19July2008
Posted by UltraRob under: General Writing; Uncategorized; Writing Audio Drama.
So, recently there was a moment when I was writing Twin Stars when I had both of my leads (who are living parallel but seperate lives in the story) in transit and in a position to cross paths. You know, the sort of scene you get when two characters are both in an airport and they walk past each other without knowing that the person they just walked past is someone their destiny is tied to. That sort of thing.
So I had the chance to have my leads have that sort of encounter, but I purposely chose not to. Why? Well, part of the reason was it wouldn’t have added anything to the story (which is reason alone enough not to do it), but there was another reason- to do so would have made the universe I’m building seem that much smaller.
I’ll give you another example from a movie series I imagine most people reading this have seen- Star Wars. Now originally Lucas presented the setting of Star Wars as an epic place and he did it with some subtle cues that really worked (hint- How many languages does C3PO speak?) and made the whole place really come alive despite actually only having a few locations in the actual first produced film. That was cool and good, and then he did the second film Empire Strikes Back where we learned Vader is Luke’s father- okay, a real co-incidence, but we’ll accept it as fate, right? Then he did Return of the Jedi where Leia is revealed to be Luke’s sister and Vader’s daughter- hold on? How big is this galaxy again? (I’ll stop there, but coming back to C3PO we find out later that Vader built him as a child, making the Galaxy even smaller.)
My point is- the more connections and co-incidences you have between your characters in a setting, the smaller the setting becomes. If the same six people keep running into each other for no reason other than co-incidence then how big does your setting seem? If they’re chasing each other that’s one thing, but if every time they go to a different Starbucks to get coffee that other guy is there then at some point the audience is going to wonder how many Starbucks there really are.
This I think is one of the reasons why a show like Doctor Who or Star Trek worked well in creating a big galaxy- they were meeting new people and going to new places every week- the place seemed huge and got bigger. But, if you do the reverse (say Doctor Who spent every second episode in Cardiff for no particular reason) suddenly the galaxy seems to be shrinking in on itself. Or if a show has the same villains showing up week after week- is there nobody else out there doing evil? Again, if there’s a reason for this within the story then it’s fine, but there’s going to be consequences and the writers need to be aware of them.
You can fight this to some degree by going out of the way to let your audience know how big the setting is in subtle ways (et tu 3PO?) as the little things often do a better job of showing the scope of the setting than outright saying it. (It takes HOW long to get from A to B? That’s a long time!) But the best remedy to keeping your setting from turning into a fishbowl is limiting co-incidence as much as possible. Which you should be doing anyways since things not happening for a reason in a story is bad writing anyways!
Rob
4July2008
Posted by UltraRob under: Uncategorized.
Wow, it’s been too long since I posted something here. Sorry about that!
The main reason (excuse) I will give is that I’ve been on Vacation for the past two months and for some reason I write MORE when I’m working than I do when I have time off. Not sure why that is, but is it.
Things I’m working on right now:
Radioplays:
Twin Stars Episode 7&8- 7 is effectively done, but 8 is driving me nuts. I know what I want to have happen but making it all come together the way I’d like is turning into quite a challenge. I may have had a breakthrough today though, we’ll see.
Little Gou and the Jade Lamb- Inspired by being here in Taiwan, it’s a bit like Little Gou meets Iron Chef! If there’s one thing the locals know how to do it’s eat! ^__^
An unnamed fanfiction project also inspired by being here, which if I write it won’t be for KFAT but will be handed off to someone else to produce for another group since I have a no-fanfic policy on KFAT.
A Team Iron Angel story set in Africa dealing with terminator seeds. If you want to know what those are, go look them up. Hint- they’re much scarier than Arnie was, and they’re real.
Rob
6June2008
Posted by UltraRob under: General Writing; Writing Audio Drama.
I recently had a chat with a fellow producer who produces audio drama based around Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction, and one of the questions I found myself having to ask is- “why bother?”
