P.R. O'Leary's Blog: PROLeary.com, page 8

Brandon Sanderson on Nuts and Bolts

I’ve been watching these lectures by Brandon Sanderson on Youtube. It’s him teaching a class on writing scifi/fantasy. But it’s full of ideas that can help writers in any genre.

I definitely recommend them, but a bit on Sanderson first, so you know what to expect: Sanderson is a great structural, nuts and bolts, technical writer. Meaning he knows how to make ideas into novels using tools and devices that have been tested over time.

He is undeniably talented, and comes up with great ideas, but he does have limitations. I don’t think he’ll ever write a truly deep or personal book, and his style isn’t particularly interesting. But that’s fine. He tells good stories.

And these lectures are very useful at showing how he creates those stories. They are full of great tools. Structure, plot, character, prep, word-counts, genre expectations, etc. It’s very focused on getting published, which sounds like the antithesis of art but these ideas have their place.

To put it simply, these videos can give you a structure to fill in with your own unique creations. Combine some of these tools with beautiful and personal prose and you’ll be unstoppable.

I’m reading Steelheart now. It’s a great premise, and it moves quickly. Light, but a lot of fun. A good counterpoint to the wrenching book that I just read.

Recent Reads: Tears, Hemmroids, Torture, Shapeshifters, Chalk, Bees, and a Milky Bath of Death

I’ve read some interesting books during the past few weeks. Here is a quick run down of just a few that I think were notable:

I Loved You More – Tom Spanbauer

Fucking Tom Spanbauer, man. My personal favorite author. His writing connects with me, heart to heart. His latest, a sort-of love triangle between two men and a woman, is probably his most personal book. Beautiful and touching as usual.

The Hoke Moseley Series – Charles Willeford

Charles Willeford wrote a series of novels starring detective Hoke Moseley. There are only four (not counting the unpublished Grimhaven). But they are unique and exciting and incredibly engaging. I can’t believe all of the pieces that Willeford keeps moving in these books. He must be a juggler.

Miami Blues (they made a cool film out of that one). New Hope For the Dead (I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that had as much going on in it as this one did), Sideswipe (After the previous book, I can understand Hoke’s mindset), and The Way We Die Now (A fitting final entry).

The Girl Next Door – Jack Ketchum

Jack Ketchum writes brutal horror pretty well. Most of his books are entertaining throwaways (The Off-Season series), but this one stands above the rest. A girl is held captive in her step-mother’s basement under the watchful eyes of the neighborhood kids. What makes this different than Ketchum’s terrible Right To Life, is that the idea of authority and mob psychology are explored. You get a POV of one of the children and you can see how this incident developed from the ground up. I reviewed the film here.

The Wind Through the Keyhole – Stephen King

Stephen King gets a lot of flack for being a perceived hack but that is just not true. This Dark Tower entry is excellent. The novel focuses on a story that Roland tells while hiding out from a Starkblast (A cool idea by itself). It recounts one of Roland’s first missions as a Gunslinger. Nostalgic, fantastic, exciting. Great character’s too. A good example of what Stephen King can still do.

The Rithmatist  – Brandon Sanderson

This is the best book I’ve read by Brandon Sanderson. The cornball chalk-drawing magic system is much more interesting than it sounds. The book moves quickly, has an intriguing mystery, and builds to a cool ending. And it full of the charm that young kid in magic school books can have if done well.

Deadman’s Crossing – Joe R. Lansdale

A set of hilarious and action-packed weird west novellas by the master of the genre, Joe R. Lansdale. They all star Reverend Jebediah Mercer, and each one is better than the last. Very pulpy, in a good way.

The King in Yellow – Robert W. Chambers

More of an interesting oddity than an engaging read. It’s a set of short stories that all revolve around a made-up play called The King in Yellow. If you read the second act of that play, you will go insane. It’s a cool idea, but not all of the stories were engaging. The ideas in this book did influence Lovecraft, though.  So that should be good for something.

George R.R. Martin is not Kind to Hands: Hand and Arm Injuries in Game of Thrones

In Game of Thrones and the rest of the Song of Ice and Fire series we know that he is not kind to those that hold the title of King’s Hand, for sure. But I’m talking about actual hand injuries and arm injuries. Have you ever noticed how many injuries to those extremities are inflicted upon characters?

