Taven Moore's Blog, page 49

[Perry] The Flag of Splenderificness

My heart is pounding and my hands are clammy with sweat.

I had to kill a man to get in here. I was lucky though. He was facing away from me, manning a turret and sending a torrent of bullets toward my teammates downrange, keeping them at bay.

A few quick and silent steps brought me into range and I hopped onto his back, yanking him away from the turret. Pulling him down to the ground with my body weight, I grab both sides of his head and wrench. There’s a soft pop and he goes limp.

Collecting the spare ammunition from his corpse, I make my way inside the base.

I’m immediately reminded why it’s not a good idea to do this alone when four members of the enemy team materialize, their armor a menacing blood red.

They’re dazed, slightly disoriented by the transit stun so in the bare second of grace, I lobbed both of my fragmentation grenades into their midst and take off running.

I should have had the layout down pat, after all, isn’t our own base built off of the exact same blueprints?

But I’m running on nerves alone. Cognitive reasoning doesn’t enter into this picture at all and I make a mad dash for any empty corridor as the grenades explode behind me.

That did it.

It’s like kicking a hornet’s nest.

Only instead of friendly and benevolent angry hornets, the Reds boil out of the hallways like Hell’s own demons with guns in their hands, and murder written on their blank and impenetrable visors.

The next minute passes by in a blur of gunfire, grenades and a bunch of very angry men in red armor.

I turn a corner and it’s suddenly there.

The red flag.

It flaps in a nonexistent breeze.

Its redness cannot truly be described. It’s not the red that common folk such as you or I are able to encapsulate and envision, it’s more. Something so much more. It’s the red of life itself, of pride and victory and bikinis on a gorgeous women on hot days at the beach. It’s a red that transcends time and space, passed down from generation to generation in the eternal, ever frightful struggle between the glory of the Blues and the villainy of the dastardly and despicable Reds.

It stands, a glorious flapping symbol of all that is right in the world and it is a travesty, utter travesty that the vile Reds should possess something of such magnificence.

There is more that should be said here. An object of such reverence and awe shouldn’t be rushed, shouldn’t be treated in any kind of haphazard fashion.

Unfortunately, every Red in the canyon is literally howling for my blood and I’ve run out of time.

A quick dash forward and the flag is in my hands, a transient moment of bliss as a Red darts out at me from the next hallway, disgust on his blank visor at the thought of a Blue touching the flag, assault rifle blazing.

My shield takes the brunt of the impact, redlining almost immediately at the tightly clustered impact of bullets. I toss the flag to the left for the moment, unslinging my battle rifle and taking one step forward, smashing the Red in the face with the butt of the gun.

There’s momentary yellow flash as his shields overload from the impact and a quick shot sends a bullet crashing through his visor. I turn to collect the flag as he falls dead and there’s the characteristic tinktink of a fragmentation grenade and I see it, bouncing off the wall and into the room I’m in.

A split second to react.

Tightened grip on the flag.

Take two steps to the corrido-

All thought ends as the grenade explodes in the corner of the room behind me.

The blast sends me hurtling forward into the wall, sending me reeling to the floor with the shock.

It feels like forever before my senses return to normal and the first thing I hear is the high pitched electronic shriek of my suit alarms, signifying that my shields are fully depleted and that I’m exposed.

The flag is still clutched in my hand.

Light at the end of the corridor ahead of me.

Sunlight.

I don’t have much left.

About six bullets left in my rifle. No grenades. Shields gone. Stuck inside the enemy base with no hope of escape.

I can get the flag outside this damned base, though. I can do that much. I’ll be gunned down before I make it five steps and more likely than not, I’ll drop to my knees with my arms spread wide as the bullets punch through my armor, go out Platoon style.

Even if it’s just for a moment though, I can get the damned flag out of this base.

I can let it see the sun of a brand new day in the hope that the someone will see it and bear the tale.

Someone will see the red flag, shining proudly in the sunlight and know that it is NOT impossible. They’ll know that one of us made it at least that far and that knowledge will give them strength. It will give them the drive and the belief that it CAN be done so long as there is someone who believes.

