The Musings of Rob the Eternally Lost Zeppo

We’re at the end of week three now. Truth be told, I had hoped to be past the 50k mark by now, but stuff got in the way. Had a two-stage job interview on Thursday and Friday, so I couldn’t put out my daily word count quota on those days as I’d planned to, since trying to get a job took priority over writing. Anyway, after the inevitable fit of depression that consumed me after I washed out in the second stage of the interview, I just wasn’t feeling up to writing on Friday night, and then I was still too worked up about it on Saturday to really get any work done. As of late afternoon today though, I’ve managed to get back on track, churning out 2050 words today and bringing my total up to 46,130 words. I’m going to aim for a regular pace of 2000 words per day now, so I should have 50k by the end of Tuesday, all things going well.

I’m approaching the end of my Doctor Who/Evangelion fic’s first episode, and the plans I have laid out should carry me to the conclusion. The way things have been going so far, I’ll have reached 50k well before that anyway. So my thoughts now are turning towards the next stages of the fic; episode two and beyond, as well as editing of episode one once November is over.

I need to flesh out my season arc a bit more, as well as come up with more concrete ideas for the individual episodes themselves. I’ve been rooting around the Doctor Who RP community for ideas in that area.

I’ll also need to try and work out a way to balance the continued work on the fanfic with my own original work. I’ve done too much work on the fanfic at this point to just stop now and let it collect virtual dust on my laptop, yet I want to be able to work on my own original ideas at the same time. One idea for handling fanfiction and original fiction at the same time which I’ve considered in the past is alternating between original fiction and fanfiction on a day-to-day basis. The other is to do original fiction work during weekdays and leave fanfic work for the weekends. I know I can’t be the only fanfic author around who writes his own original stuff as well, so I’d love to hear back from other authors on how they juggle the two fiction types.

Oh yeah, and there’s still that horrible gap in the narrative between the heroes stuck in the cave trying to come up with a plan for ambushing the aliens hunting them down, and the aftermath of the ambush once they’ve escaped. That’s really bugging me, but it’s something I’ll tackle in the edit. For now, I have to keep powering on with the story I’ve got right now, especially as the end is starting to fall into place so nicely.

This week I finished reading both ‘Doctor Who: The Glamour Chase’ and the Evangelion fanfic ‘Orchestrating the Silence’ which were keeping me in the mindset and providing inspiration for the earlier weeks. Now I’ve switched to reading ‘Aeon Entelechy Evangelion’ (technically speaking, it’s more of a Cthulhutech fic than an Evangelion fic, but I’m enjoying it anyhow) and watching episodes of Doctor Who series 5 as inspiration instead. I’d blame ‘Aeon Entelechy Evangelion’ for my fic being infiltrated by elements of the Cthulhu Mythos, but it was really already going that way, since the Mythos seems to have had a growing influence on my work in recent years. Not that I’m complaining, it’s just a bit…odd.

NaNoWriMo may not be over just yet, but I’m already contemplating possible ideas for projects to do for April’s ScriptFrenzy. So far, I’m considering a TV pilot script for Robin Laws’ Esoterrorists RPG, and Cthulhutech: The Movie. (I’ve had Cthulhutech on the mind lately, and THAT I can definitely blame on Aeon Entelechy Evangelion.) I’m sure more ideas will jump out at me between now and then, as well; enough to randomly select on a dice with six or more sides at any rate.

I’ll be back next week with the penultimate NaNoWriMo report. I’ll try to post the final report on the 1st of December, before I head out to the Glasgow NaNoWriMo TGIO party, but time constraints may mean it gets delayed until the 2nd.

Anyway, until next Sunday…

- Ja na!

After a flying start in week one, I found myself starting to struggle quite a bit this week. Whereas my first week’s worth of work on the project followed a more or less linear path from the beginning of the first episode to the end of its first act, this week’s writing has been more haphazard.

After following the linear progression of the plot a bit longer, I had my heroes - as intended - hiding out in a cave from the bad guys, trying to plan their next move, which would involve laying a trap for their pursuers in order to capture one and steal his teleport. Unfortunately, I found myself stumped as to how to set up the trap, and so I wound up skipping ahead to a point shortly after they’d dealt with that issue.

This wasn’t the only time-skip I made during this week’s writing, I also wrote ahead to the denouement scenes for the episode, as well as some scenes from later episodes - some involving story arcs I’m not yet certain I wish to use - and I also added an extra bit to the first episode’s opening which gives a bit of a nod to the main series arc plot I have in mind. So, it’s become a bit more of an uphill struggle this week - as is normal for week two, I believe - but I managed to work my way through it and made my way to 36,512 words.