For some reason, I have. And for some further unknown reason, I have decided to make a list. And here they are, in no particular order: SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

Jon Snow burns his hand on a lantern when fighting a white walker.
Caitlin Stark cuts her hands on a knife while defending herself from Bran’s assassin.
Theon Greyjoy has his finger flayed by a Bolton.
Sandor “the Dog” Clegene gets his arm burnt white fighting Beric Dondarrian.
Great John Umber gets his fingers bit off by Grey Wind.
Davos had parts of his fingers cut off by Stannis.
Jaime Lannister gets his hand cut off by Vargo Hoat.
Qhorin Halfhand, you guessed it, has half a hand due to a Wildling axe.
Victarion Greyjoy injures his hand in a duel. Then has a weird mage set it on fire to heal it.
Ghost finds a lone hand in the woods, leading the Night’s Watch to a two corpses.
Arya gets her hands scratched up pretty good while trying to catch cats.
Urrigon Greyjoy lost half a handplaying The Finger Dance, the axe game of the Iron Islands. (Countless hands and fingers have been lost by people playing that game…)
Lady Hornwood chews off her own fingers because her dear husband, Ramsey Bolton, locked her in a tower with no food.
Marillion the singer  confesses to killing Lysa Arryn, and as punishment gets a few fingers cut off.
Narbo, a theif in Braavos, gets stabbed in the hand a prostitute, losing the use of three of his fingers. Poor guy can’t pickpocket anymore!
Tanselle had her finger broken by Prince Aerion in The Hedge Knight.
Way back when, some guy named Silver Denys tried to tame the wild dragon Sheepstealer, and got his arm bit off in the process.
Lancel Lannister obtains an arm injury in the Battle of Blackwater Bay. It turns him religious.
Nymeria bites Little Shit Joffrey’s arm, hopefully inflicting great pain.

 

There are probably many more! Maybe some day I’ll create a comprehensive list. It will be the most useless Game of Thrones list ever. If you would like to contribute any I missed, please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Also, I found an appropriate Q+A from Mr. Martin in this interview:

I have a question that’s been bothering me for six books now – what’s with hands? How come characters keep getting hand injuries?

GRRM: Well, actually hand injuries were very common in the Middle Ages. When you fight with swords and axes and do a lot of hand labour, you get a lot of hand injuries. In fact, even leaving out the swords and axes you get a lot of hand injuries. my father was a longshoreman, a stevedore, and I know they would always get hand injuries. They would wear protective gloves, but they would still get injuries. There are other touches of realism; my characters who fight in repeated battles in these books tend to get scars. They lose noses and ears and become disfigured, and that’s a consequence of those battles. That’s where the icon of the Scarred Warrior comes from. Every time you go into a fight you risk emerging a little less pretty than when you went in.

Zen Writing

Imagine writing a book a hundred years ago? Writing it long hand by candle light? Or on a primitive typewriter? Most of us think we are blessed to be writing with today’s technology. Computers, printers, spell-check, word processor auto-formatting. Scrivener, outlining and novel-building software. Email and submissions managers.

How could we possible write a novel or a story let alone edit it without all those tools? But I’ve found in my experience (as what I would call an Experienced Amateur writer), that all of those tools and features get in the way of actually writing.

Distractions are everywhere! Even things that seem productive are really just distractions. Now, this is all just my opinion, but I have found that my best and most productive time is when I am just writing on my computer and not thinking about anything else on the screen. If I misspell a word, I don’t want to see that red-squiggly line. It will interrupt the flow and make me want to fix it. But that can always be done later. After I’m done being creative.

It took me a while to figure that out, and I had to leverage some technology and software to get back to the spirit of what authors were doing hundreds of years ago. Mainly because I can’t write long-hand quickly.

Here are some things I found that are very useful for that productive time:

WriteMonkey – A simple full-screen text editor that lets you easily control the writing experience. If you have a Windows-based system, try it! I used it until I got my Chromebook.
Chromebook (I chose the Acer C720) – Cheap, easy to use. Starts in seconds. Isn’t full of distractions (Well, the internet is always a distraction, but see the point below). Basically, it’s a typing machine for me and nothing more.
I now use Google Docs full-screen with the menus hidden. Looks just like WriteMonkey did.
Windows Notepad – When all else fails, go with the classic. I use this one when I’m not on my own computer.
Turn off the internet if you have no self-control. Unplug the network cable, turn off the router, whatever you have to do to keep you mind on writing instead of browsing.
Find a location where you just write and do nothing else. No internet. No TV. Train yourself like Pavlov’s dog. When you sit in the chair or couch or bean bag or or wherever, your writing glands should start salivating.

After the writing is done, I go back to the distraction filled world of fully-featured software that helps me organize and polish my work.