So I get up.

For the eternal and everlasting glory of the illustrious Blues, I stagger to my feet and clutch the red flag in an armored hand. I push forward through the pain, ignoring the infernal ringing of the suit’s shield alarm and take a step.

Then another.

Commotion behind me, Reds of every sort barreling through the corridors, out for blood and the man who has dared to steal their flag.

Sunlight. Blinding.

I can hear shots firing, bullets whining past me…

…into the Red base!

My eyes open, blinking rapidly to try and adjust to the change in light and I hear that heavenly sound. A throaty roar and the screech of tires as the Warthog skids to a stop just in front of me. The Blue at the back has taken a firm stance, mounted gatling gun spinning and spitting out death into the red base at a hundred bullets per second.

The Blue riding shotgun hops out, sprinting toward me and then one step past. His armor hums as a shield forms from his arms, the hardlight shield engineered from Forerunner technology sliding interlocking plates of light into place to form an impenetrable barrier.

“Go! Go!” He shouts. The shield slides quickly from it’s frosty azure blue to orange and warming up to red as it starts to overload. I can see him fingering a pulse grenade on his belt as he counts down to when the shield will fail to make a final stand; ready to give his life in one final distraction to ensure the escape of me and the flag.

I grip his shoulder firmly through the armor as I limp past, the only thing I have time for as I climb into the Warthog and hunker down.

The driver burns rubber getting out of there, tires screeching as the gun on the back keeps firing, staying trained on the exit.

Looking back, I see the shield fizzle and spark out into nothing. As the brave soldier’s personal shields begin to overload and flash, I see him trigger the grenade and drop it at his feet, his triumphant cry the last thing I hear from him as it explodes, taking out him and the Reds that had been on my heels.

“FOR THE GLORY OF THE BLUES!”

…So ended my first multiplayer game of Halo 4.

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[Perry] Dishonored and Why It Failed (For Me)

Recipe Sharing Time!

Share some of your favorite recipes, please!

There are no requirements that it be healthy, gluten-free, vegan, etc … but if it IS, please indicate so in your comment, so interested folks with food restrictions can click intelligently.

My favorites:

Butternut Squash Mac N “Cheez” – Gluten-free if you use GF noodles, dairy-free. I adore this recipe. It’s delicious and creamy and is a fantastic way to use up a butternut squash. It does have some weird ingredients (like “Nutritional Yeast”, also known as “Brewer’s Yeast” — it’s just a yellow flake and it’s good for you and yummy. Don’t be scared.) and takes a big blender and time to roast the squash, so it’s not a quick recipe. Well worth the work, though, and we use a whole squash, doubling the recipe, which means we have enough sauce pre-made for a second round later with almost no work.

Sweet Potato Chili - Vegan, GF, and AMAZING. The lime and cocoa powder really make this recipe shine, and it’s worth actually hunting “Garnet Yam”s down for the sweet potato. Yumyum.

Steven’s Nighttime Sweet Treat

No linked recipe, because this is a Steven original.

Ingredients

Natural Peanut Butter (crunchy or not, get one that only contains peanuts and salt. Do not use pre-sweetened processed PB for this)
Maple syrup
Chocolate chips (optional)

Directions

Mix equal parts Peanut butter and maple syrup.
Optional: heat the mixture up in the microwave
Optional: add chocolate chips to heated mixture, letting them melt and swirl in yumnitude
Eat.

Oh yes. I just pretended mixing maple syrup and peanut butter is a recipe. ;)

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Adventures in Acupuncture

Back Pain

So, Mr. Moore has had back troubles ever since we lived in Houston. The kind of back troubles that begin by bending over and result in several days (if not weeks) of unhappy bedrest.

Recently, he bent over to do a jump squat and nearly fell.

Two days of bedrest and heating pads and careful attention later, he was no better.

Doctor

“Get Thee To a Doctor!” said our friends, and they were right … but a long and unglamorous chain of events has led both of us to hate going to the doctor.

