Benjamin M. Weilert's Blog: BMW the Blog, page 8

What video games can teach us about writing (2/3)

Last month, I discussed how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild could teach writers about world-building, travel time, and how to show (and not tell). Even if open-world games like Breath of the Wild can give the player any experience they want, there are still some weaknesses of the genre. It’s difficult to provide direction for a plot that can be experienced at any time and in any order. Older video games didn’t particularly have this problem due to their fairly linear format. Of course, there also wasn’t much in terms of a story either.

While nostalgia can color our experiences with games like Mega Man and Super Mario Bros., one can find their influence on modern gaming in gems like Shovel Knight. With modern development tools, game companies can preserve the nostalgia of these older games while also advancing the “retro” style in exciting ways. What’s perhaps surprising about Shovel Knight is its ability to tell a story linearly but with enough flexibility that the player won’t necessarily get the same experience each time. So, without further ado, let’s explore what writing tips we can glean from:

Shovel Knight

For this week’s game, I’d like to include the first three campaigns of this throw-back. That means I’ll be referencing “Shovel of Hope,” “Plague of Shadows,” and “Specter of Torment.” I’m sure the final portion of this game, “King of Cards” will have similar lessons to show us, it just hasn’t released yet. While I grew up with the video games that inspired this recent release, I’d offer that even those who didn’t have this nostalgia might enjoy playing through this particular (if not peculiar) platformer.

1. Motif and Theme

The main thing you’ll notice right from the start with this game is that it excels in Motif and Theme. Each of the Knights of the Order of No Quarter has a specific trait that gives their level a particular look and feel. Sure, it can feel exaggerated at times; but there’s no doubt that a boss character you meet at the end of a graveyard would be similar to the grim reaper. Each setting feels unique to the character who inhabits it, and each of these characters is distinguishable from each other based on these themes and motifs. When you’re designing your characters—especially ones as diverse as the Knights of the Order of No Quarter—make sure you pick something that will make them unique and expand upon that theme into the motif of that’s character’s design and behavior.

2. Point of View

One of the benefits of Shovel Knight’s various campaigns is that it allows the player to control different characters. The titular character has a pretty standard “hero’s quest;” but once you are able to play as the enemy, you start to realize they might not be as bad as you first thought. The key here is using the different points of view (POVs) to explore the motive of a character. It can be easy to get in a character’s head using the first person POV to show their reactions to certain stimuli—some of which likely resulted from their backstory and past experiences. This might not entirely excuse the actions of a villain, but it can certainly make them more realistic and relatable.

3. Diversity

While some genres like fantasy can lend themselves to a variety of settings like Shovel Knight does, part of the challenge of including diverse characters in writing is to make their inclusion feel natural. Part of this is tied to the previous points of motif and POV. More importantly, Shovel Knight is an interesting game because of the various characters’ diversity. It can get pretty boring going through the same levels over and over again to face the same boss with minor differences added to make them “unique.” These diverse characters can add interest and sub-plot conflicts to a story that might otherwise be a straightforward “save the princess” narrative. In fact, the fact this game chose to make the “princess” an equal partner with the titular character is something that I’d readily declare as #relationshipgoals.

Shovel Knight vs. Mole Knight.

As you can see, even a simple game like Shovel Knight has a lot it can teach writers about characters. Additionally, even though the concept of a knight who wields a shovel seems ridiculous, the game commits to it wholeheartedly and has a believable story and world as a result. If anything, this should inspire you to write that weird mash-up you’ve been thinking about. After all, how ridiculous could it be? Surely, not as absurd as Shovel Knight. And we all see how successful it became.

 

Have you played Shovel Knight?

What are some pitfalls of writing “video game” characters?

What other games have great characters?

What video games can teach us about writing (1/3)

Art inspires art. Sometimes a beautiful painting can give you an idea for a short story. Perhaps a beloved song is a jumping-off point for a novella. Maybe a great movie can get your creative juices flowing for a book of your own. Art can come in many forms, but one form most people don’t readily recognize is that of video games. I’ve already written about how games like Not Tetris describe my idea-collecting process, but recently I’ve played a few games I would consider artistic enough to pull some lessons into my own writing.

Art inspires art. But, are video games art?

Video games have come a long way from the days of Pong and Pac-Man. While these games were kept simple due to technical limitations, today’s video games no longer have these restrictions. I think one of the reasons why video games aren’t considered art is that most art is one-directional. You go to a museum to view paintings. You listen to music on your phone or computer. You read books from one page to the next. Sure, you’re still interacting with the art in some way (sometimes more than others), but the artist can only provide one side of the experience. Video games, however, are intrinsically more interactive and thus need to be more flexible in their art. Anymore, video games are more like interactive movies. Considering how artistic movies can be, then can’t video games be just as artistic?

