T.R. Neff's Blog, page 9

Playing Games with Umbra and Fallout 4. Tropes? Or Has Someone Read My Novel?

I don’t often pre-order video games, giving them time for the developers to get the post-release bugs ironed out. Now I am more inclined than ever to wait for the game to release (thanks, Cyberpunk 2077 and CDProjektRed), so in the meantime, I decided to fall back on some of the games I’ve played and completed, to come back with fresh, older eyes and see if they still hold up.

If you are someone who’s read my blog before, you know I’ve been a fan of Fallout since Wasteland came out in 1988* (and for that matter the post-apocalypse, especially nuclear apocalypse) and couldn’t play through enough times, getting to the point where I started challenging myself to speed runs. Nowadays, I don’t have the patience and there are FAR TOO MANY games out there begging to be played**, but I did want to get myself back into the “mood” to rework the second part of Umbra that I hadn’t ever gotten around to revising.

Loaded, booted up, started to play…

As I am working through the narrative, a thought occurred to me. Several, in fact. There seemed to be a lot of “coincidences” in Fallout 4 as in my novel (for that matter, there are some “coincidences” between Umbra and Mad Max: Fury Road, too, but that’s for another blog). Umbra was written originally as an almost totally different novel during NaNoWriMo 2011, and I finished the extensive revisions to published the final novel on 3 May 2014. (For reference, Mad Max:Fury Road came out a year later in 2015, and Fallout 4 followed that November.)

Note: (in fact, make that a BIG NOTE:) I am NOT accusing Bethesda of plagiarizing anything. Of course there are going to be similarities, as anything post-nuclear is going to be mirroring the tropes.*** If anything, that’s what made the original Fallout and Fallout 2 so awesome – all the pop culture references woven through the narrative. A place like the world in Fallout was so dark and so gritty that those little punctuations of humor proved vital to the balance. Like a little salt in your cookies to define the sweetness. (Fallout 3 and 4 really missed the mark there, but Fallout: New Vegas worked some of it back in with the optional “Wild Wasteland”. R.O.U.S. anyone?)

What about the tropes, the common elements? Well, they’re not what I’m referring to, because that’s all those little expectations, what readers need to see in their preferred genres. No, I’m referring to some of the details I found that had me laughing and thinking maybe, just maybe, they had someone scarfing up anything and scouring it for additional ideas, including Umbra.

Why do I think it’s possible? For one, there was a whole year between my publication and the release. While they do need time for the game to go gold and get published, it’s also well known that game developers put their people into a nasty crunch to get it ready enough for the master to go to press. Why not cut a few corners for some ideas to throw in by combing through pre-existing material?

For what it’s worth, it’s not like they are huge parallels, like lifting the plot of my novel and putting it in the game (although FO4 does have a prominent character solving murders, he’s only a little like Vera in that he’s an outsider only just accepted by the people of Diamond City). There’s The Wall (complete with capitalization in both game and novel). There’s the left-jaw burn scar that appears on Vera’s chin in the novel that’s happily available in the character creation. There are plenty more, so if you’ve read the book and played the game, feel free to put any you’ve found in the comments below.

All in all, though, little things. Which makes me think at least someone got something from reading my novel.

*Yes, I know, but if you know ANYTHING about either game, Fallout was what they called they called the “spiritual successor” of Wasteland, and boy, did it ever satisfy in that regard.

**Okay, so I kinda contradict myself there, replaying newer-old games again when there are many to be played… just call me Miss Dichotomy

***And I used something in my story that I won’t divulge in case you haven’t read it and would like too, but let’s just say there’s an element that gives a nod to Predator (another of my faves) that was also introduced in the Fallout series back when it was still under EA/Black Isle.

Re-Writes… AFTER Publishing

So I’ve gone back to an older work I’d already published to fix up all the typos, as I planned to re-release it with its new cover and, while reading through it, found… things. Not just typos. Inconsistencies that me and my editor missed (make a note to get a better editor). Places I didn’t think the prose was clear enough. Passages I thought went on too long.

That gets me thinking… should I change it? Should I take the opportunity to alter something I’d published so long ago and alter the story?

Part of me says: “Yes, go ahead and do it, it’s just making things clearer. Besides, you’re not fundamentally altering anything. It’s just aesthetic.”

The other part of me says: “No, leave it alone except for the typos and spellos. It’s just as bad as re-working the same story over and over so that it never gets published.”

