Posted By orchard on March 31, 2010

I am participating in the Script Frenzy even this April.  My good friend Big-O will be working with me to help in the project.  The goal is to write a 100 page script in the month of April.

So right now we have a concept and have outlined a plot.  We are working this script as an audio drama, told from the perspective of a new employee at a large corporation.  I don’t want to give too many details, but we feel like this will be a fun script to write, and it should turn into a fun comedic drama (not a comedy).

For me the difference between a comedy and a comedic drama is the perspective of the characters.  In a comedy, the characters are at least trying to make jokes.  There are setups and punchlines and the like.

In a comedic drama, the jokes are there, but they arise more from the absurdity of the situation.  This is not to be confused with the type of situational humor where the character is immersed in an embarrassing situation (a classic example of this would be Meet the Parents–a movie which I consider unwatchable because of the degree to which the main character spends his time being in intensely embarrassing situations).   This is when a character finds themselves in a situation that is so absurd that its amusing.  A good example of this is the show Chuck.  While it does sometimes have the embarrassing humor, it more often relies on the characters being put in absurd situations.

All that said, by then end of April I should have a full script of 100 pages, which google tells me that means we are shooting for about 100 minutes of produced drama.  Of course we may end up doing no better than I did for NoNaWriMo, where I managed to only squeak out about 8000 words for the months–not really a respectable pace at all.  But that’s what I get for trying to write, have a full-time job, and spend time with my family.

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Posted By orchard on March 25, 2010

It’s virtually impossible to ignore Twilight.  Especially if you are a married guy.  Even more so if you are LDS.

Here’s the deal: The book came out in 2006.  It’s 3 1/2 years old.  Pretty much 60% of the women that I know about have read it.  Move into the LDS population and that jumps to something like 90% of the women between about 18 and 40.  I’ll be nice and say that the reaction is enthusiastic.

So here it is 2010, and my wife (see…) checks the book out of the library and says to me, “I’d like you to read this”.  That’s fair–I hand her books and tell her that she would enjoy them quite often.  Only when I really think she will, but since I read so much, it’s pretty often that I find one that I think she will like.  So I had this book lurking on the bookshelf in our bedroom (that’s right), and I figure it won’t take me long to read it, so I might as well.

Now I’m going to quote this article by Orson Scott Card (also LDS, in case you didn’t know):

“For instance, I really hate vampire fiction. I don’t understand why anyone is attracted to it. So even though I know Stephenie Meyer to be a faithful Latter-day Saint and a lovely human being, I’m incapable of giving a fair reading to her vampire novels.

That doesn’t mean I have some kind of duty to “save” other people from reading her novels by getting them banned from bookstores.”

Now to be clear, I don’t hate vampire fiction–I quite enjoyed Angel, and I liked Sarah Ash’s “Tears of Artaman” series as it’s a refreshing look at the vampire and dragon mythologies.  But it is hard for me to give Twilight a fair shake despite the fact that I’m positive Stephanie Meyer is a good person.

I’m not going to talk about the story itself much–although I seriously doubt that there are any real spoilers I could give at this point.  Instead I want to focus on the storytelling, because really I think that’s the important part of  a story.  Plot is not unimportant, but to be honest, a simplistic or even revisited plot can be made to work if the story is well-written.

The plot of Twilight is (as far as I know) original enough, but it certainly plays on a lot of familiar themes.  Girl meets boy, falls in love, there are obstacles to that love, they overcome obstacles, all is dandy.

Now the question is (in my mind): is it well told.  The answer, predictably, is both yes and no.  Despite myself, as I read the book, I did find her style engaging.  That said there are two or three things that really bothered me.  First is the occasional grammatical gaffe.  I’m not talking about using who instead of whom, but tense matching (Bella says something about doing something ‘tomorrow’, when she in narrating the story in the past tense; this wouldn’t be a problem if she had been talking to someone other than the reader when that comes up) is important.  If you write a book in the standard 3rd person omniscient past, then you need to stick with that.  Even third person limited.  First person perspectives need somewhat more careful attention, primarily because you know that the person telling the story is going to survive.  In a romance novel, this is okay.  In a vampire-novel, it *might* be okay, but it certainly takes out any sense of real danger.  Nevertheless breaking with the chosen tense and character is jarring.

