Tyson Adams's Blog, page 82
July 21, 2013
What Reader Species Are You?
This is a cool infographic from Laura E. Kelly. I definitely fall into the Book Cherisher genus, but I’m not sure if I’m of the species Hoarder or Compulsive Buyer.
(Click to view at original large size.)
Visit Laura-e-Kelly.com for more about books, reading, and authors.
Tagged: Authors, Book Lovers, Books, Class, Classification, Compulsive, Conflicted, Domain, Family, Free Range, Genus, Haters, Laura E Kelly, Prestige, Readers, Reading, Right What You No, Situational, Social, Species, Tyson Adams
July 17, 2013
July 15, 2013
7 Tips on How to Research Your Novel
As regular readers here know, I’m a science-a-holic and love research. I actually have an archive dedicated to a minor topic for my first novel, a topic that I make passing reference to, a topic that probably has me on a watch list somewhere. It was book research, I swear!
Below is an article by Chuck Sambuchino which I stole am reblogging from Writer’s Digest with a few of my own comments.
Ernest Hemingway said writers should develop a built-in bullshit detector. I imagine one reason he said that is because readers have their own BS indicators. They can tell when we writers are winging it. We have to know well the worlds in which our characters act. Readers don’t have to believe the story really happened, but they need to believe it could have happened. So with that in mind, I offer a few thoughts on research for fiction.
1) You can’t do too much research. In the military, we often say time spent gathering intelligence is seldom wasted. The same concept applies in writing a novel. You never know what little detail will give a scene the ring of authenticity. In a college creative writing class, I wrote about how a scuba diver got cut underwater, and in the filtered light at depth, the blood appeared green. Though the professor didn’t think much of that particular story, he did concede he liked that detail. In fact, he said, “The author must have seen that.” And indeed, I had. TA: Whilst I agree with Chuck’s point, there is such a thing as too much research for a novel. At some point you have to be writing and not researching. There will be some things that you just can’t know and some things that your readers really don’t need to know.
2) You can write what you know. We’ve all heard it before. Experience may be a cruel teacher, but it is a thorough one, and experience is the purest form of research. Things you’ve done in life (like scuba diving) can inform your writing in surprising ways, even if your characters aren’t doing those same things. When I watch the old Star Trek shows, I can tell the creator of those stories knew something about how a military flight crew works together. He understood the dynamics of a chain of command, how a commander learns the strengths and weaknesses of his team, how those team members communicate and work together. Turns out that Gene Roddenberry flew B-17 bombers in World War II. Roddenberry, of course, never flew a starship. But he knew from experience how the crew of a starship might interact. TA: Except that the away team was always the most important members of the crew and one poor guy in a red shirt; how does that make sense? The idea is that you get to be captain so you don’t have to go down to the planet, no matter how hot the green women are. I’ve commented before that Right What You No is not always good advice and that is what research is for. Sometimes research will be spending a day in a squad car or an overnighter in prison. Although, I don’t advise that, felonies are hard to live down.
3) You can do research on the cheap. If you can’t visit an exotic location, you can pick up the phone and ask questions. The worst that can happen is somebody thinks you’re crazy and they hang up. Then you just call somebody else. (Believe me; I used to be a reporter, and I’ve learned a lot by asking questions.) You can visit a museum, or a museum’s website. Develop an eye for small details. TA: Plus we have the internet now.
4) You can find anything on YouTube. Seriously. But you have to know your topic well enough to know how to search for it. In The Renegades, I have a character whose lungs collapse from a bullet wound. I wanted to find out how a medic would treat that condition. Sure enough, someone had posted on YouTube a video with detailed instructions on how to perform a needle decompression. TA: Just check to make sure that the video is reliable. There are some shams and woo on youtube, but that is a topic for my Mythtaken series.
