A.R. Knight's Blog, page 11

Thor: Ragnarok and making stereotypes triumphant

An action-packed November meant, despite all the enthusiasm, a viewing of Thor: Ragnarok eluded me until this past weekend. With the ol’ MoviePass in hand, Nicole and I settled into the front row and had our faces melted by the Thunder God and his green Hulk friend. Action aplenty, of course. CGI-drenched. One liners flying hot and heavy. In other words, everything you’d expect from a Marvel flick. And, as ever, what makes it work are the characters.

Thor has something of a Superman problem – at first glance, anyway. He’s a god, with all kinds of superpower and a feel of (despite not actually having) immortality. He flies around, shoots lightning, and throws people for hundreds of yards. Thor wants for a weakness. Something to make him relatable. In the movies, Marvel chose to do this by making Thor, uh, less than savvy. He’s not necessarily a moron, but Thor doesn’t exactly light up the room with his intricate schemes or deep introspections. Still, being a little on the simple side isn’t enough, and the first two Thor films struggled with giving the lightning guy much of an arc, despite the fact that Chris Hemsworth’s rendition was always fun to hang with.

Thor doesn’t have Tony Stark’s personal journey from billionaire playboy to haunted, avenging inventor, nor Captain America’s endless supply of justice in a world that has none to draw from. Rather than invent something, though, Thor: Ragnarok allows, finally, Thor to just be who he is. The movie is less about some terrible external threat and more about Thor just doin’ Thor things, with the understanding that it’s damned fine if you’re a super-strong lightning god that happens to like fighting and helping people. And it’s fun! The movie doesn’t try to make itself into some grand evolution about power and blah blah blah. Nah. None of this makes sense anyway, and our lead is a dude who likes to smash stuff with a hammer, and failing that, his fists.

So what’s that word “Stereotype” doing up there in the title?

There are two (for this example anyway) types of stereotypes – negative and positive. We’ve already established that Thor: Ragnarok is a positive flick, and so it’s concerned with taking Thor’s stereotype as the “dumb jock” and letting it ride. What happens if your dumb jock happens to have a good heart and enough strength to get the job done? Turns out, makes for a pretty entertaining movie.

We so often view stereotypes in a negative sense – the idea that something’s been done before, or that a character is going to act a certain way just because that’s the simplest way to present them, that it’s refreshing to see the other side. To see what is so often pictured in the negative brought to the positive. Hulk does the same thing – essentially an even more severe version of Thor, Hulk too smashes and bashes around and it’s a grand time because everyone’s having fun. Hulk’s not getting served some moral lesson for loving to fight. We’re not bemoaning the fact that Hulk doesn’t look at the broader implications of a life lived devoted to violence. Nope. Hulk’s here to destroy stuff, and that’s what he does.

Which, ultimately, brings us back to the point of the movie (or book, or painting, or whatever). Namely, if you want to have a stereotype in your story, consider making it a positive one, or twisting a common negative trait into a positive light (or even the defining trait that allows the hero to overcome their antagonist). It’s much more fun and interesting to see things that are normally faults play turn into causes of success.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen Thor: Ragnarok, and have any interest in superhero flicks or comedies, check it out. You’ll have a grand time.

The Power and Problems of On-The-Fly Storytelling

The heroes have burst into a bar looking to slake their thirst with a flagon of the good stuff. Alas, before the sweet golden nectar can be theirs, a gruff ogre of a man demands entertainment as the slovenly town has little more than dusty dandelions to enoy these days. As such, the heroes are challenged to a contest – one that involves imbibing one’s beer and slamming one’s mug against the table so hard that it shatters.

Confused eyes cast across the table – which of the heroes, and there ought to at least be two, are up to this challenge? Who dares brave the boozehounds of the only inn in town?

This wasn’t a planned moment. I hadn’t etched this into the adventure for the day. However, when my friends marched their motley cast through a town that eyed them with suspicion, getting to the only inn and the first real haven they would encounter on their journey seemed like it should be marked by something special. “You sit down at the table and drink your fill.” doesn’t sound all that exciting. Not a whole lot of accomplishment in that. But besting a pair of the town’s biggest louts in a game of their own choosing? That’s pretty entertaining.

