I’ve been editing quite a bit this weekend, which has been a lot of fun although it has also been hard work. On the other hand, some of the tools that I’ve developed (the VBScripts, for instance) are able to show me that I’m making objective progress. Whether that translates into subjective progress is something yet to be seen, but I believe it does (in other words, I think that an objectively better text will translate into a subjectively better experience for the reader).

Just to give an example, one of the big problems that faces new writers is the fact that they are often repetitious. We can often catch a lot of these problems ourselves, but often it takes extra readers to find them. That’s why, for instance, in the dedication I wrote for Public Transit, I included the phrase “Thanks, I suddenly realized, to…” I had used the phrase “suddenly” and “realized” as well as the combo “suddenly realized” a lot in that novel without knowing it; but the readers I gave it to for critiques spotted this flaw instantly.

Let’s make this concrete. Suppose that I wrote the following paragraph:

The wide receiver ran to his starting position. On the snap, he ran down field as fast as he could. Once in the open, he turned back, saw the ball already in the air. He ran to where it would fall, scooped it in his arms, and ran for the end zone.

When I run that paragraph through my stats program, it tells me:

There were 52 total words.
There were 35 different words used.
There were 27 words used only once.

So what this tells me is that in the above paragraph, there were 35 unique words that made up a total of 52 words. That means about 2/3 of the paragraph was unique. More importantly, of the 35 different words used, only 27 of them were used only once. That means that there were 8 words used more than one time.

But here’s where the problem of repetition comes in. See, there were 52 total words, with 27 words only used once (meaning we haven’t accounted for 25 words). There were 35 distinct words, meaning that there were only 8 words that accounted for those missing 25 words! Thus, 48% of this single paragraph was comprised of 15% of the words used in it.

Because the paragraph is so short, we can look at all of the words that appeared more than once:

6 the
4 he
4 ran
3 in
2 as
2 his
2 it
2 to

It’s not a surprise that “the” is high on the list, since “the” is a function word. In this context, so is “he”, “in”, “as”, “his”, “it”, and “to.” Those aren’t a big deal.

But what about “ran”? “Ran” is a verb, not a function word. What happens if we substitute synonyms for the word “ran” in the paragraph?

The wide receiver trotted to his starting position. On the snap, he raced down field as fast as he could. Once in the open, he turned back, saw the ball already in the air. He ran to where it would fall, scooped it in his arms, and sprinted for the end zone.

Now when I run my stats programs, I get the following result:

There were 52 total words.
There were 38 different words used.
There were 31 words used only once.

The numbers have improved. We added three more unique words, and because we only used the word “ran” once, we’ve added four to the number of words used only once. Furthermore, now the only words that occur more than one time are all function words.

Now, 73% of the text is comprised of different words (up from 67%), and 60% of the text is comprised of words used only once (up from 52%). Finally, 40% of the text is comprised of 13% of the words (whereas before 48% was comprised of 15% of the words).

Those numbers show that the second paragraph is objectively superior (assuming, of course, the rules of syntax and grammar are followed). That doesn’t mean it’s subjectively better though, because subjectivity relies on personal taste. However, I would say that generally speaking objective improvements would indicate subjective improvements too.

So why do I bring that up? Well, let’s just look at the numbers for my first chapter of The 13th Prime before I did my edits this weekend:

There were 3684 total words.
There were 1001 different words used.
There were 595 words used only once.

Compared to after my final edit this weekend:

There were 3694 total words.
There were 1053 different words used.
There were 668 words used only once.

You can see that I added 10 words to the total length. However, I added 52 “different words” and 73 “words used only once”!

Now with longer texts, the ratios won’t apply the same way as they did when I examined the single paragraph above. Still, I do look at how often a word appears in the document, and for this size of a sample I don’t want to see non-function words appearing more than around 20 times. That gives those words a cap of about 1/200 (that is, I want to keep non-function words appearing no more than once every 200 words).

Of course there are ALWAYS exceptions to this, so if I read something and artistically feel it’s better to have a repetition, then I’ll include it. But in those instances, I better have a darn good reason to do so!

I was going to post part of this yesterday, but I didn’t. Stupid Bush.

Anyway, turns out that I was a bit inaccurate in my previous post, as the PDF text-to-speech worked just fine on my friend’s computer at distinguishing between wind (as in “wind-up”) and wind (as in “the wind blows”). The only difference is that he didn’t have Office 2007 (and may have in fact been on XP since the default voice was Microsoft Mike while on Vista it’s Microsoft Mary).

