Dungeon Master Growth Patterns

            Those who have been following my blog for a while will have noticed how much Dungeons & Dragons has become a part of my life in the past few years. In that time, I’ve been part of about fourteen different games, and I’m currently involved in five active games. During this time, I’ve been both a player and a Dungeon Master, but what has captured my attention today is the rise of new DMs and how they follow roughly the same growth pattern that I went through.

            Most people starting out as a Dungeon Master (though not all) have played the game before, so they have a pretty good idea of how it works on the players’ side of the table. They know that it’s a challenge to switch to being behind the DM’s screen, where they essentially have to create and control an entire world – much like a writer does, only a writer doesn’t need to account for the craziness that players come up with.

            The first game the new DM runs isn’t bad (with a good group of players, it’s very hard to have bad D&D), but it isn’t quite where they want it to be. Often the plotline railroads the players – that is to say, there’s pretty much only one way for the players to go, and one way for them to solve problems. This isn’t ideal in a game that revolves around the decisions made by players, but it’s also extremely understandable – because allowing players complete freedom takes a lot of thinking on your feet, and that takes practice.

            That first game usually falls apart within the first few sessions, but the new DM doesn’t give up. They learned a lot in those games, few though they were. The next game they run is significantly better. They’ve learned to prepare for players doing crazy things, and so they adapt their new game for that. This game goes much better, but it still isn’t perfect. The rails are still there, and still noticeable, and the DM runs into two similar problems: the players don’t catch on to what they were certain was obvious, so they need to improvise huge hints; and the players respond to things in ways previously unanticipated. Once again, the game usually falls apart at this point – but the DM has learned even more.

            Now comes the time for over-preparedness. The new DM has realized that players are wild and uncontrollable, and so the solution is to have a plan for everything. A massive world begins getting built, populated with interesting people and things. Histories and mythologies are created, as well as multiple dungeons and ways to attract the players to them. It becomes overwhelming, and at some point the DM realizes that if they keep this up, they’ll never get to play again – and so they take a leap of faith and start the game with what they’ve prepared.

            This time, the game goes very differently. Instead of the players going in crazy directions and forcing the DM to improvise, they seem to stick to the plot and avoid 90% of the content the DM has painstakingly created. This isn’t out of malice – this is simply because the DM has improved enough that the players feel that they are on the most natural course. The game lasts longer, and now the DM learns and perfects the rest of their skills. Their world is more in-depth, so they find improvising easier when it’s necessary. They get more of a feel for how to run and balance the game. They learn how to anticipate what their players are going to do, and to plan accordingly – but also how to have backup plans for when the players surprise them.

            Finally, DMing begins to come naturally, and less preparation is needed for each game. A lot of work still goes into running the game, but it becomes easier and more natural – as does coming up with things on the fly when the player throws a curveball at them.

            This isn’t a precise formula, as different people improve at different speeds. Some people manage to hold together that first game, improving as they go, while others have a few more false starts. However, by and large, this is the basic pattern of learning and growth I’ve observed in multiple new Dungeon Masters, and I find it to be fascinating – because running Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a skill you can learn everything about by being taught, or reading a book. It’s a form of art that you can only learn by doing.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Foreshadowing

            My wife once told me that, when she was young, it used to amaze her how writers could put all that foreshadowing in their books and have all the loose threads come together at the end. It blew her mind – not to mention, disappointed her – when she got older and realized that writers could go back and add foreshadowing earlier in the book after writing the end.

            I think that foreshadowing is one of the most complicated aspects of writing, yet is one of the most important ones. How would you feel about reading a book where the masked villain is revealed at the end and... it’s someone you never even heard of before? What if you were reading along and got to the end of a book, only to discover that there was a whole other plot going on in the background that had nothing to do with the rest of the book, and that was never even hinted at? You’d probably be pretty disappointed. Surprised – but disappointed.

            I think the best-known use of foreshadowing is in the Harry Potter series. You know what I’m talking about. Or, if you don’t, go read the series and find out. If you read the series a second time (or have a very good memory), you’ll start seeing things from all the way back in book one that hint at the great reveal – and it’s truly amazing how much there is that connects.

            But, wait... there are 7 Harry Potter books (well, in the main series, at any rate) and the big reveal is in the last one – J.K. Rowling certainly didn’t have all the books completely written when the first was published. She didn’t have the option of going back to add those bits in. So, how did she do it?

            Well, it’s because there is more than one way to foreshadow. In this case, it was excellent planning. This big reveal was practically the whole point of the entire series – it was something that was planned from the beginning and, as such, it was easy for Rowling to put in. In this case, the hard part was keeping it subtle enough to not alert the readers.

            Of course, not all foreshadowing can be planned in advance. Sure, writers generally know how their books will end, but they don’t know all the separate elements – those are discovered along the way. Then, if needed, the writer can always go back and add them later, after completing the manuscript (but before publishing it).