Most people who create things (and I’d venture to say most people in general) have those spontaneous moments throughout the day – those times when you sit up and say “this is a great idea!” or “That sounds awesome” or “I really need to get more sleep if I’m seeing these things during the day.” In a creative context, these sorts of moments are the tantalizing forbidden fruit. Beautiful, succulent ideas that promise everything if only you pursue them to the ends.

And the worst part is that they deliver. Sometimes.

The above drinking game played out well. Everyone had fun. The heroes smashed some bottles and earned the grudging respect of the bar’s patrons (if not the inn’s owner, unhappy at her broken glasses). It also fit well into the overarching story without disrupting much. A moment’s fun and then back to the main event. No harm done.

But what happens when the idea fundamentally alters what you’re trying to do?

In my current novel that I’m typing away on, I wrote an entire outline targeted around a particular storyline. I liked it. Plenty of adventure, action, and interesting characters. Problem was, and I knew this even as I put the finishing bits on the outline, is that some of the character moments wouldn’t resonate because we wouldn’t know those characters well enough to care. If you’ve just met Joe and Sally at a malt shop, and Joe gets hit by a truck five seconds later, you’re probably not going to break down in tears. You’re not going to wonder about what might have been between Joe and Sally because, uh, who cares? You just met them. You may, in fact, be wondering whether malt shops still exist.

So after playing with this for a bit, I restructured it. Changed the outline and moved events around.

What does this have to do with on-the-fly storytelling?

Namely that I made the decision after I actually wrote the passages that had problems. Thousands of words into the story, it became clear that the characters weren’t achieving the effects that I wanted. So I played around more with Joe and Sally. Where my initial outline, for the purposes of this metaphor, had a lot to do with Sally’s growth post-Joe, the ideas that came to mind fleshed out the period of time for both Joe and Sally. Their pasts grew more compelling, and their actions changed, to the point where neither of them wind up going to that malt shop anymore. The truck doesn’t show up either.

I didn’t finish that first version. There’s no telling whether it would have worked out in the end. Instead, I scrapped days of work and went back to it, and it was hard doing so. If I hadn’t come up with a better idea there in the moment, writing the truck scene, I might never have done so. Might have just pushed through, warts and all.

The final version, I think, will be better than the first. But it’s going to take me longer, and it’s going to be more work. That’s the problem with these impulses – following them is always a risk. How big a risk depends on the project, the impulse idea, and the time you have to implement it.

If I’d come up on the world-changing idea three-quarters of the way through instead of when I did? Joe would probably still get hit by the truck and I’d find a different way to address character concerns. It would be too much of a sacrifice to trash the whole story at that point.

But when it came to a few minutes in a bar? Absolutely. Going to take ride that spark all the way.

The pros and cons of writing a novel with Scrivener

The last post in this series, and it covers the program I’ve now used for at least three years, Literature and Latte’s Scrivener. It’s anecdotally the most prevalent “creative writing” program, though it’s general enough to be used for non-fiction and I’ve also written screenplays with it.

General Impressions:

There’s no getting around it – Scrivener isn’t pretty (especially on Windows). There are tons of buttons that aren’t clear on what they do, menu options hidden behind obscure drop-downs, and you could argue that having several tutorials as a prerequisite to a program is a sign that something’s wrong. But Scrivener is a sandbox. It rewards the work you put into it. With Scrivener, as with Word, you can create document templates. Unlike Word, however, your templates can encompass entire series with breakdowns for individual novels and multi-book arcs in a single document. There are many features, like Word, but most of the features are directly related to writing, and once you find your preferred method, all of the unused pieces fade to the background.

Unlike StoryShop, Scrivener is offline. You download and install it. This makes collaboration difficult (StoryShop may become the Go-to for that soon), but you can punch Scrivener up anywhere. I can dictate into it without a problem. It’s simple to organize and outline. World-building lacks StoryShop’s beauty, but makes up for it with speed. Characters and virtually everything else is pieced together through one blank page after another, allowing you to write up your own templates and use them over and over again to speed up your work. In short, Scrivener takes a lot to get going, but once you get there, it’s the most efficient way I’ve found to putting together a story.