This month—and for the next few months—I’d like to discuss how video games can teach writers some tricks to help improve their craft. While many of these examples are modern, I’ll focus on one game each month to highlight the aspects that writers can use in their writing. This month, I’ll be covering:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I’ve been a fan of the Zelda series for quite a while. This latest entry is what motivated me to purchase a Nintendo Switch, and it gave me numerous hours of content to absorb. While this was my first foray into the realm of open-world action games, I recognize there are other prime examples in the genre. From Shadow of the Colossus to Skyrim, there are many ways to set up an open world for players to explore. Even though I’ll be specifically talking about Breath of the Wild in this post, if you’ve ever played an open-world game, you can likely glean some of the same writing tips.

1. World-building

Early entries in the Zelda series had a limited amount of ability to convey the complexity of the world they inhabited. This was again a restriction of the hardware at the time. By the time the first 3-D Zelda came out, a lot of that changed. Ocarina of Time set the standard for the series, bringing forth fully fleshed-out races and themes that have continued through the series to this day. If you’re writing fantasy, look no further than Breath of the Wild to see the latest example of a world filled with different races of allies and monsters. From the rock-like Gorons, fish-like Zoras, and bird-like Rito to more human-like Gerudo and Hylians, the variety in the characters is based in part on the geography and geology of the world they inhabit.

When you’re building your own world in your writing, what are some things to consider? Are there rivalries between races? Cultural limitations? Can some races only survive in the immediate area around their home? What about geography? Breath of the Wild features volcanoes, deserts, lakes, beaches, mountains, plains, and everything between. How would you describe these places? While “magic” isn’t necessarily a huge part of Breath of the Wild, it is present in limited forms. What rules does this magic have? Are there limitations? Extreme or destructive cases? Remember, the more depth and detail you can figure out for the world you’re writing, the more realistic it will seem for your reader. Just don’t get distracted with too many details, or you might derail your story.

2. Travel

Breath of the Wild is by far the most extensive map in the Zelda series to date. Like I mentioned above, there’s plenty of geographic features, but it can take a while to travel from one location to another. While one way around this is the quick travel system that can warp Link from one place to another, your story might not have that luxury (as an example, The Fluxion Trilogy uses a series of doors and keys to accomplish this quick travel technique). In open-world games like this, it can take actual time to traverse the distance between towns or other points of interest. While you’re playing, start to consider how long it takes to travel by walking, running, on horseback, on the glider, or on an ancient motorcycle. Granted, the world of Breath of the Wild is scaled down a bit from the real world, but figuring out how long travel takes is essential to give the world you’re creating some heft and size.

How long does it take to paraglide across a river?

Similarly, with a world as big as Hyrule is in Breath of the Wild, there are plenty of different climates. When your characters travel to a new place, do you know what equipment they need? How often have I quick-traveled to a snowy mountain from a scorching volcano and had to change Link’s clothes to handle the new climate? How does this climate change during the day as compared to the night? For instance, in the hot desert, I need to be able to handle the heat during the day, but when night comes, I need to switch over to cold-weather gear. And it’s not just climates that necessitate adequate accouterments. If Link is climbing a mountain, walking in the snow, or running in sand, I equip the right gear to make that task easier. What do your characters need to overcome the challenges of their world? If they’re not adequately equipped, what problems arise?

3. Show, don’t tell

One of the limitations of the open-world format is the ability to force a linear storyline. As a writer, one of the only ways to imitate this would be via a “choose your own adventure” story. However, this limitation in a video game puts more of an onus on the ability of the game developers to “show and not tell.” In fact, most games that have excessive handholding are seen as frustrating since the player is always reminded what to do. In a game like Breath of the Wild, the exploration of the world helps tell the story, even if it’s indirectly. Instead of saying that Hyrule Castle is taken over by Calamity Ganon, it’s constantly shown off in the distance, surrounded by a swirl of dark purple evil. Plenty of monuments and ruins show what the world used to be, leaving the reason why to the player’s imagination.

Because there’s a limitation to storytelling in an open-world game, Breath of the Wild resorted to flashbacks to deliver key plot points to the player. While this technique is generally frowned upon in writing, it’s important to note that flashbacks can work if used infrequently and only for critical pieces of information. Sometimes, you can “show” a lot about a character or setting, but a little “tell” can go a long way if there’s any ambiguity in the string of hints you’ve laid down for the reader.

