Novel In Story

July 27th, 2010

I’m working on a book right now. Syndicate is one of those weird concepts that I had that was never supposed to exist. It was supposed to be a universe that appeared as setup for a whole different story that took place in a completely different place, but then I started getting idea after idea for it. And then I started writing those ideas down as several short stories.

The funny thing was, the story didn’t focus around any particular characters or story lines. Sure, there were recurring characters and bits of longer plot threads that popped up here and there amidst the shorts, and a few characters definitely got more attention than others, but this thing I was writing wasn’t a novel. It wasn’t even really a sequence of shorts because, try as I might, these stories needed one another and were going to come as a group.

It’s around this time I learned about the novel in story format (Which appears to no longer exist according to Wikipedia) via more unconventional means. By that, I mean I watched an anime called Boogiepop Phantom, which more or less illustrates what I’d started to create.

A novel in story is a format whereby each chapter reads like it could be a self contained story centring around a central setting, person or possibly theme. The stories are told sometimes linearly, sometimes in an anachronic order, however the author chooses to tell them. When put together, they create a more complete story, though ideally they will all hold up individually as well.

These shorts will sometimes even connect directly to one another via an overlapping character or crossover scenes told from different perspectives. When writing, it’s a little tricky to make sure the details of the scenes still fit, but if it works it usually works as a bit of an “Aha!” moment for the reader who recognizes both. That, and it helps to put the stories in time line context of one another.

Myself and Boogiepop Phantom aren’t the only ones to do this, though admittedly I haven’t found many more. The comic series and Sin City have done this as well. As for books, it’s a little hard to tell because anything that suggests itself as a collection of shorts usually is categorized as an anthology regardless of the context.

The question then becomes: What is the difference between an anthology and a novel in story?

For me, I think it’s those little details in creating crossovers between chapters, episodes, issues or stories. When the parts all really feel like they were meant to fit together somehow and not just written separately, then grouped together because of similar theme.

Now that I’ve seen it in video and comic format, though, I would like to see what other authors are doing with the format. Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

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Respect Your Fandom

July 23rd, 2010

Or, if you must piss off your fandom, make sure they don’t have the internet.

As Wiseau Films is discovering after taking down two videos from popular internet review site, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, upsetting even a potential fanbase who is tech savvy is a bad idea. Upon releasing a video mocking the situation and clearly pointing the site’s fans in the direction of the people responsible for the removal of the review1, their Facebook has been flooded and those fans are also presumably flooding the site with emails.

The review in question? It was for a cult classic due to being hilariously awful, The Room.

One of the two reviews removed have subsequently been reuploaded to Youtube2 and are being shared among fans who have started a boycott and have informed Wiseau Films that, while they had been considering purchasing the movie, they now will spend no money on it. They point out that Fair Use places reviews and parody as exempt from copyright claims.

This isn’t the first time there’s been a fan backlash due to copyright. I, myself, will not read Anne Rice due to her attempting to sue fans for writing fan fiction of her works. And there was Metallica and their fans.

Just don’t piss off fans or potential ones. It’s always a bad idea. All press is not good press.

  1. Not that this is necessarily the best move in general. I can see a few issues with harnessing your fanbase’s rage intentionally. Whether this video is an attempt at that, I don’t know, but for those thinking about doing something similar, think really hard before doing so. [↩]
  2. I’m a little disappointed that only one of them was uploaded. I really did like the one by Obscurus Lupa. [↩]

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Westernizing Visual Novels

July 20th, 2010

Japan is weird.

It’s just a fact. They’ve given us a lot of weird stuff over the years, from a wide variety of Hello Kitty paraphernalia to… actually, I think I started with the weirdest thing I could think of there. Anyway, it’s a strange place and has spawned a whole genre of animation and even a type of game called a visual novel.

Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books from when you were younger? A visual novel is a game that operates sort of like that. You get a scene with an introduction to the cast, each of them sliding in and out with different expressions and saying their lines to exposit the scene. It ends with your character at a crossroads with several choices to direct the story.

I’ve been trying to do research on these games and figure out how they operate. There are playable areas with mini-games in some, while others rely on the story to be the driving force to get the players to complete watching. Really, it’s a bit of a comic/CYOA novel hybrid where the “player” gets to choose where the story goes and how events will play out.

