Posts Tagged ‘NitS’

I realised I’d not posted a progress report on any of my writing for ages. Its far too easy to update twitter and forget to mention stuff here.

I finished a completely rewritten draft of the Role Playing Game that’s been occupying a lot of my writing time for the last year. The plan was to make it leaner and more focused. This draft came in 7000 words longer and exactly the same number of pages so it isn’t leaner. However it is now more focussed with more detail where it was needed. So I need to circulate it and see what reaction it gets.

I took a look at the reworked opening to NitS that I wrote last year. I hate it so I need to go back to square one. The core story of NitS is written (although it will need a thorough edit at some point) but I’m struggling with the outer story as NitS takes the form of an investigation of the story. Still it’s not a lost cause.

I scribbled down the first few pages longhand of a short story on Thursday night that came to me thinking about some of the pictures in Exposed at Tate Modern. Discovering the book for the exhibition was a lot cheaper on Amazon than at the Tate I’ve ordered a copy as additional inspiration. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve a couple of Dirk Dangerous short stories I must post up over on the Dirk Dangerous web site. I must try to find a pulp zine since Astonishing Adventures Magazine really seems to have gone (although I’m happy to be corrected on that). I’ve a good stand alone DD story that needs finishing and I’d like to continue the serial adventure I began by accident to see where it winds up.

I’ve been scribbling some notes on a very old idea for an RPG that has overtones of The Prisoner; The Invaders; and Health and Safety films. The system for it is very lightweight. The big idea is that the setting should be mostly detailed on a large map of the key location with lots of margin notes and scribblings.

I love it when research material falls into my lap. I came across a book about the espionage and shady goings on in Shanghai in the 1920s-40s era for the massive sum of £1.99 in my local remaindered book shop on Saturday. Handy since some of NitS is set there around then and involves shady goings on.

On top of that the second of the two Pulp Guns books from SJ Games came out today. Yes these are game books for players of GURPS but they also include lots of handy details. Including a description of the flame thrower Dirk Dangerous uses in a story I’ve been writing. Which is handy because up until now all I’d been able to find out was it was a flamethrower that was combined with a sub machine gun. Every hero should have one.

I’ve been taking a few days off work and needed to go in to Liverpool for a few odds and ends today. I’d forgotten it was Liverpool One’s / The Paradise Projects opening today. Had a quick wander round and wished I’d been quicker because I’d worn my new shoes to break them in a bit and broke my foot in a little as well. The new John Lewis store is a huge improvement on the old store. Light and spacious with a lot more variety of stock than the old shop and a smarter arrangment of departments. Kitchen stuff and table stuff is now all together rather than two floors apart.

I nipped into Debenhams which is a similar design to the John Lewis building. Partly because there was less of interest to me and partly because there was a fashion show causing hold ups around the elevators I wasn’t quite as impressed.

I walked through some of the shopping arcades and at the moment I really like the open style with covered walk ways and a lot of glass, stone and polished steel. I hope the detailing on the architecture has been done right so that rain water doesn’t stain parts of it and turn it into a modern take on a 1950s or 1960s shopping centre.

My other concern is that a lot of the shops are shops from the existing city’s shopping area relocated into the new development. Hopefully the owner’s of the now empty property will be smart and ask for realistic rents to attract new tenants rather than sitting on empty units.

I’m having one of those weeks where I just seem to be constantly juggling projects…

I’ve almost finished Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom. I’ve been retooling some of my old Ravenloft adventures for a more recent version of D&D. I’ve been answering questions about Vue 6 Tutorial: Cloud Layer Sculpting. I completely failed to put a lighting rig together for Monday night. I’ve the first interview for the Vue News blog down to final edits. I was trying to make some materials for Vue that simulate a heat haze effect. I picked up a book on Shanghai to help me research the real world parts of NitS. Oh and to top it all off I’m back to learning C# development at work. I’m just glad it’s a bank holiday this week end – maybe I’ll catch up a bit.

Tonight The Sontaran Stratagem didn’t make UNITs 3 extras in berets and a couple of Land Rovers and so far the Sontaran havn’t been reinvented as the sixth member of the Village People. So the BBC found its cheque book. So all over the UK Doctor Who fans are crossing their fingers that this will be a two part Doctor Who that is as good in part 2 as in part 1.

I did the last twenty pages of Night in the Sidhe draft 2 today. Now I have a complete list of all the characters, places and other important things that appear in the story. I also know how much work there is to do on finishing the inner story in draft 3 before moving on to the outer, real world story in draft 4. I cut a few pages off the end tonight because really they belong in a sequel rather than this story – if NitS was The Usual Suspects it would be as though after the credits we heard what they are talking about in the car after it pulls away.

So draft 3 here I come…

I’ve twenty pages of NitS left to work over on the second draft. I’ve now got most of the mini cyclopedia of locations, characters, species and other such stuff. That will help me flesh out the details and keep track of it as I go along. I’ve also got a short list of the three incomplete scenes that I’ll tackle in draft three.

I’m pretty happy with the inner story as told by the character in the hospital bed. I’m not so happy with the outer story as told by the detective investigating how he got to the hospital bed. Partly thats because the events of the inner story affect the outer story and I’m finishing firming those details up. Partly its because I need to do research on a few topics to give it more of the feel of a modern procedural detective story. Partly I’m just not as comfortable with the characters in the outer part. The ones in the inner story have a larger than life quality, the outer story ones need to stand up against that and act as a contrast by being strong characters but also being more believable in a real world context.

So I’m going to do my research for the outer story while doing the third draft and then I’ll write the outer story from scratch in the fourth draft. So I have a plan. Now I just need to find the time to do it.

I’ve an encounter in NitS where the hero tracks down the expert on how real world and fantasy world physics collide. I think it works pretty well but after reading John August’s blog post How to explain quantum mechanics I’ll certainly be applying his advice to make it better.

Today I passed the three quarters point on the first redraft. I’m doing a bit of polishing and fixing but mostly its about looking for plot holes so I can fix them in draft 2. Fortunately so far I’m plesantly surprised how few there are. The biggest one, a remanant from when the story was supposed to be a short story, will need some dialogue rewrites but actually opens up some real possibilities in the heroes back story to make things personal.

I passed the 50% mark on the first redraft of NitS tonight. A certain sense of relief tempered by a realisation of how much work I have left to do. This pass has been mainly aimed at picking up all the gross slips in continuity and the plot. By the endo of it I should also have a document outlining the characters, groups, locations, types of fay, time line and, most importantly, plot that evolved from the original idea into something far, far longer than I intended when I set out on this project.