 

While Breath of the Wild isn’t necessarily a perfect game, it does provide a unique experience that I haven’t encountered before. I could dive deeper into the character progression, physics, weather, lore, and other elements of this game that can help improve writing skills, but these three topics cover the significant points for right now. Next month, I’ll explore how video games can improve writing from different Points of View (POV), well-rounded characters, and thematic motifs.

 

Have you played Breath of the Wild?

How about other open-world games?

What writing tips could you glean from them?

This is a test

This is only a test

When is a manuscript “good enough”?

Just like I was surprised to realize I had been journaling for ten years (now up to 12 years), I’ll be participating in my 10th National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this November. It’s weird to think that I’ve written nine books with this challenge over the years, even to the point where I’ve used the experience I’ve gained in doing so to publish other books outside my self-imposed NaNoWriMo publishing cycle (like the Cinema Connections book slated for release this September).

Back when I wrote First Name Basis, I was so excited CreateSpace offered me five free proof copies of my book just for finishing the NaNoWriMo challenge. I really wanted that physical copy of the book I had just spent six weeks writing, but I also knew it needed some polishing so I’d be proud of what I had created. I asked some friends to help beta read, and I took their notes and performed a number of edits before finally clicking that “submit” button. I liked what I had created, so I also made it available on Amazon in case anyone else was interested.

A compressed schedule was bound to have some mistakes slip through.

This cycle continued for the next two books in the trilogy. Once I completed this three-year project (not knowing it would be this big when I started), I collected everything together, made another pass of edits for continuity, and added an appendix for the trilogy collection now known as The Fluxion Trilogy. I learned a lot in those three books, and I like them for what they were: an author figuring out this whole novel-writing and publishing business.

Sure, they’re not the greatest stories ever written, and I didn’t hire an editor or a cover artist since I didn’t have the money to spend on these projects. Still, they were a milestone in my journey as an author. Having realized that I could better serve my readers if I didn’t publish at such a rapid turnaround, I ended up taking a break from publishing anything new. Even so, I kept writing new stories. I just wanted to finish each saga so I could edit all the pieces as a collective whole.

These books weren’t the best, but they were a milestone.

In 2017, I decided I was going to take my writing a bit more seriously. I dusted off The Fluxion Trilogy and put it through another self-edit while at the same time giving them covers that weren’t just the simple “cover creator” style provided by CreateSpace. While this added a little more polish to my first books, I still didn’t hire an editor for them. They might look a little nicer, but they’re still basically the same books I wrote back in 2010 to 2012. I know some people have not finished reading these books for the very reason that they need an editor. I also know others who have found them enjoyable, despite these flaws.

If I was going through the trouble to update these books, why didn’t I spend a little more money to make them that much more professional? The way I see it; they’re like my “original trilogy.” Sure, I could go the George Lucas route and add new scenes, or tweak the story based on some complaints, but I’d rather they stand as mostly untouched works so that my readers can see how much further I’ve come as a writer. Even though it is possible for me to go in and polish them to perfection, at what point would I consider it “good enough”? Perhaps this is why some writers don’t even publish in the first place.

Perfectionism has killed more manuscripts than rejection letters.

I think my most recent book, Fourteener Father, shows how far I’ve come. I hired an editor for this book, mostly because I wanted to get that professional polish to it. Also, in the years since I released The Fluxion Trilogy, I’ve had a lot of good beta reader feedback from new and different people, thus revealing to me areas where I could work on improving my writing.

Goodreads has been great at keeping track of my reading. 488 books as of March 23rd.

Similarly, I became a voracious reader. Since 2010, I’ve read at least 488 books. Some were well-known books that helped me find techniques to improve my storytelling. Others were by independent and self-published authors. These were a little tougher for me to read, as I was able to see all the mistakes in my writing that beta readers had pointed out to me over the years. As these authors would often send me a book for an honest review, I would have to honestly tell them that they’d either need some beta readers or an editor (maybe even a better editor). I had received similar reviews of First Name Basis that had initially stung but helped me improve my writing since then.

While I’m definitely more serious about my writing, it’s still a bit of a hobby for me. I’m not quitting my day job to pursue my writing (not just yet, anyway). I think it’s easier to be able to go back and see how far I’ve come with this hobby by leaving my early works intact. If anything, this is so I can see the advancement and know that I can always become a better writer than where I am right now. Heck, in 10 years, I hope to be publishing books that are much more professional than Fourteener Father, but I won’t know unless I leave it alone as another marker on my journey as an author.