Yet more proof that Vista is a downgrade from XP. Not that more proof was needed.

Anyway, I also have to give a shout out to that same friend, Travis. I’ve finished the latest edit on The 13th Prime and was starting to go through it chapter by chapter (although it doesn’t have real “chapters”…but that’s another story). Since Travis is good at editing and giving his opinion, I sent him the first chapter after I was about 95% confident in it.

Showing he’s a true friend, Travis said: “I can tell this is one of your older works.” Why? “Because you’re much better now.”

Which actually confirmed my suspicious. I had figured that I was 95% done and that it would only take one more draft to iron out a few remaining rough patches, but as I had begun work on the second chapter revisions I had gotten a bit bogged down and had begun to think that it might be a little less than 95% ready. But I was still in that delusional area where I thought I was close enough.

But Travis’s critique was spot on. And more than that, I knew that I was a better writer than my current version of The 13th Prime has me.

Earlier this year, I wrote a short story entitled What Time Can’t Heal. I haven’t posted it anywhere because I entered it into a short story contest which, if I win, will publish it and I don’t want to have the story already archived in Google’s cache before it can get published. But if you were to ask me what my best work was to date, I would say it’s that short story.

After I spoke with Travis this morning, I got to my lunch break and decided to rework the first chapter again. It’s 7 pages long (in default Word format, not book format), and I wasn’t able to get the entire chapter revised on my lunch break. However, as I edited it, I consciously told myself: I’m writing What Time Can’t Heal again. And with that short story in mind—not the plot, not the structure, but rather what I felt internally as I wrote it—I finished up three pages.

And it was so much better than the draft I had given to Travis yesterday.

I’m not saying it’s perfect yet. Because it’s not. I’ll need to do at least two more revisions after I’m done with this one before I’ll get that confident in it (because I’m the kind of person who edits until I get to the point where I think the best I have is a neutral edit; that is, I could change words around but it won’t improve the story. That’s when I’m done editing…and sometimes I think I’m there before I really am too, but again, that’s a different story.)

In any case, this means that the quick final edit I envisioned is now a bit more intricate than originally thought. But the end product ought to blow the current version away without even trying.

So thanks Travis :-)

Oh, and I still blame Bush.

A cool feature of the newest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader is that it has the ability to read a PDF file to you, using Microsoft’s text-to-speech capabilities. Unfortunately, the voices aren’t that great, and it mispronounces several words (like “wind” is always the kind like when you wind up a watch, and never pronounced like when the wind blows).

However, despite this drawback, it’s a very useful feature for writers. Why? Because when you’re proofing a document, it’s often best to have it read aloud.

And if you have Office 2007, you can save Word documents as PDF files, open them up and have Adobe read them back to you. (You can also have Microsoft’s software read along too, but it’s a bit easier to set it up using Adobe, IMO.)

In any case, having your computer read your document back to you helps you to find places where you made mistakes, especially involving function words (the words that you kind of “skim” over when you’re reading normally). And since it’s easy enough to get it set up, now any writer can benefit :-)

Today I got to play the game Dead Space. I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not since I’m not really into sci-fi games that much, but since it was recommended and since it was also really cheap (I should note, I rarely pay full price for a game), I decided to give it a shot. And I’m glad I did, because the game’s pretty good.

Pretty good? Okay, it’s awesome. Not perfect, but it’s got my attention at least. Many games these days just don’t have much “playability” to them. I think of the Halo franchise, for instance, where basically what you do is play the same thing every 30 seconds for six hours. It gets really old, really fast in other words. That the Xbox 360 gives you achievement points is really the only reason why you’d bother to play the solo game more than once. At least with multi-player, you have a human you’re responding to, so it’s not the same thing every 30 seconds then. But if you’re doing the campaign…boring is the only word to describe it.

Not so with Dead Space however. DS is one of those horror shooters, where instead of being Rambo and running toward enemies to blast them to little bits, like in games like the Call of Duty franchise (which, I should note, I do like), you’re freaked out by the enemies that aren’t there. So as you’re going down a hall, you hear the creaks and groans of the ship you’re on, and you can hear the aliens growling and grunting, and you know there somewhere nearby, but you can’t see them. Of course, they’ll jump out at you at some point (although that gets somewhat predictable after a time—but even with the predictability, there are some times that still get you).

