Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

Another Saturday night, another episode of Doctor Who using one of the classic Doctor Who styles: Doctor and assistant run around chased by guards while the story unfolds. Fortunately there were none of the shaky sets that used to come with those stories in the old days and even better none of the bad green screen work from the first two episodes of this years run. A well put together episode with a few modern moral lessons thrown in and symbolism that was almost too heavy but wasn’t pushed too hard especially given the tea time slot.

And now for this weeks Doctor Who related grumble ^*1 … I do wonder if the schedulers know what their up to: moving the time the show is on each week so far this year seems a little cavaliar. I know its supposed to be "a gateway to Saturday night TV" but do you move the way into a fun fair each week? If you do will you notice the people who go to the wrong place and arrive late or not at all because its a success anyway?

Going off on a complete tangent I was shopping in M&S today looking for some clothes. I’d swear the v-neck jumpers they were selling were exactly the same as I was wearing in 1986 right down to the garish colours and the synthetic fabric mix. I know time travels the in thing with Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes on the telly but we’re in real trouble if mens’ fashion design has slipped back to the mid-80s. Whats next a Snood revival with Nick Kershaw ^*2 fronting the M&S ads? Its not just a bad fashion statement it’s a Marks and Spencers taste disaster…

*1 well they fixed the FX but what would Saturday be without a little rant.

*2 with all due respect to Mr Kershaw whose new albums I still buy and whose music has been amongst my favourite choice for writing to for years.

Went to see Omid Djalili at the Liverpool Philarmonic tonight with Kim of the Split Writing Personalities and DarkDwarf. I liked the TV show but it didn’t seem as funny as some of the appearances I’d seen on post water shed TV. The live gig was funnier than the TV show.

The Boothby Graffoe, the opening support act, had a good 20 minute stint that got everyone in the right frame of mind. Then after a slightly interval (20 minutes) Omid made his appearance and kept us laughing pretty much continuously for the next hour and a half. He finished it all off with his trademark dancing as an en core. Well worth seeing live.

… He won’t be expecting us then.

A line from one character when friends of mine when playing the original Ravenloft adventure. I wasn’t actually there but I’ve heard it so often it almost feels like community property. I’d played the same scenario back in college so it made sense to me. Back on the 1st I said that I’d been tinkering with my old Ravenloft notes for no good reason. Except now it may not be so frivolous as I may have a couple of players for a game of D&D. Trust me to set that up a couple of months before 4th Edition hits the shops but at least I’ve plenty of material to fall back on and its not like 3rd Edition is a bad system.

So tonight I’ve been picking out a set of appropriate monsters I may use. Like picking a colour pallet for an illustration or a web site I find having a small set of monsters to work with gives a more satisying feel to a campaign than using any old monsters that take my fancy. The adventures end up with a stronger linking theme and can take on a more personal feel for the players. Not to say I won’t throw a monster from out of left field if I think the players have gotten into a habbit of dealing with a particular way. I think of it as the Boromir strategy after Shaun Beans’ great line in Lord of the Rings "They have a cave troll".

I’ve also been devising outlines for four villains. I always like to have four villains on hand. One will be thrown away pretty quickly when either I don’t like them or the players just don’t act like they are scary or villainous. One will probably be defeated early on to give them a false sense of hope and progress. One will appear to be bad but will get munched on by the other remaining villain. Which will leave the last one standing of the four: in Buffy Speak the Big Bad.

After a couple of years of writing more fiction than gaming I’d forgotten how much easier it is to put stuff for a game together. Anyway it looks like I’m going back to the castle and there is every chance it’s night.

Just which up would that be?

Hopefully you wern’t looking for the lyrics to a 1988 hit by Yazz and the Plastic Population and thought the title included punctuation. If you were I hope you’ll accept my appologies and leave quiety back to google or whatever search engine sent you here…

I’ve spent part of the long Easter weekend trying to get pyODE to play nicely in Vue. If I don’t bring rotations into the set up everything plays nicely and a simple simulation of bouncy sphere works fine. If I foolishly try to use cubes and apply a little rotation to them: BAM! rotations get skewed, objects vanish mysteriously as rotations take on impossible values.

I was going to do some writing or editing this week end or maybe a render or two. Its not like there was anything worth watching on TV, my regular viewing all got cancelled for Easter. I could even have wasted it on the latest meem to catch DarkDwarf in its insidious tentacles. Instead I’ve been reading up on vector, coordinate systems and other stuff I thought I’d not need to worry about again since I was in my early 20s. The problem, I suspect, lies in up not being right. Vue uses Z for depth and Y for height. pyODE uses Z for height and Y for depth. Somewhere in the conversion errors are creaping in and hence good data in gives garbage out.

Now if I can just figure out which way is up I’ll be fine.

I’m an avid reader althought I don’t find the time I used to lose myself in a good book. However there were only a small number of writers whose complete works I read in my youth, amongst them: Asimov, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Harry Harrison and C.S. Forester. With the sad passing today of Arthur C. Clarke only Harry Harrison is still with us.