 

What about you? Do you go back and polish your already-published manuscripts after receiving negative/constructive feedback? When is a manuscript “good enough” to publish? When is it “good enough” to leave alone?

How much should you write?

Writing is my hobby. It is not my full-time job. It is not paying to support my family. Sure, it can make some money on the side, but I generally write to be creative. I have stories and ideas that I want to get onto the page and out to the world. I started writing for fun in college, creating a series of intertwined short stories I wanted to collect into a novel-length book. Nothing ever truly came of these short stories, other than to convince me that they were possible.

Then I wrote my first novel. I found it ironic that I didn’t pursue a thesis-based Master’s Degree, but ended up doing nine months of research to write a thesis-length book in roughly six weeks. This was the largest thing I had ever written. Unlike my previous short stories, though, a coupon to get five free proof copies of this book was the impetus I needed to edit and polish this novel. Six months later, I was holding a physical copy of my first novel in my hands. It was available on Amazon, and anyone who wanted to could buy this book.

I was now a published author.

I’ll leave the debate as to whether self-published authors are “real” authors to the comments section (spoiler alert: they are still authors). Regardless, now that I had written and published a book, I suddenly knew it wasn’t impossible. This allowed me to start planning the next book in the series. And the next. Suddenly, three years had passed, and I had a trilogy on my hands. With this story complete, I collected all three books together and published them in a single omnibus. I also included an appendix to help explain the tons of references I made throughout the series. While there wasn’t too much new content in this omnibus, it was technically the fourth book I ever published.

For the next few years, I mainly focused on writing novels. This was something I now knew how to do, so I stuck with it and became more serious about creating a professional product. And I kept writing. Even though I contained most of my writing to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I eventually became aware that I could submit short stories to anthologies. Sure, I had a few poems accepted into a creative anthology while I was in school, but I had never thought I was good enough to submit short stories elsewhere. Since my writing focus was on novels during November, there were still 11 months of the year I could write short stories.

These short stories didn’t come as easily as they used to.

After spending so much time focused on long-form narratives, it was difficult to revert to stories that had a word count limit, instead of a minimum word count. Finding ideas that could be contained within the bounds of a short story was harder than it used to be. I wasn’t writing 11 short stories a year, but I was managing to crank out one or two. Some of them were accepted. Others were rejected. Still, I kept everything I had written, and I kept writing regularly.

In 2017, I decided to take my writing hobby a lot more seriously. I published the second editions of my original trilogy, giving them updated covers that weren’t basic designs from an online cover creator. Part of taking this hobby seriously meant that I intended to publish a book every single year from then on out. In 2018, I published my fourth book (or fifth, if you count the omnibus), Fourteener Father. I had written the first draft of this book back in 2016, so it wasn’t too hard to get it polished and out to the world by 2018.

Then I hit a snag.

Unfortunately, while I had four manuscripts in my “to edit” pile, one of them I wanted to submit to agents, which probably meant I couldn’t publish it in 2019. Moreover, the other three still needed a lot of work before I would want to release them. It started to seem that I didn’t have anything to publish in 2019. Then I remembered that I was going to be wrapping up my movie blog, Cinema Connections, by the end of August. I had been writing this weekly blog since 2012, and I suddenly realized that I could combine these 400 posts into a single volume. A single volume that I could publish in 2019.

I write all this to arrive at the central question of this post: how much should you write? I know most authors dream of writing the greatest book ever written and using it to rest their laurels. It’s worked for a few over the years, like Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird (I’m going to ignore that she wrote a so-so sequel). But if you look at other authors like Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut, you’ll see that—along with the novels that they wrote—they also wrote short stories and other pieces of fiction. They were always writing.

Write to fill out your portfolio.

I understand that not every short story I write will be accepted into an anthology. I know that I probably won’t win every flash fiction contest I enter. And yet, I write. I write blog posts for organizations I am involved with. I write stories that interest me. I write, and I write, and I write. Eventually, I’ll have written enough little bits and pieces that I can collect them all together into a book. Authors have done this before, like Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors, Ray Bradbury’s The Golden Apples of the Sun, or Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House. I’m starting to eye the short stories I’ve written over the years, wondering if there’s enough there for a book. I think there is, but until then, I’ll keep writing.

Why a book is more than just words

Go over to your bookshelf. Pick up your favorite book and open it up. What do you see? If your only answer is “words,” then take a second look. Flip through a few pages. Now, what do you see? Do you notice that it looks like a book? What do I mean by that? Essentially, all the other elements of page design—besides the words themselves—are what help make a book into what it is. That being said, I’ve seen some issues with self-published books that I feel I need to address.