However … I just finished Jenny Lawson’s book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, where she chronicled a visit to the acupuncturist (in hilarious detail). In addition to the colorful descriptions, she also mentioned that it worked.

So I did some research and found Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture and Pain Management Clinic, just a quick bounce away from where we live. Amazing internet reviews led to a call, which led to an appointment that afternoon … after the clinic usually closed, which was kind of amazing of them to do.

The Visit

I drove Steven to the clinic and he hobbled out of the car in a slow, shuffling manner. I do not exaggerate. He wouldn’t even be walking if he didn’t have to, and every step offered new opportunities for pain up his back and around to his belly.

He filled out the forms and disappeared into a room with a cheerful Dr. Zhou.

The next time I saw him, Steven smiled at me, lifted his arms, and rotated his hips. I was flabbergasted.

According to him, they sat down, then Dr. Zhou asked him a few questions (“Are you afraid of needles?”) and inserted two needles in the back of Steven’s neck.

He then asked Steven to stand up (a procedure that was more than a little painful before the appointment).

Steven stood up.

Dr. Zhou then asked Steven to hula-hoop.

Despite strong misgivings, Steven hula-hooped … and then burst out laughing, because he COULD. He then bent both forward and backward, and Dr. Zhou smiled and said, “Good, now you trust me.”

The rest of the appointment involved more needles (very few of which were even felt, and the ones that were either burned a little or were more of a slight ache than a sharp pain), followed by a warm rest period, then a VERY vigorous massage that involved cracking most of Steven’s joints, including his entire spine.

Follow-Up

We came home with another appointment for the following Monday, a jar of pain-relieving cream, and some herb pills for Steven to take. Honestly, I think we’d have done damn near anything the doctor asked at this point — we’ve gone to traditional doctors time and time again, only to be sent home for bedrest with heavier pain pills.

This wasn’t a MIRACLE, mind you. He was still tender and pained, and didn’t have full range of motion … but to go from shuffling gingerly across a parking lot to hula-hooping with a smile (and for a fraction of the cost of a normal doctor visit) was shocking.

Astonishing. Incredible. Amazing.

You

Back pain is one of the most common complaints I hear, past yearly sniffles and colds.

All reservations we had about acupuncture are completely gone. This was a life saver.

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[Perry] How to Scare People

So in the spirit of the holiday, I’ve decided to share with you all a little something that I’ve learned about scaring people.

A number of years ago, I had a pretty big phase of horror novel reading. It was a pretty big fascination at the time and I gobbled up just about whatever I could get my hands on.

Of everything I’d read, three authors stand out to me to this day.

H.P Lovecraft, Clive Barker, and (of course) Stephen King.

What interested me, though, was that all of them scared me in completely different ways.

With Lovecraft and his short stories, it was all about the unknown. Entire dimensions filled with unspeakable things pressed right up against ours that sometimes bled through to our world. His stories of colors and angles that were just wrong and shouldn’t exist in our reality. His deathless gods kept me up a number of nights, wondering if maybe he was onto something.

With Barker, it was all about the macabre and the possibility of running into it in our daily lives. It was about people meddling and stumbling onto things in our very mundane world; things probably better left to the darkness. It troubled me because for a while after I read his Books of Blood, I too had a sneaking suspicion that maybe my next ride on the subway would end up with me on the midnight meat train, with a serial killer in service to the shadowy lords of the city.

And with King…well, King has monsters. Many, many monsters.

And killer clowns.

Fuck clowns.

In any case, reading these types of stories scared the crap out of me. It got to the point where if I was reading them before bed, I’d keep a backup book by the bedside, one more lighthearted that I could switch to and read a chapter of before I actually went to sleep.

It made me wonder how it was done though, I mean, it’s only natural to be curious right?

I’ve always felt that writing was one part story-telling mixed with an equal portion of provoking an emotional response.

Well, terror’s an emotion too, isn’t it?

I remember the first time I was reading IT by King, when I put the book down by my bed every night, I’d make sure that it lay face down, so that the picture of the clown skull on the cover wouldn’t be watching me when I slept.