            Yet, there is still another way to foreshadow, something that is almost a combination of the previous two. Writers can often foreshadow as they go. How? There are two ways. The first is simply having an idea of what’s going to happen in the story’s future, and spotting opportunities to drop little hints (usually accompanied by snickering behind a hand and statements like, “They’ll never catch this!”). The other is to link ideas backwards as you go along. A book being written is almost a living thing – it expands and grows as the author writes it, sometimes turning into something entirely different than was initially intended. A writer can keep in mind things they wrote previously in the book and be just as amazed as the reader when it turns out to be a hint later in the book. This is done much like guessing at what will happen next when you’re reading – only, as the writer, you get to decide what actually does happen. The writer writes something, uses it to make a prediction of what it could mean for the future, then makes it happen.

            So, Young Colleen wasn’t entirely wrong – sometimes writers do put the foreshadowing in as they go, and it can be very impressive. But, as with all skills, it’s important to remember that there’s more than one way of doing everything, and none of them is better than the other. The important part isn’t how you create the foreshadowing – what matters is having enough foreshadowing that when the reveal comes, the reader can put together all the pieces and feel like the story is plausible.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Stories We Tell

            When I was six or so, my family was sitting around the breakfast table telling stories of the dreams we’d had. This wasn’t an irregular occurrence, but something different happened this time: my dad had a dream to share. Normally he only commented on how he didn’t dream, so when he commented that last night, he had a dream, he had our rapt attention.

            It was an extraordinary and hilarious tale about his encounter with an aggressive pink rhino, which he had eventually befriended. To this day I don’t know for sure if he made it up on the spot and wrote it down later, or if he’d prepared it in advance. It doesn’t really matter – what matters is that it was the start of something wonderful.

            I honestly don’t know how it happened, but it led to my dad coming into the grades 1-3 my brother and I both were in to tell the story of the Pink Rhino again, and the story was loved by the whole class – so much so that it became a regular thing. My dad began producing more Robert Munch-esque stories and telling them for my class. It wasn’t just the incredible stories themselves – it was the way he told them, which I would love to describe to you, but in truth it’s something you’d have to experience.

Some of the stories involved members of the class, like Pictures, a story about a talented artist in the class named Mallory whose pictures came to life when put on the refrigerator (causing no end of problems), or The Scratch – a story about the fight I had with Rotten Rosco, the most fearsome pirate to sail the Canadian highways, that he wrote over the weekend as an explanation for a huge scratch I’d gotten on my face from running into a tree. Others grew into massive class projects, like the Ordinary Story, a rhyming story about a boy and a girl who wander into the woods and befriend a troll – after this story, our class worked together to create an enchanted forest from plasticine.

            Looking back on that time, I find it incredible how many engaging and humorous stories he wrote, memorized, and told over the short three years I was in that classroom. It led to him joining the local storytellers’ guild and telling stories at a number of other venues as well – including an event for my wife’s homeschool group, before I even met her.

            Looking back on that, it’s no wonder that, with that in my background, I grew up with a passion for telling stories. However, there’s one conversation I had with my dad several years ago that has stuck with me ever since – it was the day he told me how impressed he was that I could write full length books. I looked at him in astonishment and told him that he could easily write a novel as well. I, myself, was (and am) still impressed with all his shorter stories. I’ve only written a few short stories in my time, and almost all of them leave an opening for more to happen – making them more like first chapters than short stories. Writing something novel-length is far easier to me.

            I think that was the first day I came to appreciate a key element of human nature: our tendency to be blind to that which makes us extraordinary because it comes easily to us. We think that, because we find it easy, everyone must find it easy, and that the things we find hard and that other people find easy means that those people are more extraordinary than us.

            We teach kids that everyone is unique and special, but we don’t go on to tell them what that actually means. It means that everyone has their own skills and talents, and those are what make them extraordinary. If something comes easily to you, that’s probably one of the things that makes you special. And those things you wish you could do that other people seem so good at, but that they seem to think it’s no big deal that they can do it? That’s what makes them special, and they just might admire you for the things you find to be easy.

            Sure, I’ll never be able to sit at the front of a room and captivate an audience with the way I tell a story – at least, not like my dad can – but I have my own ways of telling stories that are just as good. Not to mention, requiring far less energy to present. And quieter. Much quieter.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Writing Life

Sometimes the words go down one sentence at a time,

Sometimes they go in leaps and bounds.

Sometimes you drag the words from the depths of a chasm,

Sometimes you wonder where they’re coming from and if they’ll ever end.

But the words keep on coming.

There are times when the words are good,

There are times when the words are bad.

There are times when you think the words are the best you’ll ever write,

Only to come back later and hate them.

But the words keep on coming.

A time will come when you must read the words,

You must judge their merit and change them.

A time will come when you must destroy the words,

When you must give up on rearranging them.

But the words keep on coming.

After an eternity the words will be complete,

The pages filled and grammar thrice-checked.

After an eternity you can see the end,

At last, perhaps, you can rest.

But the words will keep on coming.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Art of Writing

            All you need to start is one word. Just one. In fact, you don’t even need that – you could start with a single letter, although that is much more difficult if you don’t know what to follow it with.

            You take that one word – or letter, as the case may be – and follow it with another, stretching it out onto a sentence. If you want to get fancy, you can even add some punctuation, making it a compound sentence.