Good design balances negative space.

Even though this post is mostly about the design of a book’s interior, the first place to start is with the words themselves. Open up your favorite book again and look at the words. Now, see where there are no words? The indents at the start of paragraphs and the chunks of space to the right of fast-paced dialogue create negative space that helps the reader proceed through the material. If you have a textbook on your bookshelf, open it up for comparison. While there are “walls of text” in a textbook, most will try to break them up with inserts and pictures to help make it more readable.

If you have a work-in-progress, open it up and compare it to these previous examples. Are all your paragraphs the same length? Are your paragraphs long sections of exposition? As children, we were all taught about writing in essay form. This means you have some similarly-sized paragraphs because each paragraph needs an intro, the content (what the text is about), and a transition into the next section. A 5th-grade essay will have five paragraphs of five sentences each. But you’re not writing a 5th-grade essay, are you? You’re writing creatively. These ingrained rules can be broken to create a sense of pacing and action, instead of a monotonous slog through a story. If your manuscript looks like a wall of text, break up your paragraphs a little more. Nothing intimidates a reader more than seeing a page with no natural breaks in it.

If your book doesn’t look like all the others, readers will notice.

We all know it’s important to proofread your book to make sure you caught all the typos in it. However, are you also finding all the formatting errors? While I know there are a lot of other word processors out there besides Microsoft Word, it behooves all self-published writers to understand how their word processor of choice works. Right now, I’m going through many submissions for a short story anthology, and I’m surprised how many of them don’t use the requested formatting. I want a document that’s double spaced, with first-line indents and no spaces after paragraphs. That shouldn’t be difficult, right?

Wrong.

I’ve seen people who “tab” the first line in their paragraphs, instead of using the already-built-in feature of a word processor to do that for them. I’ve even seen people use a whole bunch of spaces to create the same effect, which is more annoying to fix than you can imagine. While these techniques might work for self-publishing, consider how often you might miss indenting a paragraph, or if the indents don’t line up quite right when compared against each other. Readers are bound to notice this, just like how they’ll notice if an author uses Times New Roman, Arial, or some non-standard font that you wouldn’t usually see in a published work. They’ll see how unprofessional the formatting looks, and that’s what contributes to the negative stereotype of the self-published author.

To break this stereotype, we all need to hold our manuscripts to professional levels of formatting. If you need to hire someone to do the formatting for you, it’ll be money well spent. Plus, if you’re already proficient in professional formatting, then when you do finally submit to short story anthologies or agents/publishers, they’ll be more likely to accept your work based on its content because it won’t be nearly as much of a pain to fix it and get it ready for the printed page. With as many queries and submissions these people get, you don’t want something silly like formatting to be the reason for your rejection.

Page design is an art.

I understand that a lot of authors are publishing for the eBook market. Some of the formatting issues I mentioned above can hide when their files convert into a different file format. Similarly, it’s difficult to create a desired experience on the page when the font and font size can be changed by the reader. Despite all this, there are little additions that I think make a book more interesting to read, or at least make it interesting to flip through. And people will inevitably pick up a book and flip through it. I’m not sure what they’re looking for, but if you give them something that grabs their attention, they might stick around a little longer and actually read something.

Even for eBooks, a self-published author can add little pieces of art to help create an immersive experience for the reader. Instead of a couple of spaced lines between section breaks or a simple asterisk, why not use an asterism, fleuron, dingbat, or another symbol that can not only distinguish between sections of your chapters but can add some flair that’s tied to the theme of your book. Similarly, you can put similar ornamentation before the start of a chapter to help a reader quickly see at a glance how long your chapters are when they flip through your book.

Here’s an example from “Fourteener Father.” Notice the silhouette at the beginning of the chapter, the different font for the chapter title, the triangle and page number in the header (both referencing mountains), and the mountain used as a section break.

Regarding font, I always recommend Garamond, since it is more professional than a standard Times New Roman typeface. Plus, if you look at any italicized text in Garamond, you’ll realize that it’s used more often than not. You can use a different font for emphasis occasionally, just don’t go overboard. Additionally, you might want to consider using a font for the page numbers and page headings that match the font you used for your front cover, just to tie everything together into a cohesive format. Heck, play with the placement of text in the headers and footers as well. Do you want page numbers on the top corners? How about the author name and title hiding in the margins? I’ve seen some creative uses of headers and footers lately that prove that page design is more of an art than most authors tend to consider.