In any case, I’ve completed 10 chapters of the game. There are 2 left, according to the achievements section (I could look it up online to make sure, but I figure why bother? I’ll finish it tomorrow either way). And the only complaint that I have about the game is the frustration factor that sets in. That’s when you’re told, “We need to get this goal accomplished” and you go forth and get the goal accomplished only to find out someone behind the scenes has sabotaged something else, so now you have to get ANOTHER goal accomplished. This is okay every once in a while, but when it happens at the end of 10 straight chapters, it gets annoying. Not enough to make me stop playing, but enough to make me note it. I think the game play would be better if they just gave you a list of objectives at the very beginning, and said, “Here’s the ten things you’re going to have to do.” Throw in just two or three sabotage events, and the game play is less frustrating because you feel like you’re actually getting somewhere.

And that brings me to the actual point of this post, which isn’t so much a review of Dead Space as it is using the video game to think about story. Many video games these days are getting story oriented. It happens a lot with RPGs, of course, but it’s becoming more obvious in other games that typically don’t have much story going for them. Now I’ve yet to find a video game story outside of RPGs (like, say Final Fantasy VII) that has any real depth to it, but games are getting better at it. It used to be that you could wow people with awesome graphics and they wouldn’t care about the story; now we’re finding that all the awesome graphics in 1990 are hideous today and, therefore, we need a story.

But the important part of the story isn’t the plot; it’s not the sequence of the events that occur. The important part of the story is the character development. And this you’ll find true of stories in general. Take, for instance, Robert Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy (I mean the books, not the movies). What made the first book so compelling is that you actually cared about Jason Bourne. You struggled with him as he sought to reconcile his good beliefs with all the evidence he was collecting that he was an assassin. How could he be a cold-blooded killer?

The movie, on the other hand, jettisoned the character of Bourne and instead focused on the actions. They weren’t even the actions of the book, but that’s another issue. Bourne became an action figure, and the result was that the first movie was lame. You didn’t care about what happened to Bourne. You had nothing invested in him. The only virtue he brought was that he could do cool moves that you couldn’t do, and even that is something that we subconsciously recognize as a cheat because of trick photography and wire work.

The net result: if you want something good, character always trumps action. If you care about the character in your story, absolutely nothing could happen and it’ll be a great story. If you don’t care about the character in your story, he can win the world and you won’t want to read the story ever again.

Dead Space doesn’t have much characterization in it, but it does have more than the average FPS. You’re given more than just a set of objectives to fulfill. Even so, the game would have been so much better had the gamers tried to invest a bit more in building empathy for the characters in the story and the people who play the game. So it’s a good first step, but an even better first step was F.E.A.R. which, incidentally, is of a similar horror game genre—in fact, the first time you play that game if you don’t know what’s happening, you’ll end up firing about 20 shots at nothing (the first level is a training level so there’s no real threat, but it’s set in the story so you think there’s a threat).

In any case, there is perhaps hope for the future. Game developers are reaching a state where they can no longer hide deficient story with the “coolness” factor of better graphics or sounds. We’re pretty much maxed out there (about the only thing that’ll be better is when they get a 3-D game). This means that story is becoming more important, and as a result I predict that in the next five years or so we’re going to finally get the types of good stories found in RPGs over in action games.

Before I begin…

CONGRATS TO TRAVIS!!!!

Yup, he’s breakin’ out the ol’ cigar now. Well, he would be if he was a Presbyterian….

Oh well.

Anyway, today I edited through two different stories I’m working on. They’re both basically complete now. One, Snake Oil, is ready to go; I’ll try to submit it tomorrow, but since work is going to be a bear (we’re doing one of those HR-forced-bonding experiences called an all staff “picnic” so that means that we have to be finished with all our work before we go, which only accomplishes us having to do 8 hours of work in 3 hours…you know, kinda the “let them make bricks without straw” mentality) I might end up not sending it off until Monday. And re-reading that sentence I have to say: “Hello. I’m a professional writer.”

Anywho, the other short story is at a point where I feel comfortable saying it’s done, but knowing me that means that I need to do another revision of it to make sure. Otherwise, after I submit it I’ll look at it and go, Why does this sentence have two periods?

Editing stories isn’t anywhere near as much fun as writing them. On the other hand, it’s not as easy either. On the other foot (I ran out of hands, ya see), it’s the only way to get published.

Stupid Bush.