Yup. Of two minds on this. I’m leaning toward the former, and just assigning a new ISBN along with its new cover, with the warning caveat that it’s a Second Edition. Might even give it a new title and add to the warning that it was “Previously Published As…”

Have others done this? I don’t know. I honestly haven’t thought too much about it before now and may append this article if I find out some tasty tidbit on the Do or Don’t of it.

Right now, my gut says go for it.

Using Pre-Existing Works as Basis for New Fiction – Bad Idea?

Not referring to fan fiction, which I have mixed feelings about*. I remember over a decade ago when visiting Barnes & Noble a certain book titled “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters”. Intriguing. It wasn’t a re-write of Jane Austen’s work, just a re-weaving (if you will) of her words with a new subplot involving sea monsters. A new take on a classic that many people welcomed. Others like it cropped up, and gained some level of success.

Then I began to see other stories, not so much expanded works as using public domain fiction as the basis but writing from a different character’s perspective. There’s a slew of them based on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that come immediately to mind. Then there are the works which take a well-known character and interweave them in a new narrative, for good or ill**.

Reading comments on the forums, I noticed an argument cropping up that these kinds of stories are “lazy”. What made them lazy? Few commenters qualified their opinion, which they didn’t necessarily have to do, but it would have been more interesting for the argument.

Assuming you’re here because you are interested in what I have to say, you want to know if I think it’s lazy, right?

It depends.

Some of the examples of the first type (expanded classics in public domain) may be lazy. After all, they are just weaving in a new subplot with extra language. But it’s not as easy as it seems, especially to make it work well. Many argue that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters fell flat in its endeavor to make something new of the old.

Writing a whole new work, like the ones around Huck Finn, for example, aren’t really all that lazy, as it’s a whole new perspective on a different character that still has to successfully navigate the waters carved out by the river of the classic. Those who call it lazy may be conflating “coming up with an idea” and “setting it to words and getting it published” are one and the same. I can assure you, ideas are a dime a dozen. Fleshing them out as a full, satisfying story is where the challenge arises***.

“Lazy” shouldn’t necessarily be conflated with “awful”, either. I’m aware of a good number of stories that I’m sure someone *ahem* put a lot of effort into that ended up sucking hardcore. Some works from the bottom up (idea to accolades) may have come effortlessly to the author.

All in all, everyone’s going to have an opinion of their own on a story, and all we authors can really do is write stuff that pleases us, get better at it, and hopefully find the folks out there who love what we write.

* Mixed feelings about fan-fiction come from several arenas. It’s not bad if the writer stays true to the character and writes a good supplementary tale that casts new (non-canon-breaking) light on something that occurred. It’s awful if it forces the character(s) to be someone they’re not just to satisfy the writer’s sick perversion (slash fiction. Save yourself and don’t look it up unless you want to be scarred for life). It used to be an honor to be asked to write a story for a well-known character (I personally know someone who was invited to write a story about Darth Vader published in a genuine Star Wars anthology, awesome lady), but now these freaks treat it like something they can take a shit on and claim it’s part of the canon. Hell, even their own original writers take a shit on their own characters (I’m looking at you, Steven Spielberg, and that travesty that came after the last Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade).

**Yes, I’m thinking of you, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. You read like “wahman-awesome” fan fiction. That’s not a compliment.

***Actually, this was an exercise a creative writing teacher I had way back when liked to use – write another scene for a story we read as a class, paying attention to the characters’ voices, the narrator’s voice, the tone, etc. A great way to learn story construction is by reverse engineering another’s, brick by brick. I was especially proud of my Bastard Out of Carolina “epilogue” scene that got good reception from my classmates. If I ever come across it again, I’ll post it on my blog so you can form an opinion. Fair warning if you want to read that novel, it’s one of those books that you come out of it really wanting to hurt someone, even though he’s (sort of) fiction.

Bad News for Genuine Authors

So I was doing a bit of research on my MOST FAVORITE topic (/sarcasmoff), Marketing. If you’re here reading this, chances are you are a reader of my blog, but maybe not of my fiction.

In this research I discovered a valuable new resource, and if any of you are writers, I suggest you check him out. I am not affiliated with David Gaughran but so far what I’ve been reading is pure gold.

On his site, along with the marketing advice and freebies, there’s a little button that says “BEWARE”. When you hover over it, it turns a scary shade of red! Being the curious sort, I clicked on the link to read the articles. Lo and behold, the information there was frightening**.