Now, this isn’t some slam against fanfic writers or furry fans (those will be other posts! [Just kidding!]) it’s about the question of the appearance of the characters. One of the key elements of the furry approach to stories is that all the characters are talking animal-people, which is fine but how do you translate that into a radioplay? I ran into a similar issue when I was thinking about the question of Aliens in Twin Stars- would I use aliens to add colour to the setting? The answer quickly came back- “why bother?”
Both aliens and furries are totally visual elements that are extremely difficult to convey in a radioplay unless you have a narrator in there describing everyone to the audience, which is fine but it comes around to the question of why they need to be aliens or furries in the first place. Without a narrator (which seems to be many producer’s preference) it becomes extremely hard to convey without using lots of silly voices and effects filters that may just leave the audience confused. (Or annoyed. Having the cat character say “meow” at the end of every sentence is cute and fine for a short show, but a whole series? And how can you expect the audience to take them seriously? (Assuming it’s a serious story.) “Why bother?”
I suppose if a producer wants his characters to be furries or aliens or pixies in his head that’s fine- the nice thing about audio is it really is the realm of the imagination! But they have to think through how they’re going to convey this to the audience, and whether the effort to convey that is worth it to them. In my case with Twin Stars I decided there are no aliens interacting with humanity and that the cast would be humans (or humaoids) for the most part. Like most things, it comes down to choosing your battles and deciding where you want to focus your energies. Twin Stars is a character-driven space opera, so whether there are aliens or not is pretty irrelevant in audio form. However, if I were doing like the other producer and focussing on furry characters for my own reasons then maybe I would make the effort if it was important enough to me.
24May2008
Posted by UltraRob under: General Writing; Writing Audio Drama.
There’s a thread going on over on the Audio Drama Talk forums about “Breaking out”- that is, finding a larger audience with audio drama. The thread starter seems primarily concerned with audience, and trying to improve your show by interacting with your audience. Here’s my own reply to the topic…
I guess the question then becomes- which audience do you listen to?
Let me give you an example- over on the Voice Acting Alliance website the audience there are mostly teens and in their early 20’s. They have a finished projects section, and people put their audio dramas in that section to be viewed and commented upon like anyplace else. If you put something anime/fan/video game related into that section your hits will instantly skyrocket as they trip over themselves to check it out. If you put something more traditional or original in that section that doesn’t meet those criteria it will generally sit there unless you’re a forum celebrity and then it will also jump up.
Pendant stuff, Darker Projects stuff, it doesn’t matter- the kids will turn up their noses at it and ignore it no matter how well produced it is.
However, if you were to take the stuff they trip over themselves over and put it on this forum it would sit here like Pendant or DP stuff does there. Different audience, different tastes.
One of the good/bad things about the internet is that it’s allowed people with diverse tastes to find each other and form communities around their tastes of choice. (Just like this one.) This is good because it does allow people like you and I to talk and discuss things we might never otherwise be able to discuss. (Such as this very topic.) It’s bad because it’s also made everyone specialists into their own thing who rarely pop their heads up to look at what’s around them anymore. Even on this very board, there are probably sub-groups who only frequent certain sub-forums and pretty much ignore the others.
So if I make a show now- who do I write to? Someone might say “write to a general audience”. But what is a general audience now? Can anyone tell me? Is a general audience those kids on the VAA? Is a general audience sci-fi fans over on their forum of choice who just want more of their favorite show? Is it the housewives in the knitting forum? The farmers on the Agriculture Today message boards?
Tell me, because I honestly don’t know. 
So I produce my shows for myself based on what I think a good show should be and try to advertise to a wide audience in hopes that the people who would like it will have a chance to find it. I try to write for (theoretical) people who would like the things I do and hope that there’s enough of them out there to count as “an audience” by whatever my personal standards are.
So far, I seem to be doing pretty well and my audience is growing monthly so I’m happy with it. (Oddly enough, since these forums came I’ve noticed a real spike in my numbers! Thanks again Crash!) It’s not 20,000 a month or anything, but it is enough to keep me producing and know that I do have an active (if diverse) audience of people who enjoy my work.