5) You can find things anywhere. You’re a writer, so keep pen and paper within reach during all waking hours. You might get an idea from a news story on television, a song on the radio, or a Tweet from a friend. About a year ago, I was driving along on a warm day, listening to the radio with the windows down. An oldies station played “Wind of Change,” the Scorpions’ 1990 ballad hailing the end of the Cold War. I hadn’t heard that song in a long time, and I cranked it up loud. The power chords brought back memories of flying relief missions to Bosnia while based at a disused Cold War alert facility in Germany. Not really a pleasant memory–for Bosnia, the end of the Cold War brought something worse. But that flashback from early in my military career inspired a scene in the novel I’m working on now. TA: Same goes for inspiration.
6) You can use all of your senses. Find out what things taste like, smell like, feel like. Say, for example, you set your novel in Warsaw. Maybe you can’t afford to go to Warsaw, but you can go to a Polish restaurant. (See item number three above, about doing research on the cheap.) As you write one of your scenes, include a line about the texture and flavor of something your character eats. You’ve just made your writing more alive and authentic. TA: Just remember that you have far more than five senses, more like 14 to 20.
7) You can leave some things out. If you do thorough research, you’ll find more material than you need, and no reader likes a data dump. In my own writing, I could bore you to death with the details of aircraft and weapons. But a very good creative writing professor once advised me to let the reader “overhear” the tech talk. Say, if my character punches off a HARM missile, that might sound authentic and pretty scary. But scary would turn to dull if I stopped the action to tell you that HARM stands for High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile, which homes in on anti-aircraft missile radars. Who cares? The damn thing goes boom. TA: Very good point. This point is all too often done with weapons or brands or street directions. No-one cares!
Since I began this discussion with a quote from a literary heavyweight of the twentieth century, I’ll end it with another: Ezra Pound said literature is news that stays news. And a novelist has nearly the same obligation for accuracy as a news writer. Your made-up world must ring true. Not even fantasy writers can completely escape reality; the old Star Trek episodes sometimes referred to real science, which made them more believable within their context. Though we invent tales that didn’t really happen, we drape them over a framework of real-life facts.
Tagged: Advice, bullshit detector, Chuck Sambuchino, research, Right What You No, Tips, Tyson Adams, Writer's Digest, Writing
July 10, 2013
Why are books abandoned?
This is a great breakdown of why readers give up on reading and which books are the biggest culprits. I largely agree with most of the sentiments and books listed. It is very interesting to me that “slow and boring” is the #1 reason people abandon a book. Not just #1, it is number two and three as well, as the next reason had less than half the polling. I’ll offer a few comments on each part of the infographic.
Top Five most abandoned:
Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling – This is no surprise really. I’ve heard it is a particularly dark book and the remark that people were expecting it to be more like Harry Potter shows that no-one read the blurb.
Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James – Who’d have thought that Twilight fan-fiction would be poorly written?
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – When you have a trilogy that could have been edited down to a single book there are bound to be a few readers, like me, who think this ‘thriller’ is slow going.
I haven’t read or heard of anything to do with the other two on the list.
Top Five most abandoned classics:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – When people don’t get it then of course they will abandon it. One of the rejection letters for Catch-22 said, ”I haven’t the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say…Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level.”
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien – I can see why some people wouldn’t like this book. While I loved it, there are unnecessary characters, events, chapters, scenes, language use… Okay, it’s long and waffly.
Ulysses by James Joyce – At a thousand pages, unless you like an abridged, tiny text, 600 page version, this was never going to be an easy read.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville – I read this when I was in primary school. It made my brain hurt. Very hard to read and spent a long time between the interesting scenes.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – Great doorstop, selfish drivel to read.
Reasons for and against abandoning:
It really doesn’t surprise me that the reason most people give up reading a book is that it is boring and slow (46.4%). What does surprise me is that the reason people keep reading a book is not because people are enjoying the book but that they like to finish a book regardless (36.6%). Clearly too many people are reading books that they don’t like. Given the popular books, like the already mentioned Stieg Larsson and EL James, it shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve read instruction manuals with more action than The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Tagged: Abandoned, Atlas Shrugged, atlas shrugged by ayn rand, Authors, Ayn Rand, Books, Catch 22, Classics, dragon tattoo, Eat Pray Love, EL James, fiction, Fifty Shades of Grey, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Goodreads, Herman Melville, Infographci, JK Rowling, Joseph Heller, JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, moby dick by herman melville, Reading, rejection letters, Relaxing, Right What You No, shades of grey, The Casual Vacancy, Tyson Adams, ulysses by james joyce
July 7, 2013
12 Extremely Disappointing Facts For Geeks
Stolen from BuzzFeed.
