Author: Patrick

What I Learned While Writing My Fifth Novel

    Patrick

I recently completed the first draft of my fifth (unpublished) novel. The tentative title is The Intruders. Out of all of the long fiction I’ve written, I am happiest by far with how this one has turned out.

Not to say it’s a great book, but I can see the potential there for something that people will enjoy reading. Something that will hopefully hit them in a primal place and not let up. It’s in there for sure, but it is still a few drafts away.

Now that the basic story is complete and down on paper, I can look back on the experience of writing it. And I can see that I learned a lot. Maybe some of you have figured most of this out already, or maybe you haven’t. Either way, here is a quick list:

1) I found out what type of writer I am.

A discovery writer. Previously, whenever I sat down to write long fiction, I always had an outline ready. A chapter by chapter summary of what was going to happen, all the way through to the ending.

That’s no fun! For The Intruders, I had nothing planned. In fact, it was supposed to be a short story but once I got going I could see there was much more to it. By the time I was done it was full novel length. I didn’t plan anything out in advance, so it was like I was reading the book instead of writing it. Discovering what happened as it went on.

Which brings me to number 2.

2) Writing can be fun.

There were moments while writing that I was smiling because the events I was creating were so much fun to write. Or when some great twist or turn or scene just fell into place like a puzzle peice. It was so much fun to see that happen and to feel that momentum just build and build until the finale.

3) Stuff needs to happen!

Writing 101, right? Well, it took me a while to figure it out. Yes, my other long fiction had things happening, but the character’s never drove the action. And alot of the prose took place inside the character’s heads.

The Intruders has scenes. Scenes that the characters themselves initiate, and scenes that move the story forward.

4) Character is important

I used to write mostly for story. I liked ideas for tales, and whoever happened to get slotted in as the characters in those tales was secondary. But I can see now that the characters are just as important as what happens to them.

Mainly, because they should be driving the story forward. They should not be passengers as the story happens to them. When the plot moves forward, someone in the story should cause it to do so. And that someone should be a character that people want to read about.

5) I have a long way to go.

I am happy with The Intruders, but there are problems. It’s too short. One of the characters is pretty bad and needs better motivation. The opening chapter needs to be rewritten to have a stronger hook. I need to research some things that happen in the book because in real life they might not work. The events might be in the wrong order, depending on how you look at it.

In short, editing a novel is a little more involved than editing a short story. I can edit one of my short stories in twenty minutes just by reading it out loud with a red pen in hand. But that’s not going to work for this. There are too many moviing peices, and I want them all to work together like a well-oiled machine. But I’ll get there, and maybe some day soon this will be the first of my novels that I try to legitametly publish.

I know that I can do better and I look forward to applying all I learned to the next one. And learning even more when I write that one.

And then so on and so forth until the day I die.

Board Games and Telling Stories

    Patrick

AlienFrontiers

I am an avid board gamer and have recently been watching Top 100 Game of All Time lists from a few of the hobbies most stalwart reviewers. This prompted me to come up with my own.

The exercise made me think a bit about what I like in board games. Yes, I love interesting mechanics. I love to be made to think. I love to be given the opportunity to try to out-think my opponents. I love to have fun, be creative, and try to think outside the box while doing all of that. But most of all, I love when a game becomes a story.

I’m not talking about story-telling games here (although there a few on my list), but when a session you played becomes something memorable. An event you keep coming back to or a talking point among your friends.

Like the time in Eclipse where one of my friends was in the lead, holing up in his corner of the galaxy, building monoliths with abandon, and another friend found a way to blast through some wormholes with his custom ships and took over his whole system in the last round.

Or the time I spent the whole game of Shogun outguessing a friend of mine. Attacking him before he attacked, taking over his provinces right before he taxed them, and razing his castles right after he built them.

Or the time in Twilight Imperium when I made a risky move to attack another player (which almost worked!) and then another player sneakily added long-distance travel to his spaceships and swooped in to take over my home world while my back was turned.

Or the time a good friend of mine wrote a string of curse-words as his fake definition in Balderdash just so he could see me read them out loud. (I have never cursed out loud.)

Or the time in Wrath of Ashardalon, where our whole group barely escaped a dungeon with our lives because this goddamn rolling boulder trap somehow kept rolling towards us no matter what direction we went!

Or that time in Battlestar Galactica where we were so paranoid that we were convinced our lone engineer was a Cylon. We voted him into the brig even though he pleaded with us not to, only to find out later that he was a loyal human and had been trying to help us all along. He won’t let us live that one down.

Or the first time I played Tales of Arabian Nights and won after my character turned into an ape, murdered the princess who was in love with him, and ended up becoming a sultan.

These are stories we create ourselves, with our friends, without even trying to. Board games are the medium that help us do that in ways we couldn’t have done otherwise.

I wrote a few words about some games I love, and I hope they will inspire you to go out and give these games a try. Below that you will find my Top 100 Games of All Time list.

#3 Battlestar Galactica – Everyone must work together to try to get your spaceship home without dying or starving to death. But one of you is secretly working for the enemy. Which one? MY GOD WHICH ONE????