I’ve been trying to play the free games that have been translated as I lack the funds to invest and the ability to read Japanese. The ones I’ve had access to have two key things in common. First, they are largely based around relationships. They have been largely about the token male lead trying to woo one of the female cast in the harem to him.

The second is that there’s a lot of porn in these games.

Like, a lot.

Rather than focus on that, I’ve been trying to think of ways to make this into something that I’d actually be able to work with. Given that I’m not Japanese and I don’t really want to tell any stories with a guy trying desperately trying to pick up school girls, I have been thinking of ways to make it a little more western. And by western, I mean something that I would actually write.

Change the first, of course, is to change the art to something western. That alone will change the aesthetic to something a lot more western as it is. But that’s not quite enough.

Next, animation. There are some animations in them already, granted, but those seem to be in much higher budget games and limited mostly to lip flaps and big dramatic cinematic. Western audiences seem to like seeing things move on their screens, so an animated sequence, or a generally more cinematic approach to the medium would be a great means of making it a lot more western. Budget comes into play, but I’m going to count this as a bit of a wish list item to the medium.

Lastly, the stories. The stories are almost all either romance (From what I’ve played) or creepy horror mystery stories (Or so Higurashi is supposed to be) and not as many of the latter than the former. With the game play abilities that they’ve implemented, there’s got to be a way to create an immersive experience in the more western, non-harem themes.

It’s on my list of things to try to write one day. I have a few stories that could work really well in the medium, though they will have to wait a bit. I do still have a book to write.

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Pantser or Plotter?

July 13th, 2010

There are two types of writers, or so they say. Pantsers and plotters.

A pantser is someone who starts writing and keeps writing straight through until the end of the book, making no plans in the mean time and letting the story take them where they will take them. It’s a somewhat stressful, yet still pretty fun way of writing, hoping that you encounter no problems but if you do, you can go with your instinct and keep going as you want.

A plotter is someone who plans out their story before they sit down to paper and get writing. They come up with characters, plot and any little details they think they’re going to need while they’re writing. They know the ending already and they go at their writing without worrying about not knowing where things are going, instead running into the trouble of their story taking on a very different turn than they want to go in that isn’t a part of the plot.

I’m a plotter myself. I tend to get ideas when I’m in the midst of working on something else and jot it down when I can, then let it stew in the back of my mind until I have a little time. From there, I work out what needs to happen in the plot, some semblance of an ending and the main characters. I also get a notebook for the project so I have a space to jot down any further ideas and have a dedicated stack of paper to write on while I’m working on a project.

Still, I do like a little spontaneity when I’m writing. As such, my plots tend to consist of only about 3 pages of points I have to hit in order. I don’t plan out how they get from point to point and I don’t plan out characters outside of the main cast. Even those characters are subject to change as I’m writing, as are the plot points. I find doing this keeps things interesting enough that I don’t get bored while I’m writing.

What about you guys? Are you pantsers or plotters?

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Don’t Fear the Medium

July 6th, 2010

A large part of what I learned in SIAT was based around this one quote by Marshall McLuhan. The medium is the message. And I’ll be honest, I hated that quote and still get that little flash of red in the back of my mind when I hear it. It was stretched and twisted until it fit with every point that the professor wanted to make, or introduced and quickly dropped at the start of class. By the end of school, it was just a footnote at the back of my mind to be brought up when I wanted to sound smart. That was all.

And then I discovered transmedia storytelling and I did a little more thinking about it in that context.

Now don’t get me wrong. I still think that the message is the message. The medium, though, works as a platform and choosing the right platform is an important part of getting the message across. More than that, choosing your medium, the one you want to focus in as a writer, shouldn’t be something you choose lightly.

Stories are a strange thing to start with. They start as something small, just an idea, that a writer takes and shapes to be whatever they are going to be. To many people that’s enough. They want to be a novelist, they have an idea for a story and they write a novel. That works most of the time, but I’ve started add an extra little step in there, after the idea and before the writing.

I pick a medium.

