A New Fantasy

As some of you may know, I’ve been on a long hiatus from writing. I work thirty hours a week, have EMT training about 4-6 hours a week, my friends take up most of my Friday and Saturday nights, and I have a girlfriend… which means I have chores.

Whenever I get some time to myself, I usually end up playing video games for several hours, and then nothing productive gets done.

On top of that, I’ve been working on editing a 150 page manuscript which is eventually going to go through a huge makeover, changing plot, antagonists, adding conflict, and just about everything else I can do to make it better.

Meanwhile in the real world, I’m trying to find a way out of the world of Seilice for a bit. But, at the same time, I still want to write.

So I found the simplest solution: write a new fantasy novel.

However, I had no idea what to write. No ideas swimming around in my head for weeks or months, no magical world I’ve been preoccupied with, and no characters trying to influence my psyche. I was starting from scratch.

So, I looked up the snowflake method, which I’ve never used before, and I started to follow its directions. I had to modify a few things for my own tastes, but otherwise it’s a very sound method of story planning.

In short, you start out by writing a one sentence summary of the story. Mine is:

“A blacksmith’s apprentice travels across the land to restore magical balance to the world.”

I know, it doesn’t sound like much yet, right? Well that’s because it’s just one line. It gives a very general overview of the story, without going into too much detail. But after this step, you turn the summary into a paragraph, and then turn each sentence of the paragraph into a paragraph, and then turn each paragraph into a page, until you have four to six pages of synopsis for your story.

And the greatest thing about it is that it gets much of the logical fallacies out of the way before you ever have to worry about it. Not to mention the fact that you don’t have to worry about “what comes next?”

Somewhere in there, you start to do this same process for your characters, building out from something small into something that actually seems real. It’s pretty nice.

I’ll give more details on the story once I have everything planned out in a way I’m happy with, but for now I’ll just leave you with what I gave up ^there^. Oh, and I’m planning to make it a trilogy.

So that’s it. I’m going to try to update this more often. For now, I shall return to planning out my new unnamed story.

The One Commandment

Now, I’m not a religious person, nor am I one who believes in a finite measure of morality, but I do believe that there is one guideline which, if followed correctly, would make the world a much better place.

Don’t Be a Douchebag.

That’s all. Seriously, think about it. All that stuff about  ”Thou shalt not kill” and other archaic guidelines of things we should already know is all covered in these four words (or five if you’re a nitpicker who counts contractions as two words).

Now if only I could get someone to engrave that into a stone tablet…

But you may be thinking, “How shall we employ this novel principle of ethics into our newly enlightened lives?” Simple: don’t do things that would make you look like a douchebag. A few examples:

• Cheat on your significant other? You’re a douchebag.
• Kill someone? You’re a douchebag.
• Do things with your best friend’s sister when he explicitly told you not to? You’re a douchebag.
• Kill a douchebag? Well… use your best judgment here.

The list can go on and on, but it’s pretty much self-explanatory. You probably know a few douchebags in your own life, and I’m self-assured you that you probably don’t want to be like that.

So, the next time you decide to do something out of the ordinary, think to yourself, “Will this make me a douchebag?”

Come, brothers and sisters, join me in my quest to dispel the world of douchebagery.

I really gave Oblivion a chance

I really did. I just can’t get into this game. I know it’s been three years since it came out, but I’ve only recently started getting into newer games.

In case you’re lost, the game I’m referring to is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It’s a multiplatform game that I’ve been trying to play on the PC (because games are better on the PC, bitch) and I’m about two, maybe three hours in. Plenty of that time was spent wandering around wondering where the fuck I was going.

The setting is simple. It’s a medieval world with magic and people who look like fucking tigers from time to time. There’s a king who has a vision of this place called Oblivion (which is actually an odd name choice, considering the meaning behind the word) and he is dying or something. It’s been too long since I played the beginning. All I remember is that I was a prisoner in this king’s dungeon, they let me out (which makes no fucking sense–how do they know I’m not going to seek revenge, hmm?) and I proceed to escape the dungeon.

Oh, and I think I’m the only bastard lucky enough to get out too. Ironic, huh? The prisoner gets away, but the people who helped the poor sap out are SOL.

Anywho, after giving back a frickin’ sweet sword I’d gotten off of a dead soldier (me = disappointed at this point) I then get my actual mission. I need to go meet some dude and help him out because he’s the heir to the kingdom… or something.

I then proceed to go down the endless road to the next city and get jumped by a bandit or two, one of which was one of those half-tiger people I referred to earlier. The fights were pretty boring. Click click click. Dodge, slash, shield, cure, etc. Simple stuff all the way down.

I later found my goal and was given another mission. Another “go tell this guy something” mission. I got bored at this point and tried to kill a monk who had formerly been a soldier. The fucker pulled out a sword and killed me in about three hits.

It goes on like this for quite awhile. But if you’ve been paying attention you’ll notice I left something out: who I am and my role in the story.

There’s a reason for that.

Who are you? – A nobody. Some guy who got roped into this because he was the only person around when the king was dying.

What is your role in the story? – To kill shit between point A and point B and play messenger-boy as far as I’m concerned. Also, to singlehandedly kill the princes of Oblivion. That’s right – by myself. Hardly makes sense to me that the princes of what is essentially hell would be taken down so easily by a common prisoner.

So, as of today, I’m officially done with the game. I’m lucky that I was able to use a free version of the game to try it out, because I really thought I would enjoy it. I was sadly mistaken.

I guess all I can do at this point is say “Oh well” and move on. At least it gives me plenty of time to finish Mass Effect now, eh?

A Little About Me

I started writing on my own when I was about fourteen. I had written stories before for school, but this one was the first novel I had decided to do without any outside pressures. Several years later, I read back to the beginning, figured out the story was a mistake, and dropped it then and there at 51,000 words.

Soon thereafter, I began to outline and write a new novel which ended up being titled Dreamsphere. My aim with the story was to improve on everything I had failed with in my first story, starting with characterization and working my way on through logical fallacies, parallelisms with my own life and on to plot. Thus, my main character was intentionally made everything I was not: dark-haired, middle-aged, and alcoholic.

A year and a half later, on August 3, 2008, the novel was completed at 78,000 words. I am currently working on the second draft.

As for my personal life, I live in a decent apartment with a roommate and my girlfriend of three years. I have two birds and a puppy named Melody.

I’ve worked as a lifeguard since I was sixteen, and I’ve never worked another job since. I like it too much. I enjoy helping people in any way I can, and a profession which gives me the opportunity to help people by saving their lives is more suited to me than any other job could be. So far I have saved several people from ages two through twenty.

I don’t enjoy school, college, etc. I’ve been known to not apply myself as well as I should, even though I do well when I do apply myself. I have this thought that the only reason colleges want you to take certain classes to be a “well-rounded person” is so you’ll pay them more money so you can get through them and go on to the classes you actually want to take. I want to take writing classes, but the ones I want are classes I’m not able to get into because I don’t meet the prerequisites.

So, in light of the possibility of a new job, I am taking a year off from school to write and work. When I go back to school, it will most likely be for EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) training, because I already enjoy my current line of work.

Other than that, I hope you enjoy my work, especially considering the effort I’ve put into most everything here. Thanks for reading!

(Copied from my StoryWrite profile at http://storywrite.com/guitarshank )