Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s Off to Work I Go

Are you ready for some news?

This is probably the hardest post I’ve ever had to write, but as of Monday, I’ve gone back to “work.” Like Jack Sparrow, I’ve searched the oceans for treasure and found a job. Yes, most people would be super-excited about started a new job. I mean I am, but at the same time, I’m really disappointed that my writing career is screeching to halt. (BTW I’ve sprinkled clues at to my new employer throughout this post).

This doesn’t mean my dream of being a published writer is over. I have not LOST.

This is my plan.

Write on the bus. Read on the bus. Give up a couple iPhone games I love. Give up at least 1 of the 3 writing groups I’m in. Give up watching a bunch of TV shows I like. Give up going to the gym (kinda was forced to give this up anyways due to ankle issues).

What I’m not giving up:

• My dream of being a published writer with multiple published novels.
• The wonderful world of NaNoWriMo (won twice while working full-time)
• Steam Palace. I will publish this one way or another.

Give up yet on my new employer? Well it’s a small world after all, so keep your mouse ears on.

Couple New Posts over on The Writerunner!

Writing a Script – I write a script for a scene from Steam Palace. Scripting requires a different viewpoint on what makes a good scene.

Interjections! Excitement! Emotion! – I have an epiphany about using emotion to drive a scene.

Don’t forget to add The Writerunner to your subscriptions and/or Google Friend Connect!

WRITING CONTENT MOVED!

As of today, all new writing content on http://blog.dawnsrise.com has moved to The WriteRunner (http://blog.writerunner.com).

Please update your links and subscriptions accordingly!

I’ll still post links to new content here for a while.

Not sure what I’m going to do with this blog, but I’ll probably post things dealing with workouts, the Mariners, skiing (or the lack thereof), family, political opinion (if I’m brave enough), and life in general.

Thank you so much for your patronage of this site, your feedback and involvement has been invaluable!

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to re-do the layout of this site into a new format.

Movie Sign!

Just want to start out by saying that our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan today as they deal with the earthquake and tsunami that hit them. Japanese popular culture seems riveted with the concept of disaster but no one actually wants it to happen. Please consider a donation to the Red Cross.

Movie Sign!

I’ve been going ahead with the idea of writing a movie script for the History Story I’m working on. I have a couple reasons for this:

1. I feel that this is really a visual story with movement and action. It’s something that falls well into the movie format.
2. Writing a novel may take more time than I’m willing to spend on the project.
3. A lot of people have commented that my style is a bit “cinematic” so why not put it to the test? Probably not the greatest reason but it’s given my something to think about.
4. The potential upside is greater.

One of the things I’ve done is read the scripting book “Save the Cat” by Blake Snyder. One of the exercises he suggests (among others) is to plot movies on a sheet of paper (a “beat sheet”) which contains all the major plot points. So for the last few mornings, I’ve sat with a form and watched Netflix movies and paused the movie every couple of minutes to make notes (which drives wife crazy). And amazingly enough, movies actually do follow the “beat” that Snyder has laid out. Almost down to the minute.

Note that many movies have a “beat” every ten minutes…when the reel changes (you can see a dot in the upper right corner of the film when this happens…but only in theaters). So the first reel is “setup”(Ordinary World), 2nd reel is “inciting incident,” and third is “break into Act II” (Crossing the First Threshold). There are 12 beats in all. Note that when the reel changes, the scene generally changes as well. Also note that the beats don’t correspond to the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey.

So far I’ve screened Defiance, Gamer, and Vertical Limit. I’m trying to stick to adventure-type movies as sort of a blueprint for my own movies. So far I’ve learned a lot. I think I’m going to develop a beat sheet for novels as well, and fill them out when I read them. Have any suggestions? (that I can see on Netflix steaming)

The next step will be more complicated. I may take a couple movies and do a scene-by-scene breakdown and build a movie chart that maps the movie by emotion and conflict. It will be tough but I think I can learn this. I’ll have to say that I’m probably never going to view movies the same again.

Building a New Blog!

As some of you have seen already, I’m transferring the “writing” portion of this blog to The WriteRunner. I’m looking for ideas about widgets and other things to do for it. I’ve already installed a comment system called Disqus and I’m using a new-fangled template.

My tentative launch date is March 14. I’m hoping to host a contest or blogfest or something. It also will celebrate the 2nd anniversary of the beginning of my writing career. Stay tuned for details.

Another thing I’ve done is to start echoing this blog onto Open Salon. Open Salon is an amalgam of many people’s blogs, where people can vote and promote their favorite content. Check it out and let me know what you think!

As far as this blog goes, once The WriteRunner is launch, I’m going to give this blog a makeover. I’m not sure what direction it will take but I can imagine that it might become more opinionated. The original purpose of this blog was to talk about my efforts to publish Dawn’s Rise but I never finished that project.

So feel free to point out what blog features you like using. Even if it’s not a “Blogger” feature I can probably find a way to use it.

Punctuation Schmunctuation

Okay, maybe I’m starting to reach for blog topics. It’s hard coming up with two of these every week. I’ve written something like 350 of these over the last few years, so after a while it’s hard to not keep running over the same old ground. But I think I’ve hit on one of those hidden gems that begs for a write-up: punctuation. Probably because it’s the most boring aspect of writing, yet it’s the one thing that seems to invoke the most passion.

