Sorry if this is slightly OT, but I enjoy your writing on this forum SAS, and I was wondering where I could find some of your books?

Cheers!

Quote: Original post by jjd
Sorry if this is slightly OT, but I enjoy your writing on this forum SAS, and I was wondering where I could find some of your books?

Cheers!

I don't have any published yet, alas - I'm hoping to have a graphic novel or two published next year, but a lot depends on the artists; for my part the chapter outlines are done, I'm just feeding them finished, storyboarded pages of script as fast as they can draw, and then I'm assembling, toning, and lettering the pages.

Samples of my fiction are available on my samples page (at the bottom). If you're looking for more of my non-fiction, it's pretty much all here on gamedev.

Isn't it a good idea to get a few books written before writing a book about how to write them?

I have been writing for 11 years now (finally conquering my one weak area, plotting, in the past year [smile] ), and I have 8 years experience editing, and 5 years mentoring writers and researching existing theories of fiction. I have the motivation, and believe I have the knowledge, to write this book now, so I want to take advantage of that. I could always write a new edition 5 or 10 years don't the line if I feel I've learned any important new stuff by then.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by jjd
Samples of my fiction are available on my samples page (at the bottom). If you're looking for more of my non-fiction, it's pretty much all here on gamedev.

Thanks! I'll check that out :)

I don't know if it'd fit into your book but I would like to read some thoughts on how popular culture and events have an affect on the impact that a particular story has on a given audience. The whole giant robots in Japan being a product of having the bomb dropped on them, secret agent stories result from the cold war, the surge in sci-fi at the turn of the century. That sort of thing.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

Quote: Original post by slowpid

Quote:

6. Worldbuilding
A. Historical evolution of culture types: technology and government.
B. Types of religious belief.
C. Alien biology, magic systems, future technology.
D. Naming
E. Creating myths, songs, languages.

I think this is completely unnecessary for a serious book. Unless, of course, the intended title of the book is "How you will try and fail at you juvenile attempts to write"

Do you think all science fiction and fantasy are juvenile? That would be a really narrow-minded thing to think. I can't imagine why else you would be opposed to a chapter on how to do worldbuilding though. I personally see worldbuilding as no different from character building; a vivid world is a character which plays an extremely important role not just in science fiction and fantasy but also in horror, historical fiction, folktales and mythology, and any modern fiction built around an imaginary business, estate, or subculture. Understanding some anthropology and sociology is just as essential to being a good writer as understanding some psychology is.

You're probably planning on editing and stuff like this anyways, but...

To me, your world building chapter seems to stick out in your outline like a sore thumb. The chapter 6 titles just seem incongruous to the rest of the titles in your outline. I'm not sure how to explain it exactly other than to say that all your other chapters make a lot of use of writing jargon while chapter 6 titles just don't.

I'd also like to suggest swapping chapters 4 and 5. I think your book would flow better. You'd get something like:

I. Parts of a story.
1. What is a story?
2. What story do you want to tell? Defining your writing goals.
3. Theme.
4. Plot.

II. Content development.
5. Characters
6. World Building
7. Putting it together, fleshing it out.

III. The writing process.
8. The Beginning
9. Rising Action
10. Dramatic Build-Up and Crisis
11. The Ending
12. Editing

I'm also not sure what to make of your chapter 13. It kinda feels tacked on. If throughout your book you discuss writing both for games and for books then I'd suggest trying to put the parts of chapter 13 into other chapters. 13.B. could easilly fit into your chapter about characters for example.

The tricky thing with plot and character is that both play both a structural role and a content role. It would be equally correct to divide them into chapters about the structural aspects of character and plot, then later chapters on the details of character and plot, but it's kind of impractical because you need to understand the structure to know what details to flesh it out with, and you need to be able to use details to exemplift and explain the structure. The reason I have character before plot is that in my own writing process I choose character archetypes and relationships first and a plot for them second. I wanted to keep the book in a good chronological order: first the reader sees the outline of my theory and compares it to their existing experiences of writing and reading, then through the topic of theme we transition from analyzing specific other works of fiction to designing the reader's own specific work of fiction. That foundation laid, we design the structure of their work, then flesh it out with content and explore strategies for actually writing it, ending with a finished polished manuscript ready for submission to a publisher or use in producing a graphic novel, movie, or game.

The interactive story stuff, I originally wanted to include it throughout the book in sidebars following the presentation of the non-interactive versions of the same material, but I was advised against doing that because sidebars are distracting and most readers will only be interested in linear stories. I think that it works to put the material at the end because it's sort of a bonus section, and one ought to have an understanding of creating linear stories before one's ready to attempt creating the more-complex interactive story.

"thoughts on how popular culture and events have an affect on the impact that a particular story has on a given audience." Hmm, that's an interesting idea. The structuralist perspective is sort of an ahistorical one which is more concerned with universal human instincts, but it does include the idea that every culture embodies these universal structures with their individual vocabulary of tropes and their cultural preference toward certain thematic premises and morals, which the individual storytellers and audience members learn from their popular culture and events. Personally, I don't think it's possible for the writer to really understand what an audience thinks; all you can really do is hope that the audience thinks the same way you do and the differences aren't great enough to foul up the message you want to communicate. Reader-response criticism is based on the same principle, but from the audience's point of view; their motto is: "The intentions of the author are neither available nor desireable as a basis for criticising a work of fiction." So... I guess I need to talk about the relationship between the writer and the audience somewhere. Probably chapter 2, because envisioning a target audience is part of defining your writing goals.