Clarke’s characters may have often been more instrumental as agents of a plot and they certainly didn’t spend all their time worrying about the trivia of life but he was writing for a different market in a different time with different many more unacceptable topics and subject mater that was off limits even to science fiction writers. Some critics say his character’s are unbelievable and they may not be the finely drawn studies of humanity found in some literary fiction but then many real life scientists and technologists might come across the same way. He leaves behind a body of work that is still worth reading today.

Not many posts about this by friend’s yet but I’ll come back and link if anyone else posts later:

• Sue

Obituries in the traditional media…

• The Guardian
• BBC
• The Independant
• The Times

Saw Kodo at the Liverpool Philharmonic and I have to say I had a really good time. I’ve heard their music on CD but it just isn’t the same as feeling the vibration of the big drums run through you. It’s not just about big drums though there were subtler pieces played on shamisen, flute and drums. Then there is the complex rythms of massed smaller drums which isn’t to say they can’t kick up some volume when they’re really getting hit.

Add into the mix some acrobatics, some comedy, a dragon formed by a woman playing the drum while standing on a man’s shoulders, four oni and a bit of audience participation and there’s plenty of spectacle. The audience was a real mix from shocking red haired punks through rockeers to classical music lovers. It was great to see so many children in a concert hall too.

I’ve not forgotten about my lighting tutorials – before I started writing this I made notes on the rig that was used tonight so I can use it for inspiration. It was simple but effective. No overly distracting changes just simple fades and with enough variety to add to the show.

I’ve been making some corrections to Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle tonight. One section wandered into the present tense while the rest of the story is pretty much solid past tense. Reading it again the present tense added to the drama – well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. It didn’t fit with the rest of the story so I’ve fixed it. A few other corrections were needed. I also finaly named the eponymous electron jockey from the first story in the serial – he is now Mr Theodore Sparks. A bad joke I know but I’m writing pulp not lit-fic.

Yeh! another thousand words of Night in the Sidhe bit the dust yesterday as I found a way from the bit of dialogue to the climactic fight sequence. I then immediately found I didn’t have a good idea for the fight but didn’t let that stop me so I just pushed on past it and I’ll fix it in editing.

I also had had an idea for some stuff that I wanted to happen early on in the story so I went back and added two paragraphs in one section and one to another. Now most books on writing I’ve read say not to do that till you’ve finished the first draft. I’ve come to the conclusion that writing a novel is a messier process than writing books suggest so this was a metaphorical gesture of a rude nature to them. It also saved my file of notes on things I need to do during editing from getting any bigger. I was starting to get a bit nervous that it would end up as long as the story…

Tonight I didn’t feel the urge to write but I did start to draw a couple of maps of the setting I want for continuity checking the story during editing. Just because it’s a fantasy city doesn’t mean I don’t want it to have a certain believable quality.

I was reading the end of "The Steward, the Kriegsherr, his Femme Fatale & her Brother" and the start of "Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom" and I felt there needed to be a bridge between them. It means I won’t be introducing Dirk to the world for at least one more story which is a shame as I like writing DD. On the flip side I get to bring in another group of characters who’ve been hanging around in the back of my imagingation, Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle. A group of young women with many talents but when they meet knitting isn’t on the agenda. I’ve knocked out the first eight hundred words about them tonight so there are definitly legs on this one.

The scratching noises came from the old hotel’s basesment. Every nerve screemed at him to run. His brain said no.

So what if the power had gone off?

So what if the landline was out?

So what if the car wouldn’t start?

Storm winds rattled branches against the windows. He wasn’t afraid. He was the star of the football team.

He checked his mobile again. Still no signal. Her text has said to meet here. After last night a storm wouldn’t make him think twice about standing her up. So where was she?

He switched the phone to his left hand, using it as a torch and picked the cue up from the billiards table. Wet footprints led across the dark wood floor. Something, or someone, had been dragged between them. He weighed the cue experimentally, swung it to build his nerve. By the pale synthetic light of his phone he followed the trail, slowly, quietly he followed the trail to the door.

He pressed his ear to the door. The scratching had stopped. He thought he could make out voices. Carefully he pushed the door handle down. Dredding a click giving him away. The mechanism was well oiled. He should have thought that strange for an abandoned hotel.

He pushed the door open and peered round. Listening again he was certain about the voices. Down the stairs he went. In the dark. One step at a time. Thirteen he counted before he hit the bottom.

Ahead a thin line of light shone under a door. So the power wasn’t out for everyone. Behind the door someone screamed. A girl. His girl? It didn’t matter he was running forward. His phone rang. The door burst open. The light blinded him. What he saw struck him dumb. What he was made his gut turn. The last sound he heard was his phone ringing.

"So is he coming?"

"He’s not answering."

"Men."

"Yeh give em what they want and they vanish quicker than the invisible man."

"Let’s go and get a bottle of snake bite. You’ll not remember his name tomorrow."