The most egregious for independent authors/self-publishers involved an exploitation of Kindle Unlimited and how the bad actors take advantage of the monthly set-aside where authors get paid by the number of pages read in their work. Book stuffers are scammers who upload a book comprised of maybe one or two shorter stories (the only ones disclosed in the blurb), but the book itself turns out to be thousands of pages long, stuffed with a load of other stories (which by a few accounts were garbage but since I didn’t read any, can’t say if they were worth the read or not), with incentives or redirections from the front of the book to go all the way to the back for some freebie or other, thereby marking the book as read in its entirety or close to the end. 1000 pages “read” in a heartbeat and boom, they grab a majority of the KU budget. That’s oversimplification to be sure, and there are factors and algorithms figuring into it that these scammers use to game the system.

My guess is that if the page count in the stats for the book seems kinda high*** you might be looking at a scammer’s book. They fall through the cracks because on Unlimited, readers read them for free which means there’s nothing for the reader to lose except to check it back in and go for another book. If you see or suspect any title might fall in that realm, the best thing to do is report it to Amazon.

Doesn’t make it a pretty place to try to do legitimate business.

Anyway, fellow writers should go check out David Gaughran’s site. Hopefully you’ll find a wealth of good info over there.

*Okay, okay, red is not scary. It’s quite lovely, actually, accenting Autumn trees as it does.

**And yes, I do mean it was frightening this time for real and honest and truly, at least if you’re an honest person. Can’t say what fancies of scammers it tickles.

***I heard that 3000 pages is the max. Does War and Peace even run that long?

Constructive Criticism is GOOD

Years ago, I dated a guy who ate every kind of food I made. I loved tweaking recipes and experimenting with brand new dishes, and without fail he’d just shovel everything from his plate into his mouth (we won’t talk about the stories surrounding two occasions when I made chili con carne, one aggravating and one rather humorous) and go.

While this was great for my experimenting, it was absolutely terrible for developing my skills. Why? Because if I asked him to evaluate anything, he would just shrug. Something like the following would go down, regardless of the dish:

Me: “What do you think?”

Him: “I liked it.”

Me: “I’m glad. But what did you like about it.”

Him: “The flavor.”

Me: “What about it? Sweet? Savory? Salty?”

Him: “It was good.”

Round and round.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, I can experiment all I’d like and pump out new stories, and if people read them all with no criticisms, good or bad, I can’t tell what is really working and what isn’t. The review system of the major retailer itself has become a machine of quantity rather than quality, pushing works that have more reviews, even if they are negative*. It’s great the sell books, no doubt about that, but that tells me nothing. Trash can sell rather well, and masterpieces can go unnoticed.

While volume of reviews helps, it’s the criticism with some qualitative element in one direction or another that benefits an author greatly.

Example time: An author experiments with the points of view in the story, choosing third person for all characters and switching to first person just for the villain. A reviewer writes that it “didn’t work” for them – this shouldn’t steer the author to drop the method altogether, but at least give it an analysis as to why it might not have worked in the story. Perhaps switching characters’ POVs, first for hero and third for villain, might have suited better. Or it wasn’t convincing enough. It shouldn’t get the author overthinking but maybe giving it more attention than before. Nor should an author EVER try to cater to a single reader’s comments, for all kinds of reasons.

So next time you read something, please leave a review for the author, whether it’s on the major ebook retailers and outlets, or even in forums you may frequent (you never know, maybe they belong to some of them). Or, maybe just drop a line to the author themselves, if they are amenable to getting “fan mail”. If your critique displays some of those specific criticisms, you may just be invited to beta read for them.

If you ARE interested in being a beta reader, drop me a line – trneff@overlordmpress.com.

*Yes, I understand the nuances behind why a story with 3000 2-star reviews is pushed more than one with 20 5-star reviews, but that’s for the sales, growth of the author’s wallet rather than his skill. Most authors don’t wish to get stuck writing the same thing over and over.

Day 24 of MyPeNoWriMo

Well, that’s a wrap, folks! To celebrate (and just in time for Black Friday!) I am offering most of my stories for Free over at Kindle. You can find them HERE. The sale will run from 25 NOV to 29 NOV 2021 so get them while you can, and be sure to leave an honest review! Thanks!

Came in yesterday at 50,863 words. I decided to end it there. Why? There’s going to be a lot of revision that I can already see, so I wanted to get my 30-day cool-down period started. I was going to spread out the final writing and instead I gave it an extra push and had my best day of the month with 2667 words.

And, let’s be frank: I wanted to get back onto my short story writing/revision path. I’ve got a few stories circulating in review with various publications but the more I have out there, the better my chances of landing a few and bringing in some Christmas spending money to fund the presents I picked out for my parents.

