Commander’s Log Podcast # 5 – Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated

Posted by John Harper on

We’re back in business.

This Podcast is late. I mean really late. Sorry to everyone who has been waiting to hear it. But it is here now and they say its better late than never. You can all be the judge of that.

The audio file had to be completely rebuilt and layered. In the process improvements were made and I got some very gratefully received audio engineering advice. Hopefully it is obvious in the quality of the audio. Let me know what you think.

I tried to have a bit of fun with this episode. It was hard work and had to tee up a SKYPE recording in the middle of the working day to make it work but hopefully it was worth it.

So without any further ado, here is Podcast # 5: ‘Radio Problems’

I decide to help out Lave Radio with their broadcasting issues and end up bumping into a well known Commander. Hopefully he survives the encounter.

Stellardrone provides the intro music once again but I’ve mixed it up and brought Two Quiet Suns on board for the Outro. It’s all great stuff and I hope you enjoy listening to it.

A question for listeners: Would you like me to expand the music component of the podcast beyond just the intro and outro or do I have the balance about right?

Thanks for listening,

John

(Music courtesy of Stellardrone and Two Quiet Suns)

Going backwards – Progress Report 13/5/13

Posted by John Harper on

An honestly short progress report this week. I completed my article on writing suspense fiction where I dissect the openings of two suspense-laden novels: “Gone Tomorrow” by Lee Child and “Intensity” by Dean Koontz. I am looking to guest post this somewhere if anyone is interested, otherwise I’ll just post it here.

I also completed the work on the next episode of my podcast ‘Commander’s Log’ Except I decided to add another layer of background sound. And that is when everything fell apart. The podcast file corrupted, then when it tried to repair itself it thought it best to just delete it instead.

So I am left with nothing. Damn.

I hoped to be announcing today that the podcast is live and I have started work again on the novel. Instead I am announcing none of those things. Right now I am furiously trying to get the podcast back together to launch it as soon as possible. Stay tuned and apologies for the delay. Normal service will resume as quickly as possible.

My brain hasn’t been idle during this time. I have been thinking about And Here The Wheel, mainly on things that are missing. Some things became important by the end of the novel but they weren’t foreshadowed enough in the beginning of the novel. I have been thinking about what to insert and where, the little hints adding to the overall theme of the novel. So despite my best attempts my brain won’t leave the novel alone.

Other side projects include completing another video (Click here) for the Jagged Alliance kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2079547763/jagged-alliance-flashback/comments). The kickstarter has had some slow days but had a great one yesterday, blasting past the halfway point and hopefully onwards to completion.

So sorry no great news today. Barely an updates worth. I promise to do better next week!

Thanks,

John

The ‘Nothing to report’ Progress Report 6/5/13

Posted by John Harper on

Slow news week.

Prior to last week I had had Microsoft Office open on the computer all year.

This week, I didn’t. No manuscripts, no nothing. I have not touched the story. A clean break, cold turkey styles. I decided I needed a rest. First for myself, to let my brain concentrate on other things for awhile. But secondly for the story itself. Before I go and start ripping it to shreds I want to get a bit of space, a bit of perspective.

Basically I want to forget the story.

When writing you know all the details, you know both what is on the page and what is supposed to be on the page but you also know something else: You know what you think is on the page but may not actually necessarily positively be there. In your mind all the details are there but perhaps you didn’t write them down as well as you thought or your allusions were too paper thin or whatever.

So if I forget the story (as best I can in a couple of weeks) I should be able to get back to the manuscript with a fresh set of eyes. No, that’s too cliche. Let’s say I’ll get back to the manuscript with a head full of other crap instead. So with a brain thus distracted when I go to review the manuscript it will be quite clear what is and what is not written down. If something is missing I can add it in. If I’ve hit the nail on the head so many times that the nail has gone through the wood and out the other side, I can delete with impunity.

That’s the beauty of editing.

—–

Although I haven’t been writing the story, I’m never too far away from ‘And Here The Wheel’. I’ve been working on the podcast and episode # 5 should be out this week. Some of the characters will be making cameos in some other E:D stories so I’ve been helping with that. I’ve been keeping up with the forums, helping out Lave Radio and getting involved in other ventures such as Jagged Alliance:Flashback.

What you say? Another Kickstarter? Are you insane?

Well, yes, yes I am. I loved Jagged Alliance as a little teenager. I won’t ever have the time to play this game probably, but I want it made and I want to support it. (Sound familiar?) I even made a ‘teaser trailer’ video for it.

So it hasn’t been a week of rest, its merely been a week of ‘being busy with other stuff’.

—–

Something I have been thinking about is how do I approach the next step in my manuscript. If you have read my plan You’ll know that I’m behind schedule and that I planned to print out the manuscript to review it.

I am wondering if I’m just being a stubborn old-school editor here. I always like to read paperbooks versus ebooks and I like to do my line edits on paper. But for the first step, simply highlighting areas of weaknesses and suggesting fixes, do I need to print out?

