Category: Writing (page 63 of 81)

Welcome to Scrivener: Beyond Mere Writing

November 18, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Courtesy Scrivener

It’s been a very busy week so far for me, and while my writerly focus is shifting for the time being from Citizen in the Wilds to shorter works both written and unwritten, Scrivener is still a toolbox full of potential. Once you understand the basics of the program and experience it in action, it becomes clear that it can be a boon to endeavours beyond novel or screenplay construction. With a little work and creative thinking, Scrivener can become a hub for activies both productive and entertaining.

For example, a little transcription of notes, or the taking of them directly into Scrivener can transform the program from a writing platform to a study aid. Writing a leading question or key phrase in a note’s synopsis and then going into the Corkboard view is a good way to review for an exam. Rearrange the notecards, review your terms and perpare yourself for the questions ahead. It also can help in the construction of papers, with access not only to notes but also to downloaded or transcribed research, all in one place.

Another possibility has nothing to do with either academia or publication. With it’s division of material, ability to import just about anything and power as a text editor, Scrivener can be used to create new advetures and campaigns for tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. Location notes, creature statistics, NPC dialog and maps can all be brought into Scrivener, divided up and rearranged at the Dungeon Master’s whim, and for those actually writing in the industry, a final product can be exported like the draft of a manuscript, ready to be transformed into a PDF and sold on DriveThruRPG. I imagine it would take a lot of the frustration or confusion out of the process, since you won’t have as hard a time finding a particular encounter, map or statistic.

At this point these permutations of Scrivener seem somewhat theorhetical. What other ways might you think Scrivener can assist the creative mind?

Canned Goods: READ THIS FIRST

November 17, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Canned Burger

Due to time & dayjob constraints, I’m unable to continue my series on Scrivener today. However, Scrivener is still on my mind. I added this to the Citizen in the Wilds project, and before I put it aside, interested parties may want to check this out.

Spoiler-tagged for your protection.

Spoiler

Asherian zan Alwred’s defining characteristic is that he’s intelligent. He’s not brave or willfully charming, nor is he arrogant or rude. He’s a bookworm, focused entirely on his magic and how it benefits him. Being thrown into the Wilds makes him apply his intelligence in different ways. Even then, he doesn’t begin really questioning who he is or the nature of his home until Danae is shot.

His sister needs to be downplayed. The loneliness and alien nature of the Wilds loses a lot when he’s in nigh-constant contact with her. The killing the seers subplot is also superfluous. Mention her, give Ash the means to ‘mind-meld’ with Danae somewhere in his notes, but don’t put them in actual contact until maybe halfway through the book. The change in Ash from shy, polite bookworm to someone determined to find answers and uncover the hidden nature of the world should be jarring to his sister.

The Cities need more initial presentation. The conversations among Ash’s classmates need to underscore that the way the Cities do things – the control of the Council of Elders, the sanitization of history and exterior cultures, the use and abuse of non-Citizens – is normal. Emphasize that Justinian allegedly founded the Cities as a haven for the study and protection of magic, which to Citizens is an essential part of the nature, the lattice upon which the world is built. By mastering it, they master the world, and without them it would run rampant.

Consider adjusting Harren’s motivations & attitude. He may be bitter and disillusioned with the Cities since they never came for him. When he finds out someone IS coming for Ash, perhaps through a whisper in his brother’s dreams (NOT A FULL-BLOWN CONVERSATION), he’s simultaneously jealous of this and willing to help his brother stay alive long enough to get rescued. Danae’s wound and Ash’s reaction to heal her pisses him off because it is, to him, a delay in getting back. When the truth comes out, he’s even more dumb-struck than Ash.

Danae’s fine, save that she should be conscious when Ash goes after her memory. After witnessing it, Danae’s in contact with Ash’s mind and knows he recognizes the guns. This means she’ll be less inclined to speak to him or flirt with him on their way to the dwarves. It’s only after days of contemplation and observation that she realizes Ash really had no idea of how his work would be used.

MEPAcon Fall 2010 After-Action Report

November 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Courtesy MEPAcon

In Pennsylvania’s northern reaches, amongst mountains wreathed in fog and criss-crossing freeways, the Ramada at Clark’s Summit feels like a secluded retreat from big-city civilization. It’s a nice hotel in an interesting position, and twice a year it plays host to the Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania gaming convention, a.k.a. MEPAcon. This was my first experience at this event, and it definitely will not be the last.

I arrived to run a demo of Maschine Zeit, a session of the StarCraft board game and to break in the diplomatically-oriented rules of Conquest of the Empire. None of those things happened. Going through the experience of sitting at empty tables inspired me to remember proper ways to survive a convention. In spite of this disappointment, however, a great time was had.

The raffle, auction and other goings-on Saturday night informed me very much of the sort of people who attend the convention. It’s hard not to feel at home amongst other gamers who hiss at new editions of Dungeons & Dragons, laugh at jokes about random number generation and cheer for plush Cthulhu dolls. I took a trip into the forgotten mists of the very early 1990s with a session of the video-driven board game Nightmare and tried out a trick-based card game called Spooks. I found myself wishing two things: that I had arrived sooner, and that I had brought my wife.