With all this in mind, go back and take a look at your favorite book. What kinds of formatting did they use? Can you re-create some of this formatting for your manuscript? What are some examples of interesting page design that you’ve seen in the books you’ve read?

2019 and Beyond

While December was a good time to look back on all that I accomplished in 2018, now that it’s January, it’s time to look forward to the future. I have a lot of plates spinning right now, and a lot of manuscripts still waiting for me to edit them. Fortunately, I have plenty of projects that are wrapping up in 2019.

The Buried Colony

2017’s NaNoWriMo novel, The Buried Colony (originally titled as Frozen Planet) has gone through three editing passes in 2018 in preparations for one of the most terrifying things I have yet to do with my writing: submitting a manuscript to an agent. That’s right! I’m going to spend 2019 pitching this hard sci-fi story to agents in the hope that I can have it be traditionally published in 2020. Since The Martian has helped make hard sci-fi a more viable genre in recent years, I hope that my exploration of how to potentially send humans outside the solar system is met with at least one agent feeling they could market it to a publishing house. If worse comes to worst and I don’t get any interest, don’t fret! If I don’t garner any interest by the end of the year, I’ll push forward and self-publish this book in 2020 so that all you lovely people will still get a chance to read it.

Cinema Connections

With the 2nd Editions of The Fluxion Trilogy released in 2017 and Fourteener Father released in 2018, I hope to keep this momentum up by releasing another book in 2019. While The Buried Colony is the closest to being ready for prime time, I’m still not planning to publish it until 2020. How do I fill that gap? Well, started in 2012, my movie blog, Cinema Connections, will be reaching its conclusion by the end of August. Consequently, I will be collecting together the 400 posts of this blog and compiling them into a physical version that you can use to answer the question “what shall we watch tonight?” The point of the book isn’t necessarily to present 1001 movies you must see before you die, but rather to take some of the movies you’re familiar with and give you some different ones to expand your movie-viewing experience. I hope to have this compendium published by the end of September, so make sure to keep an eye out for it when it goes live!

This is Not a Drill

A post from my Facebook page took on a life of its own in the 13+ months since then. There’s not much about this project I can talk about right now since I want to keep it mostly a secret for now. Needless to say, it will probably be another project I’ll be pitching to literary agents, albeit different ones than the ones I’ll be contacting for pitching The Buried Colony. Make sure to like my Facebook page for updates on this “secret project.”

Your regularly scheduled content . . .

National Novel Writing Month for 2019 will see me writing the sequel to 2018’s The Slumberealm Gambit. I’ll be continuing on with the Slumberealm series with book 2: The Dreamer’s Promotion. Of course, I’ll also still be posting regular blog posts here, as well as new Writer Rant episodes over on my YouTube channel (the first episode of Season 3 should be out by now). Check back in to see what writing advice I’ll have for you in 2019. Hopefully, you’re as excited for this year as I am!

2019 and Beyond

While December was a good time to look back on all that I accomplished in 2018, now that it’s January, it’s time to look forward to the future. I have a lot of plates spinning right now, and a lot of manuscripts still waiting for me to edit them. Fortunately, I have plenty of projects that are wrapping up in 2019.

The Buried Colony

2017’s NaNoWriMo novel, The Buried Colony (originally titled as Frozen Planet) has gone through three editing passes in 2018 in preparations for one of the most terrifying things I have yet to do with my writing: submitting a manuscript to an agent. That’s right! I’m going to spend 2019 pitching this hard sci-fi story to agents in the hope that I can have it be traditionally published in 2020. Since The Martian has helped make hard sci-fi a more viable genre in recent years, I hope that my exploration of how to potentially send humans outside the solar system is met with at least one agent feeling they could market it to a publishing house. If worse comes to worst and I don’t get any interest, don’t fret! If I don’t garner any interest by the end of the year, I’ll push forward and self-publish this book in 2020 so that all you lovely people will still get a chance to read it.

Cinema Connections

With the 2nd Editions of The Fluxion Trilogy released in 2017 and Fourteener Father released in 2018, I hope to keep this momentum up by releasing another book in 2019. While The Buried Colony is the closest to being ready for prime time, I’m still not planning to publish it until 2020. How do I fill that gap? Well, started in 2012, my movie blog, Cinema Connections, will be reaching its conclusion by the end of August. Consequently, I will be collecting together the 400 posts of this blog and compiling them into a physical version that you can use to answer the question “what shall we watch tonight?” The point of the book isn’t necessarily to present 1001 movies you must see before you die, but rather to take some of the movies you’re familiar with and give you some different ones to expand your movie-viewing experience. I hope to have this compendium published by the end of September, so make sure to keep an eye out for it when it goes live!