            Then, you do it again, adding a second sentence, then a third. (It is always a good idea to vary the sentence length.) Before you know it, you have a paragraph and you’re ready to do it all over again.

            Except, this time, the words and ideas are different. Just as the paragraph after that – and after that – are different.

            It doesn’t have to be perfect. The words can be changed later; the grammar fixed; the ideas altered. The act of writing is the important part. You aren’t chiseling it into stone – the details can always be changed.

            Just take it one step at a time – one word at a time. It happens faster than you think. You have a blog post. A chapter. A short story. A book.

            Writing is more than a skill. It is an art. It takes practice. It takes time. But when you’re finished, you have something you can be proud of – because, if you aren’t proud of it, that just means it isn’t finished yet.

            All it takes to start is one letter. One word. One sentence. From there, it grows and builds momentum until it is complete.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Different Ideas

            This week I came across a list of things writers are afraid of that they shouldn’t be, and at the top of the list was: other people stealing their ideas. And it’s true – I have yet to meet an author who wasn’t trepidatious about sharing their work because they were afraid of their ideas being stolen. It’s not just that someone could copy our work – it’s the fear that someone else might take our ideas and produce something with them before we do. Even worse, what if they produce something better than we do?

            There were to incredible arguments about why writers don’t need to fear their ideas being stolen. The first was that, quite simply, authors have so many ideas of their own, they aren’t about to go around stealing someone else’s. It’s true. Every writer I have ever met has had more ideas for what to write than they could ever write in their lifetime. I know from personal experience that for every book I write, I end up with two more book ideas – I’ll certainly never need to steal from someone else!

            I found the second argument even more compelling. Even when you share an idea with someone, their vision of that idea will be completely different from your own. We all view the world differently and, as a result, the way we flesh out ideas are all completely different.

            The reason I found that argument more compelling was because I have personal experience proving it true. Many years ago, a friend shared an idea with me. She said she wanted to write a story about a haunted piano. I thought this was brilliant! A ghost haunting a piano sounded absolutely fantastic to me and I was very excited to read the story.

            Once she had written it, however, I was very disappointed. The story was very well written, but it didn’t come close to what I had envisioned from the idea. It was a tale (as near as I can remember) of someone who acquired an old piano, and then the piano had possessed them and they proceeded to waste away their lives playing the piano – writing music and reaching for an impossible imperfection.

            I was so disappointed in the results that I wrote up a story of my own so I could share my take on the story of a haunted piano. This was a piano in a secluded alcove that could play itself. A person, coming upon the piano but not knowing how to play, played a few random notes. When they went to leave, the piano played the notes back – and then proceeded to build a marvellous song around those notes, to the awe of its audience. To me, it was such a compelling scene that I built it into the first novel I ever wrote.

            Both stories stemmed from a single idea, yet that idea took on extremely different shapes for each writer. How would a third person interpret the idea? A fourth? I couldn’t say, but I do know that I’m no longer as worried about people stealing my ideas.

            What about you?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

What Is It Good For?

            I recently heard a quote that said, in essence, that the natural state of any two nations is to be at war – and that if there is peace, it is only because there is someone working very hard to keep the peace. Nations are always working to further their own agendas – be it that they want to spread their ideology or that they need resources – and so, without effort to prevent it, they will clash with others.

            This was a bit of a revelation for me. My thought process prior to hearing this was that war needed a reason to occur. However, this reversed way of looking at things made everything about global politics make a bit more sense – at least when it comes to looking at history.

            It makes sense that, back in the eras of survival, people went to war over resources. That’s how they survived, after all. As for ideology, well... people tend to believe that they are right and that it is their duty to enlighten others.

            Nowadays, lots of effort is put into keeping peace. It doesn’t always work, but it’s become important for survival with our destructive capabilities. Lots of people work very hard at keeping the peace – it certainly doesn’t come naturally.

            This bit of insight may not seem very important, but as a writer it has completely changed my perspective. When working on building a world, and stringing together plotlines, I no longer have to ask myself, “Why is there a war?” Instead I ask, “Why is there peace? Who is behind the peace?”

            And, if I’m in a particularly destructive mood, I’ll add, “How will the world change if something happens to the peace keeper?”

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Rewriting

            Whenever you write a book, it’s always a good idea to have beta readers. After all, you need other people to read the book and tell you what they liked and disliked about it. More than that, they can help you edit. No one can catch every error, after all, so the more eyes, the better.

            Then, of course, you occasionally have a beta reader who makes a suggestion that drives you to do a complete rewrite of your book – such as the rewrite I’m working on right now.

            Rewriting is an interesting process. This is actually the first time I’ve done a full rewrite of a novel – several years ago I did rewrite the first chapter of the first book I wrote (it subsequently became two chapters), but nothing as big as this.

            When you rewrite, you basically have two options: you can start from scratch and hope anything worth keeping stuck in your head well enough to find its way into the new version, or you can constantly reference the old version to make sure you’re keeping everything you want.

