So my 12 year-old nephew read the still-in-progress Christmas Carol story in a single sitting. Well, actually in two, as he took a break when we left to go to the movies in the afternoon. In any case, he finished it. Then, with my heart in my throat and a great deal of apprehension I asked him what he thought and he said ...
"It's good. It's really good."
Phew! I could breath again.
We were all standing in the kitchen, surrounding him: me, my wife, and his parents; a
Last night my granddaughter spent the night at our house. I took the advice from carlsson and decided that, rather than read her another Peppa Pig booklet, I would just tell her the Christmas Carol story. Only that instead of reading it from my book-in-progress, I decided to make it up and give her the abridged "short-short" version, made up on the spot. And it went ... not too bad. Phew! Putting aside the newly acknowledged fact that I suck at making up stories on the spot -- I rambled a
Sweet candy canes!
I just wrote four paragraphs describing the Snowflake Gardens, and I am running out of superlatives! Eek!
It seems that every time Carol discovers a new area, it's even more majestic than the previous ones. However, I'm drawing the line on this one. This is it, this is The One. Ever since I drew it in the center of the map, I always intended the Snowflake Gardens to be the most magical place in the entire Ice Cube Caverns.
It is indeed magical. It turned out to
Guess what? Guess what???
Carol Greenleaf made it into the Snowflake Gardens -- finally!
First, I moved the misty fog from the main corridor to just a side tunnel, which happens to be the entrance to the Snowflake Gardens. Because that side tunnel is covered in mist, you can't really tell what's there, and so it can be easy to miss or perhaps too scary to go through by the others.
Then it's just a matter of getting Carol into that tunnel.
She hid herself in
I don't have much progress to report today. Although I spent several hours working on the story yesterday, I feel like it was all spent just spinning my wheels in place. I wrote almost an entire page before I halted and decided I didn't really like the way it was going. After that, it just got worse: I wrote and re-wrote paragraph after paragraph, and never got past the same spot. All in all, it was a frustrating day, to balance the ecstatic and successful day before, where I completed chap
You know how in the Christmas Carol game the Bad Toy goes rogue and supersedes even the Snowman's reprogramming and attacks him? (Of course you know, because you is me -- the only reader of this blog. DOH!)
Well, I just found out why that happened. It turns out that the new model 3000 of the T.O.M.Bot, contrary to the earlier Toy-Of-Mischief 2000, is equipped with a new artificial intelligence chip to give him a little personality. The Snowman didn't figure this, so when he re-wired the toy
Well, I'm quite happy to inform that I have finished Chapter 8 and I am now about to start Chapter 9. I'm on a roll, and very excited, for I think I'll be able to get really far this week, if not finish the story altogether. Wow! That would be a treat, indeed. I'm not counting on it, though, I think what I count as two more chapters in my outline will turn into four or more when I get to them. I have just added a new chapter right now. You see, Chapter 8 was titled "Snowflake Gardens" and
So, having declared my ultimatum in Part XIII, I went directly to the story manuscript and something amazing happen: I started writing, continuing right were I left off, and the words and the sentences just poured out from my hands like water from a faucet. It was incredible! I ended up not only finishing Chapter 8 but writing three more chapters after that! Haha! No. I actually played around in the AA forum (fora?) for quite a bit longer, then answered some PMs, looked up a couple o
I'm stuck. No, I don't have writer's block (whatever that is), I know precisely what I want to write and all the next story elements that need to be included. I just haven't written anything for the past week. Not a single word. If I'm honest with myself, I can tell that I've been avoiding it. The first few days, I would sit down at my computer, go to the manuscript and read the last few paragraphs to get back into it, and then ... go goof off and do something else. After a few days of th
Back in Part XI I mentioned how I forgot to have Carol find a new uncharted tunnel -- which is important to the plot -- and that instead of going back and re-writing the passage to add the missing discovery, I decided to leave it as is. I then had to employ a special device to advance the plot, essentially just making Carol come back to the cave and do a second walkthrough looking for presents, just in case she missed some. I think it worked, since a lot of us tend to do this sort of thing.
