“Girls want superheroes, and the boys want superheroes.” Why is it that it takes a four year old girl to tell us this?  The answer of course is that it doesn’t, but you wouldn’t necessarily get that view by looking at one of the world’s premier entertainment – and storytelling – industries: video games.  Here’s Riley Maida, telling us how it is: I found Riley after she was mentioned in Polygon’s excellent editorial, No girls allowed.  I’d recommend you go read it; it’s an excellent piece.  The editorial got me thinking, because I love video games and the stories they can tell.  I was thinking recently that I’m playing less games despite this, and not just because of “life;” I’m playing less games because less of the stories being told are interesting to me.  War simulators and sports games don’t have great Read More …

Violence is one of the lenses we use to measure the quality of a man. It’s easy for a person to be calm and measured if nothing’s going on.  But if you add in something spectacular, like the sun going nova, or a crazy aiming a plasma rifle at your head, or the Earth shaking from within because of the creatures living at the core – well, shit gets real.  I’m particularly fond of how Tolkein measures Boromir vs. Faramir, and I’d love to have the skill and elegance to pull something like that off. The trick with these kinds of scenarios is keeping them real.  I’m having more trouble with action scenes in Upgrade because they’re more, uh, creative.  The book is set in the future, so it’s not just dudes with guns.  It’s dudes with cybernetics, or uplinks Read More …

Upgrade is more science-fiction than Night’s Favour, which had a contemporary, almost urban flavour. Because of this, there’s some advanced tech I need to do various things.  I’ve been research fusion and fission like a mofo for the past wee while, but a few things need to be plain made up.  One of these is a technology whereby I need to be able to teach a language (let’s say English, for argument’s sake) to someone who’s never heard English or seen it written.  In my mind’s eye, I thought that this could be achieved in some far future state by use of a clever engineered virus + some sort of mechanism for storing the memory, but that’s about as far as I’d got.  It was a necessary plot device, but didn’t have supporting science, and I just hate that kind of Read More …

Sometimes you need to write characters that are just nasty. In Night’s Favour, there are two characters who started off as generally homophobic.  One is actually an asshole, and the other is a bit of a dudebro.  The benefits of exposing this to a set of beta readers early on was that I identified some interesting things – one of which was that people didn’t like the dudebro very much in that configuration. And said dudebro is one of the “good guys.”  I wanted him to be liked.  Thus, when editing the story, chapters from his perspective lost any of their anti-gay vibe.  Despite the original vision, it didn’t really hurt his character or placement for him to join the human race – and having edited him, he’s more likeable, although perhaps not as… what.  Realistic?  I don’t know – Read More …

Here’s something worth getting philosophical about. John Romaniello has put up a pretty great post on the Heroes Journey.  Head off there and read it now if you’re at all interested in storytelling. It’s made me want to get a copy of the referenced book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, but aside from that it’s made me take a bit more of a jaundiced look at Night’s Favour.  I’m not sure whether total compliance with the generic hero’s journey is what I’m after by any means, but there’s probably a recipe in here for good stories. That’s what it’s all about, after all. One of the things I’m a bit uncertain about is how the proposed hero’s journey deals with co-operation, though.  Some of the best stories – well, sure, they have a main hero, or a prime point Read More …

As an intellectual property creator, I’m supposed to be highly enthusiastic about copyright. The problem is – certainly in my layman’s view – the laws on this stuff are just bizarre beyond all reason.  I’m doing more editing, which is a thing, but a couple of my pro beta readers (read: in “The Industry”) have said that a bit in my book needs to go. See, one character sings the happy birthday song to another.  I’m thinking, “This is pretty safe.  People have been having birthdays since before time.” It’s again fortunate that my friends look out for me, as this is a great exanple of how un-safe things really are.  Turns out: Warner own the copyright for that song, and gain revenues from its use. Well, what if you only use a bit of the song?  Like the first line Read More …