Maps of Fantasy worlds

This is a large-scale map of my fantasy setting, Malduan, the home of Gloren Avericci and Yr Neh.  When I was younger, I used to love the maps that were commonly in the front of many fantasy novels.  They allowed me to really stay grounded in the setting as the characters moved over the landscape.  When done well, and used well, maps can add a lot to a story by keeping the setting grounded (heh, I punned).  But there are potential downsides to having a map.

First, they can give the impression that the story you're about the read has a scope that needs a map.  Have you ever read a book, and then struggled to find where the heck on the map it takes place, only to discover that it all happens on the remote corner?  Why does this story need a map?  Far from impressing readers with the level of world-building, a map in this case sets up false expectations, and ends up doing more harm than good.

Secondly, they encourage some writers to name-drop far-off locations in the text, with the knowledge that the readers have a map, and perhaps with the expectation they will refer to it.  Again, this is doing the story a disservice.  Do we really want the reader to stop reading and consult a map?

Third, they give the impression that the reader needs to have a broad knowledge of the setting.  Usually, this involves a number of kingdoms and their relationship to each other.  If the story is on a geopolitical scale, maybe this will be helpful.  But in the real world, very, very few people can generate anything like an accurate map of even their own country and its immediate neighbors.  Having a map may give the characters hyper-accurate reckoning skills when thinking about the distances between places.  The writer may, even subconsciously, always use the proper distances between places, thinking that having the characters be wrong when they talk to each other (or plan for travel) will be seen as a mistake on their part.  In truth, people think about travel in terms of time, not distance.  People will usually say how far away the grocery store is in terms of travel times.  Places are five minutes away, not three miles.  So writing a story with a map means you have to think about travel times, not distances, and that's sometimes hard to remember.  Have you ever read a story where the characters casually mention the exact distance to a destination, but never the travel time they expect?  Yeah, me too, and that's just not the way it works, especially in a fantasy setting, where foot travel is usually the order of the day.

So, is it all downside, having a map?  Obviously not!

A good map in a fantasy story must do these things in order to be beneficial:

First, it must be clearly drawn.  Blurry rendering, tiny lettering, obscure fonts, or crowded landscapes all make your map a chore to peruse.

Second, the map must be relevant to the story.  It must have useful locations marked on it, which means it must be of a useful scale.  Giving a world map for a story that takes place in a single city might not be so useful.  The locations given can even include locations from the story itself that wouldn't be marked on most maps, such as an important ford in a river, a character's home, or the route taken in the text.

Third, maps need to relate some information that is not in the story, to put the events into context.  Sometimes, just knowing the characters are starting out on the west coast of a place, and travelling east, makes reading the story easier, but maps can help supply the reasoning for jogging to the south for a while (like mountains, or some other hazard).  I've read very popular books whose maps showed a basically empty landscape with just a few towns and other locations marked, and lo and behold, those were the places we visited in the story.  No other locations were marked, nor mentioned in the novel, making the landscape seem entirely empty save for those few places.  Without a map, this would not have been an issue.

Lastly, maps must be based in reality, even for fantasy worlds.  Generally, landscapes are shaped by different natural processes, and cities develop and grow in other ways.  Unless your landscape is entirely fantastical, and your cities completely artificial, you need to be aware of these patterns, so that your maps will read as being a real place.  Having coastlines and mountains and rivers all mashed together without reason, cities dotting the landscape in no particular place, these sorts of maps do a setting no good at all.  They falsify rather than reinforce.

I'll be talking more about how to create realistic fantasy maps in a later post, so stay tuned!

A soft spot for 2015

With the champagne corks mounded high on every side, I'd like to get my Goals post out of the way.  Posting it is, after all, my first goal of every year.

Given my dismal failure to meet goals in 2014 up to a point where I could cross them off my list so they could actually get counted, I'm going to do a lot more tracking of what the heck else I'm doing that isn't on-task.  So, to assist me, a sort of resolution:  300 hours of "me" time for 2016.  That includes reading, and anything else I do to chill out that doesn't involve family.  There's no limit on family time, of course.

So, kids, don't worry.  I'm still going to make dinner.

With that out of the way, the goals:

Production (New Stuff)

• Finish Book 3 of Queen of Cinders
• 4 Short Stories
• 10 paintings on commission.  These can be covers, or whatever.