            Oddly enough, what I’m doing sort of combines the two. The suggestion leading to this rewrite was based around the idea that I should split the book into two (or even three!) full novels – one for each of the main characters I was working with. The idea intrigued me, but it also drastically altered sections of the plot. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked what I could do with it.

            And so, I began the rewrite, which involved mixing whole new scenes with some of the old ones. As such, when I’m able, I reference what was happening before to ensure I get the important details and my favorite wordings, yet there’s a lot of time spent writing entirely new content. So far, the results are good – although, it seems I may have a tendency to expand each chapter into two when I’m rewriting.

            It is a tedious process – it’s like writing a whole book over again, when you already wrote it once. Yet, even a short ways in, I could already tell that the new one was an improvement over the old. So, with that alone, I can say rewriting is worth the trouble. By the time a book gets published, you want it to be the best it can be. If that involves writing the same book multiple times, so be it. The end result will be worth it.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Writers and their Characters

            Writers, by necessity, must have a very complicated relationship with their characters. It’s not as simple as creating them and then throwing them in the story. No, you have to care about them and hate them at the same time.

            You see, it’s essential for a writer to care about their characters. If the writer doesn’t care about the character, neither will the reader. It shows in the writing. Oh, there are ways to make it look like you care about a character when you don’t, but they are contrived and lessen the reader’s connection to the story. Actually caring is the only way to organically transfer the feeling into the writing.

            That said, if the writer cares too much, it creates another problem. It makes the plot fall short, because the writer isn’t willing to have (as) bad things happen to their characters. The character also tends to have less flaws. The result is that the character strolls through their trials with ease, never truly losing anything, never being forced to make a difficult decision.

            The solution is that the writer must hate their character with a fiery burning passion. Feeding on that hatred, the writer can throw obstacle after obstacle at their character, laughing maniacally all the way. The character will make mistakes and lose friends, precious possessions, limbs, or even their lives. And the story will be interesting.

            However, if the writer hates the character too much, then the character will lose their depth and the reader won’t be able to connect. If the character becomes nothing more than a bland punching bag, waiting for the next blow to fall, the reader will lose interest and likely walk away. So, the writer must care deeply about the character.

            It’s all about balance. You need to be able to care about the character so much that is shows through in the writing, while hating them so much that you can put them through the worst ordeals of their lives. You must be able to cry as their souls are crushed, even as you’re squeezing tighter.

            A writer must have a relationship with their characters worthy of writing a story about.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Hivemind

            So, I’ve talked before about the editing process I go through each time I finish a book. With my latest complete book, this has been added to slightly and I thought I’d share some of the interesting things I’ve learned.

            Now, as mentioned before, my editing cycle usually goes: I edit, my wife edits and fills in the spaces I’ve left for her, I edit, then I send it off to my parents (my mom line-edits, my dad gives me content feedback), then I edit again. This time I decided to reach out to a larger group of beta-readers, adding a few more layers to my editing.

            Why did I decide to do that this time? Three reasons – the first is that I have way more confidence in this book than any of my previous ones (I’m really happy with it! It’s very rare for any writer to actually be happy with what they’ve created), the second is that one of my dad’s coworkers asked to read my latest couple of books and he gave me some really important feedback on how some world building seemed absent from the book – something missed by everyone else because they’d read my previous books set in the same world. The third and final reason is that I was trying something risky with this book (it’s a secret!) and I needed a wider pool to test if it was working.

            I haven’t collected back in all the feedback yet, but what I have heard has shown me some interesting things. Because I’m getting feedback from so many more people than usual, I decided that, rather than go through the book with each set of editing suggestions, I would compile them all in one place. This way, I can compare the suggestions from multiple people and – best of all – see where they overlap.

            Of course, everyone is providing feedback on a level they are comfortable with – some just give feedback on content, some line edit, and some do both. As I’m adding in all the editing suggestions together, it’s fascinating to see the overlaps. Sometimes, multiple people suggest exactly the same edit (which is really cool to see, even it’s usually typos). Other times, I end up with multiple solutions to the same problem – which is really helpful because, not only do I have multiple suggestions to choose from, but it highlights when several people get caught up on the same thing that I might otherwise pass off as something of opinion or taste.

            Just as fascinating is seeing what different people catch. This is most obvious with typos – it’s easier to forgive myself for the number of typos that slipped by my notice when I’m seeing some editors catching typos that other editors missed.

            As for that risky thing I mentioned – that is the neatest thing of all to see. So far I’ve received the same feedback across the board on it (except from the one speed reader, who I believe missed the key introduction). Overall, everyone understood what I was doing and approved (though one, while approving the concept, did question the necessity of it and we had a great conversation on the topic), but they all had trouble with one minor, easily changed aspect of it. This was exactly the feedback I was looking for and now I can make the essential changes. I know, I know, I’m being cryptic and you have no idea what I’m talking about – you’ll just have to wait for the book to get published so you can read it.

            So, the moral of the story is that having a large pool of beta-readers to help improve your book is a wonderful thing. I’m so glad I reached out to more people than usual.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Faraway Friends

            One of the great opportunities we have in our modern society is the simplicity of communicating through the internet. We take it for granted now, but just a couple generations ago, it didn’t even exist. If you wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the world, you either wrote a letter (and waited forever for the response to return) or made an expensive phone call (although, if you go back just a little further, even that wasn’t available).