Pros: 

Does everything you need, aside from collaboration – If there’s a tool you want for writing a novel, you’ll find it here. Some of those pieces may take a bit to find at first, but once you put together Scrivener’s puzzle, it’s easy to put together the shell of a story and start filling it in.
Splitscreen is wonderful – Remember when I said StoryShop has difficulty letting you reference things that you’ve done in other areas? Scrivener offers a brilliant split-screen mode that lets you look at, say, a character description in one pane and your current scene in another, ensuring you get that eye color just perfect.
Cost – Scrivener isn’t free, but it’s not all that expensive. A one-time payment of $45 (per version – you’ll need to pay twice if you want Windows and Mac). I paid that price a few years back and haven’t lost another cent since.
Fast – Scrivener is a low-intensity program to run. I find it starts up fast on my laptop, things shift quickly, and I rarely encounter any issues with it. Writing directly in the program is a breeze. I’m not hassled about subscriptions, online requirements, or broken formatting issues. Once you get it set up how you want, Scrivener works like a breeze.

Cons

It’s not automatically online – If you want to back-up your work or use it across multiple devices, you’ll need to leverage a service like Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive and make sure you’re saving your scrivener files to a synced folder. Otherwise, they’re toast if your computer gets stolen.
Giant sandbox can be intimidating – there’s a lot in Scrivener. I’ve written 7 novels with it so far and I can say I probably use about 30% of its available options. Like Word, there’s probably too much here, but (unlike Word), most are directly pointed at writing and organization for your book. Things like flagging chapters and adjusting icons, to compiling various parts of the novel for things like excerpts aren’t things I use, but that plenty of people might. It’s a learning curve, one that Scrivener could make easier.
Appearance – oddly, this is probably the biggest complaint I have about Scrivener; it’s just lifeless. There’s nothing about the program that inspires you. It’s like a yard with nothing in it. Sure, it’s a yard. There’s grass. You can play a game there. But no trees? No flowers? Nothing that makes you open it and go “yes, I’m excited to be here.” If you coupled Scrivener’s speed and offline access with StoryShop’s interface happiness, then, well, you’d have one compelling package.

Final Thoughts:

As I said above, Scrivener is what I’ve been using and what I still use. They just released a new Mac version, though as I primarily write on my Windows laptop, I’m still waiting. Over time, I’ve learned the parts of Scrivener I need to use, and it does what I want it to. I don’t have to think about it anymore to start writing, and I have a strong template that I use for getting novels going. I would say, in fact, that I use less of Scrivener now than I did at the start, having refined my process to just use the tools I need. And that’s the big plus of this program – you’ll find the tools you need, and then you won’t have to worry about anything else. You’ll just write, spitting out one story after another. I’d currently recommend Scrivener to any writer.

Though I’ll say this now – if StoryShop continues to improve enough to eventually justify that subscription, I won’t be disappointed to make the switch. If Scrivener learns from the competition and makes their program a more pleasing affair to play with, that’s cool too.

Lastly, there are plenty of tools out there for writers. Tons of programs that can be used in conjunction with each other or separately. What matters most is finding what works for you, though I’d throw in this bit: never stop looking for something better. There’s all sorts of cool things happening in this space, and locking yourself into a single way of doing things just because that’s what you’ve always done is a good way to miss out on a great new tool.

Happy writing, everyone!

The pros and cons of writing a novel with StoryShop

And here we come to the first of the two fiction writing programs I’ve played with. Storyshop comes from a group of indie authors that, frustrated by a lack of programs they thought served novel writing well, hired software developers to make this. It’s early on in Storyshop’s life, and plenty of changes are expected, so I’m keeping an eye on this one to see how it evolves. As for experience, I worked with it quite a bit over the duration of a 7 day free trial, after which I decided not to subscribe, for reasons given below.

General Impressions:

Storyshop is the belle of this particular ball. It’s pretty. It’s colorful and dynamic. It greets you with a warm welcome that gets you excited to write. There are plenty of features here, and unlike Word, they’re all targeted to authors (particularly fiction). In my time with it, I didn’t see many useless things, though I saw plenty of tools that were only halfway there. Things like a relationship indicator for your characters (allowing you to identify siblings, parents, lovers, etc. and make a family tree of sorts) that would have been great, except it didn’t have an over-time element to it, which would be great for tracking how character relationships come and go over the course of one or more novels.