15May2008
Posted by UltraRob under: General Writing; Novel Writing.
I’ve just spent the afternoon reading through Lulu.com and I have to say it’s quite an interesting setup they’ve got there. Not only do they function as a online printing shop where you can make your own products (Books, CDs, Calendars, etc) they also function as a full publisher for your works as both a Print on Demand service and for an extra fee (basic publishing is free to the creator) they’ll even get you listed on Amazon.com and other online bookstores with a full registered ISBN number and all.
As I work through my options on how to distribute Little Gou and the Crocodile Princess (on Chapter 10 now, woohoo!) Lulu.com is definitely starting to figure into my plans. I know I will distribute it free as a podcast audiobook, but I’ve been debating on how to distribute the print version. Part of me wants to just consider the whole book a promo and give it away for free text and all as a way of building my reputation as an author. Another part however, thinks that I should make some effort to make a modest profit from my labors and just release the podcast and part of the text for free with the rest up for sale through Lulu.com. (And probably, if going this route, through Amazon.com as well! $100 for a book that can sit as being available for decades isn’t bad.)
Options…options…
12May2008
Posted by UltraRob under: Writing Audio Drama.
There generally seem to be two approaches to presenting audio drama- a staged approach and a chorus approach.
A staged approach is exactly like a stage play, TV show or movie- the action is set within a particular environment and is about the events that occur at that place and time. An example of this would be two people sitting on a park bench talking. The listener would probably be able to hear the sounds of the park, might hear footsteps walking past, and could even hear the participants moving around. This would all be there to set a sense of place and time for the audience, and even without this sonic backdrop the characters themselves might make reference to the park and it’s surroundings as they talk, making it clear to the audience where and when these events take place.
A chorus approach is quite different, in the chorus approach the sense of time and place is fluid and sometimes even just plain ignored. There aren’t any scenes as the dialogue and story flow from one point to the next without focusing on a single time and place long enough to really set much of a stage. This is a form that’s unique to audio drama because it’s very difficult to do this in visual mediums like TV or movies- the best way to think of this is like a controlled dream where the listener is being pulled along on a roller-coaster of sound and events. An example of this would be a story told in the form of letters, news clips and pieces of dialogue, or perhaps a single narrator telling a personal tale with other voices chiming in during the parts when other characters enter the story. Time and place is of minimal importance- what’s important is the story itself.
Both approaches have their place- I use the staged approach almost exclusively for my own work because I tend to keep things very simple and structured. That said, I have heard some chorus work that was simply amazing (check out Mercury Theatre On the Air’s Dracula for an example of this.) and often actually envy writers who can pull off the chorus approach well. To me it’s just not that easy since I tend to think in staged terms because of my long exposure to TV and movies. Maybe someday I’ll write some chorus stuff to try and see how I can make it work. Orson Welles made amazing use of the Chorus approach to bring huge stories down to simple 1-hour or less narratives, and perhaps it works best that way. Something to think about.
6May2008
Posted by UltraRob under: General Writing; Writing Audio Drama.
A post I recently put up on the Audio Drama Talk forums on the subject of having characters in audio dramas speak in archaic ways to represent the setting of the story:
People have always used slang, and will always use it, so I see nothing wrong with putting characters speaking ancient (or non-English) tongues in modern English. The way I look at it is that the characters are speaking the equivalent way they would in their setting for who they are. So a nobleman speaks proper English, a streetkid speaks in a slangy way, etc. To me when listening to a period (or fantasy) piece, it’s about how the characters act that’s important.
Xena’s cast wasn’t annoying to me because they spoke modern English, it was annoying to me because they had 100% modern attitudes to go with that English. The language they used was fine, the way they used it was the problem.
I had to deal with this when I started to do my Little Gou adventures, and think how I was going to represent a bunch of people speaking Chinese (Chinese dialects even, not even proper Mandarin!) in English. I quickly gave up trying to simulate their language in any way, beyond peppering in a few key words and transliterated phrases, and stuck with making the rest of the details fit instead. It just wasn’t worth trying to confuse my audience for any kind of accuracy.
