Book Review – Story Design: Storyteller’s Handbook for Writers and Dream Merchants by SEAM
Story Design: Storyteller's Handbook for Writers and Dream Merchants by Shared Experience Art Machine My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an awesome resource for writers, providing a concentrated source of helpful advice and a thoroughly worked example of how to design stories and produce a good pitch to sell them. The book is born from the experience of a group of script writers, who recognised that it was better to sell lots of pitches and then write the accompanying scripts than trying to do write the scripts first. After all, if you want to earn your living by writing it is best to be sure you're going to be paid for it before doing it. The core of the book is an approach to designing your story before trying to write it. There is a 8 step approach…
Product Review – MEElectronics Air-Fi Runaway AF32 Bluetooth Headphones
I have acquired a new set of wireless headphones, which is the first time I've had a set of bluetooth headphones. I must say that it is oddly liberating not having a wire attached to my phone while listening to music. In the box you get the headphones, a USB charging cable and a backup flat cable with two jacks for using with devices that don't have bluetooth. There is also a storage bag and a very good set of instructions on pairing the bluetooth with a range of devices including apple iPads and iPhones, android tablets and phones, blackberry smartphones and other bluetooth devices. Personally I have been using it with my android smartphone, it attached first time and all the buttons worked for their intended purpose. It changed the volume, skipped to the next and previous tracks, paused…
Five Reasons for Establishing a Colony
In looking through my notes from previous story and game design ideas I came across some notes about the reasons why a colony might be set up. This was primarily for a set of scenarios for science fiction games. A group of us have been playing games set in Jim Wallman's Universe around the Full Moon each month since 1996. That said, they are based on actual historical reasons why people left the UK to live elsewhere. Not always to establish a colony on an uncertain and dangerous frontier. 1. Religious/Ascetic Freedom This covers people leaving to avoid discrimination as well as those that might want to live in a place where the temptations and 'polluitng influences' of modern life are not present. Examples of this include Amish and similar sects that avoid advanced technology (although quite why they'd get in a spaceship…
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Perfects, Imperfect & Crisis Point free for November 2013
You may have noticed that I stopped the serialisation of Imperfect. The underlying reason was that I had other things to post, and also I had decided to make the three novellas I've written so far completely free during November. So if you would like to try them out then you can get them from Smashwords in a variety of formats (kindle, nook, iBooks, PDF, Epub etc). You also ought to be able to download them for free from Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Waterstones. Here are some links: Perfects go to Imperfect is at Crisis Point is at I would really appreciate some honest reviews on smashwords, goodreads, amazon or on blogs (or indeed anywhere you can post them). Thank you. Related articles Smashwords Smashes Self-Publishing Stigma Imperfect (Exodus #2) Serialised Does Apple's iBooks need to go Android? Smashwords named top indie…
A215 Short Fiction: Daprav – A Creation Myth
As part of my Creative Writing course I need to write a short story for my next assignment. So rather than racking my brains about it I've been going back over stuff I'd written, but not finished, in the past for some inspiration. I also plan to do the exercises in the book to see what that sparks up too. Anyway I was looking through my role-playing archives and went through a fantasy game I used to run where I made up all of the setting myself rather than using a published one (there are about 17k words on this, and on top of that a stack of index cards). I was rather taken by the creation myth I wrote for the primary god in a theocracy. Daprav It is important to distinguish between Daprav Himself and the Church, which…