This is Not a Drill

A post from my Facebook page took on a life of its own in the 13+ months since then. There’s not much about this project I can talk about right now since I want to keep it mostly a secret for now. Needless to say, it will probably be another project I’ll be pitching to literary agents, albeit different ones than the ones I’ll be contacting for pitching The Buried Colony. Make sure to like my Facebook page for updates on this “secret project.”

Your regularly scheduled content . . .

National Novel Writing Month for 2019 will see me writing the sequel to 2018’s The Slumberealm Gambit. I’ll be continuing on with the Slumberealm series with book 2: The Dreamer’s Promotion. Of course, I’ll also still be posting regular blog posts here, as well as new Writer Rant episodes over on my YouTube channel (the first episode of Season 3 should be out by now). Check back in to see what writing advice I’ll have for you in 2019. Hopefully, you’re as excited for this year as I am!

2018 Year in Review

It’s incredible to think that 2018 is almost over. This year, completed quite a few projects and started many more. In case you’ve missed some of these announcements, this post is a handy recap of all the content that I released in 2018. So, without further ado, here’s the . . .

2018 YEAR IN REVIEW
Fourteener Father

While 2017 saw the re-release of my first three books in the form of the 2nd Editions of The Fluxion Trilogy, this year I released my fourth book, Fourteener Father: a memoir of life above 14,000 ft. Here’s an unboxing video for the paperback and hardcover versions:

This book was a labor of love and the first non-fiction book I’ve written. Over the last 20+ years, my father and I climbed all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains, and I wanted to share that experience and journey with everyone. I released this book on Father’s Day of this year and have been getting pretty good reviews on it on Amazon. It’s available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle eBook.

Last Shot Fired (Soul Photographer)

It took a bit of work, but my short story, Soul Photographer, is finally out now that the Midnight Writers‘ anthology Last Shot Fired is published. Released at the end of October, this book brings together 20 different short stories (including Soul Photographer) that ask the question, “What happens when there’s only one shot left?” If you’re interested in reading these stories, they’re available in paperback and Kindle eBook on Amazon.

The Slumberealm Gambit

For this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I started writing a new trilogy via The Slumberealm Gambit. I originally was going to write this about five years ago, but other ideas were stronger at the time. I managed to write the first 50,000 words of this book in 9 days and finished up the entire plot in 10. I’ll likely be publishing this book a few years from now, so make sure to sign up for my newsletter so you’ll know when it comes out.

Writer Rant

Season 2 of my vlog had way more episodes than Season 1, with a grand total of 44 episodes. This year, I covered topics as varied as Accountability to Prologues to Breaking the 4th Wall. If you’ve missed any episodes or want to watch the whole season, you can check out the playlist below:

Blog Posts

Much like my Writer Rants, I have written a number of blog posts on this website with the intention of helping any authors who might be starting out. Here’s a listing of this year’s topics:

January: How to handle a bad review

I’ve given a few bad reviews over the years and received plenty of bad reviews on my books. How you handle criticism says a lot about your maturity as a writer.


February: Expectations and a Reviewer’s Rubric

As someone who reviews media (like books and movies), I have realized that expectations are key to any review. It also helps to know what things I look for when I’m reviewing something.


March: 3 Reasons why you shouldn’t pick sides

Politics are extremely polarizing. If your writing “picks sides,” especially if you portray the other side in an extremely negative fashion, you might be alienating half your audience.


April: 4 types of edits, and why you need to do them all

How much editing is too much editing? While a writer’s work should always go through a few iterations, it’s important that they’re the right type of edits for the project.


May: Why “spell check” is not enough

There are some pretty common homophone/homograph errors that plague writers. It’s these slightly less common ones that still make readers stop and go, “huh?”


June: 3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 1/3]

You might not realize it, but the programs on your computer can help you publish a book. These tools are hiding in plain sight and are often underused when it comes to their usefulness.


July: 3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 2/3]

The second part in this series shows how a common set of programs can be used in slightly-less orthodox ways to help you get a book published.


August: 3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 3/3]

The final part in the 3-part series, this post highlights the simplicity in which some of these programs can be used to replace more expensive programs.


September: The ABC+ of Beta Reading

While all writers should seek out beta reader feedback, sometimes it helps to give these beta readers something to focus on when they’re going over a writer’s manuscript.


October: Why you should schedule your writing

Let’s face it, nobody has time for writing. If you want to be serious about it, you need to treat it differently and schedule it. Daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, a writing schedule is key.