Using appropriate headers to make chapters easy to find, notes, bookmarks and other whiz-bang things kids use these days, can I just toughen up and do it on the screen? A few advantages: it saves me the cost of printing and once complete it saves a step of transferring the notes from paper back to the electronic copy. That is quite appealing.

On the other side, working on paper just feels more comfortable, which is an important factor too.

What do you think? Am I being silly? Is there some tool I don’t know about which makes this alot easier? Any advice / thoughts / blatant attacks appreciated.

—–

So keep an eye out for the next episode of the ‘Commander’s Log’ and don’t stay away for too long because I should have a few interesting things to say when I start the editing process.

Ok then, now what? – Progress Report – 29/4/13

Posted by John Harper on

Time for a quick celebration. . . and then back to the grindstone

Time for a quick celebration. . . and then back to the grindstone


If you haven’t visited my site in the last few days, well I have some good news for you: The draft has been completed. But there isn’t much time to rest, there are still other things to do. But first, the stats:

Word Count for the week: 6,697 words. Not too bad, considering I did that in about four days. Those final scenes were pretty exciting and I had the time and the words were flowing and I really wanted to be finished before today’s update. It all just kind of clicked.

Total Word Count: 107,973. Phew. That’s a lot higher than I had initially aimed for, but it’s in the ball park. I’m not complaining, but that will make it a pretty decent sized book. (~430 pages once published). Of course I have a lot of editing to do between now and then and I expect that number to ultimately go down.

 

107,973 / 105,000 (102.8%)

 

Quote du jour:
Brown studied the door’s armour. “Four core. I’m sure I’ll have something on the Explorer for that.” He turned to leave but Robert called out “Wait.” He stepped forward and gingerly brushed the handle with his fingertips. No electric shock. Feeling bolder he clenched it tight and wrenched it down.
It unlocked.
He opened it wide as his stomach squirmed. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Commander’s Log Podcast

The cover art for the Commander's Log podcast

The cover art for the Commander’s Log podcast

Episode 4 was released last week. If you had had a listen I hope you enjoyed it. All the feedback so far has been positive. My best so far, I’ve been told. Which is nice, I’m always learning, getting better at the audio mixing and improving the ‘role playing’ aspects and the foley layering. I like to think my podcast fills its own niche, a blend of drama, a bit of news, but mainly my take on my story and Elite community events. If you have any suggestions or what you would like me to cover please let me know.

Oh, and watch out for Episode 5, coming out next week.

The Draft – By The Numbers

OK, time for a bit of analysis.

Throughout this year I have been harping on about the ‘four part story structure’ that I write my fiction to. I designed my novel to fit this structure, which means that I need:

  1. A ‘First Plot Point’ – where the real story begins. The narrative changes and a course of action is laid before the protagonist. This should be around the 25% mark of the story
  2. A ‘Pinch Point 1′ – a moment/scene/whatever which reminds the reader and/or the protagonist of the danger of the antagonist. It reminds us that the bad guy is still there, lurking and that they are very powerful. This should be around the 37.5% mark of the story
  3. A ‘Mid Point Contextural Shift’ – a point where the ‘curtain of knowledge’ is parted. New knowledge is gained and it clarifies and energises the protagonist and takes him from his ‘Wanderer’ stage, flailing around and making things worse, to his ‘Attacker’ stage. He knows what he has to do and its time to go and do it. This should be bag in the middle, 50% of the way through the story
  4. A ‘Pinch Point 2′ – the same as the Pinch Point 1, but occuring around the 62.5% mark of the story.
  5. A ‘Plot Point 2′ – this is the final galvanising point where the protagonist puts aside all fears and self doubts and marches straight toward the climax. They are ready to do whatever has to be done. They became the hero and they go ahead and be heroic. This should occur at the 75% mark of the story.

The table below shows how the draft stacks up:

Draft Statistics

All in all, not too bad. A bit off on all points, but not far off. These percentages will naturally change with editing, but if I add more before the first plot point and bump that up to 20%, then the other percentages will also move up, bringing them pretty much in line with where they should be.

This is the situation I thought I would be in when planning the novel. It felt a bit light at the start, and I have confirmed that. There is a fix, but I need to put it through some rigourous contemplation before adding it the story.

DailyWords2

This graph shows my word count from when I started the draft to when I finished. Its quite a lovely looking graph. Some high numbers, and a few low numbers I had forgotten about. But on the whole there is a clear line that shows an average word count a tad under 1500 words a day slowly dropping toward, but not crossing, the 1000 words a day line. It looks like I couldn’t keep up my initial bluster but I did have real life issues that affected me between days 60 and 70 as well. If not for this low point the average would probably have been a lot flatter.

WeeklyWords
This graph kind of confirms my last statement. Things started with a hiss and a roar and then tapered away. This graph doesn’t account for the fact that the last week of writing was only four days which is why it looks quite bad near the end.

