| Betaing |
[Jul. 7th, 2011|06:10 pm] |
I could really use some beta readers for Elcenia's re-launch who have not been exposed to the prior incarnation of the work. The betas I have nearly all have at least some familiarity with it, so they will make inferences that arbitrary new readers won't be able to and won't catch certain kinds of unclarity. (I'll happily take new betas who have read prior Elcenia versions, too, but am specifically seeking those who haven't.)
Here is what my beta readers do:
1) Be on an IM client a lot. Receive raw-HTML pastes of a few paragraphs at a time of yet-unpublished installments of writing.
2) Listen to me think aloud about future plot details, character development, etc. Be discreet about privileged information. (I'm not cagey about spoilers, but I prefer that they all be handed down directly from me, not disseminated indiscriminately from reader to reader.)
3) Supply feedback on the pastes and the thinking-out-loud. This has two purposes: One, I write faster and more happily when I feel like writing gets me attention. So if you have a comment or two on every paragraph, that is extremely helpful, even if the comments are just "Hahahaha! I like $SENTENCE!" or "Awww, poor $CHARACTER!". Two, to point out typos, catch grammatical brainfarts, identify areas of poor clarity, and otherwise find things I might want to change about the story.
Betas are given Borg designations in the form of Greek letters. (i.e. I have an alphabeta, a betabeta, a gammabeta, etc.) |
|
|
| A Food Thing |
[Jun. 6th, 2011|12:03 am] |
Toast ciabatta.
Spread herbed goat cheese on it.
Add avocado slices.
Top with a spice-sprinkled fried egg, bonus points if you get it so the yolk has that smooth soft buttery texture. |
|
|
| Sneak Peek: Elcenia Cover Art |
[Apr. 17th, 2011|01:37 am] |
Cover art for the first novel of the Elcenia relaunch. Sketchy and unfinished, obviously. |
|
|
| Speak To Me Of Spoilers |
[Apr. 16th, 2011|04:34 pm] |
I'm going to relaunch Elcenia soon. By my estimates, unless I cut out a decent chunk of content, the material already written will (when condensed and rewritten) comprise 7 (possibly 8) novels, 7 series of novellas/shorts, 12 standalone novellas, and 6 individual short stories.
A lot of these things take place concurrently, or partially concurrently. The first three things I'm going to write - a novel titled "Summons", a five-novella series titled "Blood", and a three-novella series titled "Silver" - overlap considerably. Summons begins at the chronologically earliest point I plan to cover; Blood starts during Summons but ends close to the last chronological point I plan to cover. (Some things happen in other stories after the end of Blood, but they're mostly either on another continent or a "next generation" sort of thing.) Silver starts near where Summons ends, and ends during Blood. All of these stories share significant numbers of characters, too, although they're focusing on different plot threads. Subsequent stories form similar overlapping clusters.
Speaking of characters...
Dear lord does Elcenia ever have a lot of characters. I was once challenged to name 50 of them from memory. I did 200. Without looking anything up. (I did name several dead characters to achieve this feat, but I also left out a bunch whose names I couldn't remember readily.) Even if I pare away as many extraneous individuals as I can, there's still a lot of characters. Oh god so many characters.
I cannot do without some form of character reference here. I mean, I know who everybody is and if you give me a big enough sheet of paper I could get at least 60% of them onto a single family tree from memory. But my readers would be lost, the poor lambs.
I don't know, though, how to make the character reference interact with spoiler potential.
For example: take a character I'll call Sister so you don't know who she is later on when you read Elcenia. Sister has a long-lost brother who I'll call Brother. While this relationship is (intended to be) fairly obvious once Brother is introduced, it is not something you know about Sister when she is introduced. If someone opens up the first chapter of Summons, meets Sister, and then goes and looks her up in the character reference, her page must not state the correct number of brothers that she has, because that's a spoiler for a later revelation. So such a page must either lie about or omit Sister's sibling-having status.
But, after this information is made known, the spoiler-safe page is actively misleading. The reference page is there to help readers keep track of the characters: there is a nonzero chance that a reader who looks up Sister has read past the revelation about Brother, but is having enough of a challenge keeping track of the cast list that ey will be badly misled by a spoiler-free page.