Oddly enough, that didn’t help much. It probably had something to do with the fact that the back cover was this picture of Stephen King and, let’s face it, that man doesn’t exactly look like he’s about to sing you a lullaby and tuck you in, you know?

But you get kind of curious, don’t you? I mean, you read enough of something that affects you and you want to know if you can do it too.

So I tried to write something scary…

…and failed utterly.

Apparently, there was a lot more to this business of scaring people than I’d initially suspected.

But a lot of study and thought did help me isolate one or two tricks when it came to scaring people through text, one of which, I’ll share with you now.

One of them is this:

Be relentless.

It seems just a little counter-intuitive, right? I mean, if you’re jumping out of every doorway at someone, after the fourth or fifth time, they’ll be expecting it and get a little blase about it.

But strangely, the tactic of just keeping up the pressure until you reach their breaking point works.

Take this video for example.

The video shows two guys making their way through a haunted house. At the start, you can see that they’re trying to tough it out. They try to act like it’s all a laugh and they try to put up a macho front.

But about a minute into the video, you can see little cracks starting to form in their demeanor.

At two minutes in, you can see them grabbing at each other for comfort (2:25 is hilarious).

At three minutes, you see them running in terror from a guy in a mask.

The interesting thing, though, is that none of the fright elements were all that scary by themselves. I mean, a couple guys in masks? Girls looking like crazy ghosts screaming at you? That’s not enough on its own to provoke that level of fear.

It was simply the relentless onslaught on the senses that did them in.

These guys were more than capable of handling any of these scare tactics alone, or even if they were given a little more time in between scares.

But it was the fact that the scares hit them in rapid-fire succession that overloaded whatever tolerance they had.

I think that most people can take a scare here and there without too much fuss. It’s when the scares don’t stop, when it’s a relentless pace, that you can start pushing for that fight/flight reaction.

If I write a horror novel, I don’t want it to be the kind of book that people will read in one sitting and think to themselves, “damn that was a great novel.”

No.

If I write horror, I want it to do what IT did to me when I was a teen. I want people to keep a spare, happy book by the bedside to read in tandem.

And more than anything?

I want push someone to the point that putting my book in the freezer is the only way they feel safe.

 

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Samples Currently Rocking My Kindle

Samples

So Amazon allows you to download a free sample from any kindle book they sell. I’m more than a little in love with this, and have been downloading samples left and right. If a book can’t sell me in the sample, I already know not to bother further.

These are the samples that are stuck on my kindle right now, waiting for me to get the full book to read:

Fantasy. Mostly MG/YA (younger audience)

The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy (it has an harrumphing cockroach butler. Sold.)
Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge (Interesting naming conventions, giant goose, clever protagonist, word-loving shyster. Sold.)
Vessel, by Sarah Beth Durst (Fascinating concept. Girl with a destiny … and in chapter 1, that destiny is whisked from her. Love it.)
A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge (I am rapidly becoming a Hardinge fangirl, fair warning. This one has ridiculous cheeses and an entire society of people who only know the facial expressions they’ve been taught)
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire (this one is Urban Fantasy and has an MC who hunts zombies and loves dancing. Also, colorful mice. Those of you who know who Jade is know that my heart weeps for how much fun this sample was.)
Thirteenth Child byPatricia Wrede (I adore Wrede, and this one is set in alternate pioneer America, where the seventh son (always lucky) has a seventh son (always a wizard) … who has a twin sister who happens to their thirteenth child (always evil). Fascinating)
Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (not as flippant as it sounds, this was fun to read and played with language in a way that made me want to keep reading)
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis (MC is a very young girl who I believe gets magical powers. Believable, strong, MG heroine in sort of and 18th century setting)


Other

Redshirts by John Scalzi (what if the “redshirts” on star trek figured out they were just characters? Intro was good, but I’ve heard it gets better.)
Black Ships by Jo Graham (long-time recommendation from a good friend, who was, of course, right that I’d love this. Ancient Greece.)
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (Romance novel with a remarkably sensible 18th’ish century british heroine. Love at first sentence.)