1. The Twilight series has sold more than the Wheel of Time series, the Dark Tower series, the Song of Fire and Ice series, and the His Dark Materials series COMBINED.
TA: Not to mention how crappy the Twilight films were.
Via: en.wikipedia.org
2. Star Wars: Episode I has made more money than Star Wars: Episode IV.
TA: Lucas can’t direct or write, just comes up with good ideas. The first series was saved by Harrison Ford.
Via: movies.wikia.com
3. Firefly lasted one season, and had terrible ratings. The Big Bang Theory is in its sixth season, and has incredible ratings.
TA: Firefly and Serenity are the best. Period. I can’t watch TBBT as it is just one great big stereotype. Although, Mayim Bialik, who plays Sheldon’s girlfriend, is actually a real life neuroscientist with a proper PhD.
Via: tgdaily.com
4. The Matrix is the worst-performing film of the trilogy.
TA: The sequels should have been great, but someone took the brain dead approach to screenplays.
Via: the-numbers.com
5. The Resident Evil movies have made far, far more money than the Resident Evil video games.
TA: One reason – Milla Jovovich.
Image by http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Residen... http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/ResidentEvil.php
6. The original Indiana Jones movies did worse in their combined opening weekends than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
TA: Biggest shark jump in history.
Via: okkidd.com
7. The movie Doom made more than the video gameThe Ultimate Doom in the U.S.
TA: I played a lot of Doom as a teen. I loved FPS. The movie, meh.
Via: the-numbers.com
8. The 2001 Planet of the Apes starring Marky Mark made far more than all the original films combined.
TA: I didn’t like any of the films.
Via: the-numbers.com
9. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the sixth highest-grossing film of all time.
TA: Fuck Michael Bay and Fuck Shia LeBeouf.
Via: en.wikipedia.org
10. 2006’s Superman Returns is the best-performing Superman film.
TA: All the Superman movies have been kinda meh.
Via: the-numbers.com
11. Super Mario 3 is the third most popular video game of all time. Nintendogs is second.
TA: showing my age here, but the only Super Mario games I ever really played were Donkey Kong and Super Mario Land (Gameboy).
Via: vgsales.wikia.com
12. M. Night Shyamalan’s films have made more money than Joss Whedon’s films.
TA: Joss could direct a movie of Summer Glau and Nathan Fillion making toast and it would be fantastic.
Via: the-numbers.com
Tagged: Big Bang Theory, Dark Tower, Doom, drama, entertainment, Fantasy, Firefly, gaming, His Dark Materials, Indiana Jones, Joss Whedon, M. Night Shyamalan, mayim bialik, Planet of the Apes, Resident Evil, Right What You No, Song of Fire and Ice, Star Wars, star wars episode iv, Stephen King, Super Mario, Superman, The Matrix, Transformers, Twilight, Twilight sucks, Tyson Adams, videogames, Wheel of Time, Writing
July 6, 2013
Writing program scams
On the internet there is a scam born every minute. Whilst I love to receive email from Nigerian royalty, ads for another penis enlargement (the first one was enough, thanks), and fat loss supplements that promise not to kill me, there is a line I have to draw in the sand: scamming writers.
Most writers are hobbyists, writing because they love it. The handful that do get paid enough to be full-time writers are few and far between. So targeting writers with scams means that somewhere a monkey at a keyboard is not being fed today.
Yesterday in a writers discussion group a question was raised about whether a New, Amazing, Adjective, program that promises to give you the tools to write a 400 word article in 7 minutes.
