Author: mytholder

Round 3 of editing done – this time, copyediting. Again, less work than I expected – other than quibbling over capitalisation, and changing a line where I’d used the word “down” four times in a dozen words, all relatively clean. * * * While going through the book yet again, I’ve assembled a spreadsheet of characters, locations and concepts, which is the sort of thing one should probably do when writing book one, and not when you’re 100,000 words into the sequel. About three quarters of them are references to people or places that actually matter to the books to some degree. Major characters like Cari and Spar and Rat, minor players who show up and then.. well, probably get stabbed and die horrible. *Checks spreadsheet* Yep. Of the named characters, more than half suffer a grisly fate to some degree. Then again, I also massacre a lot of nameless bystanders. (Actually, looking at the spreadsheet, the best thing if

read more Concordance

I’ve spent the last few days – well, actually I’ve spent the last few days getting ready for the twins’ fifth birthday party, writing multiple adventures for Pelgrane Press, fighting to stay on top of freelancing, and buying replacements for the many, many different things that broke last week (phones, dishwasher, car.) In the brief gaps between such things, though, I’ve processed the second round of edits on book 1. Most of the changes are minor – clarifying some motivation, sorting out chronologies, cutting some poor choices – but the book feels stronger now. And it’s only in this last round of edits that I’ve realised where two major elements in the book come from. I’ve always known that the city of Guerdon is partially based on Cork – the description of the harbour is a dead giveaway – but I’d previously have broken down the formula as “30% Cork, 30% London, 10% Edinburgh, 30% fantasy weirdness”. The Cork percentage

read more Round 2, Edit!

Book 1 update: publication has been pushed back by a few months, into 2019. While I’m gnawing at the thought of getting it out sooner, I’m going to bow to the wisdom of publishers. And this does mean I get to have a launch party at Warpcon, all going well. The editing process was very much like processing playtest feedback, only without lengthy anecdotes and no spreadsheets of dice probabilities. Book 2 is proving to be a very different beast. The draft is currently at around 70,000 words, or a little short of halfway through, but it’ll require a lot more rewriting than the first book did. In Book 1, the characters all revealed themselves to me pretty clearly early on; the cast of Book 2 are being more evasive, which I suppose makes sense as they’re mostly spies or spy-adjacent. I’m discovering that what seemed to be throwaway incidents in the first draft are actually clues or foreshadowing for

read more Knowing What I Know

2017 was a year in suspension. Either there were these terrible events hanging in potentia above the world, potential orange catastrophes, or I was feeling like I was unable to get traction, trying to run but impeded because… well, mainly because I was obsessively checking twitter to see if any of the potential catastrophes had become real. Obviously, the big wonderful news is the novel deal, of which more anon, but for my own benefit, I’ll run through the year and lessons learnt. (Most of these lessons I’ve learned already, of course, many times over, but it’s time to put them into effect again with resolutions and clean slates.)

I have sworn a blood oath that this blog will be updated weekly. I should, perhaps, upgrade that to the next level (marrow oath? Spinal fluid oath), and I shall endeavour to be more diligent in future… but this month’s gap is for the best possible reason. I have a book deal!

Last week, I talked about uncertainty in interactive narratives – how, once you give the player influence over events, things can spiral out of the writer’s ability to predict the shape of the story.  In this brief (there’s a hurricane outside) entry, I’ll list some tools for keeping that spiral in check.

Over on twitter, I talked a little about uncertainty in interactive fiction. Here, where I’m free of the tyranny of 140 280 characters, I can unpack things a little.

Ideas are even easier. There’s a lifecycle to writing a novel. A spark of inspiration gives you an idea; the idea gives you a starting point, and then you just keep writing (outlining along the way if that’s your preferred approach) until you get to the end. That’s the ideal, anyway. It doesn’t happen like that.

This is the excerpt for your very first post.

read more The Red Notebook