Month: March 2020

Social Distancing — Not so Isolated

On By Dan MelnickIn PersonalLeave a comment

I’m glad that others are making the best out of a bad situation and getting a lot of writing done. Seriously, I am. I’m also super jealous. With three small kids at home, my writing has ground pretty much to a halt. As you can imagine, they don’t quite get what Daddy does on his computer. But I’m not really complaining. I’m lamenting. There’s a difference. I may not be making a lot of headway, but I’ve been spending tons of time with my family which is pretty great too 🙂

In the past, I’ve tried to publish a post every Monday — and missed more than a few deadlines — but this is going to be hit or miss for a while. In the rare moments when I DO get a chance to write … like right now … I may choose work over blogging. Sorry blog-buddies! So don’t expect any kind of consistency from me on the ole website. Hey, don’t blame me. Blame the Coronavirus.

If we’re talking actual progress then I think I figured out the problems I had with the second half of my new book. I knew what the protagonists were doing, but not how the antagonist would respond. That’s solved. I hope.Now I just need time and space to get back to the outline to plug all that in.

And I decided I’m growing a quarantine beard. Is this a thing? I haven’t shaved since work told me to stay home and I’m getting pretty bristly.

What I’m Watching: Lots and LOTS of Paw Patrol. I’m usually the one who gets up first with the kids so my wife can sleep. I need less hours than she does and can typically go more sleep-deprived days than she can before a recharge. So the task of keeping the kids alive and quiet often falls to me. We don’t usually use a lot of TV but early morning is the exception. Whenever I need them to be quiet so Mommy can keep sleeping, I just yelp for help!

What I’m Reading: I finished The Sword of Kaigen and … I have mixed feelings. I like it, I think. I like the world but the author doesn’t do much to help ground the reader in it. There’s a specific term that gets used a lot that I have a problem with because I don’t think it fits the rules the author created. I mean, this is just my outside opinion here.

That’s only the start of it. Not to give away a major spoiler, there’s a big battle halfway through the book. The entire second half is dealing with the fallout from said battle. And this is where it completely kicked me out. Again, my opinion here, but I feel like the author set up some promises and then either ignored or broke them all during that latter half. The climax of the book isn’t what the climax of the book should have been about. Or if so, then there wasn’t enough ground work to get there. Don’t give me the ole dangling threads excuse either. I love a few open ended things as much as the next person, but I’m talking central conflict points here. They don’t need to be resolved, but there should be movement. I think I see what the author was trying to do and how it made sense in their head, but it just didn’t work for me. It’s a shame too because I was all on board and then felt like I didn’t fall off, but was pushed.

I’ve also just finished Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch, the fourth Rivers of London/Peter Grant book. It was pretty much what I expected. It was the old friend, the sure thing, I needed after the previous disappointment.

Favorite Video Games of all Time

On By Dan MelnickIn PersonalLeave a comment

I’ve been updating my site some with more personal information. Favorite movies. Favorite books. The next, obvious list for me would be favorite video games. I mean, I’ve been playing video games since probably the second grade when I used to go over to Peter VanVarga’s house across the street and play Super Mario Bros. 3 or Battletoads. It was a fun, but it wasn’t until visiting my older cousins that video games really became a part of my life forever. They had the Super Nintendo, Mortal Kombat II and Super Mario World. My brothers and I would play over at the cousins’ house for hours. Sometimes it was NBA Jam, but usually it was MKII or Super Mario World. Favorite MK character? Sub-Zero, duh!

After how many visits, I decided that I needed a Super Nintendo of my own. I remember saving up every last dollar and cent I had. Up until that time, the most expensive thing I’d ever bought with my own money was the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. A SNES was about four times more expensive.

I rolled loose change, scrubbed my family’s brick walk, and did every kind of odd job I could think of including house sitting some cats for a family down the street. Eventually, I had enough to buy the SNES and it came with a free copy of Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country. The rest, my friends is history.