The other thing that really jarred me out of any immersion in the book was the vampire baseball.   As a device to show how strong and physically impressive the vampires are, it worked.  It also worked to set up with the ‘wild’ vampires.  Except for one minor problem–it wasn’t necessary. Now I recognize that a lot of things happen in real life that aren’t ‘necessary’.  I certainly didn’t need to eat that candy bar yesterday, but I did.  But a novel is different–we expect as readers to be shown the things that are most relevant to the story itself.  Some authors are very sparse in this regard, while others (I’m looking at you Mr. Jordan!  Tad Williams, you are at LEAST as guilty!) are very verbose.  Twilight reads like a book that’s reasonably terse.  There’s little in the book that isn’t plot-driven.  Meyer even makes sure to go back and explain why some thing are important.  But the vampire baseball is redundant for showing the physical prowess of the vampires.  At that point in the book if a reader hasn’t figured out that the vampires are insanely strong and fast, they haven’t been paying attention at all.  Edward stops a car with his bare hands then picks up a van with one hand! This guy is strong.  We get that.

So I found that jarring.  Not that there is some objective standard that says it was a bad scene, I just found it jarring because of the redundancy.

Now to the real question: will I read the sequels?  Yes.  I likely will.  Overall, for a book solidly aimed at a different demographic (not males 33 yrs old), it did a remarkably good job of getting and holding my attention.  I don’t love it, and I’m not a fan.  But I do recognize that they are engaging, but I thinks that is more of a function of the storytelling than the plot.  Well done Ms. Meyers.

Note: I have the deepest respect for anyone that can actually finish a book and get it published.  They’ve done more than I have.  Maybe some day.

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Tags: twilight, vampires

Posted By orchard on March 5, 2010

Unless you are a professional speed reader,  chances are that I read faster than you.  And not just the more obvious aspect of words per minute, but also tenaciously.  If I am eating breakfast at home, unless it’s a family meal (as in we are all sitting together), then I am reading.  I freely admit to taking whatever book I am reading at the moment to the bathroom if I think that I am going to be in there for more than a minute or so.

I read while cooking, waiting for my computer to boot (which is rare–I typically leave it on), during commercials (exception: the super bowl, in which case I read during the game and watch the commercials–or I just ignore the whole thing).  I read at night before bed (last night I stayed up an extra hour or so reading). I also read when I am walking.  People tell me that this is a bad habit, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that.  In fact, I’ve fallen while walking without a book FAR more than while reading.  I do not, however, read while I am driving.  People who do that deserve exactly what they get.  It’s as bad or worse as driving while intoxicated.

And when I am reading, I move through the pages quickly, but never skimming.  Skimming leads to a person needing to re-read pages because a useful bit of information was missed.

At work, about 25-35% of my job is reading journal articles and test manuals (the other part being WRITING journal articles, test questions & manuals and more).  I re-read Robert Jordan’s massive series recently, going through it in fairly short order.

I have never understood people who don’t enjoy reading, or that say they don’t have time to read.  I DO understand people who read slowly because of some problem or other.  I have a number of friends and acquaintances who are highly dyslexic, and I don’t blame them for reading slowly.

In fact, reading quickly isn’t necessarily a virtue.  It means that I have less overall time with the story, the characters, and the setting.  It means that even a lengthy series of books is but a passing friend.  It means that without a solid local public library (I appreciate my librarians more than I can possibly say) I would have long exhausted my ability to acquire books at the rate I read–not having hundreds of dollars to spare on my habit each month.

There are upsides that are undeniable, however.  I have read a lot of books in my life–likely numbering in the thousands, but I can’t be sure.  When a new book comes out, I never have to wait long to finish the one I am on to read it.  Because of this I have been exposed to a myriad of writing styles and stories.  Reading quickly means that I can take a risk in getting an author I don’t know much about–I won’t be spending a month on their stuff, and if I don’t like it, I’ll know that much sooner (of course, with few exceptions, once I start a book, I finish it–only if it egregiously vulgar or poorly written will I abandon it).

Of course, the point of all this, is that I believe that being a quick reader allows me to be a better writer.  Of course, that’s not the only requirement for being a good writer, but it helps.  I’ve noticed that the big names in writing have very different approaches to reading.  Orson Scott Card (whose various columns are quite insightful) seems to read a bit of everything.  I know that David Eddings once wrote that he avoids reading fantasy, though that’s what he writes.