Also, because Storyshop effectively runs as a web program, even running on decent internet connections, had some slowdowns. Storyshop simply doesn’t flip between sections as quickly as OneNote or Scrivener. The writing tool can take longer to accept your text. I didn’t try dictating into it, so can’t comment on that, but I’d recommend dictating into Notepad or something and copy/pasting in. There’s also some clunkiness, like not being able to easily see a scene’s synopsis while writing in that particular scene.

But you can put in pictures for your characters, for your settings. You can interrelate everything to each other. You create “worlds” and then “stories” within those worlds – like creating a world of “Star Wars” and a story titled “A New Hope”. It’s a world-builder’s dream. It can also be a timesink, as you notice all those opportunities to find images for minor characters and settings. Ultimately, though, using Storyshop will give you a vivid base for outlining your stories. And then, when you want to start outlining, you can choose from a whole suite of starter templates, allowing you to shape your plot by emulating your favorite works.

Pros:

Fun interface – working in StoryShop is easy on the eyes. It has a delightful color scheme, and once you load up your world with pictures, it’s easy to visualize the settings for your novels.
Best outlining/worldbuilding system – Storyshop makes it easy to create and store the pieces that make up your worlds. From characters to settings to tools, StoryShop gives you easy ways to describe them all and reference them.
Easy to access online – because it’s a web app, you don’t have to install Storyshop on anything. Like Google Docs, it all lives online, so you can access from anywhere. No worries if your computer gets crushed by a random meteor.
Receptive to feedback – Developers and owners interact frequently with the audience. This is an application in its early phases, and it’s clear the creators are invested in making it better.

Cons

Relatively expensive – Storyshop requires an online subscription. $8.25 per month if you pay for the whole year in advance. Compared to the “free” of Google Docs/OneNote or the one-time purchase for Scrivener, you’re quickly going to be paying more for the privilege of using the program. Still, it’s a couple of coffees a month. If Storyshop is what works for you, then this shouldn’t be a dealbreaker.
Can be cumbersome – Where other programs in this series have been noted as lite, Storyshop throws a lot at you. Its design encourages a lot of world-building, which is great if you enjoy doing that. If, however, you’re more into writing a narrative and letting the setting flow, you might lose a lot of time building all the little pieces. And then there’s the issue that a lot of pieces don’t quite fit together as easily as they should. You can, though, see a beautiful future in the clumsy present.
Online only, at least as of November 2017 – This is the big one for me. Several times during the 7 day period I wanted to jump into my StoryShop story and jot down a few things. Its whole structure, in fact, makes StoryShop great for utilizing those five or ten minute chunks of the day to get a little writing down. Unfortunately, I wasn’t somewhere with internet I could use (or internet good enough to get me into the program). On an airplane, in a park, or a coffee shop that doesn’t allow guest wifi? You can’t write with this. You can’t access it to review. This is why I didn’t sign up for StoryShop – if I could have, like Google Docs, an offline version that I could sync, this would be my prime tool.

Final Thoughts:

As noted in the final con above, I think StoryShop is off to a great start. It’s more fun to use than any other writing program I’ve tried. Its use of colors and images that you can choose gives the whole experience of writing with it a life that other programs don’t have. It makes you excited to jump into the world that you’ve built. Until you try to jump in and realize you can’t, because you’re not online. Or you start trying to write and StoryShop struggles to keep up with your typing. Or you want to reference an element you created without leaving behind the scene you’re writing.

I think you owe it to yourself to take a look at StoryShop’s free trial version. Click around. Play with setting up a world. If you like it, and you’re consistently writing with an internet connection, it’s probably the best program for you. StoryShop is going to grow, its features will improve, and in time it may well be the clear frontrunner for fiction writing software. Right now, though, I spend too much time traveling or in places without reliable internet, which makes StoryShop a non-starter for me. I’ll keep a pulse on it, though, and I hope that one day it grows into the promise shown by this early effort.

 

The pros and cons of writing a novel Google Docs

The last of “non-novel” writing programs that I’ve tried. I last used Google Docs for fiction writing for a while after college, when I attempted some collaboration work with folks. It did not last after those efforts ended.