Non-Fiction (Design and User Interface Books)

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
About Face 3 by Alan Cooper, Robert Reinmann and David Cronin (both of these Cooper books are funny, fascinating, and brilliant. Must-reads if you’re in the software design business)

You

What’s in your TBR pile?

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Promote What You Love

Instead of Bashing What You Hate.

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[Perry] Dishonored and Why It Failed (For Me)

The following post contains heavy spoilers for the game Dishonored.

Also harsh language.

So I just finished playing through Dishonored by Ubisoft and I feel like punching a kitten.

Right in the face. I’m mad enough to even want a two step wind up and POW!

It’s one of those situations where I seriously feel like throwing the damned thing across the room and would if it wasn’t for the fact that my computer would go with it.

So let’s get the good stuff out of the way first.

Dishonored tells the story of Corvo Attano, bodyguard (possibly lover?) of an empress and protector of Emily, the daughter of said empress.

At the start of the game, the empress is assassinated and Emily is kidnapped. Accused of the murder, you’re taken to prison whereupon you’re broken out by a loyalist faction who wants your help to find the lost Emily and help her take her rightful place on the throne.

The game takes place in an alternate Victorian England setting, a city called Dunwall. Their primary source of power is a type of whale oil, plague-infested rats roam the streets, and the man actually responsible for the assassination, the (former) Spymaster rules with the totalitarian fist of absolute authority.

There are two main gripes I have with this game, one related to the story and one related to the characters.

Gameplay Issue

As the royal protector, you’re given an interesting toolkit to tackle your issues.

While the game primarily lauds itself as a stealth game, they provide you with many tools to deal with combat situations as they arise. So as you wander around the shadows of Dunwall, you’re packing guns, crossbows, razor wire mines, and swords.

On top of that, you’re aided by the “Outsider” who gives you a slew of supernatural abilities ranging from a short range teleport (which breaks the game), rat summoning, and possession.

Despite all these tools though, the problem is the game never gives you a situation where you NEED to use any of it.

For example, I COULD summon some rats, attach a razor mine to the back of one of them, possess it and run it up to a guard to set it off…or I can take a quarter of the time, blink behind the guard and introduce his neck to my knife.

I COULD use the various empty bottles littered through the game to throw and make a noise so that the guards will investigate it while I sneak by…or I can just blink past the guard’s vision range.

I COULD summon my plague rats after killing a guard to dispose of the body for me…or I can let the alert trigger and then blink 3-4 times in a row to lose all pursuit.

The game gives you a heck of a lot of tools to work with, but no reason to use ANY of it.

You pick up the blink ability right from the get-go and after you get that, it pretty much settled into a pattern of getting a new tool/ability, trying it once and then going right back to blinking about the place, using my default knife.

You can go through the entire game using just the teleport and your knife.

And here’s the other thing.

The game offers you a huge variety of ways to kill people…then judges you for not using the stealthy, non-lethal approach.

Uh…what?

Story Issue

Here’s the thing, the story STARTS alright. Sure, it’s a bit of a generic revenge story but as long as its aware of that and doesn’t try to puff itself up to be more than it is, there’s nothing wrong with that…right?

The issue I had with it has less to do with the story and more to do with the characters and how the ending was handled.

So basically, you’re given a “chaos rating” throughout your missions, depending on whether or not you killed a lot of people or just choked them out and left them in dark corners.

If you have a low chaos rating by the end of the game, young Emily ascends to the throne and you’re all Mr. Benevolent Advisor/Father Figure and her reign is celebrated as a golden age! These two argumentative geniuses figure out how to cure the plague and everything is happy!

If you have a high chaos rating, Emily still ascends the throne but her reign is troubled. The cure for the plague is never discovered (despite the two genius guys being all alive and friendly just the same) and her reign is fraught with strife.

If you end up with a high chaos rating, the other characters in the story will judge you.

Right to your face, they’ll judge you.

There’s this character named Martin. He’s your boatman. Throughout the game, he takes you to the places you need to go, gives you a bit of context as you go and he manages to save your life when the loyalists themselves turn on you near the end.