I want to be a novelist. I know that’s one of my ambitions, but when I look back on my stories, not all of them are a good fit for novels. I have an idea for an ongoing super hero series that is really better suited for a more visual medium. I have an idea for a story about demons flooding a snowed in campus that would be more spectacular with a different ambiance entirely with different characters. There’s a whole series I want to make that revolves around characters that are all equally interesting, but as a book would get bogged down transitioning between them all.

For me, my stories aren’t clearly defined as novels anymore. While I still want to write novels, I know that’s not always what’s best for my fiction. I’d love to write them as novels, really. I know how to write a piece of prose better than I do any script, but that’s not the best medium for them. I could twist and shape them into the shapes I want them, but I doubt that I’ll be satisfied with the end result.

Because of this, I’m exploring more. I’m learning how to write for comics, still image by still image, and learning to split up dialogue for the medium. I’m learning about animation techniques, audio and voice acting for animation. I’m learning about the different sorts of narrative driven games so that I can write for those sorts of games as the narrative demands.

So how many other people are doing this? Is there anyone else out there who thinks about what medium their story is best told in before they start writing, or do you make your story work for the medium you want to write for?

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Fiction Friday

June 25th, 2010

It’s time for another installment of Fiction Friday!

Include a telepathic parrot in your story.

“Arr! Avast! Port side!”

You don’t actually know how to speak pirate, do you?

“Shut up, stumpy.”

The battle was fully underway, the pirates putting up a fight against an attacking ninja vessel. They were sneaky bastards, but the sea belonged to the pirates. There at the helm of the SS Gonna Kick Your Ass, Azriel the Hatless pretended that she knew what she was doing. Her allegiance was with the cowboys, truth be told, but they were already knocked out of the tournament. The pirates were kind enough to take her for her expert gunmanship and stuck her on a ship with a guide.

They’re getting close! Stop being useless and man the cannons!

Her guide was a parrot with a peg leg, sitting on her hatless head. He may know what he was talking about, but he was certainly the most annoying guide she’d ever had. And she had to deal with the singing swords when she briefly decided to be a knight.

She did as she was told, taking up a torch and setting fire to the canons. They fired at the ninja ship and it collapsed into the waves, a sinking black monstrosity with several black creatures diving and taking to the water. Their flag floated in the wind, but Azriel was ready. The cowboys lost to the ninjas before. She knew what to expect.

What are you doing? the parrot asked as Azriel went to the side of the ship, cutting the net ropes thin and keeping an eye on the water. The ship went down!

“They’re ninjas!”

In pirate!

“They be pirates!” Azriel corrected herself. “The… uh… sea dogs be… oh, screw it, they’re in the water!”

She pointed over at the sea where the ship had sunk. Sure enough, there was a black sea crawling in, and her pirate coach tightened his talons on her shoulder.

This could be bad.

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Fiction Friday

June 18th, 2010

It’s time for another installment of Fiction Friday!

A signal is misinterpreted…….

Days off were routine by this point. They had passed by this little shop earlier in the week on the way to a job and now that they had a moment, they decided to check it out. They kind of wanted some new games anyway.

Two sixteen year olds, a boy and a girl, walked into the store. It was a game shop, shelves filled with all sorts of games and consoles along the wall behind the counter. All sorts of things. Mario. Sonic. Whatever else was available at that time. There should be a list somewhere that I can draw on. But it was a lovely game store that these two teenagers walked into, their eyes scanning the merchandise and the sales clerks, who themselves were preoccupied with their own banter.

The teens conferred in glances, the boy flicking his eyes up to the racks, then back at her before heading over to the two behind the counter. He leaned against it, looking around impatiently as the two clerks came to notice he was there. One seemed more annoyed that he’d interrupted their conversation while the other one smiled, eager to help.

“Hello, how can I help you?” the smiling clerk asked.

“I’m doing a little research,” the boy said. “School project. What kind of security do you have installed in a place like this?”

“We aren’t telling you that,” the annoyed one said.

“It’ll be fine,” the boy said, his hand waving away the concern. “So, police button? I see you have cameras set up, any blind spots?”

“No,” the annoyed one said. “We have the cameras, but they haven’t had tape in them since they were first installed. They’re just to scare people into thinking we do. There’s nothing else except the alarms at the front and they just warn us about shoplifters.”