General Impressions: 

Take your neighborhood bar. The one that you might wander to on a random evening for a drink and find, at random, some friends there to chat with. Or at least a friendly bartender who might know what you like to drink. Google Docs is that neighborhood bar. It’s not pretentious, it can provide what you need at a cheap cost, and, if you want to find some friends, it’s a great place. However, if you want truly high class, it’s not going to give you what you want. And you won’t want to go there every single day, all the time, for your writing needs.

Pros: 

Free – Pretty much always free. Like the air you breathe and the stuff you steal, Google Docs is free for you and your friends. Unless you count the cost of internet, but you were paying that anyway, weren’t you?
Minimalist – Easy to get into. Google Docs doesn’t offer all the features of Word, but, like a city driver that buys a Hummer, you weren’t going to use those features anyway. The interface is pleasingly mild and lets you get right to work. Super simple to click back into your document, too.
Connected by the Cloud – For collaboration, Google Docs works really well. It’s up-to-the-second versioning helps you see exactly what your collaborators are (or are not) doing as they type it. No saving and emailing files, no messing up version control. Simply type and forget.

Cons

Connected by the Cloud – Google Docs does allow offline modes, you’ll just want to set that up. If you forget to do so and you find yourself on an airplane, well, you’re outta luck (unless your flight has wifi and you want to pay for it). Always-online has a lot of benefits, but if you’re a mobile writer, then it can be frustrating to find your story locked behind the interweb gates.
Few options for chapters and organizing long works – Bet you saw this coming. Like Word, Google Docs functions as a word processor but not as a novel-writing program. For longer works, you’ll have to put in some extra effort to organize your text. Making edits is going to require zipping about to various sections, and there’s no easy way to incorporate research and outlines. The comments functionality does work really well for leaving passive-aggressive notes to your fellow authors, though.
Formatting options – Google Docs has a limited list of fonts and style options, so if Word can be too much, then Google Docs can sometimes be too little. As with Word, you’ll need to have another program to help you format your work and add in these parts. Can I recommend Vellum, if you have a Mac? Or, Vellum through Mac-in-Cloud if you don’t?

Final Thoughts:

Like Evernote/OneNote, Google Docs is great at getting you going with minimal cost. In fact, if you’re just starting out and want to see what writing a novel is like, I’d recommend Google Docs. Especially if you want to share it with friends, or work with one. Doubly so if you don’t have access to Word. For short fiction or articles, Google Docs matches Word’s general ease, though it suffers if you want to add some pizzaz to what you’re writing. You’ll need to develop a system for keeping notes and tracking research and such, though, because it’s difficult to do that inside a Google Docs file. All in all, you could do worse. But you could do better, too.

The pros and cons of writing a novel with Evernote and OneNote

Continuing this week’s look at tools to write books, here’s what I think of trying to use Evernote and OneNote to write novels. I tried both of these a few years back, and while I don’t use either today (having substituted other things for their functions), so there’s a chance major revisions have outdated my impressions, so feel free to let me know if I’m hilariously wrong here.

General Impressions: 

Both Evernote and OneNote, like Word, are not designed for writing novels. They are, however, designed to take the thoughts out of your head and get them into a more “permanent” digital paper. With even fewer barriers to jotting down your ideas than Word, both Evernote and OneNote give you some of, if not the, fastest ways to get going on your story. That both allow you to group your various “notes” and order them means you can structure a book without too much trouble. Both also allow easy synchronization between multiple devices, like your phones and multiple laptops, so if you have a sudden burst of inspiration and you’re nowhere near your home computer, you can still jot it down.

However, since these aren’t long-form writing tools, you’re going to run into problems with things like formatting, organization, and exporting the finished product. As with Word, longer chapters can get messy in these programs, which prompted me to create numerous “notes within notes” and hierarchies to preserve chapters, character details, and settings or research. While it’s satisfying, in some ways, to fill all this stuff out, your story can quickly become a mess of notes that need a lot of tending to. Again, as with Word, a lot of this is going to come down to familiarity – can you make both of these work? Sure, but you’re going to have to get your strategy in place before you get too far along or your novel will end up a maze of folders, pages, references, and globs of text that can’t be easily sent out to a formatting program.