…and despite this, if you have a high chaos rating, by the last mission, this bastard will tell you that you’re worse than all of the people that betrayed you. He’ll tell you that he thinks it’s almost as if you’d gone out of your way to be brutal.

Ummm…fucking excuse me? It’s like, “Bitch! I watched the woman I love get stabbed right in front of me! I’ve been in prison for six months getting beaten, cut at and stabbed with red hot pokers while they tried to get a false confession out of me! I finally escape to discover that I’m framed for her murder and I’m the most reviled man in the kingdom! But there’s still hope…a bunch of loyalist rebels are out to help me save Emily and put her ass on the throne where it belongs…oh, no. Wait. THEY betray me too? Leave me for dead so that they can control Emily like a puppet with me safely out of the picture? Call me crazy, but you know what? I’m going to feel just the slightest bit…stabby. I’m going to feel something that may or may not resemble murderous fucking rage.”

Holy hell, all that and Mr. High and Mighty Samuel feels the urge to judge me for the choices I’ve made?

The way I see it, it’s a goddamned fucking MIRACLE that I didn’t just go on a rampage through the city, killing everyone that was left.

I think it’s a bit of a misstep to give the player a moral choice…and then punish them for taking the wrong one. Not only punish them, but make a point of telling you that you’re an evil, sadistic bastard to boot.

Especially, ESPECIALLY, if the choices you make are more in line with what the character might actually do instead of becoming some sort of super saint that wouldn’t even be slightly tempted to introduce a batch of backstabbing sons of bitches to the business end of a retractable blade.

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The Secret To Writing

WRITING

Blogging, magazine articles, short stories, novels, non-fiction books, diaries, role-playing …

No matter what flavor of “writing” they do, a lot of writers are looking for the magic bullet – the missing piece that will solve all their writing problems.

“What problems are these, Tami?”

Well, I’m so glad you asked! Let’s take a look at a small sub-sampling, which naturally has no bearing whatsoever in my own personal writing problems and issues, because any one person having THIS many writing hangups might seem unhinged …. *coff, coff* Moving on.

I don’t have time to write.
There are too many distractions, it’s too hard to concentrate.
My writing isn’t good enough, nobody would voluntarily read this!
My muse must be broken.
What if I’m doing it wrong?
Every time I sit down to one story, five more crop up and I want to write them, too!

Those are fun, eh? Any of them sound familiar?

[image error] THE SECRET

I am going to teach you the secret to writing. It answers every single one of those problems and more.

Furthermore, I’m going to give it to you absolutely free.

*waves you in closer* Are you ready?

WRITE.

NO, SERIOUSLY

That’s it.

That’s the secret.

Disappointed?

I can’t imagine why you should be. If anything, you should be filled with hope and a renewed fervor.

I’m being serious here. You, in the back, stop it with the scoffing.

If there were some magical secret to writing, that would mean that some folks had an advantage. That no matter what you did, you might never write as well as they can until you got your hands on their magic bean/pill/potion/prayer/thingy. “Powdered writing skill, just add water!”

Happily, that’s not true at all!

Write. That’s it.

Work. Practice. Do. Take action. Butt in Chair, Fingers on Keyboard – WRITE.

EXCUSES

But, but, but, how can that possibly address all of those problems?

Don’t have time to write? What about all the single mothers out there holding down a full time job and still producing one to two books per year? Talk about someone who doesn’t have time to write! Ask any of them and they’ll tell you – they make time to write. In a life filled with valid reasons to have no time for writing, they carve out that time.
Too hard to concentrate? Buy a pair of headphones or earbuds and suck it up. We will never have the “perfect” writing environment. If we NEED the perfect writing environment to write, we’d never get anything done. Real life always intervenes. You just have to bull through it.
Not good enough? That’s what practice is for. You get better at writing by writing really horrid stuff for a while and improving as you see what works and what doesn’t work.
Broken muse? No such thing. I promise, if professional authors and artists produced work on their muse’s schedule, we’d still be in the dark ages. Sure, having that artistic high is FANTASTIC, but it can and will not be how you feel every time you sit down to write. Furthermore, writing “museless” is normal and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Just write. Regardless of whether or not you feel like you’re peeling the words out from beneath your fingernails or if your fingers are flying over the keyboard. Write.
Doing it wrong? There’s no wrong way to write. Commercial fiction has some structures and rules it usually obeys, and you can learn those from websites and books on writing. But there’s no way to WRITE wrong. Experiment. Do it the wrong way. Do it a different way. WRITE. Practice. Learn. What have you got to lose, really? Especially when compared against what you have to GAIN!
Too many story ideas at once? Write them all down. Promise all of them that you love them and you’ll come back to them. Pick one and WRITE it. Finish it. Go all the way to the end and then keep your promises to those other stories. WRITE.