I’ll be resuming my normal schedule from here on out. Wait… scratch that. I’ll go to once a week rather than “whenever I remember and Real Life doesn’t get in the way.

‘Til then, hope your own writing journey takes you places that not even your dreams could comprehend!

Day 22 of MyPeNoWriMo

Sliding into home base! 1814 words to go to hit the 50K.

Up until I am literally typing this, I realized that I’m not really going to be able to stop writing. I’ve taken literally THREE days where I wrote nothing and boy, did that guilt follow me around all day. I had said to myself when the month is over, on 1 DEC I’m going to reward myself with sleeping in, but I doubt that will happen. I feel too guilty. A few weeks back the power went out so my alarm didn’t go off and it took the cat begging for his breakfast to get me out of bed. I felt… off. All day. Coupled with that guilt. I still managed to write my full words but boy, oh boy… Anyway, what I haven’t decided yet is if I will close this one out, and then start on cleaning up another project. I’m in the works to get some short stories out there in the “traditional” publications, and I have a few shopped out to various markets right now. Updates on that later.

Yes, this can happen to you too. When you get into a swing of a routine with writing, you can make yourself plant your butt in the chair for fear of what you will feel like throughout the day if you don’t. I can’t say it’s a pleasant feeling, but it’s there, and it works to help be get words on the page, and words revised as well.

Oh, and if you’re interested in reading anything I’ve actually written, you can start with one of the titles found HERE, at my author page. I cross a few genres in my collections (though that will be subject to change as I go “schizo” to help keep titles on-brand, the subject of another blog in the future, most likely). Let me know if you liked what you read, or even if you didn’t. Can’t improve without some criticism.

Day 20 of MyPeNoWriMo

Alright, Alright, so I skipped a day. That posting on odd days bothered me, so I skipped to correct it again. I know, I’m weird like that. I have certain things I really can’t deal with like a rational person, like drawers and cupboard doors left open, anything but the same black hangars in my closet, and breaking up number patterns (yes, I’m serious. It’s not full-blown Monk-style OCD, which I am thankful for, but its still irksome in an irrational way. I’m working on it.)

And this font? That’s bothering me too. It changed all of a sudden when I opened this page to write, and I am trying to ignore it for now.

That’s really the key of “winning” in November. Learning how to ignore the typos and keeping your fingers moving on the keyboard, only “fixing” the spelling if the meaning would be significantly/confusedly* altered by the mistake.

I’ll give you an example. I’m sure plenty of you writers out there mistakenly typed in a “p” instead of an “o” when trying to spell “heroes” to some juvenile laughter from the reader/recipients. Easy enough to do, since the letters are right next to each other on the standard keyboard (I can’t speak for Dvorak users) I know I’ve done it. But longer ago than I’d like to admit, when that peculiar dial-tone of getting on line was still ubiquitous, I had a pretty young, tech-savvy pastor before that became the norm (he and my brother were about the same age, were good friends in the church and both a couple of nerds), and because we were all friends online he noticed I signed in when I hadn’t gone to services. Turned out I caught a cold and didn’t want to share it with anyone else, so typed into the messenger window that I got sick. Except… you can look down at your keyboard and see where I was going with this.

Needless to say I corrected that REALLY fast, and we both had a pretty good laugh about it. I just wonder how many people he told the story to. Good thing I can laugh about it now.

So you can see where that would fundamentally alter the meaning of what I tried to convey. Those errors I allow myself to fix on the fly, but the others, they can stay misspelled. When I know I need a better choice of word, I don’t fret overmuch and just CAPITALIZE the word I want to change later so I can see it when I come back to it. And i don’t bother changing it until the revision phase, when I may just cut the whole passage.

And by “better” I mean it could be the word itself needing clarity (replacing “blue” with “sapphire” as a simple example), or because I can’t think of exactly the right term at that moment. I had this thing a little while back when i was trying to think of the word “hatch” as in “DOOR ON A SHIP”. Me! A sailor, forgetting the word! I guess that’s what happens when you get in the flow and your muse takes over. Stopping to look it up is a time killer and potential productivity-destroying dive into a rabbit hole. I’m better off just putting in the phrase and continuing on, to do the research later.

What methods do you have to get the words on the screen without pausing, even when you know something isn’t quite right?

Day 17 of MyPeNoWriMo

Ah, so here it is, Day 17. At this rate, I will be done by the 23rd if I want to stop at 50,000 or, if I finish it out, will end up with 64k words on the 30th.