Personally I read largely in the speculative fiction area when I’m reading for pleasure (most people might call this genre ’science fiction & fantasy’, but that’s another post).  There are two major reasons for this: first I enjoy seeing what worlds others will create and second I appreciate that there are some moral, political, social and ethical dilemmas that are more easily presented as part of a plot on a fictional other world than as dealing with examples on our own planet. Of course, I also like to get away from reading journal articles with titles like “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Endophenotypes, Structure, and Etiological Pathways”.  I just like a mental break, and speculative fiction allows me that, while keeping my mind engaged.

So, I may read faster than you, but chances what you read is more carefully selected.  Or you might actually read faster than me.  Who knows?

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Tags: metacognition, reading

Posted By orchard on March 4, 2010

I’ll be blunt…I don’t know much of anything about writing audio dramas.  In fact, I’m not sure I know anything about writing.  With that in mind, I am trying to get in the mind frame appropriate for writing more fiction.  The audio drama will be centered around the entire TMOG concept, telling the story of the alternate world in which the TMOG exists.

I am currently  working on a work that is told from the POV of a non-human character, and her reaction to meeting them for the first time.  It’s coming along nicely, but I am still struggling with a few details of it.

Both of the above remind me of why so many authors choose to write things that are told from either third-person omniscient or even a semi-omniscient narrator.   Telling a story from an unusual POV or about alternate realities quickly becomes a great deal of work.  Somehow I end up choosing things that are not easy to write.  I guess I’m just that self-flagellating.  One day, I will finish writing something, and it will be worth reading!

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Posted By orchard on May 7, 2009

I am currently writing three major stories (or that’s how I think of it–whether or not they go anywhere, are any good, or even get finished remains to be seen), one of which is a steampunk setting.  It is the story which derives its main ideas from a joke that some friends and I came up with–the Time Machine of Guam (hence the name of this site).

The basis for the story is that at some point an empire is founded and called the Empire of Guam.  The founding of this empire is done using the Time Machine, and the results are that most everyone ends up living in massive clock-work cities where the houses and shops are built on the gears and cogs of the clock-works, the people use the chains and pulleys that connect the cogs as transport, and all this is powered by massive steam-driven technology.  Of course WHY this clock-work assembly exists or what purpose it serves is something that will be revealed in the story itself.

The protagonists in the story are setting out to find out more about the Empire in which they live, and how it came about.  One is a private detective and the other is his client, a worker in a grease factory (these grease factories produce the lubricants necessary to keep a massive multi-ton cog & gear system moving) both of whom have discovered that what they think they know isn’t really all that accurate.  Which isn’t surprising considering that there is a time machine involved.  It was originally meant to be a short story, but I find that I simply cannot write the story that needs to be told in a short space.

Which is, of course, my major obstacle in finishing a draft–I keep realizing that there are details that must be added and idea and subplots that MUST be addressed in order for the story that is there to be properly told.  All this would be fine if I were a published author who had the leisure of doing nothing else but write.  As things stand, I actually have to work for a living…

Here’s to finishing the story!

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Tags: writing

Posted By orchard on May 7, 2009

It’s all about distractions.  It’s the same reason I have an enormously difficult time finishing anything other than a 3000-word story.  I can plan enormously large and beautifully complex stories (or I like to think I can), but the true test is in finishing them.  Which I apparently am incapable of doing apparently.

To date I have at LEAST 4 unfinished manuscripts with a word count well over 10k words.  One is about 25k words, and another is in the 20-25k range.  And they are all nowhere close to being finished.  I have ideas at bare plot sketches for another 3 or 4  stories.

The problem?  First off, time management.  I have a LOT of other things that I enjoy doing or need to do, and those inevitably end up taking priority for various reasons.  Family, work, & finishing my dissertation all take priority.  Then, because I’m rather stressed after all that I find the need to relax looming a bit larger than I’d like.  So I end up playing video games a lot more than I should.  Which leads me to be curious about the internal workings of the game, and then I start playing around with the editor, and that then becomes a very fascinating toy (and oddly relaxing, even though it can be very mentally challenging).  I’ve done this with various games (warcraft 3 is my current poison, but I’ve also played with Diablo II, which doesn’t even have an official editor!) and I always end up learning enough to make me feel that I’ve mastered something new, but I never really push the limits of it because I don’t want to put too much time into it.

So writing becomes a hobby that I love dearly, but I simply never make as much time for as I would like.  This, of course, means that I don’t blog well.  Even when I have wordpress to do the work for me.