SUMMARY

Whether you have novels inside of you, yearning to be written or you’d really just like to update your blog more often, the answer is the same.

WRITE. No excuses.

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My Rough Story Outline Blueprint

ROUGH Blueprint

This isn’t complete. I haven’t had time to test drive it yet, which pretty much always results in changes.

However, with NaNoWriMo uponxt us, I thought I’d release the draft version into the wild for you budding writers to fiddle and tweak and play with

This is my story blueprint — the thing I pull out when I’m developing a plot to make sure that I’ve got a decent base for the pacing and that I’ve got enough big events to pull me from point A to point B.

Hopefully you find it helpful. =]

ACT 1: The Setup

HOOK! Show the reader something that immediately catches their attention. This is why they bought the book. Don’t hide the magic and dragons till chapter 7. This can be a question the reader wants answered. Regardless, it should be a promise you fulfill in the novel (don’t promise dragons and then never use them) and should create an itch that needs scratching in the reader.
Save the Cat Establish empathy with the character. Give the character a minor conflict to reveal to the reader what they are REALLY like. Show their Essence rather than their Mask.
The Normal Show the character living in or stuck in their Mask. This can be done VERY BRIEFLY and the reader doesn’t need to be beaten about the head with it. This is typically boring stuff.
Casting Call Show me your major characters early. If you cannot show them (such as the villain, sometimes), at least hint at them. Try to build your adventuring crew very, very early. Show me the love interest now.
Inciting Incident Catalyst, Plot Point 1, Opportunity: No matter what you call it, this changes EVERYTHING. This is a life-changing event. It knocks down the character’s house of cards. It is a game-changing event that leads to a decision. In gentler stories, it creates a desire in the main character that cannot be ignored. This event appeals to a character’s Essence rather than their Mask.
Decision The main character makes a decision based on that inciting incident, from which it is obvious they cannot return to The Normal ever again. This may require a debate on their part, wherein they are dealing with the desire revealed during the Inciting Incident

Often, you can work BACKWARDS through Act 1. Figure out what your inciting incident is, figure out what a good HOOK would be (remember: start your story AS LATE IN THE TIMELINE AS YOU CAN) and then figure out what needs to happen to get from HOOK to DECISION. Act 1 often writes itself in this manner. Also, do not feel that you need to lengthen a starting act that works lovely when shorter. In most cases, Act 1 is too long because too much time is spent on The Normal and the author didn’t start the story late enough. Often, the reader is already aware of the Inciting Incident because it’s on the book cover. What they DON’T typically know is what comes after. Don’t spend too much time working up to a “reveal” that won’t surprise them. Length-wise, one hopes this is all wrapped up by 1/4 of the way through your final wordcount. DO NOT EASE INTO ACT 2.

ACT 2: The Climb

Reaction The character reacts to the goals/stakes/obstacles revealed in the Inciting Incident. (doesn’t need to be heroic yet: could just be retreat/regroup/doom)
B-Story Work in the sub-plot. Romance, etc. Break from the tension of the main story.
Behind the Mask The character wavers between their Mask and their Essence.
Reminder Reminder to the reader of the antagonistic forces at work.
Funhouse Develop your relationships and characters through activities that foster a good spirit.
Midpoint New information or awareness cause the characters to change course on how to proceed. False peak/collapse. Conflict point. If your characters have been reacting/learning/regrouping thus far, it’s time to become active. Fun and Games are over and stakes are raised. Reaffirm character’s goal, and do something to affirm that they are still on track and dedicated. As the name indicates, this is about halfway through the story.
False Hope The character is given a glimpse of hope, a reason to believe they will succeed.