            Now we just pop open the internet and within moments we’re having conversations with people all over the world. Marginalized groups, who previously felt alone in the world, have a way to discover they aren’t as alone as they thought.  People who otherwise would never have met become fast friends.

            Having spent much of my younger life playing online games, I’ve been lucky to have many such friends. More recently, though, my online friends have come in the form of my writing support group, the Alliance of Worldbuilders. We started out as a group focused on giving constructive criticism on each others’ writing, but grew into something much more – a group of good friends from around the world. We even published an anthology of short stories together.

            This week I had the great opportunity to meet one of those friends in person – she was on vacation nearby and she suggested we could get together (last month she had met up with a number of the others in the group who, like her, live in England and previously had met a number of others around the world as well). Opportunities like this rarely arise, so even though it meant leaving my house (blech!) and driving to and in one of the largest cities in the country (blargleblech!!!), Colleen and I decided to go meet her.

            After arriving late because I’d only planned for half the bad traffic we encountered, we the three of us hit it off fantastically. I think we actually got along better in person than online. I had expected that we’d visit for maybe an hour, but we ended up chatting for over three hours an everything from writing to social issues to plotting global domination (forget I said that last one). My first meeting with an online friend was a huge success.

            For me, it highlighted the wonderful opportunities afforded to us through the internet. It had the marvellous capability of bringing together people who, in a past age, could never have met. What’s so great about this? The discovery that all the people across the world aren’t all that different from ourselves. Previously, all we could go on for picturing people of other nations was derived from meeting a few here and there, maybe travelling, and hearing from other peoples’ descriptions of then. This, of course, all gets simplified down into the stereotypes that still survive today.

            Yet, now, those stereotypes are tempered by the ability to go online and talk to almost anyone. We can really meet and find out about each other; discover how similar we are. In spite of the people clinging to the past – insisting it’s us against them – cultures from around the world are being brought closer and closer together.

            What a wonderful potential this has for changing how we view the world.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Inked: A Digital Review

            Inked, by Eric Smith, is a book I bought back in December with the intent to suck up to the author – who happens to be a literary agent (and by suck up, I mean research his tastes through seeing what he writes). Although, in truth, what sold me the most was the presence of moving tattoos in the book. Those lucky few of you who’ve read my first few books will be familiar with the creatures in my world known as ink sprites – basically, living tattoos. I was intrigued to see what a different author would do with a similar concept. I was not disappointed – I love how similar ideas can branch out to have such different results.

            Inked is set in a world where everyone, once they come of age, are tattooed with a magical ink that will show them what profession they will have for the rest of their lives – a florist might have flowery tattoos that grow and wilt with the seasons, while a smith could look to have trails molten metal coursing across their body. Naturally, Caenum is nervous about discovering his destiny as the time for his Inking approaches. The last thing he expects is for a catastrophe to strike his village, sending him and his lifelong friend Dreya on a magic-filled journey that will reveal the dark secret of Ink.

            Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It pulled me through, wanting to find out more about this fascinating world. I found the adventure to be fun and entertaining and the writing was excellent – I often struggle to read books written in first person (my brain has trouble focusing on that POV for some reason), but with this book I had no such problems.

            The characters were deep and interesting, but at the same time I felt they were a bit erratic. There were a few times throughout the book that characters behaved in a way that, to me, felt out of character – it could be the writer in me, but I felt like they were making choices or having extreme emotional reactions solely for the purpose of moving the plot forward. I would have been accepting of this as a character trait in one, maybe two, of the characters, but it was a bit too common and each time it happened I felt distracted from the story.

            There were also a few points when I was slightly confused by minor things in the environment. I loved the imagery of the Inked horse, but at the same time couldn’t help wondering if a horse’s tattoos would be visible through its fur. There was also a point where I had understood there to be snow on the ground, but suddenly there wasn’t. I’m not certain if it was a continuity thing, or simply that the change wasn’t clearly established.

            The plot itself flowed well and was entertaining. There were no surprises for me, but that’s because when I’m reading I’m always working out what is going to happen next. To me, no surprises means the author did a good job with foreshadowing – which he did. The plot twists were excellent and well-timed.

            All in all, I would recommend this book, especially to people who love interesting and well-designed worlds. And sneakily hidden pop culture references. Shame on you, Eric. Shame.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

We Need Diversity

            Something I see talked about a lot in the online writing community is getting accurate diverse characters written into books (people of different ethnicities, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, etc). Why? To ensure that everyone from every background and belief has characters they can relate to and, more importantly (in my opinion), to show people how much variety there is in the world and make them more accepting of people different than themselves.

            This is actually something that is very challenging to, for several reasons. The biggest challenge is fighting the social conditioning we have that leads to us simply using stereotypes – we’re exposed to them through all the media that’s out there already. Many of the books that inspire current authors are written either with an absence of diverse characters, or with them represented in stereotypical ways. It’s far too easy to follow the well-trodden paths.