That Super Nintendo lead to so many great gaming moments with my brothers. I still can’t help but think of Donkey Kong Country every time it snows. That was our snow day ritual growing up. That one system has lead to the purchase of many more and an unknown amount of games.

I’ve tried coming up with a top 5 list of favorite video games to go with the others, but I’ve had a really hard time deciding what to count. There are some that I love for nostalgia — NBA Jam, looking at you! — and others that I love for the feeling I had playing them. I remember the absolute terror of Silent Hill but I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite. It’s been incredibly difficult deciding what makes the cut. So instead, here’s a list of games that I love. Some new. Some old. All great!

  • Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario World. Both for SNES. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent playing either game. I could probably draw the levels for you, I’ve played them so much. All time favorites.
  • Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Tactics for PS. Probably the stories that resonated with me at influential times in my life. They showed me that video games could tell actual stories and it wasn’t just jumping on goombas or crocodiles all the time.
  • Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for N64. I mean, the game helped launch a complete mechanics revolution. How could it not be good?
  • Nioh for PS4, XBO, PC. I’m not as good as this game wants me to be, but it doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy playing it. I love the world and the mechanics. It’s just fun to run around and fight everything. Plus, for as hard as the game can be, I really appreciate the fast load times when you die.
  • Bloodborne for PS4. It’s a modern masterpiece. It’s challenging, fun to play, but it’s the story and aesthetics that really got me. It was like someone had made a game specifically for me. I love everything about this game and it’s the only one I’ve ever bothered to platinum.

That’s about as definitive as I can make it. I mean, I still love the original Resident Evil and I’ve played enough GoldenEye to wear out a controller, but again, if we’re talking pure favorites here, it’s probably the list above. My apologies to all of the great games I’m forgetting at the moment.

For me, the real takeaway is that gaming isn’t just a hobby, it’s a lifestyle. Most of the games on that list are on there because yes they’re fun to play, but they also connect with me on another level. Whether its my hobbies and interests or memories with my family, video games have been a part of my life for over twenty years and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Outlines. Gotta Love ‘Em

On By Dan MelnickIn Personal, Writing ProcessLeave a comment

Still plugging away at ye old outline. Outlines are funny things. Even us outliners have different definitions of what that term means. I know some people who use a single page and cram the whole thing on there in broad strokes. Another author has an eighty page document that he’ll keep expanding and basically rewrite until that thing is basically the novel itself. For me, mine are around 20 pages. I want those broad strokes, story beats, and memos of important set pieces and dialogue, but I can’t have any holes. I no longer trust myself to figure it out when I get there.

The current thing I’m struggling with is what my antagonist is doing the whole time. This is a heist novel. I’ve got my plucky crew stealing things to ultimately rip off the big bad. OK cool. So what’s Mr. BBEG up to while all that’s going on? He’s not just waiting to be stolen from. Well, I guess he could be, but I need more than that from him. This is another way to raise the stakes. He’s got to show the reader how much worse things are getting so we’re routing for him to get ripped off.

I think I’m cracking it. On the verge or a cusp at least. I’m examining and extrapolating some of the other conditions I’ve introduced in the book around civic unrest to tease out some natural responses that way it makes sense for both the character and the world.

In the mean time, I’ve finally gone back to finish a short story I started way back in August. So that’s pretty exciting.

Also, while getting sucked down a research rabbit hole on YouTube (I was going to hyperlink it but come on, it’s YouTube), I was recommended the following video by everyone’s favorite algorithm. I took one look at the speaker and immediately jumped to conclusions. He did not disappoint. His channel is pretty awesome and I just wanted to share this new gem with everyone. Enjoy!

What I’m Reading: I dropped Red Winter. Speaking of stakes, there weren’t any. To not become an embodiment of your god means your god has to wait another ten years to try again even though it’s been a hundred years since your god has walked the earth last time and we see no reason why this is either a good or a bad thing … OK. Do it. Don’t do it. I don’t care.