This website sums it up for me quite well:  http//:you.are.a.disorganized.freak.andyousuck.com

Made by my good friend Big-O, it’s a pretty neat little site. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to organize myself eventually, but for now…I languish in the pits of chaos, a freak twisted and spit out by the churning of societal insanity.   But enough self-loathing and despair.  I’m actually going to post this and another thought as well…

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Tags: andyousuck.com, disorganization, poor blogging, writing

Posted By orchard on February 26, 2009

I wrote this short story in the summer of 1999 while working in Utah for my uncle drilling granite. I was far from any close friends, and I had a fair bit of spare time on my hands when I wasn’t working 10 to 12 hour shifts. At that time I wrote this and a number of other stories in a journal that I sent to my then future wife (I was pretty certain about our future even though I hadn’t yet proposed.)It’s a quick story about deception and how an immortal creature might go about convincing the world that they are no longer around. Please, enjoy a bit of Treachery.

“I’m not boasting!” The familiar denial flows with ease from Jara’s lips. It came with readiness, and he had the good sense to look embarrassed this time. Perhaps he was finally realizing how ridiculous his claims were.
He had only been in Aerth town for two days, but already his outrageous stories—and denial of fabrication—had earned him the reputation of a braggart and liar of the highest order. True enough he had some gold, and spent as if his supply were infinite, but his claim of crossing the Northern Mountains and bested a dragon were just too much. In living memory no one had ever crossed the mountains and only a few had tried. (more…)

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Posted By orchard on February 26, 2009

While this story is much shorter than some of my other stories, I do like it. It illustrates a number of things, but mostly that sometimes we make decisions without even considering that we don’t have all the relevant information, let alone what that information is. Of course, when you are just trying to get by, sometimes it is difficult to see past that. Then again, I can’t put too much description of the story here, or this will be longer than the actual story. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss the irony. Also, yes I am aware that this may or may not be an actual demonstration of irony as the reader understands it. Oh well.  This story was originally written in summer of 1999.

For the planet Balochian there is only one word: cold. Not just the weather, but everything there is frigid, especially the people. Don’t expect any help from them! How do I know this? I am stuck here, and I have been here for a very long time, centuries it feels like. The eternal ice has infected the people, the government, and everything. Nothing here cares about anything. How do you explain that you want to leave to officials that don’t care? How do you bribe an officer whose only concern is the system? (more…)

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Posted By orchard on February 26, 2009

This story was written about the same time as Treachery (summer 1999) and is one of my favorites from that time period. It speaks to me about the power of a single individual to change another individual’s life. I think we run into people like that a lot in our own lives without really knowing it. Oh, and as a note, the name Eia probably needs a bit of explanation in order for English speakers to pronounce properly, even though it is dead simple. You see, I spent about 18 months in Portugal, and the name is built using Portuguese pronunciation rules. Thus, the ‘ei’ is pronounced as a long a, as in hay or way, while the the last letter is simply tacked on the end as a short ‘a’ like the a in about. Ei-a. Emphasis on the first syllable. It means, roughly, behold. I leave it to native speakers to work out details such as voice other grammatical nitpicks. It is a word seen rarely outside scriptural Portuguese writing. I think it beautiful. Oh, and by the way, I hope you enjoy the story.  Comment are open.

Once, in the distant eastern lands, a very noble thing happened, and this story will try to tell the wonder. Yet no one knows exactly what happened, or what caused it. Rumors ran rampant for years after, but the truth of what changed in a bitter young man may never be known. So, while there are many versions of what happened, this is the tale I like the best. Nobody told me this version, but many have heard it from my lips and they will hear it again before all is done. (more…)

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Posted By orchard on February 26, 2009

It has been some time in the making, but I have finally come up with a modified wordpress theme that I am quite happy with.  I’m not sure how happy I’ll stay with every element, but overall this is one that I like.  The Time Machine of Guam, however, now lives in WordPress.  A few credits are due:

My buddy Big-O for all his help.

Obviously the original theme designers (link at bottom of page), and credit to these guys for some of the images I’ve taken, played with and made my own.  Every image they provided I modified in some way using inkscape, which is a invaluable tool for the gear-loving steam enthusiast.  I’m not a graphic artist, but I am capable of taking an image and manipulating it to my advantage.

So with all that said, the Time Machine of Guam lives.

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