Development

• Internal stuff for the Gallery Hunters Anthology, including maps, missing illustrations for the new stories, as well as formatting, a cover, and so on.
• A new draft of Firewatcher for sending out to agents.
• A new draft of the completed Queen of Cinders trilogy.  Normally I wait a year before doing new drafts of novels, but it's been more than enough for books 1 and 2, and by the time I get through them, I'll be mentally ready to edit book 3.
• Game apps:  I've listed this before, but now am going to try less collaboration with coders, since they're hard to keep on-task on small projects, and tend to wander off to newer shiny objects.

Marketing
12 short story sendouts.  Every time I meet with John O'Niel, I'm reminded of how little I'm sending out, recently.  I need to get off the pot, and get those stories rolling to publishers again.
Querying Firewatcher and, perhaps, Queen of Cinders, if I can get some beta eyes on it first.
Gallery Hunter trailer.  This is the real elephant in my marketing room, at the moment.  This is a massive project, but I still can't help but feel it's doable.
Blogging at least once a week.  Is this marketing?  I'm not sure where else to put social media efforts, and need to account for the time it takes, so I'm putting it here.

And that's the lot of it, and the estimated times for all of this is over a thousand hours!  Time to get cracking!

A firm handshake to 2014 as I show it the door

Well, here we are again.  The end of the year.  As usual, I want to review what I did, and what I thought I would do.  This is usually a painful process.

If I were to simply tally up my goals (10), and compare to my successes in meeting those goals (2), I would look like a loser.  So I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to justify my lack of progress on a case-by-case basis, on the theory that this will make me look better.  So far, I have no evidence this theory is correct, but here goes:

Novel Writing
Planned: 1  Achieved: 0
In fairness, I'm about three-fourths of the way through Book Three of Queen of Cinders, and I had a good reason to stop writing (see Painting, below).  But with two days to go in the year, I can't see myself pumping out 100 pages or so.  Given that, this goal was a big fat FAIL.  Still, I plan on whacking out the remainder fairly quickly next year (see my Goals post early next year for further pro-procrastination rhetoric).

Publishing
Planned:  1  Achieved:  0
Considering that the stories for the Gallery Hunters Anthology are all completed, this is a mysterious one.  I need to finish all of the stuff that is going to go around them however, such as maps, and illustrations.  That's all well and good, but time's ticking on these, as they were published fairly recently, and the iron is still hot.  I need to get cracking on getting the anthology out the door, and a lot of that is reconsidering the planned animated trailer.   But I'm stubborn about my projects, so this is unlikely to die (see below for more attempts at justifying my stubbornness).

Self Promotion
Planned: 1 Achieved: 0
This is the trailer I was referring to above.  My initial push to learn all the different software I'd need, and do concept work, was largely derailed, but I think I can do a better job of getting others on board, if I make a real go of it.  Next year, this will be a far larger priority for me.  Teamwork, that's the new key to getting this one done.  After all, there are specialists who do this stuff all the time, right?  Right!  Calling all specialists!

Agent Hunt
Achieved:  No
Literary Agents heard exactly nothing from me this year.  What can I say?  I hope to do better in 2015, but it's a lot of work, and was a lower priority.  I'm not too broken up about this one, but its an important step on a long road, so I should change my thinking, here.

Painting
Planned: 5 cover paintings  Achieved: 4
My Goals 2014 post said 6, but my planner only had 5 covers listed as goals, so I only fell one painting short.  Given my switch to new software (and my current reconsideration of that switch), this wasn't bad output.  I need to up my game, here, though, in 2015, and not allow myself to backslide.

Wrapup
The big story for 2014, though, was how few hours I actually put toward my goals.  Considering how hectic my year turned out to be, I shouldn't surprise me that I only put in about five hundred hours toward my plans.  A lot by some standards, given that this is all in addition to taking care pf the kiddoes and related things, but still, only about half of what I'd planned.

So, next year I'm going to be looking hard at where I'm spending my time when not working toward my goals, and not just when I am working toward them.  What the heck am I doing?  How to do this is a question I'm thinking about.  I don't want to turn into a neurotic freak, after all.  Unless it would make me more productive, in which case, bring on the neuroses!

Emergent Narratives: Why I Wait So Long To Edit, -or- My Toast Looks Like Jesus

Years ago, Matt, a friend of mine, and I would play lots of games, and in them we'd have adventures far beyond what was actually present in the rules. One game that stands out in my memory was The Arkham Horror, a game based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. In this game, the players became investigators in the small fictional town of Arkham, which was the focus for an transdimensional invasion by forces beyond human comprehension.