Dear Fellow Article Writer (TA: read as mark or sucker),
Did you watch the video above? It’s hard to believe so many people would send me such raving, unsolicited testimonials about my product, “How to Write an Article in 7 Minutes or Less“. (TA: Testimonials!? Wow! I’m sold!)
If you did watch the video, you saw with your own eyes how I was able to take people who spent more than an hour writing an article down to as fast as 5 minutes per article! (TA: 5 minutes? I thought you said 7 minutes. Does this mean I get a 2 minute abs program as a bonus?)
….. (TA: edited out promotional garbage about money back guarantees and how only the scammer found the secret or developed it or whatever)
Here’s how it works.
Open my 3 special research sites. (TA: Wikipedia?)
Use my “skim and grab” research technique to find your
3 main points (Takes about a minute). (TA: Yes, because reading comprehension is for suckers.)
Outline each main point with two “sub points.” (another minute here). (TA: What if there is only one point?)
Use the “opening paragraph” template to quickly create the first paragraph (About 30 seconds). (TA: Insert generic filler paragraph, got it.)
Use the “main point” template to write paragraphs for each of your three main points. (2-4 minutes total time) (TA: So, standard writing….)
Use the “conclusion paragraph” template to quickly create the conclusion. (another 30 seconds). (TA: Insert generic filler paragraph at the end.)
Proof read your article, and then submit it to the appropriate directory. (1-2 minutes) (TA: Click spellcheck and hope it doesn’t miss anything.)The cool thing about using these templates is you never have to pause to think…but… you also enough leeway so each article remains 100% unique, and of the highest quality. (TA: Yes, why would you want to actually put any thought into your writing. Highly overrated for quality content.)
Don’t worry: My method has nothing to do with plagiarism! (TA: Of course not, copy and pasting clearly takes too long.)
Anyway, you can learn all about my 7 minute article technique by reading my special report, “How to Write an Article In 7 Minutes”, and by watching the videos I made showing step by step how I do it.
But that’s not all… (TA: Steak knives?)
My first thought upon seeing the claim that you could learn to write an article in 7 minutes was that it was bullshit. The fact that people would question if it would be possible left me a little stunned, a little thirsty and thinking about having a nap. Clearly some people are going to be taken in by these kinds of scams. So I want to just illustrate my critical thinking process and how I avoided being scammed for $37 (I know, huge amounts of money).
Drawing from personal experience, I know that I’d spend more than 7 minutes just copying in the links to the research I’d be citing, let alone reading those articles. So the first check is to understand just how long certain tasks actually take you. This scam works on the idea that you don’t really measure the time it takes for common activities. You may know how long you spend on a full article or day’s writing, but not on the little parts, like one paragraph or one sentence. So when someone presents you with some figures, you are bound to think, “Well, I do spend a lot of time staring at the screen and checking my Twitter feed.” Suddenly you are partly receptive to the con.
Let’s have a look how long writing actually takes the average person. Being a science nerd, I like to have a few figures around on writing, reading, average number of Facebook posts per hour; you know, important stats. The average person has a typing speed of 60-100 words per minute, which gives you 400-700 words written in 7 minutes. The page claims a 400 word article with 5 minutes actual writing time, which is 300-500 words written. So unless you are setting world speed records, then you won’t have time to do anything other than write.
What about editing? Nothing is perfect on a first draft, nothing! So even if this is a 400 word article written in 5 minutes, you still need to edit. Reading speed is not the same as proofreading speed, with average speeds of 180-200 words per minute. That’s another 2-3 minutes.
This program is essentially promising that you will achieve touch-typing dexterity and speed that will allow you to write fast. It is also promising that you’ll have fantastic reading comprehension skills at skim reading speeds. And yet you will also somehow acquire a time machine to allow you to also plan, research and create a concise article at the same time. The fact that the scam makes no mention of boosting your reading and writing speed and giving you keys to the Deloren, shows that someone is wanting your money and your credules.