When it comes to editing, I think sometimes the most painful decisions involve cutting. You’ve worked on a scene and perfected it…only to find that in the overall structure of the story your perfect scene is perfectly irrelevent…

I only bring this up because I just had to do that with a scene I worked on for a story I’ve written entitled Snake Oil. It’s a short story that topped out at 5,500 words. Unfortunately, the places that I’ve looked to send it for publication want everything under 5,000 words. There was a specific scene, however, that I knew could go, and it was just over 600 words long.

It was a tough decision because I like the scene, but on the other hand the story works perfectly fine without it. And while I lose two sentences that I thought were extremely well written, the benefits to losing this material is better than keeping it. It got to the point where I just couldn’t justify keeping it, especially in lieu of the fact that the publications I’m sending it to have word length restrictions.

Oh well. This is the way things go sometimes. And it’s better as a writer to be able to let go of a scene than to hold on to it and ruin your chances.

Based on some things I’ve read before, I think the feeling is a common one to authors. It’s the feeling when you read something that you wrote but it’s been a long, long time since you wrote it. The feeling…Did I really write this?

In between working on some short stories and editing The 13th Prime for what will hopefully be the last time (we shall see how that goes!), I’ve dug out my old NaNoWriMo story from last November. I read through it last night to get the flavor of the story once more, and I’ve been working on it now too, filling in the gaps, etc. As you may recall from last November, I wrote the novel just to get 50,000 words, and I did succeed at that. But the novel wasn’t finished. I only got the entire first act and portions of the second act (as well as the very end of the third act) finished.

Part of the reason why I didn’t write more on it is because a lot of the sections that are left are extremely complicated to write. Not in the sense of looking for research or anything of that nature. All I can say about it is, once it’s finished you’ll have to read it to understand. And you will understand why it would be difficult to come up with those portions.

Anyway, as I read it there were many times when I felt that feeling: It doesn’t feel like I wrote this. I surprised myself in a few places even. Words and turns of phrases that I forgot I put in.

Ironically, just the other day I was talking to my friend Travis and I mentioned how even working on The 13th Prime, which I think is a good novel, I still feel that Public Tranist was better. Public Transit had a certain quality to it that I told Travis I didn’t think I could ever duplicate.

But having read through my NaNoWriMo project, even hacking out some of the bad prose that I had put in just to ensure I got over 50,000 words, I have to say that that story definitely has the potential to surpass Public Transit in my esteem. I can’t wait to finish it and share it with the world, not because I want money (although that would be nice, of course!) but because I think it’s actually really, really good.

FWIW, I would love to write a book some day that Stephen King would say “I wish I had written that” about. For that matter, before M. Night fell into the deep end of the pool, I wanted to write a script that he said “I wish I had written that” to as well.

Oh well. At least it’s a goal, even if one that I will most likely never attain. :-)

I.
Look over beyond what the pale mystic skies show clear
To find a purposeful knowledge, wisdom we forever impart. Near
The catacomb’s shadows and the dungeon’s darkness. Hear
With a heartfelt bitterness. Hate raging, embracing fear.

II.
Look beyond the mystic show
To a knowledge we impart
The shadows, the darkness
With heartfelt hate embracing

Over what pale skies clear
Find purposeful wisdom forever near
Catacombs and dungeons hear
A bitterness, raging fear.

III.
Look beyond the mystic show
Over what pale skies clear
To a knowledge we impart
Find purposeful wisdom forever near

The shadows, the darkness
Catacombs and dungeons hear
With heartfelt hate embracing
A bitterness, raging fear.

Note: It took me about an hour this morning to come up with this little poem. When I wrote it, I was looking more for structure than for any thematic concerns.

The structure, which some of you may have gleaned by reading it already, is as follows. The first block contains the four lines that are in A-A-A-A rhyme scheme. If you take every other word of the first block starting with the first word, you create the first stanza of the second block. If you take every other word starting with the second word, you create the second stanza of the second block. Finally, the third block shows what happens if you alternate between the two stanzas. Thus, the first line of the first stanza of the third block is every other word of the first line of the first block starting with the first word; the second line of the first stanza of the third block is every other word of the first line of the first block starting with the second word. Etc. It may be easier to say that the third block consists of the first line of the first stanza of the second block followed by the first line of the second stanza of the second block, followed by the second line of the first stanza of the second block, etc.

Of course, all of it should be easy to see if you just look at the poem itself :-P

I should note that there can be improvement with my method above. For instance, you can see that the first stanza of the second block has no rhyme scheme at all; this could be fixed if I spent more time on it. Furthermore, the poem itself could use a little ironing out. But all in all I think it’s a fairly successful first attempt at combining two stanzas into one.

