First, you may have heard me mention elsewhere that I wrote a book in November. This was part of the National Novel Writing Month competition; this was the first year I decided to participate, and I won! (Before you get too excited, hundreds of thousands of people participate, and "winning" just means you managed to write at least 50,000 words [about 200 pages in paperback] of a novel within the month of November. There are a lot of winners.) My novel is the story of a WWII tank crewman who, through some bizarre twist of fate, magic, or science, somehow finds that his mind has been transplanted into the very tank he once crewed. It's the tale of his journey through occupied France in the aftermath of the D-Day invasion in the company of a sassy French psychic as they try to stay ahead of the Nazis and discover what has brought about his bizarre condition!
It's called Losing Track, and it's just the first part of a multi-book series. I'm working on editing it right now; I think it's going to need a couple more drafts before it's anywhere near ready to be published. Once we reach that point, I expect I'll self-publish using a site like CreateSpace. Naturally, I'll post a link to where you'll be able to order it here!
NaNoWriMo, as it's called, is pretty grueling; I found myself with little time to do anything but write in that month. When I started out, I assumed I would need to write through my lunches at work in order to have a chance at making the deadline. I was very lucky that a few of my nearby friends were participating as well, so we had a few super-productive writing parties. In the end, my lunches were unharmed. The great news is that I loved it -- right after finishing I was feeling pretty burned out, and promised myself I wouldn't do it next year, but looking ahead I can't see how I could deny myself that pleasure.
You see, I decided that for my first NaNoWriMo, I wanted to go in whole hog -- an ENTIRE NOVEL in one month -- and didn't let myself do any outlining or other preparation in advance (which is pretty common for participants to do). The most I would let myself do before it started was think about what premise I'd like to write about. And while it turned out pretty well (I think), I know that I can write much more efficiently, and write a much better story, if I give myself the chance to think about what's going to happen next before I actually sit down to write it.
In fact, I had a book all outlined and ready to work on when November arrived, but my decision forced me to set that aside. That book was titled Gravity Hack (if you google that name, you will find a youtube video of a dubstep song sharing its title that was uploaded in October, but I promise I thought of the name years before [also, I do not listen to dubstep]). GH would have been an epic sci-fi story about humans exiled from earth, mind-machine interfaces, two kinds of psychic powers, an alien invasion, a superintelligent nanovirus that passes itself off as God, and love. Which isn't to say that I'm not still going to write it; I'm just no longer sure that a book is the proper way to do it.
When I first conceived of GH, I realized that a lot of the scenes would be very, well, cinematic, but I don't have the budget to make it into a movie in a way that would suit my vision (I could write a movie script and try to sell it to Hollywood, but then I'd lose creative control over it. I could also try to crowd-fund it, but that'd be an uphill battle given my complete lack of movie-making experience; plus, on the off chance it were successful, it'd mean I'd have to work on it full-time, and I don't want to quit my job.
There is a computer program, one I've toyed around with in the past, called RPG Maker; it's designed to let you quickly and easily put together a computer game in the style of games like Final Fantasy in the old days. Here's a screenshot of one of the early scenes:
It's a pretty spiffy little program; all of the characters on the screen above were created using a character generator. I was just gluing pieces together, but technically they're original creations. And while this program is designed for making games, it's versatile enough that you can use it for whatever you want. I don't think I really want to put a strong game element into this, as I feel like it would get in the way of the narrative and, more significantly, it might present a strong obstacle to people who don't play games from experiencing my work. To that end, I might create two versions; one for gamers, and one for people who just want to experience the story at their own pace. The great thing is that this tool is cheap and extremely easy to learn and use; within the first hour of using it, I was able to create a pretty atmospheric area with a lot of funny things to see and do.
The only problem I have is that, while the built-in graphics look really good, and you're entirely permitted to use them in commercial products you want to sell (although the graphics in the shot above are mainly from a futuristic graphics pack that costs a little extra), it seems a little tacky to make a commercial product using prepackaged graphics. Therefore, my plan is that when I finish the main plot of the game/interactive movie and I feel it's close enough to production quality, I'll hire an artist to draw custom graphics through the entire game, giving it is own unique art style and hopefully setting me apart from the rabble.
The best part about all of this is that some of the same friends who were by my side through NaNoWriMo have been drawn into this little idea too, so we're competing against each other to see what kind of cool things we can create. That kind of friendly rivalry, I think, is going to bring out the best in me, so I'm really excited to see where this is going to go! I just found out about this: World Game Development Month! Who's in?!
Hmm, I just realized I'll probably have to hire somebody to make music for the game, too. It's crazy that sometimes I find myself wishing I didn't have such a good job; it would make it a lot easier to pursue my dreams! Well, maybe when I finish paying off $150,000 in student loans, it'll be time to focus on passions. For now, I'm lucky to work at a job that I like, with people I like, and still have time to follow those dreams on the side. Thanks for following along!
Maybe you should start listening to dubstep.
ReplyDeleteI did try listening to that song -- it didn't really do anything for me. How ominous!
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