My recommendation is to clearly separate your time actually writing from the time you spend doing all the other stuff. The latter has to get done, but it should never impede the former.

50 Ways to Be Killed By Zombies

My Choose Your Own Adventure -style Zombie book is now free and online!

50 Ways to Be Killed by Zombies: An Interactive Fiction Adventure through the Zombie Apocalypse

Do you ever wonder if you have what it takes to survive a zombie outbreak? Well, here’s your chance to find out. In the style of the classic Choose Your Own books from childhood comes an adult tale full of blood, guts, zombies, and lots of choices.

Can your survive? The odds are against you. There are 52 endings to this story. In 50 of them you will die. Those are tough odds, and only those most adapted to apocalyptic survival will make it through.

Please enjoy the book. I think it’s a lot of fun. Especially for zombie-movie fans who should enjoy all the references.

I’m also trying something new. This book is not illustrated, but I intend to change that.

Interested in submitting artwork?

This website has an open submission policy. If you would like to contribute art relating to one of the scenes in this book just email Proleary1 [AT] gmail.com

Include:

“ART SUBMISSION:” and the title of the chapter as the email subject

Your image in an accessible format (JPG, BMP, PSD, etc)

A short bio and a link to your website if available

The image will appear on the site under the appropriate chapter, and link to your website. Your name and bio will also be listed as an illustrator on the contributors page.

No payment will be provided for your piece. Your image will not be sold or used in any other way other than what is listed above.

This is just a great way to get some exposure for your art and have some fun at the same time.

New Fiction in Flash Me! The Sinthology

Presenting–the latest anthology project from Solarcide. A flash fiction adventure of sinful and decadent design. Flash Me! was about having a place to open your literary raincoat and show the world what you got. It rears its head again now in a new form. This anthology is a collision of decadence and shorter word-count fiction. Joining us on this project is the man who first birthed Flash Me! and the minister of exposing one’s self in word form. That would be Mr Chester Pane. The Sinthology features flash/micro fiction from twenty six different authors, wicked ones to the last.

I’m happy to be included as one of the 26 authors. I have read the whole book and I’m glad my story was chosen to be amongst such wicked good company.

My story, Warnings, breaks one of my main rules of writing. But that’s because it is based off of something that someone actually said to me. It was too weird not to write down and share.

Buy it here, read, share and let me know your thoughts!

What I Learned While Writing My Fourth Novel

This week I finished my 4th novel, Furnace Man. Now don’t jump up and cheer just yet. This one, like all of the others, is unpublishable.

I thought I had something going in the first few chapters but I quickly realized there were too many problems for this to be a workable idea. Still, I persisted, because I was learning so much by going through the process.

So now that the draft is complete and safely in my “trunk”, I can forget about it. But I won’t forget all of the valuable things I learned. Here are a few:

The protagonist should be active.

The one in my book spends the first 75% of it just letting events happen to him and not reacting in a manner different than he normally would have have his whole life. Although the situations might be interesting, his lack of action was getting old.

Backstory needs to have action.

There was a lot of history that my reader was discovering as he went on. But that history didn’t really have much going on. Their were a few big events, but I was saving them for the climax. Other than those, there just wasn’t enough to sustain interest (even my interest!)

Never even think about using a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

When I first conceived of this idea, many years ago, one of the characters was the dreaded MPDG. I wanted to change that while writing but the character never worked. Her roots were tainted by that horrible cliche.

If the reader spends the whole book in a person’s head, that person better be interesting.

My narrator was a two-trick pony and those two tricks weren’t enough to sustain interest while I went around setting up all the salient story points for the climax.

Do not outline the whole book!

At least for me. It may work for some people but I don’t like knowing what is going to happen too far ahead in my stories. Finding things out while writing is what pleases me.

When inspiration strikes, just go with it.

There were sections of this book that really worked and those were the scenes or that I had not thought of before hand. At points while writing an idea came to me and I wrote freely. Remember, if it doesn’t fit in the story, you can always cut it later. But if it makes you happy to write it, don’t stop yourself.

And finally… Things need to happen.

That sounds obvious, but what you think of as “things happening” before you write might not amount to much of anything when you are writing. I ran into this problem a lot. I think it has to do with my previous bullet point. Things I assumed would take up a whole chapter really didn’t need to, but I only found that out while writing.

A lot of work went into learning some simple truths. But that’s life, right? A series of lessons with answers that hindsight tells you were obvious the whole time.

