DFTBA

The last two months, I’ve been in one of Kristen Lamb‘s blogging classes. This was a large group, and you’ve met a few of them as guests here. There’s some cool stuff I’ve gotten from the class, but I’ll cover that a little later.

Kristen teaches what she calls the ‘WANA method’ after her book We Are Not Alone. It’s a good method, and takes the best parts of social media networking and marketing and delivers a great look at what writers specifically, and creative entrepreneurs in general, needs to be doing to expand their fan bases.

An important aspect of WANA is being yourself. Remarkably, it’s not the only group that teaches this fairly basic idea. Another one is Nerdfighteria, ‘headed’ by the Green brothers, John and Hank.

Nerdfighteria has a slogan that means a lot to me: Don’t Forget To Be Awesome, often shared as DFTBA. The big thing is what is awesome? What’s it really mean?

I’ll start with a quote from John Green, stolen lovingly from Christin Terrill’s blog (Which she got from a Tumblr. Please check both out!):

This definitely starts describing awesome to me. Being able to like something so much it puts off those who don’t understand is a kind of blessing. I have a friend who complains that I spend a lot of time with a critic hat on, shifting through books and stories and movies and games. She thinks it’s a sad life to not be able to ‘simply enjoy.’ The thing is: That’s how I like things. The more I like something, the more critically I’ll examine it, because the closer I look, the more amazing the best things are!

But it’s more than that. As Christin talked about on her blog, being able to just be you, unashamed, uncensored. That’s awesome. I’ve talked about some pretty heavy topics on this blog that were very sensitive topics in my life. And you guys were simply awesome every time!

So, in an effort to be awesome (And share that awesome with all of you) one of the things Kristen offered her students was log-line suggestions for their blogs. Obviously I have one, and made up my whole blog to match it. You know, “A Digital Magician.” I loved the title, especially because it came out organically. But something about me: I like change. Developing this blog is definitely a hobby, and so seeing about changing the look, and the log line, and even my categories is something I do every now and then.

So, instead of leaving the decision just to me, I’m going to ask my readers, which of these log lines do you like best? Answer the poll below!

Please comment on why you liked your choice, or maybe you have a better idea?

Writing Advice, Inspiration, Voice, and Bouncy Balls?

Great piece of advice from Mental Skillness: Rubber Bouncy Balls

Gabriela Pereira talks about the five stages of writers block, and shares a piece of wonderful advice.

Laura E. Bradford, a member of my personal writing circle, comments on Esme Weijun Wang’s “Things I Have Done Alone.” While I felt Things I Have Done Alone was interesting, it was Esme’s blog that really made me fall in love with her voice. For the record, Laura’s guest post here was modeled on Things I Have Done Alone.

Janice Hardy talks about Man vs Society and ways to implement it in fiction. I was drawn to this one specifically because my WIP has some institutionalized outlooks, primarily class definition, and gender roles, that my characters face head on. Thanks, Janice, and everyone else go check it out!

Chuck Wendig’s 25 Things series continues with 25 Things I Want to Say to So-Called “Aspiring” Writers.

Eileen Young, my wonderful editor, has a post on fan-fiction, specifically in response to another author demonizing fan-works. Check it out, then go back and check out her guest post!

Slacker Heroes has an examination of why Luna Lovegood should have been Harry’s main squeeze.

J.J. Abrams: The Mystery Box

I’m pretty sure I’ve sung the praises of TED before, so I’ll keep that part brief, but I’m a HUGE fan of J.J. Abrams. Mostly because of his work on the new Star Trek, but because I absolutely love his outlook on things.

Then I found this video.

There’s so much good in this video, I’m not even sure where to begin!

I totally agree that creation should be distributed, the more creators we have the better our art can be in the end. There’s of course corollaries to that statement, but for another time.

And how’s that idea for Mission Impossible 3? So cool.

How about you? What’s your mystery box?

They’re Dumbing It Down!