5May2008
Posted by UltraRob under: Audiobook Topics.
The Best Laid Plans, a satire about Canadian politics just won the prestigious Steve Leacock award here in Canada, which might not be that important except for 2 points:
1) It was a self-published book.
2) The author also podcast the book for free as an audiobook to build his audience.
Does this mean there’s hope for those who use this technique to get our work out there? I’m not sure, especially considering the poor author mentions he still hasn’t managed to get a major publisher to touch his work in an interview. But, it’s darn inspiring and I wish him hearty congratulations!
Rob
5May2008
Posted by UltraRob under: Novel Writing.
I just finished Chapter Six of Crocodile Princess out of a planned 26 or so Chapters. It looks like I might be writing mostly about book writing in this blog for a while, but we’ll see. I’m sure I’ll still touch on audio drama writing from time to time. In effect at the moment my Audio Drama writing is on hold while I focus on trying to crank out the novel as quick as I can. I want to get it done before real life interferes with writing, which should hit about the end of this month. If I can write roughly a chapter a day I can meet my goal, but we’ll see how things work out.
One interesting shift I’m having to make in novel writing is in the perspective department. In the Little Gou audio dramas I’ve been doing I’ve generally kept to the perspective of Little Gou- very little of what happens in them is outside of what Little Gou himself sees or hears. I do this mostly for simplicity and to make the story easier to follow, but I also enjoy working with a more limited viewpoint. (Even Twin Stars does this, very little in Twin Stars is outside the viewpoints of Tysen and Ping-An.)
With writing the novel I’m finding since the story is bigger I’m being drawn to cover more and more events outside of Little Gou’s viewpoint which is a bit of a change for me. For the most part the story still of course focusses on Little Gou and those with him, but as it goes on I find myself writing more things that occur outside his perspective and knowledge.
The other thing I’m finding myself dealing with while writing Crocodile Princess is trying to find my own writing style, as the writing style I’m using now is a mixmash of my own style combined with various authors I admire or have made a study of. In a single chapter there are sometimes subtle shifts in the way I present things depending on when I write it and what mood I’m in. For example, sometimes I dialogue out every word, but in other scenes I skip over unimportant dialogue with narration. Sometimes I as the writer make comments about the story, but other times it’s more detached and objective.
Most of this will be smoothed out during the editing process, of course, but it’s still interesting to see my own style shifting and evolving before my eyes as it develops.
Rob
30April2008
Posted by UltraRob under: General Writing.
1) It’s about the characters.
The story goes that someone broke all the possible plots down into 36 different situations, and I’ve heard 7 as well, and 3 (man vs. man, man vs. himself,and man vs. nature). The truth is, it doesn’t matter how original your plot is- it’s been done before, and it will be done again, probably better than you’re capable of doing it by sheer odds.
So what’s a writer to do?
The answer is focus on characters. It’s the characters and their interactions that will make most stories unique, not their ideas or incredible plots. Characters are the one advantage every writer has over the competition because nobody out there has exactly your life experiences, and it’s those experiences you will use to draw upon when making your characters. Even if your plucky heroine is a typical plucky heroine she will still have some of you in her, and if you let that uniqueness flower it will help to make her different and special from the other plucky heroines out there.
2) Cause and effect- Putting a Gun to the Story’s Head
Chekhov’s Gun is the key to all structured writing.
Good writing is all about setup and payoff. If a character gets hungry then he makes food. If he’s tired, he sleeps. These are boring things, but the cause and effect is still there, and that’s what writing is all about- cause and effect.
Character A is in love with Character B, so Character A chases Character B.
Character C is in love with Character B, so Character C chases Character B.
Character A and C are both in love with Character B, so they hate each other.
Ta-dah! We have a story!
One event causes another, which causes another, which causes another.