I don't know how to model the spoiler-averse brain, because I don't have one (the government took away the one I was studying, and its mason jar too). Somebody who doesn't like spoilers, please tell me what you would like a character reference page for Sister to look like so I can decide on how to present this type of content. |
|
|
| My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and So Are Drugs and Threats of Internment! |
[Apr. 15th, 2011|11:21 pm] |
Yvain: I think in Equestria depressed people are placed in re-education camps and injected with amphetamines until they perk up.
Alicorn: Maybe ponies are just congenitally cheerful. Besides, we know that malcontents are sent to the moon.
Yvain: Please, please don't send me into space! I promise I'll cover myself with sparkles and shout "Yay" at random intervals!
Alicorn: You must also profess a deep and abiding love of candy and streamers and bunnies! Or it's the happy drugs for you!
Yvain: NO! NOT THE ROCKET! I'LL CHANGE MY NAME TO RAINBOW HAPPY SPARKLE BUNNY FLOWER DAWN! ANYTHING!
Alicorn: You know, if you were really on board with the program, you would find the trip to the moon an exciting adventure! Or at least you would let your five very best friends drag you along so you could learn an important lesson about conformity!
Yvain: Yay! The cold merciless vacuum of space! It's like a rainbow with only one color in it!
Alicorn: That's better :P
Disclaimer: I actually like MLP:FiM (although I have little idea why). |
|
|
| raaaaaar |
[Mar. 29th, 2011|05:57 pm] |
Last week a piece of paper appeared on our door telling us to do various preparatory activities to prepare for being bug-bombed, presumably because someone else in our building complained of bedbugs (we don't personally have any). So this morning we put our soft things in bags and put them all in the kitchen out of the way of the relevant furniture.
Pest control was onsite but never knocked on our door, and when Roomie called the office to ask what the meaning of this might be, we were told that their piece of paper said we had been visited and bugbombed, even though we were home all day and neither of these things happened.
Oh well. At least it means we got the front room picked up a bit. |
|
|
| I <3 The Internet |
[Mar. 20th, 2011|10:36 pm] |
If the Internet were a marriageable entity I would totally marry it.
It is clearly courting me. It would not produce such wonderful things and present them to me with such demure generosity if it didn't want me. |
|
|
| A Brief Assessment Of The State Of The Me |
[Mar. 17th, 2011|06:06 pm] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) piseag wanted me to update my LJ. I don't have that much to say at the moment, but I haven't updated in a long while, so I'll just summarize what little is up with me.
I live in North Carolina now, having moved here from Connecticut after a stay of six months there. I like it here so far, and I'm getting along with my new roomie. We have compatible problem-solving approaches (this is so unbelievably nice to live with that I'm astonished I never made it an explicit priority before) and complementary domestic habits. She likes my cooking as long as I tweeze out single-digit numbers of individual grains of pepper to put in food so the level of capsaicin is undetectable to the human mouth.
I am minimally employed, with a few work-from-home odd jobs bringing in a trickle of income so I can go to Goodwill and its brethren on occasion. I'm not paying for rent, utilities, nor groceries, so I can afford to have very little cash coming in: I just spend less than that. Can I sustain it? I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see.
In the meantime, I have oodles of yummy spare time. I'm using it to write, mostly. I have now written two novels (fanfiction) at a combined wordcount exceeding 450,000 words, and have more (non-fanfiction) in the works, plus short stories of both fan- and non- varieties both complete and forthcoming. I'm still keeping up with my webcomic, but I'm losing interest, and hope to finish it for good in the next few months maybe so I don't just drop it in the middle. There might be liberal use of montages or something to hurry the plot along. I think once it's over with I'm going to shift focus to prose altogether; although I'll still draw sometimes, I don't want to commit to producing art to tell a story in the future.
I might start updating my food blog again soon, at the urging of a friend. If you want to see something specific go up there, let me know.
Strawberry rhubarb pie is really really really good. |
|
|
| On Gifts |
[Oct. 14th, 2010|12:29 pm] |
This isn't precisely a FAQ. It's a question/comment-and-answer-format set of instructions for people interested in getting me something for my upcoming birthday (or Christmas or any other occasion or lack of occasion). They are in a strange order in the hopes that I can reduce people being weird about them.
Q1. Something about the instructions below offends or upsets me. I don't want to comply with them.
A1. Okay. Don't get me anything. That is fine. I'm not being passive aggressive - it's really fine if you don't get me anything. If I linked you to this post, it's not because I'm hinting, it's because I thought it might interest you. If I was wrong, then my bad - ignore it.
Q2. But I want to get you something.
A2. Then follow the instructions.
Q3. But I don't like the instructions!