ACT 3: The Fall

Inner Demons Character ramps up battle with inner demons, fears, worries, faults.
Artillery Bad guys regroup and come back with heavy artillery.
Crumble The hero’s team unravels. This is almost always done because characters reatreat behind their masks, despite having been revealing their Essenses to each other. The most believable conflicts are the ones that are based on a character’s fears and who they were at the beginning of the story, because the reader SAW those and will understand them.
Darkest Night All is lost, and the hero’s greatest fears are realized.
Final Plot Point The final injection of new information into the story. This information doesn’t need to be understood by the main character yet, but you don’t keep adding new plot twists up to the final page or your readers will feel cheated.

ACT 4: The Finale

Finale Go! Fight! Win! Hero and team work together to defeat antagonist. Hero summons the courage and growth to come up with the solution, overcome inner obstacles, and conquer the antagonistic force. All new information must have been referenced, foreshadowed, or already in play. (anything else is a deus ex machina)
Aftermath Wrap up EVERY primary plot thread.
The New Normal Show a glimpse of the hero in their new Normal, where they are living more in their Essence than in their Mask.

Related posts:

Story Dissection and Evaluation
NaNo2010 > Outline 7 > Act 3
The First Quarter Of The Book

[Perry] Authors Don't Owe Us Anything

Do you know what drives me nuts?

Hearing people talking about how some author “owes it to them” to get on with the next book in the series.

Uh…excuse me?

It boggles the mind to consider that there are people out there in the world who feel that because they’ve deigned to grace the author with their readership, the author owes it to them to get on with it and publish more books solely for the reader’s entertainment.

In other words, dance, my little entertaining monkey! Dance!

That’s complete and utter crap and I’m hoping that everyone reading this knows it.

When someone writes something…hell, when someone creates something and dares to share it with the world, it shouldn’t be seen as mere entertainment but more of a gift.

I read that last sentence out loud and it sounds really funny, not to mention more than a little presumptuous but to be honest, that’s how I feel.

Everything I write, from the full stories down to the smallest story fragment, feels like a child of my own blood. The thought of setting them free, with all of the flaws and handicaps that I’ve saddled them with, to make their own way in the world oftentimes scares me more than I care to admit.

Even with the nicest of readers you could ask to share your work with *coughtamistevencoughcough*, my heart leaps to my throat every single time I share a new piece.

So I can’t imagine how it would feel like to share a piece of your soul like that with a stranger to be met with anger on their part when you don’t write fast enough to suit them.

I feel so goddamned awful for poor George Martin, writer of the fantastic Game of Thrones series.

Around the time the television adaptation was slated to be released, the poor man was dealing with a pretty serious bout of depression.

Do you want to know why?

Not only was he struggling hugely with the next book in the series and acting as an adviser for the show, he was also dealing with a staggering amount of hate mail. Hate mail sent by people who demanded that he stop ‘wasting his time’ with the TV show and get his nose back to the grindstone so that he could churn out the next book in the series as soon as possible.

Just thinking about that makes me want to punch a kitten.

Now, I loved The Name of the Wind and my hunger to know how the story will end is something that nibbles away at me every single day, but by Rothfuss’s great and bushy beard, if he chose to stop writing tomorrow and never finished the story? There is no way that I would feel that I was owed the the rest of it.

I’m not saying I’d be happy about it. It would, of course, be heart-breaking news and there might even be a manly tear or two, but if the man chooses to no longer share his literary child with me, that’s entirely his prerogative.

Lucky for us, many of these authors love their work and are more than willing to share the results of that work with the general public.

But if an author didn’t enjoy what they were doing and wanted to pursue something else with their life, well…it would be rather selfish of us to chain them to a desk and demand they write for us, wouldn’t it?

That sort of situation never tends to end well for anyone…

 

Related posts:

Plotting
On Worldbuilding And Infodumps