.

Let's take this out of the bilblical-style setting. Sure, this would be pretty easy to translate into fantasy, but let's make this space opera instead. And I've been watching a lot of anime lately, so let's make this one with Variable Armor suits. Like the Robotech/Macross Veritech Fighter, maybe. (Maybe. Maybe mecha is crazy enough.)

Okay, that ups the crazy a bit. Mecha is always fun. But it's still not crazy enough.

Let's take the idea of Jedi Battle Meditation, and meld it with the idea in Macross of the effects of song on the Zentraedi.

And throw in this picture. (from DeviantArt)

And what do you get?

Battle DJs. Co-ordinating their forces through the power of music. Broadcasting through the battlefield using gravity waves. (h/t John Ringo in The Claws that Catch). Once we have that idea, suddenly I have something that I didn't have before.

I think I have a protagonist.

I think we're crazy enough. Maybe.