In the meantime, send me $40 and I’ll send you some templates that I guarantee will add inches to your penis and bust size, whilst making you an awesome writer and friends with Nigerian royalty. Trust me, no-one lies on the internet.
Tagged: blogging, Comprehension, Course, internet, Literature, Reading, Right What You No, Scam, Scams, Speed, Tyson Adams, Writing, Writing courses
June 30, 2013
Because Batman Says So
I definitely need to do this, do you?
Tagged: Art, Batman, Funny, Humor, Humour, Procrastinating, Procrastination, Right What You No, Tyson Adams, Writers, Writing, writing fiction
June 27, 2013
Ladies and Gentlemen, Stephen King
I’ve just finished reading Carrie so Stephen King is inhabiting my brain. A friend posted a Pink Floyd video (Learning to Fly) and for some reason the video below was one of the suggested “view this next” videos. It’s hard to see the link between a Stephen King lecture and a Pink Floyd live performance, perhaps the members of Pink Floyd were terrorised by a monster clown in their youth.
Regardless, this lecture from Stephen King covers a range of topics in a Q&A format. The most important part is his opinion on the phenomenons of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey. Don’t fast forward to 48:20 for his Twilight and 50 Shades of Shit comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8TkQvdJVbc
Edit: sorry the video is not embedding at the moment. I’ll update it soon so that it embeds.
Tagged: 50 Shades of Grey, Carrie, Lecture, Master class, On Writing, Pink Floyd, Q&A, QandA, Reading, Right What You No, Stephen King, Twilight, Tyson Adams, Writing
June 25, 2013
I think you’re mythtaken: Guns
Nerd cred if you can name this gun correctly.
There are a lot of guns in the world. The figure is something like 639 million firearms, or to put it another way, one gun for every 9 people on the planet. Yet the average person knows diddly squat about guns. People probably have a better idea of how Nicki Minaj managed to become a star than express knowledge about guns. Most of our knowledge is likely to come from movies:
Or professional Russians:
As an author I really wanted to make sure I didn’t base my gun knowledge upon misinformation, otherwise I’d have to work as a reporter covering the gun debate. So here are a few myths to be busted.
Machine guns are not monsters of death
They may fire great big bullets at hundreds of rounds per minute but machine guns really are given the fashion magazine airbrushing treatment. A great big gun letting off a whole lot of explosions in a short amount of time has a habit of getting hot. Really hot. We’re talking change the barrel over every minute hot! Yes, that’s right, at the maximum rate of fire your machine gun needs a new barrel every minute to keep firing without causing problems – which I imagine as a gigantic explosion like Bugs Bunny sticking his finger in the end of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. But it isn’t just the barrel changes, most of the time you aren’t actually firing the machine gun at people, you’re firing it at super mean looking inanimate objects, or as the military call it, suppressive fire (250,000 rounds for one kill!!!). Essentially the machine gun is a tool that performs a very different role from the one gun noobs think it does. Well, unless you don’t mind the thing catching on fire (yes, I know that isn’t technically a machine gun):
Guns aren’t really death machines
For death machines, these gun things really don’t kill enough people. In science we talk about effects, rates and how to blow up stuff with the things you find under the kitchen sink, as such it is hard to look at the gun deaths and gun injury rates and not think guns kinda suck at their job. The USA use guns to kill roughly 30,000 people a year, one third of those are homicides, but that is less than half the people they injure with guns, roughly 65,000. But that isn’t really fair, because not every time a gun goes off is it being used to shoot at someone else or a particularly nasty piece of paper. If you just look at homicides and attempted homicides, guns are still only getting the job done 21% of the time.
Guns suck for self defence
Not everyone can have Chuck Norris camped out in their house for self defence, nor carry Steven Segal around where-ever they go. But as mentioned above, guns really do suck at their job. Whether it is only being 23% effective in legal interventions, or the fact that you’re 4.5 to 5.5 times more likely to be shot for carrying a gun, you really start to think running away looks like a better option, even if you are as fat as Steven Segal has gotten lately.
