While waiting for my daughter at soccer the other night I brought along a notebook (a gift of encouragement from my wonderful wife), and I started processing some of the material from the Brandon Sanderson class I have been watching. Namely, the notion of Promises, Progress and Payoff. I started brainstorming what were some of the things I was promising the reader in the beginning of the story I have been noodling. How would I show progress? What were the payoffs?
Sanderson also introduced me to the idea of Umbrella plots and Main plots. E.g, you can have a journey plot (get from place A to place B -- the main plot), but really it is a romance between two of the people on the journey (The Umbrella plot). I might have those backwards, but the idea of those two concurrent plots resonated with me. As I am writing this post I am reminded of The Sure Thing which is exactly this structure.
He also talked about an "information" plot type. A story could start out with a very confusing setting, and make a promise that by the end you will know what is going on, and the progress in the story is about incrementally revealing more and more details of the world. I recognize this idea in a some of the authors I really like, and totally get how the progressive disclosure keeps me reading (great example: The Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe). I don't want to spoil it if you have not read it, but Wolfe casually drops details about the world that make you go "what? what is really going on?". The front-and-center plot is much less interesting than unravelling the mystery of the setting/world the story is set in.
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I did a little bit of thinking about the mobile game I am planning on writing. And in so doing, re-stumbled across a long lost friend, Charlie Cleveland's amazing blog. He has so much good advice, backed up with real world examples. For one, get a low-fi prototype done very quickly. And don't put good graphics in it. You want to be able to pivot on the idea quickly. As soon as you start making it look nice you lock yourself in to the idea before you have tested it with users. He also recommends a small team (1-2 people) should make the first prototype. Again don't kill velocity by needing to keep a larger team in synch. So I am going to hammer out a prototype... probably in April, once I have taken a few online classes to reacquaint myself with current game dev platform mechanics (e.g, Unity). I have a subscription to gamedev.tv from a long time ago so will start there.... other suggestions for good classes and/or platforms welcome!).
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Quick infrastructure update: I got the NAS up and running and TimeMachine has backed up the MBP. Although I don't want it to, the machine is free to fully die and I won't be completely despondent.
I wrote a short story!
It's still very much a first draft, but maybe, just maybe, I will have a slightly better draft to share with people who have joined the mailing list next week.
peace, Greg
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