Ah, the cry of the long term gamer, heard often as new versions or sequels of their favorite games come out and they’re simplified, or streamlined, or optimized, or one of a dozen buzzwords all gaming industries use to describe their games.

The buzzwords are pretty pathetic (since every company picks a new one), but there’s a deeper issue here. Why are gamers bemoaning less complicated designs?

Rewan took the time to talk about the gamer’s view of the industry last week, and I’m thankful he did, since now I can balance it with the designer’s look at the gamer this week!

When games get simplified, their established player base often lashes out at the new version for being ‘dumbed down.’ Rewan’s post approached this topic, describing the backwards trend of the Fable series. I guarantee, he was much more reasonable about it than some fans!

Another grand example is Dungeons and Dragons. I won’t go into the oldest versions (Though I have read and tried to play ‘Classic’), but I want to focus in on 3rd edition against 4th edition.

3rd edition was a remarkably flexible system without changing the rules. Because of things like skill ranks, you could micromanage your characters abilities to a razor edge, and the ‘best’ players did. If you add in other things, like spell casting and multiclassing you could eventually end up with any character you wanted. After a few dozen levels of play.

Then 4th edition came along. 4th Edition simplified almost everything. Skills now had a binary state (Trained or Untrained), advancement happened at the same rate for everyone, no matter what class you chose. And they introduced Powers. Powers functioned much like the spells of 3rd edition, but everyone got them, and they were the primary place the flavor of your character came from. With a little work, you could make the character you want to play right now, and then see where the game takes them.

Now, obviously, a lot of players were a bit upset about the changes, and 4th edition has been unfavorably compared to the Devil himself, but the design was a solid thing that produced some wonderful game play. For certain things! And no, I don’t mean the ‘roll playing’ vs ‘role playing’ dichotomy, stop that right now!

There’s a quote I love that I keep in mind when I go about playing with design:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Complexity, in and of itself, is not a good thing. If two games can produce a similar experience, with a similar end result, the one that is less complex is the better game. So while Mass Effect had a much more complex and customizable character creation system, a large portion of the choice was illusory, as only every fifth or so point actually changed the way the game was played. Mass Effect 2 took care of this by making every character point matter. That’s a good thing. (I’ve not finished Mass Effect 2, so I won’t comment on the game holistically, but the character sheet is much better than Mass Effect.)

So do me a favor, the next time you call something ‘dumbed down’ make sure it’s not just trying to deliver a similar experience easier.

Your turn! Give me an analysis of two games, comparing a complex game to a similar, but simpler, game in the comments!

Authorial Pragmatism

There are common platitudes among the fiction writing community. The one that comes readily to mind is ‘Kill your darlings.’ In three words, we speak volumes.

Then there’s the tools of the trade. From hardware (Macbook fans raise your hand? Caught you!) to software. Methodologies get touted like dogma. The long standing plotting versus pantsing war, anyone? Then even after you make a decision you’ve got arguments about details!

In my view, though, they’re all just means to an end. While I’m a converted pantser and wouldn’t go back, I still write short stories by the seat of the pants quite frequently. Why I don’t use the ‘pure detail’ character sheets during the planning stages (Really, why is their eye color important again?) they really help some people.

There’s only one motto I need for writing: All for the story. Anything that makes the story better is to be loved and used until it stops making things better. Everything that weakens a story should be burned with fire.

This took me years to fully grasp, and I think I’m still learning. We invest a significant portion of our ego into everything we write. That’s what makes the writing uniquely us. So it’s understandably painful to cut and rearrange those things that were likely hard to write in the first place.

As I said before, a writer needs humility. Sometimes it comes from editing, sometimes from a too public poor review. But we’ll learn it, because we need both to become the best.

Mash-Up

John Moller, a local gamer and game designer, finally got some table time with one of my favorites: Small World. He gives a first timers perspective on a light-weight war game!

Janice Hardy has an excellent blog post on Man VS Society conflict that approaches some points of the topic in a fresh way. Check it out.