            Then there is fighting the comfort zone. We are brought up with many taboos, and some can be very uncomfortable to push past. How do we write about people with different colours of skin when we’ve been told all our lives that pointing out someone’s skin colour is racist? How do we write about a disability or a gender identity we haven’t experienced ourselves?

            That leads into the third challenge: research. Research takes a lot of time and energy. It’s so much easier to run with the stereotypes, or just avoid unfamiliar topics altogether.

            Yet, we live in a diverse world, and therefore we must push past all out boundaries to include everyone in our writing. Once we do that, we need to choose how to present this diversity: do we highlight it, by making the story about modern issues related to it, or do we blend them in and treat them like we would any other character?

            While there is a need for the first, I feel that the latter option is the most important for the future. There are many parts of society that have been characterized in certain ways, marginalized or outright abused throughout history. This had been built into our media – movies, shows, games, books – and many of them will last for generations to come. We’ve become aware of the problem, and it’s getting talked about more and more – but it won’t be solved until we stop talking about it and make it normal.

            What really needs to happen is for diverse characters to be added into the media, but without them being treated any differently than anyone else. By doing so, we normalize them, and by extension show future generations that not only is it normal for people to be different – but it’s perfectly okay.

            Gone are the days when everyone needed to be made with the same cookie cutter. As a society, we are moving closer and closer to accepting people for who they are. By allowing people to be true to themselves the world becomes a happier place. But we can never achieve complete acceptance until our sources of entertainment – which shape us and our ideas in more ways than we realize – represent diversity as normal. Diversity in media starts here and now, by making the extra effort to put it in and make sure it’s accurately represented.

            The world is a diverse place. We need to celebrate it, not stifle it, and make it perfectly normal to be whoever we are.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Habits

            It always astounds me how easily we get into habits. Or the things that can become habits, even when we are not expecting them to.

            Take writing, for example. I very deliberately developed a habit of writing every day. I made the decision to write every single day six years ago and I haven’t looked back. What I didn’t expect was the secondary habit I didn’t even notice I had until earlier this month.

            Once I finished writing my first book, I set a goal for myself to write a book every year. I managed it for the first five years, but last year I decided to switch it up a bit. I wanted to take the year to really focus on building the world I write in – developing people, places, cultures and maybe writing a few short stories.

I focused on that for about three months before I found myself with a book idea I just had to start right away. So, the new book took on much of my writing time until I had yet another idea. I focused on the world building around that idea, while still taking some time to work on the book until I’d developed the idea to the point where I was ready (and extremely excited) to start the new book.

            So, I did something I promised myself I would never do – I started the new book without finishing the previous one. What has all this got to do with habits? Well, I’m getting there.

            January rolled around and during my year of only world building I had a quarter of a book and a half of a book. However, for the last five years, January has been the time when I have started work on a new book. An idea started tugging at my brain – an idea for a book I’ve had for a while, but now my mind was trying to start writing it even though I have two unfinished books to complete first.

            That’s when it hit me. I’ve actually developed a habit of starting a new book in January. It is so ingrained in my brain that it tries to do it whether I want to or not.

            Apparently habits can be built into our systems on an annual calendar. I find it astounding to think our minds can pick up on something happening with such a large time gap in the middle and still make a habit out of it.

            Now I must go resist starting a third work in progress.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Knowledge Pools

            I’ve said before that writers need to be experts on everything. It’s true. That’s how books are convincing enough to hold people’s attention. Make one mistake and... well, you’ve seen how the internet responds.

            There are two directions that knowledge for a book can come from, though. The first, and more obvious one, is to look something up when you need it. Do you need to know how silk is made? Look it up. You want to know how far a horse can travel in a day? Look it up. Maybe make a chart, because you’ll need that again. If you want to know a creative way to kill someone, look it up – and hope the police believe that you’re an author.

            However, that doesn’t solve the question of what to write in the first place. If you don’t know what a volcano is, you’re hero isn’t going to make a heroic escape from an impossible situation involving being suspended over bubbling lava. Even if you don’t know the particulars of volcanoes, as long as you know they exist you can look them up when you need to.

            That means writers need to know as much as they can about the world so they can incorporate their knowledge into their books. To a certain extent, that can be done simply by observing the world around you. It isn’t a joke when you see those (usually threatening) posts about authors putting random people they meet into their books. That’s what writers do – absorb the world around them, mix it up, rearrange the pieces they like and create art.

            There’s only so far personal experience can go, though. If you limit yourself to that, you’re missing out on a whole world of inspiration (even if you have the ability to travel the world, there’s still only so much you can learn). So, we turn to other sources.

            Books are great. That’s why we write in the first place – we love books, so we want to make more books. However, reading takes time (especially for slow readers like me) and most people only read for either enjoyment or specific research. You can pick up on some unfamiliar topics there, but it still has its limits.

            So, over the last year, I’ve taken to watching a number of the documentaries available on Netflix – and they are a veritable fountain of knowledge. Watching through the Planet Earth series made me far more aware of natural phenomena in the world that I never would have considered building into my world before, but are now a big part of bringing amazing settings to my books. Characteristics of animals help me develop more believable fantastical creatures. The Ancient Balck-Ops series (which I watched on Saturday – yes, all of it in one day) gave me great insight into historical tactics, weapons, and cultures that immediately had by mind swimming with ideas for how to improve my world.