Pros: 

Efficiency – Both OneNote and Evernote have simple interfaces that let you get going quickly. There aren’t as many frills as Word, nor document templates to fiddle with.
Connected Anywhere – OneNote and Evernote sync easily over mobile/online, allowing you to check in on your work from multiple computers and/or your phone. Word and other programs, through things like DropBox or Microsoft’s own OneDrive also allow this, but the synching isn’t quite as effortless.
Full of useful features – Neither of these programs is difficult to get a handle on, and both have numerous interconnected features that can help you stick to your preferred style of writing. They both support smart pens and notebooks that let you transcribe in stuff you write by hand automatically. You can scribble ideas with a Surface pen into OneNote. Evernote allows easy clipping of web pages with extensions so you can grab that Wikipedia article that’s perfect for your next chapter.
Cost – Both Evernote and OneNote have free tiers, which will likely be enough for what you’re looking to do with it. Evernote’s Plus version is only $34 a year as well, so you’re not out too much if you want a slew of extras.

Cons:

Not really word processors – Neither Evernote nor OneNote are true word processors, meaning they will have difficulties formatting lots of text on the page. It’ll be hard for you to tell when your pages break, or to visualize new chapters.
Document export is difficult – You might think that you only need to put together a novel once, but you’re going to be going back to your completed works all the time. Whether that’s to update things like front and back matter (with lists of published books), fix mistakes, or change blurbs at the front and back, you’ll want your files in good condition. OneNote and Evernote are going to make it a pain for you to make these changes.
Lots of manual lifting for you – While OneNote and Evernote offer plenty of ways to organize your work, it’s going to be on you to do it effectively. You’ll need to set up the notebooks, arrange the documents, and make your places to store your research and plot. All those minutes dragging things around, creating new folder structures and so on is time you could spend writing.

Final Thoughts: 

Both of these programs are, in my opinion, better used alongside your actual word processor (if you want to use them at all). The messiness created when you have so many “notes” eventually grows to make the process of writing a novel untenable, or at least difficult, in much the same way as a lengthy Word document becomes hard to sift through. On the other hand, if you’d like to experiment, these are free to try. I’d caution about using these permanently for budget reasons, though, as you’ll have to invest in people or programs (like Vellum) to do a lot of formatting work for you. And to get your notes into those programs is going to take a lot of copy/pasting, or tricky exports.

The pros and cons of writing a novel with Microsoft Word

So this week I’m going to take a look at the various programs and such that I’ve tried for writing, and explicitly from the perspective of someone looking to write a novel or longer work (not necessarily fiction) with a given tool. Each one will be organized as a general impressions paragraph followed by a list of pros and cons.

General Impressions:

The quintessential word processor for Windows users (while I haven’t really used Pages, for Mac, I’m guessing many of these comments will apply to both), MS Word is likely the main form of electronic writing, outside of email. Load up the program and you have loads of templates to choose from, and all kinds of formatting tools and tricks, fonts, and a kitchen-sink array of options for how you want to put your work together. For a five-paragraph essay, or a ten page lesson plan, Word is the way to go. For a work of fiction, however, Microsoft’s generalized approach gives you an unwieldy tool to craft a novel.

First and foremost, it’s difficult to organize things by chapters. There’s no “cork board” view like Scrivener, or birds-eye option like Storyshop that can give you a scene-by-scene summary. Chapter titles themselves usually aren’t enough to convey what happens in a scene. This only becomes more of a problem as the work gets longer and longer – it’s simply too hard to find a given point if you want to edit or adjust something, like the fact that your character happens to have a flaming sword in chapter four, but you missed the part where someone gave it to him in chapter two. Scrolling through all those pages is a nightmare.

All of those extra options quickly become useless, too, as many e-readers and print editions are going to struggle with any sort of fanciful formatting. Thus you’re left with a bulky program that’s not suited to constructing long narratives. On the other hand, experience counts for a lot. If you’re a Word whiz, you can likely tweak the program to suit your style, and if you’re already investing in an Office subscription, then there’s no need to buy additional software. Especially if you’ve also got a Mac (or want to pay people) to do your formatting for you.