A Field Guide to the WannaBlessedBe

EDIT: This is a guest post from Kristen McFarland! Absolutely my favorite from this week!

In the AMAZING Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush,” newbie-witch Willow attends a gathering of would-be witches, hoping to boost her skills and commiserate with some fellow magical-folk.

It doesn’t go well. These girls are more concerned with praying to The Goddess and planning their next bake-sale.

Asks Buffy later: No actual witches in your witch group?
Willow: No. Bunch of wannablessedbes. You know, nowadays every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister to the dark ones.

Now, I don’t knock people who pray to The Goddess, host bake-sales, or want to practice their magic. But I’m with Willow—you can’t talk about “the blackest heart of eternity” and “an empowering lemon bun” in the same sentence without opening yourself up to mockery.

In my non-writing life, I work at a New Age store. (Of course, the owners don’t like to call it New Age or Pagan or anything of the sort—we’re a gift store.) I meet a lot of interesting and cool folks there, some of whom are intelligent, thoughtful people pursuing a unique and loving spiritual path.

Others, frankly, are wannablessedbes: well-meaning people who are pursuing a spiritual path of some sort without putting any real thought into what they believe or why.

Take the Incense Worshipper:  This is the woman who rushes into the store in a frenzy, desperate for something to replace sage, because, after years of marriage, her husband recently decided he was “allergic” to sage. She really needs to cleanse her house urgently, and she knows that sage is the best thing for clearing a room of negativity! But what can she possibly use that won’t trigger his allergies?

Cynic that I am, I suspect that the poor woman’s husband finally had enough sage smoke around the house, and tried to tell her without hurting her feelings.

We calm her down, and she leaves the store with some sweetgrass instead.

Or look at the Follower of the Divine Feminine: These are the women (often of a certain age) who worship femininity and all that it entails. Fertility, reproduction, statues of featureless curvy women, pieces of fruit that vaguely resemble parts of a woman’s anatomy: anything female in essence, these ladies worship it.

I don’t have a problem with it as such until they start talking about the Great Goddess as a single female deity worshipped in pre-Christian monotheistic Europe… you know, the goddess and cult that never existed.

Next we have the Faerie-Fae-Frilly Follower, usually female again and usually obsessed with all things fairy/faerie/fae. She’ll snap up gauzy-glitter fake wings, small boxes with fairies painted on them, vials of “fairy dust” (aka the same glitter you buy from the craft store) on a pink string, and anything even remotely fairy-related.

I love fairies. But I realize that the fairies of most traditions are not the cute, short-skirted, winged flower fairies made popular by Victorian paintings. Folklore fairies would be just as likely to take your offering of milk and still hide your keys if you didn’t also offer cookies.

The Faerie-Fae-Frilly girl is closely related to the Goth Glamour Girl/Guy. These folks are more like Willow’s wannablessedbes, but with darker eyeshadow and black hair dye. They worship the dark side of those frilly fairies, the black-haired sexy ones who frequently carry crystal balls. These people will worship the Morrigan, Loki, or Hekate without the humility (*coughwitlessterrorcough* these deities should prompt.

But the one who frightens me is the Demons-are-Everywhere Paranoiac. This person sees demons in the meth-head who walks into the store looking to pawn a piece of jewelry.

“There’s an evil presence in that person!” the paranoiac will say, shuddering.

Well, yes. It’s called homemade, low-quality meth.

Often these people aren’t even a brand of Neopagan—they’re Christian, non-religious, or just universally spiritual. And they see demons all around, even in people who would run screaming if you told them they had a demon inside.

Lastly, there’s the Druggie. These guys walk into a New Age store hoping that “incense” means “marijuana.” They buy big boxes of opium and cannabis incense cones, and I can only hope they’re burning it, not smoking it. They also buy blacklight posters and any crystal that may look shiny under artificial light.

This person will listen to someone following a shamanic path discussing his latest spirit-journey under the influence of Ayahuasca and say, “Duuuude! Where can I get me some of that?”