            Now, to be fair, documentaries play well to my lifestyle. I have plenty of time to watch them, since I’m usually watching something while working for my chainmaille business. Still, I’ve yet to find another source that delivers so much information in a short amount of time – teaching about so many new things that can be drawn on at your leisure, and researched if more information is required for your uses. Documentaries are a gold mine of knowledge and inspiration.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Nanowrimo

            November has drawn to a close and, with it, so ends this year’s Nanowrimo. What is Nanowrimo, you ask? It is (Na)tional (No)vel (Wri)ting (Mo)nth, when writers from around the world challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

            I’m not one of those writers – although I do consider joining them every year. I know my limits, though. Some days I do manage to write enough words to reach that word count, but it’s only when inspiration strikes. Outside of that, my brain needs lots of background time to work on the story, otherwise I have no idea what’s going to happen next.

            However, Nanowrimo is about far more than reaching the word count. It encourages writers to just write, getting to the end of the story as fast as possible without making everything perfect. Multiple drafts, revisions and editing are for that.

The true goal is for writers to push themselves forwards with their writing and stretch their limits. That’s how I take part – by aiming to write more than I usually do. With a little over 10,000 words written in November, I’d say I succeeded in beating out my 5,000-6,000 word monthly average.

            There’s no way for a writer to fail at Nanowrimo as long as they do their best. However, for those that do reach the intended word count, hearty congratulations are in order. It’s no small feat to write a book that fast – so well done to you. Perhaps someday I’ll join your ranks.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Self-Restrictions (Or the overused "Let It Go")

            There comes a time for every writer when they learn how to let go. Sometimes it’s ideas we need to let go of, or characters, other times it’s habits. But we writers tend to be sentimental and it’s hard to let go of ideas we’ve clung to for a long time.

            For me, this time came when I started to take a good hard look at my fantasy world, wondering what made it stand apart from others. There’s really quite a lot that makes it unique, but all the key surface elements are familiar. I have humans, elves, dwarves, goblins – and they’re all about what you’d expect them to be, with a few twists of my own added in. Yet, on the surface, very familiar.

            There are three reasons for this: the first is that I started developing this world when I was twelve or so and, at that age, it’s really difficult to not borrow heavily from what you know. The second is that I wanted that familiarity there to help people acclimatise to my world. The third was because you have two choices when creating creatures in a fantasy world: go with the common ones, or make up new ones that serve the functions of the old ones (such as the Urgals in the Eragon series which take the place of goblin/orc creatures, as do the Trollocs in the Wheel of Time series where there are also Ogiers that function as a combination of elves and dwarves).

            So, have I decided to drastically change my writing to replace elves and dwarves? No, although I did strongly consider it. I realized that, if I eliminated them, I would just replace them with something else. I did, however, decide to personalize them more – make them more unique to my world.

All of this made me take a closer look at my world and what I’ve been clinging to. That’s when I discovered the biggest thing that was holding my writing back: my world. It’s too big. You’d think that a big world would offer more freedom for writing in, but that’s before you have to coordinate events across an entire globe with a timeline spanning hundreds or thousands of years. It’s a bit much for one mind to hold all at once.

            So, I’ve had to step back. Rather than forcing my stories to fit my world, I’m now allowing my world to for my stories. It has opened up endless possibilities and has made writing life much easier.

            That’s my latest tip to all you writers out there. Look to yourself and your own writing to figure out how you’re holding yourself back. Then push back your self-made restrictions and broaden your horizons.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

World Building is Fun

            I think one of the most important traits in an author is a love of knowledge. Why? Because we have to know the oddest things so we can make our books realistic. Some of the most obscure things come up.

            Recently I’ve been doing a lot of world building, getting a very detailed portion of my world developed for a series I’m planning. My research taught me all kinds of things, like you can raise 100 pigs on the same amount of land you need for one cow (free grazing – about 5 acres, in case you’re curious), that dinosaurs only lived about 30 years, and that there are vast stretches of underground, water-filled caves that are the only sources of fresh water in some parts of the world.

            I saw a quote once (and can’t find who said it) that an author must be an expert on everything. When Terry Pratchett wrote The Amazing Morris and his Educated Rodents, he said that by the time he was done, he knew more about rats than anyone would ever want to know.

You might wonder why what seem like minor details matter so much, especially in fiction. Couldn’t we just make it up? Well, yes, we could. But then, along comes an expert in horses to tell us that horses treated the way they are in the book would die from being ridden too hard. This is a bad thing on two fronts – first, it conveys inaccurate information to people and it’s amazing how easily people believe what they read. The second is that it ruins the realism of the book for anyone with that knowledge of horses – which is terrible. Fiction is meant for people to enjoy, after all.

            So, an important part of the writing process becomes research into the oddest things. I can only imagine how often mystery writers worry what people would think if they could see all their Google searches related to how to kill people. It takes less than a pound of pressure to cut skin.