Demonize

Demonize is a collaborative and competitive RPG where 3-6 players are Demons whose goal is to torment an NPC and drive him or her to madness and destruction.

The players are Demons. They are invisible but are able to influence the actions of humans and alter the physical world in small ways. They delight in tormenting people and leading them into failure.

Once in a while a few Demons compete over one poor soul to determine who can do the most damage. Demonize is about one of these competitions.

The game is played over 6 rounds with no GM. Players collaborative pick a victim to torment and then vie for control of that victim in order to make horrible things happen to him.

Download the rulebook here. Completely free! Just leave your comments and questions below.

 

Example Gameplay Round

The Victim is Vicky Malone, mother in present day Texas.

Goal: For her daughter Daisy to win Little Miss Texas

Evil Vice: Tanning

Hobby: Saving and using coupons

Worst Fear: The government will take her guns

Terrible Thing: She once beat Daisy senseless when she said she didn’t want to go to a pageant.

 

There are 3 demons trying to see who can torment Vicky the most. Those demons are played by Diego, Charlie and Violet.

The round starts and the players roll for turn order. All players have 6 dice and the results of the roll are hidden. They all put forward, in secret, at least 1 die. The total on these dice is their turn order bid.

The players reveal the bids. Diego bids highest, so he gets to torment Vicky first. Followed by Charlie. Violet bid lowest so she controls Vicky this round. Diego and Charlie put the dice they bid aside, but Vicky gets to use all 6 of her dice this round.

Violet narrates Vicky’s first challenge:

“Vicky decides that she needs to go get a tan. She is looking a little pale and feels like she needs to get some time at her local tanning salon to feel better about herself.”

Violet randomly deals out 4 Demonic Power cards: Twisted Tongue, Mechanical Failure, Environmental Control, Delusion.

She then gets to remove one so that no one can use it. She removes Mechanical Failure. That one would be too easy for the opposing Demon’s to work with.

Diego gets to torment Vicky first. He chooses Delusion.

“Vicky drives to the tanning salon, walks in, starts to take off her clothes and get into a tanning booth. But what she thinks is a private indoor tanning booth is actually a park bench.”

Diego’s remaining dice total 12. Those 12 points translate to 3 Demonic Influence (Look at the chart on the victim sheet). Vicky now has to roll 3 successes with her 6 dice.

She decides to use an Evil Boon. She puts a die on The Devil’s Luck which gives her 1 automatic success and rolls the remaining 5. She rolls two more successes (5s or 6s are successes) for a total of 3. She successfully beats Diego’s influence and narrates the result, using the Devil’s Luck power.

“Vicky is just about to take off her clothes and lay on the bench when she feels a drop of rain on her head. Her delusion ends and she realized she is outside, not in a tanning salon. She’s confused, but gets back in her car and heads to her real destination.”

Charlie gets to torment Vicky next. He chooses the Twisted Tongue power.

“Vicky arrives at the tanning salon. But while talking to the attendant she means to say that she wants 20 minutes in the tanning booth, but instead asks for 20 hours.”

Violet can no longer use any Evil Boons because the Victim only gets 1 per round (Number of players minus 2). So she has to do a straight roll. She has 5 dice now, because she used the Evil Boon last round, and Charlie held back enough dice for 4 Demonic Influence.

Violet rolls and fails, so Charlie gets to narrate the outcome.

“Vicky gets in the tanning booth and falls asleep. In 20 hours she wakes up with the most horribly painful tan anyone has ever seen. Brown crispy skin peeling off everywhere, hair falling out, blisters of blood ready to pop, etc. And to cap it off, the bill comes out to $400.”

Charlie wins the round, and puts 1 of his dice to the side in his score pile. He now has 5 dice for the remainder of the game.

There will be 5 more rounds. Subsequent rounds could have Vicky attempting to register her firearms, trying to get a good deal on bulk lotion for her ruined skin, and entering Daisy into a pageant. Whatever the Victim decides to do.

And at the end whoever has the highest total of score dice will win the game and narrate Vicki’s ultimate fate.

 

My First Short Films

Ready for some really awkward early short films? These were shot very close to one another around the year 2000 I think. I was experimenting with film-making for the first time, but all I had was a very low quality web cam. But it was fun and proved to myself that making movies was a hobby I wanted to pursue.

I warn you, these are a low quality in many ways, but I still like them. Watch and enjoy and let me know what you think. Are these better than my latter films? They might be.

 

The Floppity Flop

Here is my friend Victor Fraternale reading a short poem I wrote.

Check out his band here.