Still, being intrepid truth-seekers, we'd load up on shotguns and amulets and kick multi-dimensional ass across Arkham and various alternate realities. Matt and I would weave all sorts of imaginary elements into the gameplay, occasionally making less-than-ideal play decisions because we were more interested in narrative coherence.

Sooner or later, we'd reach a sort of nexus, and either forge on to victory, or enter a state of play we came to call Escape From Arkham. The wheels had truly come off, and, battered and half-crazed with what we'd seen, our characters would attempt to reach the train station and take the last train out as reality crumbled behind them.

The lesson, for me, was that it doesn't take very much for a story to emerge. The game was not structured in any narrative way. The phases of the tale were strictly in our heads, including the moment when we looked around, shrugged our imaginary shoulders, and grabbed our train tickets.

For me, this happens for almost every game I play. My daughter also sees things this way. When we play board games, she's always narrating the details of the story. She does this is more situation-driven games (like Survive!), but also for abstracts like checkers and chess. The elements of story are all there: character (the pieces), setting (the board), and conflict. Given these simple ingredients, story spontaneously arises.

As writers, we need to keep in mind how little a story actually takes to exist. Story, and narrative, are hardwired into us like all other pattern-finding capabilities of the brain. Perhaps the greatest impact is created by a story that holds back, allowing the readers to fill in the missing pieces. The readers become invested, literally stuck into the story, their mind a fundamental component of the tale.

But this cuts both ways, as writers are also enmeshed in the pattern, and can imagine they see things that simply are not present in the writing. That's why I wait a year to reread my novel manuscripts. Any sooner, and I see what I saw when I wrote the book, not what is there on the page. I want to see what a new reader sees, not simply review what I remember. Does this slow my output? Not really, since I just write more during this time. But even if it did, it's the only way I know of to escape the fabric of the narrative, and see it as cloth.

Because stories don't have an escape hatch, no matter how damaged their reality becomes.  Writers need to grab their amulets and get off that train.  But not too soon.  Never too soon.

Five Stars released!

A few weeks ago, now, the Five Stars anthology was released by Rampant Loon Press.  This is a collection of, yes, five stories that the editorial powers-that-be thought summed up the entire mission statement of Stupefying Stories, and thus need to be highlighted.

Oh, and looky here!  Is that First Impressions leading the charge to glory?

Yes.  Yes it is.  Woot!

Oh, and that's a handsome cover, too.  Classy, understated, and... my god, is that a loon?

Yes.  Yes it is.

Sports, games, and simulation: Quiddich Professional League enters Alpha testing

I'm still alpha-testing my new boardgame, Quiddich: Professional League, which is part of my game series based on the writings of J.K. Rowling.  Since this is part of a series, I felt it needed to keep at a complexity level close to the others.  This, as it turned out, was a naive hope.  Quiddich is just too nuanced, and needed more rules than I usually like to model it.

In the Harry Potter series, Quiddich is described in a number of places as being "very complex".  Given the rules, however, it seems, while multi-faceted, to be simply layers of simplicity stacked atop each other.  Given my love of designing abstract strategy games, this should have alerted me to the trouble ahead.

Known as emergent complexity, this is the idea that very complex results are often the result of a few simple rules systems interacting with each other.  Complex and numerous rules, on the other hand, usually have the habit of constraining complexity.  Using more and more rules to control the situation is the sign of weak design, in an abstract strategy game.  Go is the gold standard for simple rules and emergent complexity.

Rowling's statement about the complexity of Quiddich proves true.

For a game like this, basically a simulation of a physical sport, I needed to model the movements and actions of fourteen players in four different roles, as well as the attributes and actions of four different balls.  All moving in three dimensions, all at the same time.  Each turn.

Keep it simple, I told myself, over and over.  For instance, I wanted to keep it pure strategy by not using dice for action resolution.  But that left me with the problem of players selecting from numerous possible actions by calculating the success of each and choosing only successful options.  Talk about paralysis!  The game threatened to get bogged down before I ever tested it.  The solution:  ignorance.

Not knowing a predetermined outcome is as good as randomness, so I hid a lot of the information from the opponent on cubes.  You can see your information, but the other team cannot.  Now there was no way to know if you'd succeed or not until you declared your action.  You'd have to correctly predict your opponent's intentions, a gauge how much they wanted something to happen.

The 3D nature of flying players and balls I abstracted away, and I kept the field very few spaces, to force players into tight proximity.  But the complexity of modelling a sport dogged me.  Every element was modeled with the fewest rules I could manage and still perform its function.