Along the way, I’ve discovered some things about the original characters appearing in the first episode, mainly the villainess and her minions. I’ve discovered how ruthless the villainess is, and how harshly she punishes failure. I’ve discovered that their species is psychically adept, and worked out how this can work for and against the heroes. And I’ve discovered that one of the minions might have something in common with one of the heroes, and that this common ground might actually give him a compelling reason to turn traitor. I still haven’t discovered how the heroes get out of that damned cave though, which is really bugging me. Oh well, hopefully I’ll find a way eventually.

In any case, I think I’m reaching that point in the plot where things start to hurtle downhill snowball-like towards a conclusion. At least as far as the first episode is concerned. There’s still twelve episodes to write up after that’s done. All told though, I think I’m still making good progress.

I’ll be doing another blast of 2,500 words tomorrow, after which I’ll be levelling out to 2000 words for the remainder of November. That’s assuming I don’t decide to do extra at the weekends out of sheer boredom. If I keep to this schedule, I’ll have reached the 50,000 word target by the end of Friday, so wish me luck with that.

I just bought Write Or Die Desktop Edition towards the end of the week there, and so far it’s been an invaluable means of keeping my nose to the grindstone. It’s even less forgiving than the browser version. You can’t get away with just moving your text cursor back and forth along the text, for one thing.

NaNoWriMo stuff aside, I’ve not got much more planning done on the new blog content. NaNoWriMo and a chest infection have pretty much consumed my life this week. I will be trying to write my review of ‘Doctor Who: The Glamour Chase’ by Gary Russell before I head for bed tonight though,if I still have the time. That’s all from me for now, until next time…

- Ja na!

Hey all! I’m currently putting together some plans for future blog content. I’ll be continuing with the reviews, the actual play reports and the monthly plot hooks, but I’ll also be posting some content in which I discuss various topics relating to film and television, fiction writing and roleplaying, and also talk about how links can be formed between these subjects, such as relationships between fiction writing and roleplaying, how elements of film and television can be applied to roleplaying, and other such connections.

In the meantime, though, I’ve signed on for this year’s NaNoWriMo, so I want to talk a bit about that. National Novel Writing Month is an annual event that takes place during November. The goal is to write a 50,000 word body of fiction by the end of the month. My project for this year’s NaNo is a crossover fanfiction bringing together the worlds of Doctor Who and Neon Genesis Evangelion. I had originally considered working on either a Lovecraftian urban fantasy story of mine, or a sci-fi mystery set in a sci-fi universe I’ve been doing some world-building work on recently.

Eventually though, I decided to settle on a fanfiction plot I’ve had rattling around in my head for about a year now. I didn’t want to work on one of my original works for NaNo this year, not after last year. I tried to get started working on a sci-fi psychological story that had been close to my heart as my project for NaNo during my first attempt back in November 2009, and did so with no real outlining done beforehand. So, I wrote by the seat of my pants - known as ‘pantsing’ among NaNoers - for about half the month before I finally burned out at about 35,000 words. Not bad, as far as word counts go, but not finishing disappointed me, and I haven’t touched the story again since. I’ll get back to work on it sooner or later, but I definitely feel that working on that story for NaNoWriMo was a mistake, and failing to acheive the goal with it definitely put me off working on it for a while.

So this year, I’ve decided to work on a project which I personally feel is a cool idea, but which I’m not too invested in because for the most part the characters and the universe aren’t my own creations. Hence the Doctor Who/Evangelion fic.

When I first came up with the idea, it started out as featuring the Tenth Doctor - this was in the middle of the hiatus between seasons, and I felt like giving the Tenth Doctor a few adventures with new companions before his regeneration - but I never quite got round to writing it, and then series five came round. I grew to love the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and her boyfriend Rory, and I realised that I could have a lot more fun with a character dynamic between Shinji and Asuka, and this group, than from just the 10th Doctor on his own. So, the plan was revised, and the crossover became a post-season five fic again. But I felt guilty about ‘wasting my time’ on writing fanfiction, rather than on my own personal work and couldn’t quite get myself to work on the idea. So, this year’s NaNoWriMo is my opportunity to work on the fic without that guilt, while also getting me back into the writing habit, and getting me used to writing so many words per day.

