To Serialise Or Not To Serialise?

Or, ‘On Making Rough Drafts Public’.

Originally I was going to have this Friday’s post be about The Evolution of Setting, but I couldn’t remember half the points I wanted to cover, and I decided that I should probably save most of these backward-looking posts for when I’ve actually, y’know, finished a first draft or something similarly outlandish. So instead I’m going to talk about an important consideration for any writer who wants to build up a following online: namely, how polished does my writing have to be before I post it on the Internet?

Recommendation Tuesday: TPB AFK

This is one of those Tuesdays I mentioned where I will recommend something that's not-so-directly linked to The Neverland as a project, but has themes and subject matter in common. Is it still awesome? Oh yes.

If you're an Internet user, you may well have heard of The Pirate Bay, one of the biggest and most notorious sites for pirated downloads. But have you heard of the documentary that tells the story of the users behind The Pirate Bay, their beliefs about freedom of information which led them to create the site, and their recent court battle against the Swedish government?

Chapter One | The Darling House | 11:47 PM

Author's Notes: I tried SO hard to get this post up on time. I really did. I sat for hours yesterday with a blank document open and couldn't think of the right words to start off. I stayed up until 1 in the morning trying to write something that didn't sound godawful. I managed a couple of paragraphs before giving up. Then today, I went to visit a friend who lives in another county. On the train journey there I opened up the Notes on my iPod and immediately knew how the next bit should go. On the way back not only did I finish the post but I started planning out character arcs and suddenly a whole load of ideas came together. I won't spend forever talking about them here, but I am super stoked. Clearly what I need to do is just write every word of my novel whilst riding around on English trains x3
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That night, Wendy lay awake for an hour after her parents had gone to bed, until she was sure that they must be asleep. She crept out into the corridor and strained her ears for the murmur of her parents’ voices, but all she could hear were the sounds of deep breathing and John’s light snores coming from the bedroom he and Michael shared. Perfect. 

Recommendation Tuesday: 'Digital: A Love Story'

It’s Tuesday! I’m posting something! Yaaaaay!

For our first ‘Recommendation Tuesday’ I wanted to flag up a Visual Novel that’s been a huge influence on this story and especially my choice of setting. If you haven’t heard of a VN before, here’s a quick primer. I always describe it as a cross between a game and a “choose your own adventure” story – except that having said that, this VN is so much more than that. It’s called ‘Digital: A Love Story’ and you can download it for free from Lemma Soft Forums right here.

Chapter One | The Darling House | 11:15 AM

WELCOME TO PIRATES V2.2! WOULD YOU LIKE INSTRUCTIONS?

YES

THE YEAR IS 1665. YOU ARE A SWASHBUCKLING, SEAFARING LASS ABOARD THE HMS COMMODORE, A LAW-ABIDING MERCHANT VESSEL WHICH SAILS THE TRADE ROUTES OF THE CARIBBEAN. THESE TRADE ROUTES ARE OFTEN BESET BY PIRATE SHIPS: VESSELS FULL OF VILLAINOUS ROGUES WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO GET THEIR HANDS ON YOUR CARGO. I WILL BE YOUR EYES AND HANDS. DIRECT ME WITH COMMANDS OF 1 OR 2 WORDS.

(IF STUCK TYPE HELP FOR SOME HINTS)

A FELLOW SHIP IS SIGHTED OFF THE PORT BOW. IT IS FLYING THE UNION JACK, BUT SOMETHING SEEMS SUSPICIOUS. SHOULD YOU WAIT, OR INVESTIGATE THE SHIP?

WAIT

Wendy laughed, looking over her brother’s shoulder. “You’re not meant to do that! It’s right there in the text. You always play things so safe.”

“I wanted to see what you’d coded for the ‘wait’ option,” John reasoned mildly.

I Have a Cunning Plan

HELLO AGAIN. I am so sorry for the radio silence for the past month-and-a-half (gah, it’s been that long? @__@). I was in Japan and then I was in Beijing and then I went to Ha’erbin (a VERY cold Chinese city near the border with Russia) and then I was back in Beijing and then I came home to England. Finally. For four weeks :3 Hooray for uncensored internet! I’ve finally knocked my jetlag on the head and now I’m getting round to all the stuff I totally sidelined for the past couple of weeks while I was travelling about.

While I was on the plane home from Beijing my sleep-deprived brain managed to solve a plot hole for the middle of this story because for some reason I’m more creative when I haven’t slept. That was a positive step. All I need to do now is the actual writing part…

Also, I came up with a plan for a schedule for this blog. I’m going to aim to do two weekly posts, one on Tuesday and one on Friday. (I know today is neither of those. xD I meant to do this post last Friday, started writing it, and completely forgot to finish). Friday’s post will be a regular one – an excerpt, or status update, or ‘The Evolution of Characters’. Tuesday will be Recommendation Day. I will make a blog post recommending something which is linked to this project in some way, like an influential book or person or game. The link might be completely off-the-wall and obscure, but I promise to make the thing I plug an interesting thing.

So there you have it. This is my cunning plan. On Friday I will hopefully remember to make a post and the schedule will come into effect. For the sake of making it official, all times on this blog (for the next 3 weeks at least) are GMT/UTC, so there’s a slim chance that my post won’t go up on Tuesday/Friday in your timezone, but it will be in mine.

What have you (all two of you who read this blog) been up to since I last posted? Leave a comment!

A Little Too Caught Up in Research

This is a question for writers as well as for anyone who’s had to do in-depth research on an obscure topic, perhaps for work or school: Have you ever got so caught up in researching your subject that you forget most people aren’t experts on, say, global warming disaster theories or foreign policy in Tang Dynasty China? It happened to me the day before yesterday. I was with a group of friends, hanging out at someone’s house, and I got up to go to the loo. When I came back, the topic had somehow turned to the Internet in the early 90s and one girl remarked that at that time, not that many people in America used the Internet.

Pretty much all of my research for this fic has pointed towards that definitely not being the case! Certainly amongst such users that were online in the early 90s, America had the biggest demographic by far. In true online forums fashion, I chimed in on a discussion in progress having only heard the most recent comment. “But there were quite a few people on BBSes.”