Throwing a ball is a good example.  There are two main types of throw in the game of Quiddich: throws form one player to another (a Pass), and throws through the golden hoops that score your team ten points (a Shot on Goal).  It seems nit-picky, but it's essential to allow blocking and interceptions, as well as defending the rings by the Keeper.  Oh, and then there are penalty shots.  How do you manage strategy when there is only one shooter and one defender?  Both players automatically have highest priority, so how can it be made strategic?

Taken together, this network of simple parts transforms into something else entirely.  And that says nothing of the technical task of writing the rules to make this comprehensible to others.  As prose, the rules are about fifteen pages long.  Gak!  I'm hoping when I do a full-art version, they'll boil down a lot.

Modeling a sport has really brought home how complex the rules of the average sport are.  The reason sports are, from a game-designer's point of view, inelegant, is that there are just so many rules.  But dealing with the real world in real time means you have to institute all sorts of controls.  Even in the wizarding world, the game was sometimes hard to watch and understand without magical assistance, and I can only imagine how a Referee could do their job.

I wanted to allow basically every interaction that was shown in the book's Quiddich matches, and I believe I have done a good job of it, now that I've been alpha-testing for a week or so.  The four types of players are all very useful, and each of the four balls in the game works completely differently.  But, now that I have a working model of Quiddich, the true complexity of the shifting tactics has really come home for me.  I wonder if J.K. Rowling realized how well her imaginary sport actually plays out, because, if my game is any sort of good simulation, the sport of Quiddich is a hugely deep, and very impressive piece of game design.  I wonder what other games she might have designed, and just doesn't talk about much.

 But I can't wait to start beta-testing, as offloading half the work onto another brain would be such a relief!

The Downward Spiral

There comes a point in every story where the end begins.  The threads have all been woven or cut, and those remaining must be tied off.  For completed work, this is the final buildup toward the climax.  For short stories, this is the end of the initial setup.  Short stories begin poised to end.

I call this moment of no return the Downward Spiral.

There's simply no turning back.  And if you have all your ducks in a row, that's just fine.  You can ride the wave to the end.  But sometimes, maybe often times, the tug of the downward spiral brings a twinge of apprehension.  The rapidly approaching future is still unclear.  Sometimes just hazy, and sometimes fully obscured, a fog of half-formed approaches to getting what you need done, or, worse yet, not being certain what needs to be done at all.

I used to revel in this uncertainty, and perhaps I still do.  I love having to think on my feet, like the characters themselves.  But with some projects, this approach simply won't work.  Whether because you've jumped your outline or never had one, the vortex of the downward spiral might make you want to pause, and get your thoughts in order before you go on.  The larger the project, the more likely this sort of late-stage planning is necessary.

My current trilogy, Queen of Cinders, is a perfect example of this.

Book One was a textbook outlined project, that I followed relatively unchanged from beginning to end.  Book Two, however, derailed the outline I had prepared for it.  My expanded understanding of the characters, and the pacing that had developed, demanded events happen first at different times, and then in different ways, than I'd foreseen.  The ending was far more satisfactory than I'd pre-imagined it.

With this in mind, I began Book Three with an entirely different approach.  Rather than outline, I'd plan just a few scenes ahead.  This trilogy has many points of view, and I used a simple spreadsheet to give each character a column.  If I thought of things that needed to happen further into the future, I'd simply write it in a cell far down their column.  Sometimes I'd switch which character presented an event, based on whose take on the events I wanted to highlight.

All three of these books are in two parts each.  Now, part one of book three is coming rapidly to a close, and will be finished in a few days, leaving the final half of the final book.  Everything I want to do has to happen in an ever-shrinking future.  The ability to forward-cast interesting hooks, or events I wanted to include, is coming to a close.  A more structured outline suddenly needs to return.  Full circle?  Maybe.

This last book is going to be about four hundred pages, so I've got only two hundred pages to work with.  And that feeling of visiting a place for the last time will be growing as I write, as it sometimes does for me during the downward spiral.  Of course, as the author, I can do more drafts, and thus revisit places, but editing is different than creation.  Barring the sort of disastrous mishap that would require major rewriting, editing is a far cry from forming the initial draft.

So the downward spiral is a good thing, signalling that I'm nearly done in the process of completing a new manuscript.  The story is almost finished, rough edges and all.  But there's pressure there, to do what needs to be done in the story, and make it look easy while it happens.  It's a special time that makes many authors feel like slow-motion athletes, swimming an ever-tightening route, until the tale is told.