“Oh,” said the boy, interested. “So if I were to do this,” he pulled out a gun and pointed it nonchalantly at the pair of them, “there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it?”

The two clerks backed up immediately, hands in the air and eyes on the barrel of the gun.

“The latest Nintendo system,” he said, not changing the tone in his voice. Obediently, the formerly smiling clerk got it down. “In a bag.” The kid put it all in a bag. The boy picked it up and walked out the door, setting off the alarm, followed by the girl, both of them grinning.

As soon as they walked out of the store, they were no longer the two teens, having gone back to being regular nine year old children strolling unsupervised down the street.

“Did you get it?” the boy asked the girl, looking down at his new Nintendo. The girl withdrew the games she’d walked out with, Mario and several others. The boy was a little sad.

“Aw, I said Ninja Turtles!”

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Fiction Friday Plans

June 15th, 2010

I’ve been having fun doing these Fiction Friday prompts. There’s just one issue I’ve been having with them. I can’t make them into the nice, fully rounded stories that the rest of those doing the prompts seem to have been doing.

On the one hand, it’s a shame. On the other hand, I’m still having fun.

As of recently, I’ve been using the prompts to tell stories that happen within my own stories and universes. Given that I’m having fun doing that, I believe I will continue. For the prompts, I’m going to continue writing what comes to mind for five or ten minutes of a scene that won’t be appearing in my stories for one reason or another.

This serves two purposes for me. Firstly, I get to still participate without feeling like I should really be doing something else. As much fun as the prompts are, I always feel like I should be working on my stories instead of the prompts when I do them. This way, I’m still doing my stories.

The second, of course, is the chance to write out some of those bits and pieces that are alluded to in stories but never exposited.

So, if you’re interested in seeing very rough, raw drafts of what won’t be appearing in my stories, be sure to tune in every Friday!

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Fiction Friday – The New Kid

June 11th, 2010

It’s time for another installment of Fiction Friday!

Include this in your story: “I wish he’d knock on my door instead……..”

Aubrey could hear the heavy footsteps outside the hall. For the first time in what felt like forever, they weren’t coming for him. There would be no knock. He would not be dragged away to whatever experiment they had prepared today for whatever it was they were trying to figure out about their physiology.

It was a good thing, really. He needed some time to recover. His body was at a breaking point as it was, barely even able to hobble. As it was, he probably wouldn’t have made it another month. The break was good for him. They could concentrate their efforts on someone else and maybe he’d learn not to have such a smart mouth in the mean time and someone else could make the mistake of stepping out of line to end up in the experiments chair.

As they drew closer, he felt a pang of guilt. It was possible they were leaving him alone because he was doing poorly and they would be loathe to lose their favourite experiment, but it was more likely it was due to the new blood in the building. As far as he could tell, the kid hadn’t even woken up yet in the week he’d been there. Not in his cell, anyway. And yet, they still kept taking him and Aubrey just couldn’t pull together the strength to piss of the guards enough to make them take him instead.

From the next cell, he could hear the knock on the door. He was never sure why they bothered knocking at all, but he wished he’d knock on his door instead. At least until the kid woke up and he could find out who he was.

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Reading While Writing

June 8th, 2010

Reading while you’re writing is a bit of an interesting subject. Reading is a good habit for a writer to have, but on the other hand there are some problems that arise when you write while you’re reading. You could draw too much influence or outright copy something by complete accident.

I, however, don’t like to let something like writing stop me from reading. If I did that, I might never actually get any reading done because I’m always working on some narrative project in some form or another. Instead, I’ve found a balance in two forms.

First, I don’t read anything similar to what I’m writing within a month of working on it. If I read something in a different genre with a different tone, generally I don’t have to worry about the influence bleeding over much.

The second is, believe it or not, graphic novels. I’m a huge comic book fan and graphic novels are this great alternative in another medium that I find doesn’t really influence my prose as much as it probably could. Granted, I don’t read much in the way of super heroes and do read things that are actually a little closer to the stuff I write, but I do try to avoid similar narratives in comics as well.

So what about you? Can you read when you’re writing?

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