So far, I’ve done pretty well. I managed to outline a good bit of the first ‘episode’ of the fic in the week or so before NaNo started, so I know more or less where I’m going next with the story at any given point. I’ve stumbled a few times, trying to find dialogue to have between the two different groups, but mostly it’s going alright. I have a plan, also, for the arc progression over the course of the ‘season’, but no solid ideas for future episodes, yet. I powered on ahead at a rate of just over 4000 words per day in the first three or four days of week one, trying to build up a buffer for myself in case I hit a slump midway through the month. After those initial days, I eased back slightly to a more sanity conducive rate of 2000 words per day, and the end result is that my word count as of this Sunday night is 20,163. Not bad, especially considering how I’ve been bogged down with the cold since Friday morning.

My hope is that I can maintain the current pace of 2000 words per weekday, and do 4000 words per day during the weekends. Assuming I can keep working at that level, I should reach 50,000 words by Friday the 19th, if not sooner. Of course, things rarely go according to plan, so I could hit a block between now and then, or something else might come up in my life that means I can’t write as much. Fingers crossed that I actually manage to stay on target though. As a reward for myself, I’ve decided I’ll get myself a RP book (I currently have my eye on either 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars, Fiasco or Inspectres) if I make it to 50,000 by the end of the month, so that’s some extra incentive right there. Plus, there’s the discount being offered to winners of NaNoWriMo on buying Scrivener for Windows when it’s released next year. I’ve been using the beta version for NaNo, and so far it’s looking pretty neat, even though there are clearly bugs that need to be worked out (that’s why they call it a beta, after all).

And that’s pretty much it, folks. I’ll be back with another report on NaNoWriMo next Sunday. Until then…

- Ja na!

Sorry I’m a bit late with this month’s plot hooks post, but I’m participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo, so that’s pretty much eaten a lot of the time I’d usually use for blogging. I might post a weekly report on my progress in NaNo on here, or over on my other blog which I’ve been neglecting even more than this one. (Once NaNo is out of the way, I’ll see about boosting my blogtivity, promise.)

But right now, I have a rather different ‘weekly report’ for you all. This month’s load of plot hooks is for the Laundry RPG from Cubicle 7, based on Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series, which follow the exploits of a British intelligence agency who protect the UK (and the world in general) from Lovecraftian horrors. For this series of plot hooks I was inspired by an episode of Spooks to write it out in the form of a weekly intelligence report. The hooks themselves are ‘ripped from the headlines’ this time, rather than based on a theme or a song album.

I personally can’t wait for the opportunity to run this setting, but writing up plot hooks for general use will have to suffice for now.

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CAPITAL LAUNDRY SERVICES

WEEKLY INTELLIGENCE REPORT WEEK 44: November 1st 2010

Item #25: Locals in the Gorsarth area have reported an unmarked van dumping barrels of toxic waste in the countryside over the past three weeks. Those living in the vicinity have since begun exhibiting symptoms similar to those of radiation exposure, with a few peculiaries such as oddly luminous rashes on their skin. The chemical composition of the waste is yet to be determined, and the identity of the dumping crew and their motives are currently unknown. Level of threat flagged as BLUE: A/B.

Item #26: Work at the drained Loch Ffily site has recently been halted after the mining operation unearthed what was initially believed to be an unexploded bomb. The object now appears to be a capsule of as yet unknown origin and function; currently awaiting expert analysis of the capsule by Laundry personnel for further intel. Level of Threat BLUE: C/C.

Item #27: Guests and staff members at the Harper Hotel have been falling ill in the last 48 hours. The first known patient has now died rather violently, his chest having apparently exploded. The other patients are currently under quarantine in their hotel rooms. The investigation into the nature and source of this sickness is currently ongoing. Level of threat RED: C/B.

Item #28: An undercover Laundry agent has been killed in a hit and run incident outside Club Elazar. Agent AMOUROUS was conducting an investigation into suspected cult operations at the club, and it’s possible the agent discovered something which prompted hostile forces to take action. Following this development, the level of threat for YELLOW LAZAR has been upgraded to BLUE: C/A.

Total number of threats: 28.

This concludes the weekly report.

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So, that’s this month’s series of plot hooks, hope you like them. Don’t know that I’ll have any plot hooks for next month, what with NaNo and all.

If I do though, they’ll probably be for Doctor Who, as that relates somewhat to my NaNo project.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now, and I’ll see about posting a NaNoWriMo report at the weekend.

- Ja na!