I ended up picking up The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang instead. I liked the sample so much I had to enroll in a free trial for Kindle Unlimited to keep reading. I actually did that! If that’s not an indication of praise, I don’t know what is. So far, I really like the book. My only hangup is the jargon. Yes, SFF has jargon, but this feels … superfluous, I guess.

What I’m Watching: Well, hope to be watching Altered Carbon. Season 2 dropped a couple of weeks ago and I’m hoping to sink my teeth into that real soon.

Montage

On By Dan MelnickIn Iceberg, Writing ProcessLeave a comment

I’m breaking ground on the new outline. This one is a little more structurally complex, because I’m writing a heist novel! I’m super excited about it, hence the exclamation mark in the previous sentence. So of course, I immediately ran into a problem.

In most heist movies, we have an early montage where the characters are planning and prepping. It’s fun, shows off the world, and let’s time pass to the good stuff. I was wasting reams of digital paper trying to figure out how to translate this into prose. See, I thought it would be fun to have this central conversation and then cut away to some of the other little stuff. Like a montage, but not.

Here’s the thing, though, montages don’t work in prose. A book is already kind of like a montage as it picks and chooses what to show you, but it’s also slower than a montage because for every scene you have to get the reader into it and out of it again. The closest a montage can look in prose would be something like this:

  • The characters talk about the job.
  • Character A is soldering circuit boards.
  • Character B is throwing axes at a target.
  • The villain is locking the door on his vault.
  • Character C is trying on a silly costume with Character D and says “This’ll never work.”
  • Character A can’t get two wires together so she uses gum as a connector.
  • Etc.

That’s awful. No one would ever want to read that. It’s a list and takes you completely out of the story. Montages are visual tricks. More than that, they’re editing tricks, to show just enough information to allow the passage of time. In a book, you can just skip to the next scene.

Once I understood that, it didn’t fully solve the problem for me. I still have to have my characters plan and prep for the big score, but it needs to be interesting so the pace isn’t bogged down.

I know, who worries about pace in an outline. I do! Well, I try to. It’s one less thing to fix in post.

So that’s where I’m at. I think I’ve got a better handle of how to present the information. Now, it’s a matter of figuring out the sequence of events. Don’t worry, there will be definite skipping ahead. We don’t need to see how my one character uncovers a secret to exploit for leverage, we just need to know that he has it. But I can’t remove all that prep stuff because in a heist, that’s half the fun.

Oh and obligatory …

What I’m Reading: I finished The White Road and had a couple of false starts. Both The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo and To Break the Demon Gate by Richard Parks, I just couldn’t get into them. I wasn’t pulled in and interested by TNT and TBtDG did a poor job of setting place and scene. It was too lean to the point where I wasn’t engaged at all because I could barely visualize what was going on. Reading time is precious these days, so I can’t devote time and energy to something I don’t enjoy – Gasp! I know what agents must feel like! I did find something, though, Red Winter by Annette Marie about a girl who’ll become a god? An avatar of a god? I’m not sure, I’m only on page 45. I don’t love it. I’d say I’m mildly interested which could be a result of my desperation winning out so I’m settling, so we’ll see.

What I’m Watching: Star Trek: Picard. I initially wasn’t on board for this show. I thought there was no way they could do justice to a character who’ll live better in my nostalgia. Picard is my captain. So I was pleasantly surprised that I liked the first episode. Five episodes later and I realized Past Dan, Wary Dan, was right. This show isn’t about Picard at all. How could it be? Sir Patrick Stewart is 79 years old! You could honestly remove him from the show and things would happen exactly as they are in the same, gruelingly boring pace. The big reveal last episode, by the way, is something we’ve known since episode one … so yeah. There is no reason for Picard to even be in this series other than for member berries. He can’t be the only optimist left in the universe.