#6 Galaxy Trucker – Step 1: Build a space ship faster and better than your friends. Step 2: Watch all your spaceships fall apart in spectacular fashion.

#8 Sentinals of the Multiverse – This is the one super-hero game where it feels like you are in a super-hero battle. Choose your heroes, choose your villain, and choose your location. Then proceed to have an intense and fun battle of epic proportions.

#12 Tales of Arabian Nights – This is a completely unique experience. You play a character travelling around looking for adventure. You encounter something: A rich princess, a raging storm, a mystical djinn. What do you do? Choose from your many options, consult the book of tales, read from one of the over 2500 things that could happen to you, and laugh with your friends as the story unfolds!

#17 Arkham Horror – Grab some friends and try to sastop an ancient god from awakening and destroying humanity. This is a lingering, atmospheric game. Give it a chance to grab you and you’ll have sessions you’ll never forget.

#90 Cards Against Humanity – Play this game with your parents.

Rank Game
1 Shogun
2 Yggdrasil
3 Battlestar Galactica
4 Castles of Burgandy
5 Eclipse
6 Galaxy Trucker
7 Glen More
8 Sentinals of the Multiverse
9 Steampark
10 Alien Frontiers
11 Small World
12 Tales of Arabian Nights
13 Cyclades
14 Heroscape
15 Kingsburg
16 Agricola
17 Arkham Horror
18 Balderdash
19 King of Tokyo
20 Twitch
21 Dixit
22 Ticket to Ride
23 Legend of Drizzt
24 Wrath of Ashardalon
25 Castle Ravenloft
26 Catacombs
27 Jungle Speed
28 Mage Knight
29 Airlines Europe
30 Modern Art
31 Star Trek: Fleet Captains
32 Age of Conan
33 Word on the Street
34 Hanabi
35 Puerto Rico
36 Mansions of Madness
37 Pocket Battles
38 Forbidden Desert
39 Carcassone
40 Escape: Curse of the Temple
41 Stone Age
42 Carson City
43 Race For the Galaxy
44 Love Letter
45 Earth Reborn
46 Legendary
47 City of Remnants
48 Mage Wars
49 Mr. Jack Pocket
50 Space Alert
51 Quarantine
52 X-bugs
53 Long Shot
54 No Thanks
55 Civilization
56 10 Days in Europe
57 Gloom
58 Yedo
59 Lords of Waterdeep
60 10 Days in Africa
61 Zooloretto
62 Dynasties
63 Kemet
64 Elder Sign
65 Exodus: Proxima Centauri
66 Samurai Swords
67 Enigma
68 Merchants & Marauders
69 Star Trek: Deck Building Game
70 Pit
71 Martian Dice
72 Best Sellers
73 7 Wonders
74 Betrayal at House on the Hill
75 Twilight Imperium
76 Cineplexity
77 Guillotine
78 Forbidden Island
79 Dominion
80 Tsuro
81 Wits and Wagers
82 Runewars
83 Kill Dr. Lucky
84 Scrabble
85 Biblios
86 Cosmic Encounter
87 Power Struggle
88 Time’s Up
89 Game of Thrones
90 Cards Against Humanity
91 Letters From Whitechapel
92 Khet 2.0
93 Formula D
94 Flash Point
95 Settlers of Catan
96 Pandemic
97 Fresco
98 Shadows Over Camelot
99 Heroquest
100 Battle Masters

 

My first Jodorowsky Film

    Patrick

Below is an essay I wrote for a contest. I probably did not win, but I like it anyway.

I became a fan of cinema through the backdoor. Back in pre-DVD days a friend of mine collected bootleg VHS tapes of rare foreign, horror and art films. Being a collector myself of other things, I was completely entranced with the idea that there were movies out there that weren’t easily available for anyone who wanted to see them.

I mean, my favorite movie up until that time was Terminator 2. A great film, but not a particularly creative choice. So enter this friend, and my eagerness to experiment. He let me borrow copies of films from all over the world, from all different genres. Copies off or rare Japanese laserdiscs or taped off of Australian TV. It was a good selection. Argento. Jackie Chan. Raul Ruiz. Pasolini. Tinto Brass, etc.

Among that stack of tapes was a film called El Topo. Of course, just like the other films, I had never heard of it. And at some point I decided to give that one a shot.

It was late. Maybe after midnight. I didn’t have any expectations and figured I would just fall asleep if the film wasn’t any good. I won’t go into detail about what I saw unfold that night. We’ve all seen the film. But what I will talk about is what it did to me.

I had no idea what was going on in my head! I was drawn in and enamored and shocked and amazed and just all-around felt strange. It was an amazing experience. After the film ended, and the TV turned off, I lie there for I don’t know how long until I fell asleep and suddenly it was morning.

Upon waking, I did not know if it was all a dream. Seriously, I woke up and thought “My god that was a weird dream.” And for a while I was unsure if I fell asleep during the film or if I had actually experienced that.

So I watched it again immediately. Confirming the fact that the film does exist and that it was something that I had actually watched. Some guy thought of those things, filmed it, and now I was watching it in my house. That experience broke cinema wide open for me. From then on, I was a hooked on the possibilities, and had become a true fan of film and a true fan of Jodorowsky.