I probably shouldn’t be suprised. The idea of writing 1,000 words in a day does not sound terribly hard, as its only 17 words per minute and I can do 50 on a good day when I’m copying something word for word. But several other factors are involved, life being one of them, and there is probably some fatigue in there. To sustain that much intensity over three months was probably asking a bit too much. I was always clear of my 7,000 words a week goal, far surpassing it normally, which is maybe where the fatigue came in.

MonthlyWords

This final graph clearly shows that March was my most productive month. But that isn’t really a fair claim. I only wrote for 22 days in February and 26 days in April, while March had a full 31. I guess that’s the problem when you finish your draft so quick :)

So hopefully that has given you a bit of insight into the draft writing process. Next week I’ll talk a bit more about it, as I expect it to be a very slow news week.

The Plan

I have put together a plan to carry ‘And Here The Wheel’ forward from now until March 2014 when it launches alongside Elite:Dangerous. You can find it on ‘The Plan’ tab at the top of the screen or click here. Its a simple plan with some allowance for adjustability.

For the rest of the year I have not set myself daily goals. Instead I have gone for weekly goals, so I can give myself a day off if needed, knowing I can make it up later on.

Writers Forum

This week we have been talking tech in the writers forum. What does an iPad look like in the 34th century? Do we care? Does it matter to the story? Its interesting that once again there is a wide spectrum of opinions on this topic (as well as every other topic). I think we can all agree though that the writer still needs to be able to picture the tech in their heads when they are writing, even if the reader doesn’t get burduned with all that detail.
—–

Thanks to everyone who comes here and visits the site and thanks for your comments and well wishes. We’ve still got a long way to go so hopefully you’ll stick with me on this journey.

Cheers,

John

Draft Zero is Complete!

Posted by John Harper on

I would say more, but why steal this little movie’s thunder?


(Warning: You can see the last few lines of the text in this video)

I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for all your support over the last 3 months. I’ll be analysing the writing of the draft in my next Monday update. See you then.

Cheers,

John

Commander’s Log Podcast # 4 – Streaming out across the Cosmos

Posted by John Harper on

The fourth episode of the Commander’s Log Podcast is live for direct download here. Just hit the link below, the Podcast tab above, or the RSS feed to the right. (iTunes will be updating overnight).

In Podcast # 4, titled “Diso Memories”, I discuss my plan for the novel once the draft is complete. I discuss some topics in the writers forum and bump into another Commander, one who has watched too many episodes of Red Dwarf.

Once again the podcast music is provided by Stellardrone, and you can find his website here

I would really appreciate a review on Itunes if you can please. It helps the podcast become more visible in Itunes.

Thanks for listening,

John

(Music courtesy of Stellardrone)

How computer games programmed my brain.

Posted by John Harper on

This post came out of something I mentioned in the third Commander’s Log Podcast (download here), a phobia of rotating black oblongs. Well at least they were black for me in the Atari ST. I suppose they were the same for other versions of Elite.

I’m talking about docking at a Coriolis Space Station. Scary stuff, at least in the early days when I couldn’t do it.

It got me thinking about what other permanent marks have been made on my psyche thanks to computer games. I’ve come up with a list below of the ones that come immediately to mind. It’s actually kind of scary the lasting impact these games have had.

So for the gamers out there – do you have a list too? What indelible marks have games left for you? Let me know!

——–

Elite

Another one for Elite – the Blue Danube played in the forms of Atari ST beeps brings back a big nostalgia rush. We got my son a toy CD player for his birthday (you put the plastic ‘cd’ with grooves on it into the cd player, and this tells the CD player which internal recorded songs to play. The Blue Danube is one of them and it sounds exactly the same as it did on the Atari ST. A good purchase that one.

Half Life

The toilets at work are deep in the building with no external light source. There are fluro lights overhead. I charge into the toilet in the darkness, flicking the light switch as I go. It takes a few moments to start flicking, and then it does, flickering on and off rapidly before coming alive. Every time, and I mean EVERY time, I get a shiver down my spine and I have to fight the urge to turn around in the fear a face crab is about to grab me.

Is this just me?

Jagged Alliance

After playing this game for so many years I have this odd habit of describing things in a deep bassy voice, and then chucking on further description like ‘in good condition’ or less appropriately ‘with six bullets’.

So I might be in the kitchen and see the coffee machine out of place, so I’ll murmur to myself *deep bass voice* “A coffee machine. In dire need of repair. With six bullets.”

It broke my heart when Jagged Alliance 2 came out with no voice over. That was, like, the best part of the game.

Yes, I am strange. Thanks for asking.

Duke Nukem

This one isn’t so bad but I do find myself often saying things like ‘Damn, those alien bastards are going to pay for the shooting of my ride’ and saying them completely out of place and completely out of context. Normally when no one else is around though . . .