The Emperor's Musings

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So, I’ve signed up for the Clarion Write-a-Thon (link is over to the right) and with luck, I’ll be able to stick to my schedule of writing a thousand words or so every two days, maybe more. I’ll be writing all sorts of stuff and contributing as much as I can. It starts in a few weeks, and I’m rather excited to get at it.

It would seem that I have neglected posting here for some time. Real life does get in the way at times, but I’m back. With any luck, I’ll be posting more often. I have some great ideas that I’m working on for fiction and stuff, which should be interesting to write.

Anyways, just a quick blurb from me for now, I shall return!

I’ve been doing some thinking about writing and computer programming. Many centuries ago, writing was only those educated in it. It was seen as something that had no practical use beyond the recording of… well… records. It wasn’t something that ordinary people had to learn as knowing all of these little scribbles on paper (or vellum. or whatever) was not really something that had practical value. As long as someone could work hard and take orders, he was set. Now though, it’s rather different.

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While listening to ABBA earlier today (don’t judge me!) I realized just how important it was to me that I be listening to something while writing. True, it’s a highly contested practice with many preferring to write in ghostly silence where you could easily hear dust drop and many on the other side of the spectrum who can’t work at all without guitar riffs blasting their eardrums to bloody pulps. I fall on the music side of the spectrum, but not so much that I’ll no longer be able to hear anything a few years down the road.

I find that certain music does a lot to affect my writing. Compare writing with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 playing in the background to doing the same with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 or Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and you’ll most assuredly see a difference. Depending on my mood, I’ll listen to different things. Also depending on what I want my mood to be, I’ll also listen to different things.

Anywho, just a short little blurb from me. That’s all, cheers!

One of the most important tools that I use is the map. Having a map allows me to do many things that are extremely beneficial in both the writing of fiction and for running tabletop games. Some of these include army logistics, travel times, and population control, all of which I find extremely useful and at times, indispensable.

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Welcome back to another issue of C3. Last time, we went a little into how we shouldn’t write one-sided characters. This issue however, we’ll look at a few things you can do to actually create an effective character. I mentioned before that one of the best ways was to hang around other people. One way to take this further is to hang around your character. No, I am not telling you that you need to suddenly develop multiple personalities or even become schizophrenic (although that would produce very interesting characters) in order to write effective characters.
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Well on to character writing. This is not meant in any way to be a be-all-end-all rulebook, but rather a general rule of the thumb that will help you get started on writing characters that really work. It’s very hard to look at what should be done in creating characters, so let’s work backwards. In this issue, we’ll look at a major crime in creating characters: one-dimensional characters.

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It’s night, and the soft satin sheen of the sky spills over me in a sombre silence. It’s late. And very, very quiet. The soft pitter-patter of feet alert me to something other than myself and my musings. I turn, and there she is. A beauty of Byronic verse personified, of cloudless climes and starry skies indeed. I gaze at her, wisps of moonlight sighing down from heaven clothe her in a silvery glow unmatched by mortal design. I know her. Very well do I remember the subtle contours of her face, the lips slightly open as if in surprise, the dark velvet hair trembling carelessly past her shoulders, and the eyes, almost tear-stained, questing and questioning for answers she’ll never find.

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There’s something about crossroads that I can never quite figure out. It seems as if at each crossroad we too become, in a way, prophets, foretelling the future and seeing down paths that only we are privy to. It doesn’t matter who we are with, we are the only ones that can see down the path that we want to take.

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