Now, these are just a few common species of New Age wannablessedbe. Look for others in the wild—you can usually spot them by their long, flowing clothes and hair, their silver jewelry, their often-dreamy look, and that vague, pervasive odor of sage.

Kristin McFarland is a former newspaper reporter living in Southern Indiana, where she is gleefully butchering her second novel in the hope that soon she can present the bleeding mess to an agent who will love it.

GalaxyFest 2012

Found out there’s some confusion about today’s post! This is a guest post from Shay Fabbro. Check out her bio at the end of the post!

There is probably no doubt in anyone’s mind who knows me that I am STOKED about going to the GalaxyFest science fiction convention. My friend and fellow author, Mark Stone, and I are attending this wicked awesome event to sell books and rub elbows with the cool folks of the scifi world.

I was floored when I first glanced through the celebrity guest list and saw the name Denise Crosby. *swoon* The character she portrayed on Star Trek: The Next Generation has always been one of my heroes. It’s strange to some people that a fictional character can actually be someone’s hero, but it’s true. Tasha Yar grew up in horrible circumstances and rather than succumbing to them, she rises above to become the head of security of the flagship of the Federation. Now you tell me, who would you rather have your little girl admire: a fictional character with those awesome qualities, or someone like Lindsey Lohan?

I was disappointed when I noticed today that two of the other celebrities I was hoping to see (and perhaps meet) are no longer attending: Richard Picardo and Clare Kramer. Robert played the doctor on Star Trek Voyager and he later appeared as a holographic version of himself as the doctor on Star Trek: First Contact. Clare Kramer was one of my very favorite characters from the hit series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember watching those episodes each week with my friends, after which we would proceed to Denny’s and discuss at great length everything about that episode, previous episodes, upcoming episodes, and just the total uber awesomeness that is Joss Whedon. I wish someone were coming from the series Firefly. *sad sigh*

Although I have never read any books by Kevin J. Anderson, I am very excited to have a chance to meet him. He’s a New York Times Bestselling author of science fiction novels. Oooo, maybe he’ll stroll by my table, see my books, buy them and become my number 1 fan! How cool would THAT be? Okay, time to come back from dreamland and back to reality. Wait, what if Kevin J. Anderson AND Denise Crosby both became fans and fought over me??? *shakes head* I’m a writer with a hell of an imagination, what can I say?

If you want to check out the line-up for GalaxyFest, click here.

Shay Fabbro was born in Longmont, CO and moved to the town of Grand Junction, CO in the early 1980′s. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Mesa State College before earning her doctorate degree in Human Medical Genetics from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, CO.

Dr. Fabbro currently lives in Grand Junction with her husband, Rich, and their two cats. When not writing novels, she teaches biology classes at Mesa State College. She is the author of the Portals of Destiny series and the Adventures of Alexis Davenport series.

To find out more about her and her books, check here.

What Happened To RPG?

When you like something, you expect more of the same. What you don’t want, upon ordering your favourite Meat Feast pizza, is to be told that to appeal to the Vegetarian market, they’ve taken the meat off. Now it’s just a Feast pizza.

The same thing seems to be happening in the world of gaming. Successful RPG franchises are dropping their role-playing elements in later volumes, streamlining gameplay in order to focus more on the action. This might seem like a good idea, but what about those who bought the games because they like RPGs?

Fable was a ground-breaking concept, taking four years to develop, and went on to sell well over two million copies. Fable II built upon that, giving even more customisation and improving the mechanics of what had been a clunky game.

Then Fable III came along, and reduced the choice of dozens of different weapons two; either Longsword or hammer for close combat, and pistol or rifle for ranged. They scrapped the easily customisable clothing for sets that were as easy to mix and match as dynamite and lit cigarettes, and made switching between weapons in combat (something Fable II was praised for) so slow that the only sensible option was hitting people.

It seemed that Fable III had a message to it. Stop customising. Get out there and hit things. Certainly the scale upon which enemies were found suggested that the combat had been taken more into focus.

