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Monthly Archives: March 2009

That’s Just Precious

“Don’t forget folks, this production is just an unofficial home movie, made by a bunch of Tolkien enthusiasts for love of the material. The budget has been scraped together by ourselves, nobody was paid and no money will be made from it. So yep it’s purely our way to express our tribute to this magical world. It’s exciting that so many other fans like us have posted supporting words on our guestbook. Thank you all for your kind comments and support! The editing of the film will take a lot of work but we hope to put it online in early 2009.”

It really says something when the quality of your “unofficial home movie” is so blow-me-over awesome you have to keep reminding people of the fact. And it really is just that awesome. At least the trailer is. Check it out.

Please, please, do the Simirillian!

Military SF story

Two big battleships around Saturn (or Jupiter)

Orbiting ship tosses asteroids from rings, ship below is firing laser up (they have to surface to fire) asteroids are like depth charges (delay)
(Smaller ships from guard fleet fighting other individual battles further out in orbit; one falls and the submerged ship takes a risk to save it even though it’s an enemy)

One had fuel from the planet but a broken ship, the other has a good ship but no fuel

They each send the other a “You’re side has lost, surrender.”
The captain of orbiting ship realizes both will die unless they pool resources, but knows other captain will never surrender
He tells other captain his side won
Other captain takes prisoners on board and leaves planet grav well to go home — finds out it was a fake, the orbiter’s side actually won

http://Mokuyo.pixnet.net/blog/post/24299972

http://www.mytinyplot.co.uk/?p=255
http://restaurantequipmenttogo.com/2009/01/28/when-pigsfrogs-fly/

Short Outline, Long Outline, Draft


My outlining will probably go through three stages.
(1) Short Outline –  basic story arc of the book
(2) Long Outline – list of scenes, with conflict-response for each scene
(3) Outline Draft – technically, a first draft, but so awful I can’t stand to call it a draft, so I pretend it’s just a really long outline
* * *
I think of the Short Outline as the infrastructure of my book. Here I decide the word count I’m aiming at, the number of chapters and the approximate number of words per chapter. I decide how many PoV characters there will be, and how many storylines. Although it will give me tremendous grief at some point in the writing of the novel, I stick to this infrastructure like a underground splinter cult fanatic clings to an uzi.
My word count, however, often suffers from bloat, perhaps brought on by adverb retention, but often as a result of overindulging in subplots.
For this novel, I have a central image/metaphor of a well. I envision the still circle of water reflecting the sky. I have four PoV characters. I’m aiming at 80,000 words, on the theory that if I go over, I’ll still be under 100,000 words. Since all the PoV characters have equal weight, this allows 20,000 words for each character. I will split the characters’ sections in two. So the structure will look like this:
Wife
Friend
Husband
Son
Son
Husband
Friend
Wife
…like sky reflecting on water.
I know. I spend way too much time entertaining myself with this stuff. Does this contribute to a better novel? I have no idea. It’s like bloomers on a baby doll. These are parts which might not show, but making them is half the fun of dressing the doll.
I’ve already encountered the first problem this set up has caused me. I need to make sure the timeline fits the order of the PoV sections in my outline. At first I thought it would be easy, but that was because I had the wrong date for an (actual) historical event which appears in my novel. 
Opps.
I may have to shuffle my characters’ sections around a bit.
* * *
The picture shows a craftsman cutting down the outline of a carving.

The Future of Books

Fiction Matters sums up my suspicions about the future of tree books after ebooks become the norm. Tree books will remain, but they will be expensive, high quality objects d’art, mainly for collectors and book lovers. The analogy is to records.

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