GeekBeat.TV and CES

This week’s going to be an interesting one; it’s the first time I really get thrown into the fire over at the GeekBeat.TV blog, where I’ll be exercising my brand new site-shaking powers as editor while most of the usual editorial team is off in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show.

Not only will I continue to blog there as usual, I’ll be handling other duties like scheduling and promoting posts and getting shows up in a timely manner, and with the volume of CES coverage we have planned, there should be plenty to keep me busy.

None of this means I get to slack off here either; in fact if anything my output on this site is actually increasing. It DOES mean I may get to be a little exhausted though, so bear with me if my rough work ends up being a little rougher than usual!

Google Maps: The Descriptive Writer's Secret Weapon

One of the things I like about writing in imagined worlds is the freedom you have to invent detail. It’s a place the reader isn’t familiar with, so it has to be described to them so they’ll understand what’s in your head.

Of course the flip side of that is you have to describe all that stuff so they’ll understand.

Writing in a familiar place is easier in that regard. You don’t want to waste a lot of the reader’s time telling them all the details about things they are familiar with. But even in a familiar setting there are details they need to know, and it’s your job as a writer to provide them.

This comes back to the old saw that you should ‘write what you know.’ What doesn’t occur to most people is that ‘what you know’ is not limited to what lives in your head. It can be what’s in front of your eyes, too.

The story I’m currently writing is set in a fictional world, but it’s a world that’s a lot like ours, except that it has suffered some sort of apocalyptic catastrophe and oh yeah, there are zombies. Aside from that though, it looks a lot like the real world, with cities that resemble ours, people that are like ours, a culture that was like ours until catastrophe struck.

I’m trying to go for a feeling of authenticity in the city descriptions, but there’s a problem. I’ve never lived in a large city. I’ve visited them, sure, but never spent enormous amounts of time in one. I live in a small town, so I can’t really just open my door, go to the coffee shop and write what’s in front of my eyes. That would work for a small town, but not a large urban center.

Enter Google Maps and StreetView!

While absolutely NOT a replacement for research or visiting areas in person, if possible, StreetView (or similar services from Microsoft and others) can give you instant access to the world, at least on a visual level.

There are certain scenes in The Fast and the Dead that I want to be distinctive, to have the feeling that they’re real places, that they really exist. The best way to accomplish this is to base them on places that actually do really exist.

Ideally you’d use a place you know or can go to, but if you can’t, or if you simply don’t know something suitable, pick a real-world area that evokes the feel you’re going for and find a suitable street. Virtually explore it until you find the perfect building to describe.

It’s unlikely you’ll find an exact, 1:1 match, unless you happen to be writing in a real location and you’re describing that specific location. That’s okay though. It means that what you describe will remain within the realm of things that come out of your head; you won’t be lifting your descriptions off of a photo and pasting them into your writing. You’re going to have to adapt the descriptions, accommodate the differences, invent or change additional details.

It’ll still require some work, but the realism and detail of your descriptions will thank you for it.

Google+ Hangouts and Editing

A lot of my planned working time was taken up unexpectedly tonight by a really fantastic Google+ hangout. Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer of Discovery.com) and several other astronomers were aiming a telescope at the sky and looking at the moon, at Saturn and several of its moons, and at several constellations in real-time online. It was fascinating, and inspiring.

It made me start to think about other uses for hangouts. I know writers have taken to doing writing hangouts, which I haven’t tried yet. Has anyone tried an editing hangout? It could be done as part fiction reading, part suggestion/critique/workshopping. It seems like that could be an interesting way to take advantage of the technology, as well as solve some of the issues I was having conceptually with editing in public.

I’ll have to put the idea out there on Google+ in particular, see what users there think. If you’re on Google+ and would be interested in something like that, add me to your circles and let me know.

The Editing Process

I’ve been at this full time writing thing for a little over 2 months now and I have plenty to show for it; 7 completed stories is not too bad at all I think. They cover a decent range of plot and theme and there’s even a little genre variety thrown in for good measure. They’re all first draft though, and that’s a problem.

I think it’s time to shift gears into phase 2 of this project, and that is beginning the editing process.

This doesn’t let me off the hook with writing. I still have to post every single day, and for WIP500, I still have to write a minimum of 500 words a day, though that’s 500 a day on average.