Sunday brought the aforementioned empty board game tables but also a rousing game of the co-operative struggle against the Great Old Ones, Arkham Horror. I also took a break to try a new card game The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, a.k.a. “Are You A Werewolf?” The expansion New Moon was included and I did not have the wherewithal to call it the “Team Jacob” game, an opportunity my bride would have capitalized upon.

Finally on Sunday I had a fantastic encounter with beloved spec fiction author C.J. Henderson. The experienced pen behind occult detectives and the adorable “Baby’s First Mythos” gave this struggling author some much-needed advice on bridging the gap between unpublished and published. Many of his words bubble in my brain, and I’d like to stir the internal pot and relate his words in some fashion soon. I highly recommend checking out his work. He’s also inspired me to spruce up this webspace a bit.

With an overall drive time of just under two hours, even using a non-turnpike route, and very reasonable registration fees, I plan on making time to properly enjoy the next MEPAcon in April of 2011. I plan on bringing Maschine Zeit and StarCraft once again, along with Ninja Burger as a scheduled event and pick-up games of Chrononauts, Spammers (my prize from almost winning Nightmare), Three Dragon Ante (if I can get my hands on a deck) and possibly Magic: the Gathering.

More than anything else, I’ve been inspired to write more fiction and columns related to these genres and hobbies, continue running and playing old-school tabletop games and find ways to include the missus as much and as often as possible. Big thanks to MEPAcon’s excellent staff, the fine gents at The Portal Comics & Gaming and the folks good enough to put up with me. I look forward to seeing, speaking with and playing at the tables of the great people I met in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Enough Hours

November 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Hourglass

There are twenty-four hours in a day. Let’s be generous and say the average adult sleeps for 7 of those hours. You’re going to need to eat, too, so let’s allot an hour for each meal. That gives us fourteen hours to work with. Fourteen hours seems like a lot of time, doesn’t it? But if you work at an office, you need to get to and from it. There’s a couple hours there. Even if you don’t, there will be tasks necessary to maintain your living space that need doing, taking up another hour or two. The more you think about it, the less available time you have.

There simply aren’t enough hours in the day for us to do what we want on top of what we need.

In the interest of not taking up any more of your time than necessary today, I admonish you to make the most of what time you have. If you want to be a writer, write. Want to be a game designer? Make a game, or at least play something critically. Don’t just lounge on the couch poking the buttons to make the mobs go boom – examine the game and its mechanics, see what works and what doesn’t, find the triggers for the player to become involve and ask yourself why they’re there. Extra Credits has more.

This isn’t to say you need to fill every available hour with work. We as human beings do need our relaxation and decompression time. Not to mention exercise. So go for a walk, play with the kitten, call a friend, watch a movie, masturbate. It’s all about moderation. If you do nothing but write all day, you’ll likely go mad. If you do nothing but whack it all day… well, they say you’ll go blind, but mostly you’ll just have a hard time sitting due to all of the chafing.

It’s a sad state of affairs when we need to do more to pay our bills that takes us away from that which makes us fulfilled. I’m sure some people love flipping burgers or shoveling gravel, but others fill that time mentally being somewhere else, doing something more interesting. Despite the apparent success of some blatantly talentless people, the individual who has the gumption and wherewithal to pursue a passion to the point of profession is rare. Most of us schlubs work a profession to keep ourselves fed and pursue our passion in what spare time we can spare between dodging phone calls and pounding the porpoise.

Enough philosophical wanking, I need to get back to work.

Welcome to Scrivener: Getting Started

November 10, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Scrivener in Action

Since I was asked…

scriv·en·er (skrv-nr, skrvnr)
n.
1. A professional copyist; a scribe: “Gutenberg’s invention of movable type . . . took words out of the sole possession of monastic scriveners and placed them before the wider public” (Irvin Molotsky).
2. A notary.

Last week I gave an introduction to and brief overview of Scrivener. For reasons yet unexplained, I cannot get Scrivener working on my main PC at home. However, a version of the program works rather well on my Xubuntu-powered laptop. So I worked on importing my manuscript of Citizen in the Wilds into the program.

Scrivener can import and manipulate a wide variety of text files. Since the software includes a fully-featured text editor all its own, any formatting in the document will be preserved. It won’t carry over page breaks, and there’s a specific reason for this. Working with your writing in Scrivener has less to do with page length and chapter and really focuses on the organization and manipulation of your ideas.

Importing a file is very straightforward. Under the File menu, pick Import followed by Import Files. Select your text file and presto, it’s in Scrivener.

Once your draft is imported, you can drag it into the “Drafts” folder. From there it’s a matter of slicing it up. To make the ideas, scenes and narratives easier to understand and manipulate, you’ll want to seperate them. Find good places to break in the action, when the scene changes or the characters move on to a new topic, go to the Documents menu, mouse over Split and choose either Split at Selection to create a fresh document or Split With Selection as Title to have that fresh document begin with a particular word or phrase.

The week has been somewhat hectic and this is about as far as I’ve gotten with the manipulation of Citizen in Scrivener. But there will be more to come, specifically how the search option helps me look for repetition, the rearranging and dropping of story points and the power of inclusive editing.

Stay tuned.

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