Pros:

1. Familiarity – you probably know how to use Word already, so it’s going to be easy to start getting words on the page.

2. Cost – if you’re already buying Microsoft’s Office subscription, then Word is probably already good to go for you.

3. Low barrier to getting started – Word is great at getting you in front of a blank page to just start typing. Pop it open, pick a blank document, and go.

Cons:

1. Poor organization options – as your novel gets longer, it’s going to be harder and harder to keep your story straight in Word. Every change becomes a slog to find the right part of the document to adjust.

2. Little help with outlining – Unlike some of the other options, Word doesn’t have spaces to detail characters, plot beats, and other items. It’s not designed for novelists, and it shows.

3. Tons of extra stuff – Word’s many frills are largely useless when putting together novels and longer works. Clip art, messy table functions, and all of those ways to stylize your headers all cause problems with E-readers, phones, and other places your readers might want to view your work.

Final Thoughts:  If you’ve already got Word and want to practice your creative chops, go for it. You’ll still be able to type out a story, and there are plenty of authors that continue typing away here. I’d definitely recommend exploring other options first, though, and see if they mesh better with your style, because I think you’ll Microsoft’s one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t quite fit for us.

When Murder is the Name of the Game

Lying, trickery, murder. With up to 11 of your friends talking past each other, trying to hint and push each other to incriminate someone else. Dramatic accusations and hilarious denials. Loose logic and double-takes.

All in less than 30 minutes, most of the time.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is a grand way to rope in some of your friends who may be a bit reticent about board games and get them to sit down at the table. It’s also perfect for larger groups – simple to learn and with plenty of social interaction. Turns are fluid, so you’re never waiting or pulling out the cellphone to kill time as someone draws their way through a deck or ponders a 12-move masterpiece to pick up another victory point.

Instead, Deception slaps all of you with roles, has one poor soul lay out some clues and guide the game through to its mysterious conclusion, and then backs away and lets you argue it out. Cards in front of each player give the means of the murder and hints as to what was found at the scene, like board-less version of Clue. Most of the players are innocent investigators, but one is the murderer, only nobody knows who. The murderer, therefore, must keep accusations pointing in other directions, deriving plausible explanations for other’s cards while denying his or her own guilt. If you’re skittish about playing poker with your friends, this game is a great way to learn whether they can bluff worth a damn.

The player tasked with laying out the clues must use general hints, such as a list of conditions of the victim’s clothes (“neat”, “shabby”, “bizarre”, for example) to try and point parties to the murderer’s tools. For example, if the killing was done through poison and a rolex was found at the scene, they might choose “nice”. There’s almost always several options that could fit the crime, and thus the game becomes as much about reading your friend’s faces, their words and reactions as it is about the cards in front of them.

I mentioned the length of the game above, but I’m going to come back to it here – this game can be short. You can complete games in 10-15 minutes or less, depending on the clues and the ability of the murderer to keep themselves hidden. The speed of these playthroughs, and that they’re still entertaining despite the brevity, gives everyone a chance at different roles. The setup time is minuscule. You break this game out and you’ll play it three or more times before people get bored. And if you ever tire of the core game, Deception comes with plenty of variants too.

If there’s a note of caution, it’s that this is a social game, and that anyone who isn’t fond of making things up, presenting arguments, or bluffing could find themselves uncomfortable. Thankfully, the short play time means they won’t be sad for long. Deception also, when played with a Witness character (an optional variant suggested for larger groups), makes it very easy for the murderer to be identified. While without a witness, we guessed wrong or really had to work to identify the suspect, a witness put the murderer on their heels immediately. So I’d try it without the witness, at least at first, if you can.

Overall, though, Deception is a light, fun game that’s playable by just about anyone in your group or family. It’s inexpensive, with tons of replayability. If you’re looking for something new to burn through some holiday afternoons, you could do a lot worse than this one.

Coco and the non-essential villain

Yes, Coco is a good movie. It’s fun, it takes on a unique culture and history with reverence, seeking to entertain and inform and succeeding on both counts. You walk away with a better idea (if you didn’t know already) of why the Day of the Dead is such an important holiday. It’s a movie about a young boy who discovers his family is much more than he thinks it is. It’s a story about those same family members realizing that, perhaps, their own grudges aren’t worth keeping.