A3. Then don't get me anything. I realize our society has a lot of conventions about gift-giving that I flout, but it doesn't have to be complicated. I won't oblige you to follow gift-giving procedures that you don't like if you don't oblige me to follow gift-receiving procedures that I don't like. If you don't like the instructions, then the only intersection of those things is that you not get me a gift. Which is fine.
Q4. I want to get you a gift enough that I will tolerate your idiosyncrasies. What do I do?
A4. Talk to me about what I want to get and what you want to give, via whatever our normal method of communication is. Make suggestions, and get me a thing that I approve, or solicit suggestions, and get me a thing I ask for. If you have specific reference classes of things that you would like to stick to (especially price ranges), let me know and I will confine myself to appropriate ideas. Do not attempt to surprise me.
Q5. I saw a thing I think you would like, and I want to give it to you, but I have to get it now without consulting you, or (my opportunity to get it will evaporate/the thing will become inaccessibly expensive.)
A5. Then you can choose to take a risk on that thing. I reserve the right to reject gifts that I don't approve beforehand when they come from informed people. (Uninformed people get more leeway, but that just means I move the discomfort from them to myself because I do not hold them blameworthy.) If you are wrong about my likes, and I don't want the thing, then you can keep it yourself, give it to someone else, or otherwise handle it yourself. This is your risk to take. In this scenario, I will just flat out not receive this gift if I decide not to, and I will not even feel bad about it: you have been warned. Remember, it is okay if you decide I am too hard to shop for and do not buy me things.
Q6. But it is possible that you will like a thing I give you unexpectedly?
A6. Yes, that has happened. I have some objects that I like very much which were bought for me without my express advance request/permission. However, note that I would not like these objects one iota less if I'd known I was going to get them ahead of time. It is strictly better to check with me first if that can be arranged, because it cannot make the gift worse and it does eliminate the risk of my disliking the gift.
Q7. But I really enjoy surprising people with presents.
A7. The disposition to enjoy doing things to others that cause those others displeasure is called "sadism". Sadism should only be practiced with consenting partners. Surprise causes me displeasure. I do not consent to experience that displeasure so that you can experience your enjoyment.
Q8. I talked to you about what I could get you and we couldn't jointly think of anything mutually acceptable!
A8. Then you shouldn't get me anything, unless #9 failed to come up in conversation.
Q9. I desperately want to give you a thing without talking to you about it first! Please oh please won't you accommodate me?
A9. Money and gift credit to Amazon.com are both things that I can receive arbitrary quantities without redundancy, the risk of not liking it, or annoying levels of surprise. These are the only things I can think of that are always fine to get me without consultation or my needing to reserve the right of rejection.
Q10. Do these instructions apply to secondhand items (i.e. stuff I already have that I don't want anymore and think you might like)?
A10. These items count as risks taken per #5 situations. I might turn it down, but you can safely offer.
Q11. Do these instructions apply to homemade items (i.e. crafts, foods, etc.)?
A11. Yes. However, I understand that in accepting an offer for such a thing, I take the chance that the creative process will turn out a result I do not expect. As far as that goes you get the leeway of an uninformed person as described in #5.
Q12. What if we are physically co-located and I see a thing that I think you might want, or you express wanting for a thing, and I want to get it for you?
A12. You still have to confirm explicitly that I am willing to receive it as a gift. I sometimes express wanting for things that I don't actually want, on net. I might just be talking idly without mentioning things like lack of storage space, transportational difficulties, roommate incompatibilities, redundancy with existing possessions, or other factors that could make owning the item a poor choice. Also, I sometimes pet and coo over things that I just find texturally interesting and don't care to actually own. However, if you get my explicit verbal confirmation that I really want the thing and would like to receive it from you as a present, then this counts as talking it over with me and getting approval.
Q13. Your birthday is in just one week from this posting! Why are you saying all this now?! Now I have to panic about being late! AAAAAAAH!
A13. One of the nice things about not liking surprises is that I don't care very much if the physical object is on time. It can be four months late or early and I'll still count it as my birthday present if that's what you prefer to call it, as long as I know what I'm getting and approximately when. Fret not.
Q14. This is too hard. I don't want to get you anything now.
A14. Okay.
Q15. You mean you aren't going to reverse your instructions so you can receive the tender ministrations of my unguided gift-giving prowess?
A15. No.
Q16. I have another question.
A16. Ask it via whatever our normal form of communication may be. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