‘Is this a bad thing?’ you might ask. Hacking through hordes of Hollowmen is great, there’s no denying that. But what about the people who wanted character customisation?

It’s not just Fable; Mass Effect has done it too. Mass Effect was an extremely tactical game, the combat style of hiding behind cover, lining up the perfect shot and then taking it, encouraged this kind of thoughtful gameplay.

Mass Effect 2 has introduced two things to the combat which don’t fit in; fast moving enemies (robotic dog things, and hordes of shambling husks, as oppose to the one or two you encountered in the first game) and tough enemies that take a lot of shooting. In fact, if one of the dogs reaches you, your character actually can’t aim far enough down to shoot it. And what happened to the ‘hide in cover, take the perfect shot’, when your only choice is to empty clip after clip into an enemy that takes minutes to kill?

The defence for this would be ‘it’s the game developers trying to keep the series fresh and interesting’, which is a noble thing. The problem is I don’t think it is that. I think it’s about sales.

When a game gets popular, the developers naturally want to replicate that popularity, and I think money takes over. What’s the best way to maximise sales and therefore generate extra profit? Make a mainstream game.

Now, I like basic, straight-forward action games too. But when I really enjoy an RPG, I want more from the next volume, not half as much. But it seems that in the quest for popularity and profit, game developers often ignore the audience that made the franchise so popular in the first place (i.e. those RPG fans), and strip their games down.

If you can’t see where I’m coming from, imagine if they made the next Call of Duty into a puzzle-platformer. ‘Sorry, no I can’t defeat terrorists right now, I’ve got to collect five ancient keys and solve a riddle to unlock my Apache from the hangar.’

At this rate, by the time we reach Fable V or Mass Effect 4 you’ll only need the control stick and the attack button. Actually, the walking will probably be done for you.

Rewan Tremethick is an English freelance writer, aspiring novelist, blogger and stand-up comedian. He blogs on all things writing, fantasy, science fiction, music, television and games on www.thehyperteller.com. His first novel, Politics in Blood, is currently being sent out to agents and publishers.

Shit Writer’s Write

So, today’s my birthday! Today’s guest post is from my very good friend and writing partner, Eileen Young. She’s currently working on an urban fantasy novel now in the editing stages.

Writers play with words almost definitionally. We make them into pleasing patterns, we hold them up and examine them and see if we can draw new meaning from words like ‘love’ and ‘heroism.’

But we have to be concientious players, which is something we sometimes overlook forget.

I’m big on communicating precisely, which is why I’ve written about gendered language ( http://authorsrefuge.blogspot.com/2011/06/gendered-language-is-like-black-only.html ) and contribute to a blog on sociology and linguistics ( http://speaking-human.tumblr.com/ , as Chiomi), but I still find myself falling into ableist sinkholes like calling things ‘lame’ when I mean ‘unutterably idiotic.’ Seems comparatively minor, right? Especially compared to terms like ‘gypped’ (meaning cheated, as by Gypsies). But it doesn’t communicate what I mean to everyone who reads it. To someone with a physical disability, it could be a reminder that there are some people out there who might consider them as less than a fully contributing member of society. That is not a connotation I want to bring up, in most cases (I don’t write a lot of social justice stuff in my fiction, as it’s exhausting), so I avoid using the term. For me, the word doesn’t communicate effectively because of its social context.

The social responsibility of media producers (writers and artists of all kinds) to hold themselves to higher linguistic standards is something that can be hotly debated. Not everything that is put out needs to elevate the social consciousness of discrimination towards various groups or bring forth justice into the world. Not everyone thinks that every line needs to be pored over and stripped of unfortunate subtext so as to be utterly inoffensive to every group. Not every writer cares if some people complain about them on some obscure social justice blog because a character of theirs says offensive things.

But I think we need to at least consider some of the implications of the words we use, to make sure we’re saying what we want to say. Sometimes we might want to say things which might offend people, to illustrate differences between characters or to make points. Something I think we all want to avoid, though, is unintentionally coming off as fucking assholes.