Of course, the reverse is also true! If you set events into motion in the story, you have to be ready to deal with those events otherwise the story will fall flat. To use the above example- If you introduce the love triangle of A+B+C but then spend the whole story talking about B’s love for her cat then why did you introduce the love triangle in the first place?
Don’t introduce story elements you don’t plan to use, if they’re not relevant to the story why are they there?
3) Challenge- It does a story good.
An interesting story comes from watching characters overcome obstacles through their own skills and abilities. Nothing is more boring than watching characters have everything handed to them by the writer, and Deus ex Machina must be used sparingly.
A character going to market to buy a loaf of bread is boring. A character getting a ride to the store from a friend to buy bread is boring. A character having to figure out how to overcome the transit strike that’s shut the city down to get across town to buy a loaf of bread is interesting! (Or at least more interesting than just walking to the corner store.)
Challenge your characters. Say “no” to them, make them work to earn their victory. It makes the victory that much sweeter, and the audience will love you for it.
Trouble on the Horizon
My general formula for writing adventure stories is this- pile as many problems as you can on a character and then have them do clever (or occasionally brave) things to do to get out of it. That’s it, it’s really that simple. It comes down to the Challenge part I just talked about- they have to be troubles that aren’t easy to overcome, and need to be solved using the character’s own resources. The more you make your audience go “how is she going to get out of this?” the better! That means they’re active and interested, which is how you want them to be!
4) Right Person at the Right Time
I once had an argument with a friend about Star Trek:Voyager where he argued that the show was boring. His thesis was simple: everyone on that show is equally well adjusted emotionally, can do everything equally well (except the Captain, but that’s another topic), and seems equally competent all around in almost every area. Therefore, why did we need all of these people? Why did we need more than one of these people in a given story?
A good character is defined as much by what they can’t do as by what they can do. It’s watching the character that sucks at fixing cars try to fix a car that’s potentially entertaining, not watching the ace whiz through the process. This goes back to my last point about challenging your characters. It doesn’t mean that you need to always stick the worst person in the worst situation, but you should try to have characters face situations where they need to overcome their weaknesses whenever possible.
Stories are fiction, they’re not reality. It’s all about sticking the right characters in the right situations to get the mix you’re going for. No different than in putting in the right ingredients to bake a cake, or using the right colours when painting a scene. Everything that happens, everything that people say, every aspect of the story is a controlled structured element, and the more control you have over them the more control you have over how your audience will react to them.
5) Trim the Fat
To continue the metaphor from the last point, if you put too many ingredients into your cake then your cake will taste horrible. Things that taste good like salt and sugar need to be used in the right balance, not too much, not too little. This applies to story elements too- more is not necessarily better, and in fact may often be worse.
When writing try to be as concise as possible. Your job is not to pad the story out (unless you’re getting paid by the word), it’s to tell the story in the minimum amount of space it takes to tell that story.
Someone once said a good story is done when nothing else can be taken away, which I most heartily agree with. If you have a solid story, your job will be trying to keep it from ballooning out, not trying to make it larger. Editing will help a lot in this area, and this is why it’s good to have someone else edit your work, or at least set your work aside for a long period of time and then go back and edit it to get it down.
6) Just DO it
Heinlein’s Rules still hold. The best thing you can do as a writer is write, and finish what you write. Even if you screw up you can go back and edit it, but the key point is that you finish and produce a work of fiction that however good or bad is yours. Editing and re-writing is much easier than doing it the first time, so don’t let yourself get caught up with details while writing it- just try to get it written as good as you can and as fast as you can. That’s the whole idea behind Nanowrimo, to get people to just spill their guts on the page so that they can later go back and sort them out.
When writing I often fondly remember a military phrase I picked up a while back that stuck with me- “FIDO”, which is pronounced like a dog’s name and is an acronym for “F*ck It, Drive On!”. It means when something gets in your way you deal with it as best you can and you keep moving. Drive around the metaphorical tree across the road and then get back on track ASAP. If you spend all your time trying to deal with every little thing, you’ll get nothing done. The wonder of word-processors is that until it hits print, everything is changeable!