Handguns are about as accurate as the horoscopes
A handgun is a really convenient weapon to carry around with you, but if the side of a barn is more than a few metres away, you’re not particularly likely to hit it. Even cops can’t hit much with these things, even when the bad-guy is less than 15m away. Half the problem is that bad-guys shoot back, which means you don’t stand around collecting holes, you run for cover, which really ruins your accuracy. But I’ve already mentioned that guns suck at their job, well, your handgun might hit the bad-guy 55 times and still not kill them.
Guns sure do help kill people
As much as guns suck at their job, as I’ve just pointed out, guns still do a better job of killing than many of the other methods we’ve devised for killing each other. Sure, people love their tools to kill one another, but guns are a really good tool to use for killing one another. I can’t wait to see the military being sent off to war with hammers and cars instead of a gun.
Being shot doesn’t mean you can fly
The trick to flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing. So being shot clearly can’t make you fly. Don’t know why people think that shooting someone can disobey this simple fact, let alone Newton’s Laws of Motion. But what good is a trope if it isn’t always on display?
Semi-auto rifles are not assault rifles
Every time someone refers to a semi-auto rifle as an assault rifle, or worse, the made up term assault weapon, a puppy dies. You don’t want all the puppies to die do you? Well then, it is time to learn the difference between the military configured select fire rifle, called the assault rifle, which is capable of fully automatic and (sometimes) burst fire, and the civilian one trigger pull, one shot, semi-automatic rifle. I know, they may look the same to the untrained eye, but some people think cars are all the same thing too.
Mags, clips, high capacity…
While we’re on the topic of rifles, I have a dictionary and an abacus for people talking about magazines, clips and high capacity . A magazine is something you read, a clip is something you watch and high capacity is a Japanese train at rush hour. Different guns have different sizes of magazines (which may or may not be loaded with a clip), which means 30 rounds may be high capacity for one gun and normal capacity for another. Also, when one of these these rifles go through 700 rounds per minute and even soldiers only carry 210 rounds, from a standard 30 round magazine, then no gun fight is really lasting that long.
It’s a suppressor not a silencer!
Remind me, is +120 decibels loud or quiet? It sure is a lot quieter than a normal gunshot sound (+160db), but calling it “silent” is like calling bagpipes a little annoying. When the best suppressors on the smallest calibre weapons still manage to be as loud as a jack hammer or AC/DC, then suppressors have again gotten the Hollywood make-over. But 30db is a decent drop from ear splitting to “say what” territory, so I’d say these things should be compulsory.
There is no smell of cordite
If someone describes the smell of cordite in the air after a gun fight, you either know that the book is set before 1950 or that there is a sub-plot about a time traveller who comes from the past to assassinate a future self. It seems really odd that so many books use the time traveller sub-plot, because it is usually a one off. It would be far more interesting if this was built upon more, maybe have Gengis Khan show up to knock down a wall, or something, as well.
Less guns are a good idea
Shooting is fun, hunting is very primal, but at some point your neighbours start to get worried when you look more like you are going to war than to the shooting range. Aside from guns sucking for self defence, they also suck at not shooting your loved ones, are handy for suicide, and unless you are in a warzone, more guns in society equals more gun violence. But it is also worth thinking about what gun figures actually mean, like 300 million guns in the US, enough for one for every American despite there being only about 80,000 gun owners. Sounds like a lot, but that means each gun owner has a rifle, a handgun and a shotgun, which is clays, targets and pistols at the local range on the weekend. Perfectly reasonable to go shooting, just not at your local school.
Tagged: Accuracy, Assault rifle, Assault rifle vs semi-auto, Blown across the room, Clip, Cordite, Death, Facts, Firearms, Funny, Gun control, Gun deaths, Gun Facts, Guns, Guns don't kill people, Handgun, Humor, Humour, Machine gun, Magazine, Magazine vs Clip, Mythtaken, Professional Russian, Rambo, Rifle, Right What You No, Science, Shooting, Shotgun, Silencer, Smell of cordite, Statistics, Suppressor, Tyson Adams, Weapons, Wounding