The problem of the editing process has occupied the back of my mind since I finished the first story back at the beginning of NaNoWriMo. The second problem of how to integrate the editing process into the writing process without stopping the writing has occupied another corner of my mind since near the end of NaNoWriMo when I was beginning to build up a decent backlog of work.

I think I’m just going to make it a very simple and straight-forward system. I’m trying to write in public as much as possible, and I’d like to do the same with editing wherever possible too. Every day I’ll put up a post about how the editing is going, what I’ve been changing in a given story and why, the direction I’m trying to take it in. This will stop me from posting 5000 different drafts of each story. I may still post significant draft updates though, if people are interested in seeing them.

Feedback Requested

This editing process is where I’m going to be most in need of feedback from my readers, and that begins with suggestions on how I could be doing better in presenting material.

Some time back during NaNoWriMo someone on Google+ suggested that it was a pain to read things online and then have to email me or leave a comment in order to provide feedback, and that I might want to make my work available in eBook formats, as PDFs, etc. I thought this was a pretty good idea; I don’t know that it’ll make giving me feedback any easier, but it will certainly make it easier for you to read and that can only be a good thing.

Formats

I’ll be spending some time over the next day or so doing exactly that. Everything will still be available in the blog of course, but I’ll be making .mobi, .epub and .pdf versions of the first drafts available for download.

Once this is done, I’d love to hear what you think about it.

I’d also love suggestions on other things I could be doing to make things easier or better.

The Future

One idea I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head is to borrow a page from Scott Sigler’s book, so to speak, and release audiobook readings. This would, of course, only occur after a story was all edited and finished.

I’ve never done any kind of long term reading like that, but it’s at least something I could try, as an experiment. See how people like it, if I’m any good at it, what the response is, etc.

So that’s where I’m at right now. I’d love your feedback; please feel free to leave comments on the blog or stories, or to email me, or to get back to me on Twitter at @fictionimprob, or at my Google+ profile at http://gplus.to/GordMcLeod. Hope to hear from you all soon!

That Awkward 'Between Stories' Feeling

So yesterday I finished off The Price of Independence, after 26 days working on it. And those 26 days don’t count the several days I wrote other things instead. In all I spent more than a month on that one story. That’s as long as it took me to write all the other Prices stories together.

That’s okay, stories are done when they’re done. The problem then becomes what to do next?

Instead of having something known to go back to and work on, I’m left with a blank canvas, a world without boundaries. I can write everything, which too often means I can write nothing. So I start looking for ways to narrow things down.

I admit it… Since the start of November, I’ve hit up tvtropes.com more than a few times. Their Story Generator is a great means of doing two things.

1: It can give you valuable sparks of inspiration that serve as catalysts for new ideas that give you new directions to explore.

2: It can be an evil time suck that keeps you from writing anything for days.

Obviously I try for #1.

I visited TVTropes again today when the time came to do my writing, and one of the very first that came up is something that’s been pinging around inside my head for a long time; years in fact. Not so much a whole story idea as a setting; I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction, and would like to try my hand at some fairly soon.

On the other hand, the pseudo-Christmas story I wrote over the holidays was set in the far future in what could be argued as post-apocalyptic Earth, so maybe I already have. It was fun to write too, as a mini-break from the proto-steampunk of Prices. Some more straight up sci-fi might be fun to get into.

That’s the other thing I do to come up with new ideas; your current writing is your most fertile ground for new concepts, whether they’re directly related to your current projects or not. Prices is a good example of that. I had only the roughest, most primitive ideas of what I wanted from that series of stories when I began writing The Price of Independence back in October. As I wrote it and then set it aside to write the others in November, ideas came to me faster and more readily as the fiction informed my thinking, metaphorically speaking to me and telling me which ideas to explore next.

Ultimately I think that’s the best source of new ideas, but you’ll still find me browsing TV tropes now and then. Send a rescue team if I’m there longer than a week though!

More on Prices:

I originally envisioned Prices as the title of a book, with the six stories I’ve written making up the book once they’re all done. I’ve been wondering lately though if maybe Prices is more of a series name and each of the stories should be more of a novella-length piece in the series. Either way I go with Prices, the six existing stories are not the end. I can and will write more in that series, and soon I’ll need another new lead character.