WHAT!?! I didn’t post yesterday. That’s right. Real Lifeintruded on my schedule. Not my writing schedule but everything that came after. I surprised myself today by just a few more words than the day before. That, my friends, is measuring progress against oneself. If you are wondering what all that last column #DIV/0! is about, it’s the spreadsheet telling me that there is no such thing as division by zero. At least not in this universe or plane of existence or however you feel like reckoning time/space/dimension. I’m sure God can divide by zero if He wants to.

I’m already thinking of what I am going to do to celebrate getting the 50k done. I’ll be happy to maybe take Thanksgiving off (which is always a treat because a turkey dinner with my family is the best thing ever, and what I missed most while I was stationed elsewhere during the holiday).

However, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, being what they are. The last time I got up at 0300 to do anything was boot camp or to get ready for watch. I don’t do it to fight other people just to pick up a “bargain”. However, with the advent of online shopping, I don’t see it as a totally bad thing, and I admit there are many times when I’ve waited to make a purchase to see if I could get a better deal. Cyber Monday made that even better, although with all the online BF sales, CM is almost superfluous.

I’ll probably head over to Steam or GoG (that would be Galaxy of Games, for those not familiar, but serves as a portal just like Steam) to see what kind of sales they have going on there, maybe do some December gaming. I haven’t picked up No Man’s Sky yet, though that’s one I’ve been looking forward to, now that they got most of the bugs out. Any suggestions?

Day 14 of MyPeNoWriMo

Day 14. Just about halfway there. Today, I decided to “take a break” and only do a single session, but it balances out against the earlier one where I felt squirrely and stashed an extra session of words.

Day 14 of MyPeNoWriMo

Today while I was writing, I discovered an earlier passage where I realized I had some author-creep going on, but hopefully I will be able to integrate it. Let me explain:

I love older cars. Back in the day, the cars were pretty simple machines. I don’t mean that they weren’t consisting of complex pieces of machinery, just that the machinery in there was pretty basic. An engine. A carburetor. A master cylinder. An alternator. Wiring harnesses for the electrical components of the system. I could pop the hood of that car (a ’64 Mustang, sadly it has passed on) and not only be able to point out pretty much every part in the engine compartment, I could see stone and grass because of all the visible space beneath the vehicle. The same thing applied to the aircraft I used to work on. Scaled up, big, simple parts with lots of space to work.

Now, go twenty years into that Mustang’s future. My mother got a new (at that time) Ford Tempo, and its engine compartment was jam-packed with parts. Fast forward again, and now you have vehicles that are governed almost completely by computers. If you have what seems to be an engine problem, it might be the engine. Then again, it might be the processes that tell the engine what to do. Same thing with aircraft, where there’s more a reliance on computers to help run things.

But what happens when the computer goes on the fritz? Not so bad if it happens to a car on the ground that you’re trying to start up. It just doesn’t work. Not so good if it happens while you’re moving down the road. Even worse if you’re in one of those aircraft flying.

I’m sure some of you mechanically-inclined readers are pointing out that physical, mechanical parts fail too. Of course they do. But they are sure a heck of a lot easier to fix, because they are easier to diagnose. In the worst case scenario, you just start swapping parts in and out until it starts to work again. But the computer ones are trickier. I think it was those Saturns there that required you to have a college degree (Associates, IIRC) to be able to fix them.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with my writing? Well, I stranded my couple on a planet. They find a terraforming research outpost, abandoned. There’s a lot of water for them in the system, but they can’t get to it easily because it all relied on being hooked up to computers. My hero gripes inwardly how nothing is mechanical and simple anymore, that with valve in a pipe, there wouldn’t be any kind of access-to-water issues. A little conflict there for the story, as I will probably have the hero and heroine working on the system together, to bring them closer. BUT… there’s something a little more there, too, with that ‘author creep’ of my own dichotomy of love-hate relationship with computers. I love their convenience (I used to write my first stories longhand and I even used a typewriter at one point. Fix passages on that thing, not!) but when we have created for ourselves a complete reliance on them, even down to the most primitive necessities, things will be worse for us than just growing fat and lazy, WALL-E style.

The TL:DR and takeaway? When everything is computerized, down to provisions of the most basic needs, then we are in for a world of hurt. Do yourself a favor and learn some basic water/food obtain/preparation skills. It may just save your life.*

*Anyone remember that episode of Night Court where the daughter of some mafia don tells Dan that she almost died without money because when she “ran-away”, she had the chauffeur take her to their summer home and she couldn’t figure out how to work the can opener? Yeah, it’s like that, only worse now.