Coco also keeps up taut tension without ever having a single, primary villain until the very end (and even then, this isn’t a villain that’ll have you quaking in fear). In fact, for most of the movie, there’s not a whole lot of risk involved to the boy, Miguel, himself. Yet, despite the lack of a hard antagonist, Coco doesn’t let you get bored. Coco succeeds despite its missing antagonist for a couple of main reasons, both of which are worth looking at incorporating into my (or your) own works:

Plenty of shifting, minor threats – rather than one big enemy, Coco presents a number of smaller dangers throughout the movie. None of these have the deadly possibilities of most antagonists, but any and all, if successful, would cause significant setbacks to our hero. And because Coco never lingers on any of these too long, mostly because Miguel has overcome the threat in some fashion, we never have the chance to get bored by the lack of doom. Coco keeps up the tension through a shuffling cup game – never quite letting us know where the next conflict will come from, which keeps us from caring about a core villain.
A vibrant world we want to explore – Miguel takes the viewers on an exploration through the world of the dead, and it’s a fascinating, colorful place to visit. The wide shots, teases and tastes of how this magical place works are simply too much fun – there’s no time to worry about where the danger’s coming from because we’re too busy taking it all in. This, I think, plays better in film than in the written word, where pages and pages of description, no matter how wonderful, can leave readers falling asleep or thumbing ahead to the next gunfight.
Compelling B Characters  – Coco has a brilliant cast of side characters. Miguel’s family, who make up the stars of Coco, along with Miguel himself, all have personality. They have goals, problems, and arcs. They aren’t talking exposition dumps, or one-note caricatures (for the most part), and they expand to fill the space a villain would otherwise occupy. By the time the actual evildoer is revealed, I almost didn’t care. I wanted more time with the goofy collection of characters we’d already met.
A central mystery that isn’t tied to a villain – Coco‘s core plot revolves around a mystery, and while the resolution of that mystery eventually brings Miguel to encounter the villain, his journey to answer the question serves in place of a direct counter. I’d put this down as essential whether or not you have a hard, active villain, and while Coco‘s mystery isn’t exactly original, it’s compelling enough to keep the story moving forward.

The point of all this, of course, is that it’s entirely possible to craft a compelling narrative without a strong villain, especially if you have a protagonist or setting that doesn’t encourage an active antagonist. Coco could have made itself into a frenetic action movie, with plenty of cartoon violence and chase sequences throughout the land of the dead. Instead, through Miguel, we experience the setting slowly, let its wonder seep into us, and when the plot eventually catches up, it’s almost disappointing. Would that more movies did as much with their worlds as Coco does.

 

The Best Part of Vegas – Red Rock Canyon

In early November, I spent a few days at a writing conference in Las Vegas (which I’ll write about at some point, probably). Because my flight home, due to prices and whatnot, didn’t depart till late Monday afternoon and the conference closed on Sunday, I had a lot of time to wander around. Casinos, even the nice ones, get old and after spending days around them I wanted something different. Red Rock, not far outside Vegas, offers a distinctly non-glitzy experience. It’s a back-to-nature park that, with a scenic drive and plenty of trails across all length spectrums, holds no barriers for anyone sick of neon lights.

On the day I went, the weather was pleasantly cool – low 70s and windy – and while there were people around, I didn’t feel crowded. Benches abounded at trail heads and overlooks, giving plenty of opportunities to take out the journal and do some scribbling underneath the tall rock faces. The breeze runs through your hair and there’s not a single blare of a horn, no music bouncing around or calls for this or that special. It’s a moment of peace in a town dedicated to anything but.

You’ll see plenty of cacti. Valleys cut through majestic and odd stone. Rock art carved on those same stones. And, unlike some larger parks, the whole experience can be as long or short as you want it to be. Getting through the scenic drive with a stop or two from the strip should only take a couple of hours. Plenty of time to get some fresh air before heading back to the tables. It certainly made the long flights back home easier.

So next time you find yourself in Vegas, if you have a car or access to one, consider taking the jaunt out west. Go on a hike for a few hours. Cure that hangover with something other than more alcohol.

Who knows, you might even see a bighorn sheep.