So, today is the last day for the judges to submit their entry scores for the IntyBASIC Programming Contest. As a judge, I took the job very seriously. I will be honest, though, it was a lot of work. It was also tough because you want to make sure to be fair and consistent, while at the same time you wish to promote and encourage only the highest quality standards for the community. I think I may have been too tough on some of the games, but it's because I think the talent is good and the
I screwed up. Not majorly, but I made a mistake in my story and painted myself in a corner. Darn. You see (well, I guess "I" see, for I don't expect anybody else to be reading this blog. I do read it, so I'm just talking to the other "me" who's going to re-read this one later). Anyway, where was I ... Oh yeah ... You see (tsk! tsk! tsk!), Carol found herself in the Candy Cove -- the last cave explored by the guy who made the map. He left it incomplete, and it's up to Carol herself to le
I know it's been quiet around here in the past couple of days. You (if anybody other than myself) may think that I gave up on the blog or something like that, but nope. What happened was the best possible thing for such a procrastinator like myself: I worked on the Christmas Carol story. That's right! While trying to motivate myself to write another blog entry, my procrastinating mind conspired to find a distraction in order to avoid it -- and what did it find as the most appropriate distr
Carol just discovered the Candy Cove, the last cave on her map, left incomplete and unnamed by the original cartographer when he was scared out of his wits by the Ghost Of Christmas Presents. It's the last cave on the map she has right now, but not the last cave in the Ice Cube Cavern system. Before the end of the story, she would have discovered two additional major chambers. Being a sweet elf from the North Pole, Carol's language is full of idiosyncratic idioms to describe alarm and excite
Progress! This past week-end my Christmas Carol short story reached a milestone: Carol met the Ghost of Christmas Presents. I mean really met him, as in she introduced herself to him. She did:
It's Carol's turn to scare the Ghost.
Why is this a milestone? Well, apart from being the point in the story in which we finally get a glimpse at the titular character, the narrative has now completed the full arc of the Ghost's persona as it relates to Carol's point of view: He is a
I was going to continue writing chapter 7 this morning and instead found myself playing with the font-sizes and paragraph spacing of the chapter titles. Darn! I am my worst enemy. Anyway, that took just about an hour (I am very dedicated to my fonts), so now I'm back to work. Only that instead of writing the story, I ended up over here, writing a blog post. Darn again! Oh well, let's embrace this moment. I'll convince myself that this is not a means to avoid working on the book, but ac
I thought I'd talk a little bit about the writing experience. As I mentioned before, I am not a writer. I fancy myself as having a good command of the English language, and in my professional career I've had the opportunity to apply and polish my technical writing ability, but I've never written fiction before. In fact, other than two projects in high school, I've never even tried creative writing before. I wouldn't count those projects as any kind of experience, though. They were absolute
Guess what I did today... C'mon, guess! Yup, that's right: I played with the font size and margins again. I thought I had 21 pages, but I was wrong. It turns out I have written 27 pages! I feel so much more productive now. I think I'm done with the fonts and margins. It bothered me that the font looked so tiny before, and the truth is that it is a book intended for young children, so it shouldn't look too dense. It happened when I chose Baskerville. That font is very pretty, but boy
I know I mentioned it in the previous entry, but I've decided not to post the map nor any of the other illustrations on this blog. I rather not make any of the content public at the moment, at least until it is all finished. In the meantime, below is a small section of the Ice Cube Cavern map showing the Frosted Maze. Other areas included in the map, not shown above are:
Entrance Hall (presumably where the first cut-scene happens)
Haunted Hollow
Candy Cove
Krystal Keep
Along
Progress? Yup, we've got some of that. I started this project about a month ago. Well, actually, I spent a week just staring at the initial page I wrote six years ago. I'd like to say that I was planning the story arc and figuring out my writing style and narrative voice, but I was just staring at the document pretending to be a writer, while I looked for all sorts of other distractions like re-organizing my photos or updating my household budget (yes, I get very productive when I want to a
I ended the last post suggesting that my motivation for finally writing the Christmas Carol story book had to do with a very special girl. Actually two. A lot has happened in the intervening six years since I developed the game and wrote the original single page essay introducing the full story. Since the game came out in 2012, I have not only grown older, but I've become a grandfather -- twice! I've seen my granddaughters grow up from little drooling pod-people into beautifully cute little
When I say that every element of the Christmas Carol game was part of an overarching story, I mean everything. Every little thing had a bit of background and mythos behind it to give it weight.
Carol was smart and resourceful because her job was to explore the world to find all children and ensure that they were added to Santa's list. That job makes her Santa's most trusted elf.
The Evil Snowman is evil because his eyes, which gave him a soul, were two pieces of black coal cursed by a fair
As I mentioned in my first post, I started a project to write a short story based on my Christmas Carol Intellivision game. It is something I've been wanting to do for the past six years. You see, that game was much more than a silly Pac-Man clone to me, it was an experience: not only was it my very first video game (which was a huge accomplishment for me, The World's Greatest Procrastinator), but it involved much more than writing code. I love Christmas. It reminds me of my childhood, and
Never had a blog before, and probably never will again, but I thought it may be useful to type short entries of what I'm working on as a blog rather than abusing the "Status Update" feature. I intend to write brief updates on the progress of my projects -- both retro-game-related and not. I don't expect anybody to read this, so this blog is mostly for me: talking to myself keeps me sane, and helps me focus. I know that sounds sort of stupid, but it works for me. First of all I should state
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