I sent off a “Please Reject Me” request today, otherwise known as submitting a story for publication. Any author who’s anyone can paper their wall with rejection slips. A lot of this has to do with the fact that authors tend to think they’re better authors before they actually get better.

As with anything, writing involves practice. I remember when I first wrote The Outlaw I thought it was the best thing I’ve ever written. When I wrote Public Transit, that novel blew The Outlaw away. Why? Because two and a half years passed between when I thought I finished The Outlaw and when I finished Public Tranist. During that time, I got better. In fact, when I reread the “final” draft for The Outlaw it embarrasses me because of how poorly written it is.

But that’s more of a digression than relevant to this post. I sent off a story today and decided that I might as well aim as high as possible, so I picked The New Yorker to submit it to. Consequently, my chances of being published there are quite small. On the other hand, I have the audacity of hope (to steal a phrase from some charlatan in a cheap suit) so I think, “If they read it, they won’t reject it.”

We shall see what comes of it. In many ways submitting a manuscript is much like asking a girl out. You have the same nervousness as you present a request. “Will you go out with me?” is not that much different from “Will you publish this work?” Both put you out there and you risk rejection. Of course, if you ask a girl out there’s a slight difference: you’ll know a whole lot quicker whether she rejects you than you’ll know if The New Yorker rejects you!

So I’ll wait with baited anticipation for a response. But that won’t stop me from writing new things. I figure it’s time for me to create my “platform” of published works, something that I could attract an agent to. My goal is to submit one short story every month (not all to The New Yorker of course, especially since they request no more than two submissions per year per author and a good way to not get published is to piss off the publisher!). Perhaps I’ll go a year. I don’t know. I’ll test various genres. And of course in the meantime I’ll also continue to edit my novels. Novels tend to come easily enough to me, so I don’t mind spending a lot of time on short stories instead of working on them. Besides, the payoff once I do get my foot in the door will be well worth it. After all, even if half of my stories are rejected, I’ll still have a “platform” with the other half. And I’ll be able to submit those that were rejected to other magazines, after I look over the story to make sure there’s no way I could improve it.

Anyway, that’s the goal. Here’s hoping that in five years I’ll be on the NYT Best Sellers list. :-)

Confession time: I’ve seen The Dark Knight four times at the movie theater. This is the most I’ve ever watched a movie at the theater. In fact, I’ve seen it more times than I’ve seen some DVDs I own.

What makes The Dark Knight so good isn’t just the great acting that Heath Ledger did. It’s the strength of the story that the Nolan brothers wrote. The Dark Knight works well because it’s such a well crafted story that it transcends the superhero genre.

I just rewatched Batman Begins, which was also directed by Christopher Nolan. I remember the several times I watched it before that I thought it was a great movie. Watching it today, I still think it’s a good movie but the growth between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is astronomical. The Dark Knight makes Batman Begins look weak in comparison.

There is just something about a story that is well done, one that has all the pieces in place. It hits on many levels. My friend Travis is letting me borrow the third season of Lost (he’s let me borrow the first two before too, since I don’t watch much TV). Lost is also (usually) very well crafted. In this case, I think it’s because the creators knew the entire story arc before they began. They also made a conscious decision to have a definite end point to the series. They wanted a set number of episodes to tell the story in, and then they’d finish up.

Granted, there are times when you wish they’d get on with the story already, but by and large the tension is enough to keep you going. And when you watch it on DVD without commercial interruption and without having to wait a week between episodes, it works well. Even the episode that Travis said was the most wasted hour of television ever created (the explanation of Jack’s tattoos, for those wondering which one that was) wasn’t that bad in my opinion. I do agree that it’s one of the weaker episodes, but I’ve seen plenty worse on TV.

Having a well crafted story is difficult work. It’s not just the inspiration factor that you have to deal with, it’s communicating that message to everyone else in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them. The best stories are those that encompass more, that are not limited to one framework or one view. Because the more people who can relate to your story, and the more often they can do it, the better the story is.

What is the point of a story? Sometimes it’s simply to escape from reality and provide a measure of relief. But sometimes it’s to confront reality in a different way, a way that helps us learn from it. Escapism is great to relieve stress, and there is benefit to it. But when I think about those stories that are the best written, all my examples are in the latter category. They all depict reality (even those that occur in fantasy stories!) in a way that is more than escaping. They’re educational. They’re inspirational. They’re honest. They’re real. They’re true.

Perhaps life itself is just a well crafted story written by an Author who reveals Himself in His work…