November: An Engineer’s Guide to NaNoWriMo (or how I grew from a newbie to a veteran)

In this post I wrote for NaNoWriMo, I explain how spreadsheets helped me compete against myself and grow as a writer.

Thanks to everyone who’s enjoyed my content this year. I promise next year will have quite a few interesting things planned, but the blog posts and Writer Rants might be a little more sparse as a result. Come back in January and I’ll explain the details of what’s to come!

2018 Year in Review

It’s incredible to think that 2018 is almost over. This year, completed quite a few projects and started many more. In case you’ve missed some of these announcements, this post is a handy recap of all the content that I released in 2018. So, without further ado, here’s the . . .

2018 YEAR IN REVIEW
Fourteener Father

While 2017 saw the re-release of my first three books in the form of the 2nd Editions of The Fluxion Trilogy, this year I released my fourth book, Fourteener Father: a memoir of life above 14,000 ft. Here’s an unboxing video for the paperback and hardcover versions:

This book was a labor of love and the first non-fiction book I’ve written. Over the last 20+ years, my father and I climbed all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains, and I wanted to share that experience and journey with everyone. I released this book on Father’s Day of this year and have been getting pretty good reviews on it on Amazon. It’s available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle eBook.

Last Shot Fired (Soul Photographer)

It took a bit of work, but my short story, Soul Photographer, is finally out now that the Midnight Writers‘ anthology Last Shot Fired is published. Released at the end of October, this book brings together 20 different short stories (including Soul Photographer) that ask the question, “What happens when there’s only one shot left?” If you’re interested in reading these stories, they’re available in paperback and Kindle eBook on Amazon.

The Slumberealm Gambit

For this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I started writing a new trilogy via The Slumberealm Gambit. I originally was going to write this about five years ago, but other ideas were stronger at the time. I managed to write the first 50,000 words of this book in 9 days and finished up the entire plot in 10. I’ll likely be publishing this book a few years from now, so make sure to sign up for my newsletter so you’ll know when it comes out.

Writer Rant

Season 2 of my vlog had way more episodes than Season 1, with a grand total of 44 episodes. This year, I covered topics as varied as Accountability to Prologues to Breaking the 4th Wall. If you’ve missed any episodes or want to watch the whole season, you can check out the playlist below:

Blog Posts

Much like my Writer Rants, I have written a number of blog posts on this website with the intention of helping any authors who might be starting out. Here’s a listing of this year’s topics:

January: How to handle a bad review

I’ve given a few bad reviews over the years and received plenty of bad reviews on my books. How you handle criticism says a lot about your maturity as a writer.


February: Expectations and a Reviewer’s Rubric

As someone who reviews media (like books and movies), I have realized that expectations are key to any review. It also helps to know what things I look for when I’m reviewing something.


March: 3 Reasons why you shouldn’t pick sides

Politics are extremely polarizing. If your writing “picks sides,” especially if you portray the other side in an extremely negative fashion, you might be alienating half your audience.


April: 4 types of edits, and why you need to do them all

How much editing is too much editing? While a writer’s work should always go through a few iterations, it’s important that they’re the right type of edits for the project.


May: Why “spell check” is not enough

There are some pretty common homophone/homograph errors that plague writers. It’s these slightly less common ones that still make readers stop and go, “huh?”


June: 3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 1/3]

You might not realize it, but the programs on your computer can help you publish a book. These tools are hiding in plain sight and are often underused when it comes to their usefulness.


July: 3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 2/3]

The second part in this series shows how a common set of programs can be used in slightly-less orthodox ways to help you get a book published.


August: 3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 3/3]

The final part in the 3-part series, this post highlights the simplicity in which some of these programs can be used to replace more expensive programs.


September: The ABC+ of Beta Reading

While all writers should seek out beta reader feedback, sometimes it helps to give these beta readers something to focus on when they’re going over a writer’s manuscript.


October: Why you should schedule your writing

Let’s face it, nobody has time for writing. If you want to be serious about it, you need to treat it differently and schedule it. Daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, a writing schedule is key.


November: An Engineer’s Guide to NaNoWriMo (or how I grew from a newbie to a veteran)

In this post I wrote for NaNoWriMo, I explain how spreadsheets helped me compete against myself and grow as a writer.

Thanks to everyone who’s enjoyed my content this year. I promise next year will have quite a few interesting things planned, but the blog posts and Writer Rants might be a little more sparse as a result. Come back in January and I’ll explain the details of what’s to come!