This weekend, I almost got into a (another) punctuation argument with my critique group. About what? Single or double- space between sentences. A simple Google search reveals the answer: One space. Period. One space. Next sentence. However, about half the documents I review have two. I simply meant to remind them of the convention, because Word 2010 puts little green marks whenever I have a double-space. (Yes, I know I can turn it off but why?)

You would have thought I asked them to wear uniforms and salute. Use acid-free paper and dolphin-safe toner. Change the gender of their characters and call them Charley. I almost got my head chewed off. I just wanted to mention it and move on. “Uh, could you just use one space—” “NO! HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT! NEVER! NEVER NEVER NEVER! We’ll settle this in the parking lot!”

Yowza. Like, who cares? I just want my green marks to go away. I’ve had other people yell at me, “IT’S DOT-SPACE-DOT-SPACE-DOT, NOT …! DON’T USE CURLY ‘ USE ' ! USE -- NOT —!”

Sheesh! Does anyone know what editors truly want in electronic submissions? This kind of reminds me of the old days of programming, before there were any standards and when you wrote code in the simplest of text editors. The huge religious argument consisted of “tabs vs spaces vs 2 vs 4 space etc.” When to indent, how to format comments, even down to something called “Hungarian” which is precise rules to name code variables. I’ve endured argument over argument over the name of variables that are used maybe a couple of times. Nowadays, all those arguments are moot, because “smart editors” use company-wide templates and force your code to comply to a certain format. These are called “code beautifiers.” Nowadays, if you want to know what a variable does, hover your mouse over it. Who cares what it’s called?

Does something like this exist for manuscripts, that fixes all the crap authors put in there? Or does any of it really matter? Should we just be cool with writers using spaces to indent paragraphs, using l instead of 1, (that’s little L if you didn’t notice) and hitting line breaks at the end of each line? When are we going to enter the 2lst century?

Guess I should be glad that I’m actually getting electronic copies instead of typed or—gasp—handwritten entries. (Well, I still get handwritten feedback, but there’s only one space after those sentences).

Don’t Be A Watson

I’m going to talk about how the example of IBM’s Watson is a good object lesson on what not to do in your writing. Bear with me for a minute.

I was very impressed at how IBM’s creation Watson fared at Jeopardy. As a former computer scientist at places such as Google and Microsoft, I was actually more fascinated by Watson’s failures than its successes. Frankly, I was surprised that Watson didn’t answer every question correctly and faster than the humans. Watson missed obvious questions. To me, it seemed that the machine was great at trivia, the “fill in the blank” kind of questions. Things that any Google search can answer. But it failed at more complex problems, questions that involved things like metaphor and analogy, standard fare on SAT tests. It all led me to one conclusion:

We are still nowhere near achieving “artificial intelligence.”

Watson is just a machine, without emotion, drive, or ambition. I thought of a few questions I could easily ask it that it could never solve. “Who is standing to your left?” “How’s the lighting in here?” “Who does Ken Jennings remind you of?” “Fire! Please proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly manner.”

Yes, computer scientists have created something I call “programmed intelligence.” Intelligence in very specific domains, but as soon as you step outside the domain, the intelligence fails. Because “intelligence” isn’t just about recollection, computation, or pattern analysis. It’s much more about metaphor, symbolism, and relationships.

Think about a book for a moment. A book is really just a machine. It’s a Kindle with only one book available. The words are just dots of ink on the page that create letters. The letters form words, the words form sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Computers can be made to understand how to display and edit those letters and words, even spot incorrect ones. But a computer can never read a book and understand what’s in it. It can look up every word and phrase, but never truly comprehend the meaning, the story. And even a book can never judge your emotion reaction to the story and respond accordingly. There’s as much intelligence in Watson as in any book on your bookshelf.

There were other subtle things that Watson failed to do on Jeopardy. He couldn’t learn from his mistakes (yes, computers can be programmed to learn, but that’s the equivalent of fixing a typo). It seemed that the other contestants learned and began to challenge the machine on the third day. More importantly, Watson has no idea why he made mistakes to begin with. Watson has no insight, no self-awareness. Imagine if Alex Trebeck had said “incorrect” to Watson on even correct, obvious answers:

“Answer is: The color of the White House. Watson.”
“What is white?”
“Incorrect. Ken?”
“What is white?”
“Correct.”

Watson would just hum along, completely oblivious. If Trebeck pulled that on Ken Jennings, he would storm off the stage or go after Trebeck’s throat.

So until we create a computer with emotion and true reasoning, we’ll never have intelligence, only super-fast trivia answerers.

So you’re wondering, “what does this have to do with my writing?”

The questions you should be asking yourself is, “How are my characters like Watson?” Do your characters react to their environment? Do they have their own agendas? Are they there just to provide other characters with information? Or are they living, reasoning creatures?

Another way to look at it is to ask, “What was at stake for Watson?” Yes, hundreds of computer scientists spent years on this project, but did Watson care? If there was indeed a fire alarm during taping, would Watson react? Do you think Watson really cared about how much money it earned? But every single character in your work cares about every interaction. There are stakes involved. They want something, and your other characters are either assistants or obstacles to those goals. Otherwise they are no better than the old books on your shelves.

So when you write your stories, keep one thing in mind: Don’t be a Watson.

NOTE: The writing content of this blog is moving soon! Check out the preview at The WriteRunner.