Revenge of the Gamer

My first column at www.rpg.net was published today!  You can go read it here if you’re interested.  It’s not my best work, but it’s a neccesary step for the column I’m writing.  I decided to cover some of the more basic techniques to help new GMs before getting into the fun and devious tricks an Evil GM should have in their toolbox.  Regardless, it still feels good to have my name in print on such a large site.

The campaign I mentioned in the last post is really taking off.  I’ve found three players, and the game’s first session is scheduled for July 11th.  I’m pretty excited as its been a long time since I’ve run a game.  My Campaign Website  has been a pretty big hit so far!  I’ve always wanted to use a website for a game, but this is the first time I’ve actually done it.  Its so much easier having all the information in one place, accessible to all the players at once.

The novel is also doing very well.  I’ve reached a stage I’ve never been at before, which involves creating new scenes and editing old ones.  Basically I look at each character and the story in general, and I try to identify things that are missing.  For instance, I need to show Yuri as a master salesman so I chose to interject a scene with him selling a cargo stolen from merchants. 

All told I’ve added six new scenes so far, with between four and six more to write.  Once I’ve finished all of them I get to start back on page one of the novel.  Then I give the whole thing a final edit, and at long last I’m done.  I’ve been working on the same project since February, and as much fun as its been I’m eager to finish.  

The largest reason for that is being able to show this thing off.  The novel is light years better than anything I’ve ever finished in my life.  Thanks to help from Saul, Jeff and Shannon the scenes flow a lot better now.  The whole thing makes a lot more sense, and the characters are far more developed than any I’ve created in any other work.  I’m genuinely excited to see what people think of the final product.

Saul and I have also launched another ambitious project.  Both of us want to finish an original novel, and have set a timeline to have our rough drafts finished by December.  Six months ago I’d have been terrified by the thought, but now I’m filled with confidence.  It took me five months to complete the rough draft for Yuri Silvertongue and the Violet Spire.  I see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to accomplish something similar with the Faelands novel, especially given that the plot was written in my head years ago.  I just need to bring it to life!

Looks like its going to be a busy summer for me, and I have all sorts of news.  To start with in my last post I promised to give more details about the novel, so here goes.

Back in February I started playing in a friend’s Exalted game.  I decided it would be fun to write a short story about the character’s background, but found I just couldn’t stop writing.  Within a few weeks I had over fifty pages of fiction, and I decided it would be a good idea to convert my story into a novel.

Bear in mind that because the novel is based in White Wolf’s Exalted universe I won’t ever be able to publish it, at least not with the intent of making any money.  Knowing that I decided to write the novel anyway, but purely for practice. 

Fast forward to last night.  Just under five months after starting the Exalted novel I’ve finished the rough draft.  It’s been one hell of a ride, and I learned more about writing than I ever would have expected.  Now I need to go back and edit the whole mess, and I’m hoping I’ll have it finished by the first week of August.

After that I plan to use my new found skills to work on my first original novel.  Its based in the game world that I created back when I was eighteen, and has been kicking around in my head for the last fifteen years.  Its time for it to see the light of day, and by Christmas I’m hoping to have the rough draft finished.

I have other good news as well!  I applied for a columnist position over at www.rpg.net and was accepted.  I put together the first three articles in a series I call GM Fundamentals, and the first one should be up in the next few weeks.  I’ll make sure to post as soon as its up!

I also had a spot of bad news.  Aaron decided to end the Exalted game that I was playing in, which means the character that inspired the Exalted Novel will no longer be played.  The good news is that this clears up my schedule, and I’m now putting together my own Exalted campaign.

Its been over a year since I’ve run a game, and the itch has been getting stronger so this is good timing.  I went ahead and created a Meetup Group as well as a website for my players.

Hello? *listens to the echo* 

It’s awfully quiet, just the way I like it.  That might sound odd since this is a blog.  Shouldn’t I want a lot of traffic?  Not really, no.  I’ve avoided listing this site or trying to stir up traffic in any way.  This place serves a different purpose.  It helps measure my progress as a writer.  It’s a log of the projects I’m working on, and of the skills I’m cultivating.  My writing has improved a great deal in recent months, but there are still many things I need to learn.  Characterization, viewpoint, setting, syntax…all are skills I strive to master. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve made tremendous strides, especially since I started a major project in February.  I decided to write a novel.  Really write a novel, not get half way through or a few chapters in before abandoning it.  I say that, because I’ve attempted to write a novel many times throughout my life.  Every previous attempt ended in failure, usually because I just didn’t like what I’d written.

This time is different, because for the first time I have a plan.  I set rules and have followed them, and the results are amazing.  I have over 200 pages done, and am two chapters away from finishing the rough draft.  So what did I do differently?

 

Rule #1 Get it done- My most critical rule is writing two thousand words every weekday.  That gives me 10k words to edit on evenings and weekends.  For the past four months I’ve followed this rule, and the longer I’ve done it the easier its become.  Now I casually belt out 10k words and have hit as high as 20k a couple of times.

This was difficult to accomplish in the past, because I spent too much time editing my work.  I’d write a few paragraphs, and then spend hours editing them.  Now I belt out several pages before going back to edit.  Even then I keep the editing to a minimum, because there is plenty of time for it after the first draft is complete.

 

Rule #2 The Outline- Cranking out a ton of words is useful, but you need a plan if you want to tell a good story.  Reading a book called Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress helped me tremendously.  It taught me to lay the entire novel out in scenes, and how those scenes need to be interconnected.  Now that I have a better understanding of the whole story its much easier for me to tell it well.

 

Rule #3 Know your Characters- In the past I often ran face first into a wall when writing.  I’d plot out the story and it sounded good, but for some reason I just couldn’t sit down and write it.  I finally realized why.  I’d crafted scenes and a general story, but I didn’t have people to fill it.  My characters were wooden and lifeless.  Even I wasn’t interested in them. 

I sat down and wrote a few pages about each character in the novel.  Who is Yuri and what are his goals?  How will he change?  Why?  I repeated this process for every character in the book.  Once I understood who they were whole new storylines opened.  The novel practically wrote itself as the characters came to life.

 

Rule #4 Show don’t Tell- Reading my past work the mistake I most often made was backfill.  Instead of showing my world through the story I had paragraphs of explanation littered everywhere.  For example in a fantasy story one of the nations outlawed magic.  I wrote several paragraphs explaining this to the reader, but it sounded flat and lifeless.  It was like reading a dry historical tome.

I picked up a book called Setting by Jack Bickham, and it provided a solution.  Instead of telling my reader I needed to show them through the perspective of the characters.  I had a character arrested for using magic.  The reader learned through the attitudes of the men who caught him, and from the circumstances of his trial that the nation of Olivantia hated magic.  It proved far more effective and I ended up with a more exciting scene.

 

So, there you have it.  Four simple changes have allowed me to accomplish a goal I’ve had since I was a child.  I’m very nearly done with the first draft of my novel, and I’m proud of what I’ve written.  I may not be Robert Jordan or Geore R.R. Martin, but I’ve proven I can finish a project I set my mind to.

I’ve decided to post once a week and will keep you updated on the Novel’s progress.  Watch for the next post which will go into the specifics of the plot, subject, and goals of the book.