            With all the bitty details needed, enjoying learning becomes mandatory. Otherwise, writing becomes tedious work – and, really, why bother writing if you don’t enjoy it? I’m lucky in that I’ve always loved learning. On the flip side, my research skills are lacking, so it takes me a while to find what I’m looking for, but I tend to pick up a few extra tidbits along the way. I gain lots of new information, then add it to my arsenal for developing believable worlds, stories and characters.

            World building is fun!

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

So You Want to be a Writer?

            There are two tips that you will come across repeatedly while doing research on writing, usually in conjunction with each other: read a lot and write a lot. More than anything, these are the two things that will shape all writers.

            The later is self-explanatory. “Write a lot” walks hand in hand with “practice makes perfect”. No one in the world can just sit down and write a perfect book the first time. Like any art, it takes time to learn not only skills, but how to tap into your innate talents and develop your unique voice.

            I, myself, am amazed at the drastic improvement I see in my own writing. Each time I complete a book, I find it hard to believe I wrote the previous one. A more tangible example is the best-selling author Terry Pratchett. All you have to do is read The Colour of Magic and compare it to any of his later titles. It’s hard to believe they were written by the same person.

            As for reading a lot, it seems to be obvious, yet at the same time it can often feel counter-productive. During the creative process, our brains naturally regurgitate what they've absorbed and it sometimes feels like we’re accidentally imitating someone else’s work. It does happen to a certain extent; I remember reading Christopher Paolini’s Eragon for the first time and being able to pick out some of his favourite authors (I looked it up later to be sure I was right). However, imitation is the first step in learning. When learning to speak, we imitate sounds before we understand the meanings of words. When learning to write, we learn the letters prior to understanding how they’re used.

            The benefits of reading when you’re a writer are endless. It’s important to know what else is out there, plus it’s a great source of inspiration. More than that, though, it is how writers learn and improve. As you begin reading books as author, you learn to look at them a new way. You take a step back from simply enjoying yourself and analyse deeper. If you find yourself drawn into a book, you ask yourself, why? What has this author done to affect me so? You look more closely at the characters to see how they’re made to seem realistic, at the plot to see how it progresses and twists, at the words to increase your vocabulary, and at the style to see what you like and dislike.

            Much of the time, the learning is on a subconscious level. Other times, you find yourself searching for the secret that makes a good book so good.

            I've recently started reading Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series and I came across something I've never seen before (or, at least, never noticed). A lot of authors build tension by keeping secrets from the reader. What’s that lurking in the shadows? Where is the villain? Who is the villain? Jordan did the opposite: he gave, what I felt, was too much information. It wasn't quite enough to tell exactly who the traitorous allies of the protagonists were, but it was enough to make me reasonably certain – while still leaving just enough doubt. It wasn't until characters were trustingly being led into what I was sure was a trap that I realized what he’d done. He’d given me enough information to guess the truth, but held back enough that I had to read on to be certain.

            And so, my repertoire of writing tricks grow, and I become a better author through reading. For those others out there aspiring to be writers, I shall reiterate the advice you will hear over and over again. Read lots. Write lots. You’ll amaze yourself at how much you improve.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

An Easy Fix for Writer's Block

            A lot of writers suffer from writer’s block. For me, it’s been a long time since I've had what I’d actually call writer’s block – I'm as close as I've been in a long time right now, but I'm still writing every day.

            Writing is an art. Because of that, most people wait for inspiration to strike to write and that makes it too easy for writer’s block to set in. That’s how I used to write and, because of that, I almost never got any writing done.

            Then I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and finish my first book. I decided that, to do that, I would write every single day. Six months later, I completed my first book. I kept writing, though, moving onto my next book. I'm on year six now, and I have written every single day (with the exception of one week in the first year when I was too sick).

            Now, that doesn't mean I wrote a lot every day. Sometimes it was just a sentence, or perhaps some editing. Sometimes, rather than working on my book, I worked on world-building – a very important part of writing.

            I think it’s easy to forget that, along with being an art, writing is a discipline. Most arts are. How do you get better at something? You practice. How do you make sure you complete a project? You work on it, even when you don’t want to.

            When I'm writing, I go through phases. Sometimes the words fly from my fingers. Other times, I struggle to figure out what happens next. The latter is as close to writer’s block as I get. Those are the days I write one sentence at a time. I keep writing and writing until my inspiration kicks in and my work takes off.

            Not only does the discipline of writing every day help me kick writer’s block, it helps me trudge through the parts of my books where I have no idea how to get from point a to point b. By forcing myself to write every day, I also force myself to create when I'm uninspired.

            After five years, I discovered that writing every day had become more than a habit. It has become almost an addiction. I was planning to take the year off from writing books to focus on further developing the world I write in. I very soon found myself wishing I had a book to work on.

            Then inspiration struck and I accidentally started a new book. I got through two and a half chapters before I hit the rough patch I'm currently struggling through. Yet, every day, step by step, I keep going.

            So, do you really want to kick that writer’s block? Start writing every day – no exceptions. Writer’s block won’t stand a chance against you and your project will be done before you know it.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.