Archive for September, 2010

Set Pieces and Game Planning

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

I’ll admit something about gaming – as much as I plan my novels to obsessive detail (down to POV for each scene) before I write them, I can be a bit of a pantser when it comes to running my games. Actually, I’m a lot of a pantser.

I have a couple of reasons for this. Primarily I have had the privilege of gaming with and running for some really great groups in my day. These are folks who define the concept of making their own gravy. I could quite literally sit down at the table and say “It’s a post-apocalyptic game, you’re all survivors from a hospital, go!” and we would have four or five good hours of game-play. But having great players who get into character and have lots of interplay at the table has its downsides too – specifically, they tend to go off on tangents, chase leads I never intended as significant, and generally go any direction that I hadn’t particularly planned for them to go.

So I started looking at things differently. I started making a list of things I wanted to happen, both over the course of the campaign and from game session to game session. For a Pulp Adventure game, this might look like:

  1. Players get attacked by dinosaurs.
  2. Players find crashed plane (German equipment?)
  3. Players find primitive tribe. (Enslaved? Need help?)
  4. Nazis Riding Dinosaurs!

In the book Save the Cat (which is about script-writing and a great resource) – Blake Snyder calls these the “Set Pieces” – the beats that drive the story forward. For me it’s more like a grocery list of things I have to include. I don’t worry about how to get from one to the other; I just keep track of what’s next and let the players give the direction of the story. If it’s a game that requires more organized encounter planning (like 4th edition D&D) I put down some possible encounters on cards and mix-n-match to make an appropriate encounter for the situation as it arises.

Obviously, this runs counter to everything I do in novel writing, but at the same time, it takes advantage of the creative power I have around my table. If the players try to get the plane working again I’m just as ready for what happens next as if they decide to ride the dinosaurs a la Valley of Gwangi. So, Gamer-writers (and writer-gamers) any differences between how you work on your fiction versus how you craft a game session?

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Three Great Science Fiction Romance Films

Monday, September 6th, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about romance in science fiction lately, in case you couldn’t tell by the flavor of my writing posts. One of the things I’ve found myself doing is justifying to people the rightful place of romance as a part of science fiction. To that end, I’ve had a few films that I fall back on to say ‘Hah, there’s even a romance there!”

I’m not using the obvious films, though. That would be too easy. It’s tough to miss the romance in Avatar, for example (It’s the main plot after all), and Time after Time is easily one of the best time-travel romances out there (If you’ve not seen it? Do yourself a favor and go watch it, now.) Instead I’ve tried to pick films that people don’t think about as romances. So without further ado:

#3 – Wall-E (2008)

I can say a lot of things about Wall-E, and frankly I debated including it in my list because the romance is so blatant. At the same time, there is something absolutely heartwarming about two characters expressing their love for each other while only being able to express themselves by saying each others’ names. I get choked up in two places every time – the beautifully choreographed flying sequence (which is Miyazaki-esque in its gorgeousness) and another scene towards the end which I will not discuss for fear of spoiling it. Regardless, as SF and Romance go, I can’t say enough good about this.

#2 – The Empire Strike Back (1980)

The best of the Star Wars films (despite what Randal Graves thinks). It’s made even better by the shift from antagonism to romance between Han and Leia. There are a number of great scenes, but one of the high points is the two of them working together to fix the Millennium Falcon. I’m not too proud to say I didn’t riff that idea for my own scene in Hearts and Minds; it’s brilliant, and a classic. For all the great scenes together, and the excellent demonstration of their growing relationship, nothing tops the sardonic exchange of:

Leia: I love you!

Han: I know.

#1 – Aliens (1986)

James Cameron has a thing for tough-as-nails women who fall in love with Michael Biehn (see also 1984’s The Terminator) but I love how Ripley develops her relationship with Hicks, so Aliens won out. I love the scene where he’s teaching her how to use the pulse rifle, and the scene with the locator beacon (it’s the next best thing to an engagement ring). I could say a lot about the underlying motherhood themes that permeate this movie (especially the extended cut) but I’m going to keep to script and just deal with the romance. It’s a great one, with two characters who are perfectly fine on their own finding something in each other that gives them a reason to fight even harder.

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Potpourri Loves its Supervillainy

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Welcome to another installment of the weekly link-dump known as Potpourri. It’s all comics and super-villainy this week, which is never a bad thing.

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This Week on the Needles – who’s got the Clap?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Welcome back to another thrilling discussion of my knitting, and the trails and frustrations involved there. This week, we’re going to talk about what I’ve been working on for oh, too damn long now.

I’m knitting a Clapotis scarf – referred to as ‘the Clap’ in my local knitter’s circle. If you’ve never had the pleasure, I can’t recommend them enough. It’s an easy pattern, and the end result is a nice beginner lacework, on the bias to make it extra flowy and soft. The pattern recommends a silk-wool blend, but as I can never follow a pattern 100%, I’ve been working mine in a lovely bamboo. The resulting red-orange-gold scarf is rather pretty, and has the added bonus of being earth-friendly as well as cuddly.

There’s only one problem – if you saw me knitting at RWA this year? It was the same scarf. I’m not this slow, normally. And yes, I’ve lost some of my normal knitting time to other events that weren’t entirely expected. But some of the time, I’ve just not picked up my needles even though my hands were free. I don’t hate the pattern. Quite the opposite in fact. But I finally am beginning to understand my friend who called it ‘tedious’. It’s a long row of knits or purls, with a few twisted stitched to force you to count (or, if you’re like me, employ everything from washers to twist ties as stitch markers). Every twelve rows you get to do something different, drop a stitch and rip it down. That’s it. The Clap in a nutshell.

So I haven’t finished it yet (though I am close to the end now – it’s narrowing back down so I can finish the far side.) It’s Hockey Season in another month, and ideally, I will have it done by then. It’s a reasonable goal to set for myself. Even if I have trouble early, as the pre-season games start I’ll be able to get a lot more done. Yes, I knit while I watch hockey. It’s the perfect combination for an evening, really.

Well,  unless you’ve got the Clap – in which case you need the hockey to distract you.

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