A winner!

I've just come third in a short story competition, a feat of which I am immensely proud. An odd little competition where the competitors were asked to write a short story of no more than 3000 words set in the world of any specific Roleplaying Game the writer wished.

Writing to a short word count proved a challenge. My outline rapidly ballooned and translating it into prose went way past the limit.

Cutting it back was painful. I lost a scenes, flashbacks and entire conversations. These cuts explained character motivations and help the story make sense. They were painful cuts. Then, once they were gone I had to re work other conversations to fill in the gaps.

After that I was still too long! It became a case of working each sentence, looking for a way to rephrase so that it could be reduced. It took three passes of this before I hit the word count limit.

It was a real challenge, hard effort. Seems to have paid off in the end :)

Here's a link to the Entries and Entrants. You may need to log into the RPGGeek site to download the stories .

A pulp story

So with my game book's first draft complete, and sitting to fester for a few weeks, I started looking around for a small project to fill the gap.

Looking through by browser's bookmarks I spotted the Lester Dent pulp plan and decided to give it a go. I'm not writing a noir detective, but have opted instead for a post-apocalyptic story. Like Solomon Kane my hero uses a sword and carries a pistol, but instead of a fantasy background I'm plunging forwards into the sci fi genre.

I wrote the first quarter of the story, which was supposed to be 1500 words, but ended up with 2100. So I've just done a hatchet job on it, but only managed to get it down to 1587. I can't bear to cut any more!

I've started the next segment and will just have to write it using 87 less words...but I'm already running a bit long, considering how much I want to stuff in there.

Hmmm....too wordy, I'm too wordy. Less words, more action.

It's an interesting challenge, having to write less. It's exercising my brain in some new ways and despite the pain of cutting, cutting, cutting; it's a fun thing to do. If you haven't tried it, add it onto your to-do list.

Entering the KDP Select scheme

Having finished the edit of my tongue in cheek Lovecraftion short story called "Incursion" I decided to try an experiment.  I've enrolled a Kindle version of the eBook in Amazon's KDP Select scheme. This scheme gives your book away for free, or rather, lends it for free.

So now "Incursion" can be downloaded for free, for the next three months. What do I get out of it? As the story is the latest in my "Lovecraftian Shorts" series I'm hoping that by getting one for free, readers might be inclined to purchase the other stories in the series.

On a side note the I created the scene you see on the cover, using a free piece of software called POV-Ray which is a ray-tracer.  It allows you to build CGI images using a scripting language. A very cool tool with a great manual!

Giving "Incursion" the once over

I decided to take another break from the big annotation project and instead get go through the edits I had back from the editor well over a week ago for my story "Incursion".  There was a lot of red text in the story.  I didn't agree with all of the red lines.  Some lines that were scored through with red, I left in as I think them essential to get over the attitudes of the characters.  There were other things too that I left in or slightly reworded.

I always look at the editors returns as informed opinion rather that a rule of law. I read the suggested change, and consider what it means and why the editor put it in there. Only after that do I apply the change.

In the end I implemented lots and lots of the changes, massaged a couple, and did re-write the ending which was ,as the editor suggested, a bit weak.

Dealing with edits like this always takes it out of me.  The story is only 19 pages of  double spaced text, but it still took me the whole evening to work through them.

I do have a better story now, and send out my unending thanks to Mrs The Editor.

New outlet

I found a new outlet for some of my works today. It's called Drive Thru Fiction which hosts a lot of "genre" fiction, anything from short stories to full novels.  I've had a product or two on DriveThruRPG for a while but for some reason never noticed that they has this sister site.

Never one to miss an opportunity I've already uploaded one short story into their shop and others will follow soon.  

A sea of Red!

My Lovecraft inspired short story "Incursion" has returned from the editor. Yikes!  It's a sea of red ink. Things crossed out, sentences circled, suggestions edged in round the side and requests for clarification. Oh, and the ending was a bit too quick.

I find it astounding that I write, then I edit, then I double check before anyone else sees it. Then when it comes back looking like its under a red film of ink I am always surprised.  I ask myself, what can I have missed this time!?! Looking through the notes made on the hardcopy it becomes all too obvious what I missed.

I think there must be a better way for me to edit. I did consider submitting it to the "Bookoven" project, but that is only a typo and grammar thing, and it only examines one sentence at a time. My first drafts need "bigger picture" editing than that.

I'll let this edit sit for a while yet, as I'm working on an "annotation" project at the moment and only 120 pages into a total 456. Once I get the draft on that complete, then I'll come back and implement the red text OF DOOM!

Editing a short story

With no other new story idea burning in my soul, I took the opportunity today to go through my first edit on a story I call "Incursion".  I finished the first draft of this a week or two ago. On this first edit I was just doing the basics.

• Checking for spooling mistaks. 
• Making sure each sentence actually makes sense.
• Trying to remove repeated words that I repeat.
• Adding the odd detail to scenes to increase flavour.
• Correcting awkwardly worded bad sentences

The story is a tongue in cheek Lovecraftian tale, that I'll be branding as a "Lovecraftian short". the third of my stories in that mould. there may be a collection of these at some date in the future.

And a quote from the story...

"Her name is Georgina." He explained.

"Is that a crystal ball?"

"Oh yes. She's very good with it."

I stared at the professor. "What is this place?"

"We are the governments special research and defence division."

"Special..." I was lost for words. "What sort of government work is Georgina doing with a crystal ball?"

Finished a first draft

I've just finished the first draft of another short story. It's the first in what I hope will pan out to be a series of short stories featuring in the genre of "giant fighty robots".  Here's the stories opening...

Sergeant Karen Nowak lent her chair back from the briefing table, reaching for a cup of coffee as she did so. “No way, Rosco if they start taxing people for windows they’ll be revolution.”

“I know that, you know that, but these” Corporal Orosco pointed to the news article displayed on his tablet. “are career politicians. They’re about as far from real people, from reality as you can get. Not one of them has ever had a real job!”

It's first a draft, so none of your nit picking!  I probably wont edit it for at least a week. This draft is 8824 words and under the provisional title of "AMRAT: the Bank Heist".