My theme for the next few generators, barring interruption or more likely distraction, is going to be food.  I love to cook, and it’s only natural I apply this to the generators.  Plus it’s kind of interesting to study how we name and create foods.  First up is the Fusion Food Generator, now in beta, which generates assorted items, leaning towards meals and snacks.  Let’s take a look at some samples, shall we?

• Steak Dumpling
• Mango Cheese and Spinach Crab with Barbecue sauce
• Tempura Spicy Soy Burrito with Apple sauce
• Crab on Toast with Pesto sauce
• Boiled Burrito
• Squid Pilaf
• Toasted Curried Miso Bean and Kimchi Taco
• Buttered Honied Maple Mango and Kimchi Octopus on Fries
• Roasted Risotto
• Boiled Mint Cheese and Potato Squid
• Nacho Sausage
• Spiced Parmesan Risotto with Mustard sauce
• Lamb Lasagna with Honey sauce
• Pickled Banana Steak on Risotto
• Baked Sandwich

Lamb Lasagna with Honey sauce actually sounds pretty good (especially if you worked some mint leaves in there).  So, what do you think?

• Steve

Way With Worlds

This week I finish my current editing sweep – and then the next one begins.  In that one I plan to read the sections backwards – which helps me get a fresh view on the things I was editing when I was tired of it, and catch continuity errors between sections.  We’re definitely on schedule to get it to pre-readers in October.

Plot Twist Generator and Other Generators

The plot twist generator didn’t get an update this weekend, but I hope to do one soon.  I think it’s time to just sit down and do a serious push on it to take it to beta.  Fortunately everyone’s given me great feedback.

I also may need to take a small break from it after I get it to beta, and write something fun and simple.

Respectfully,

– Steven Savage
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

As you may guess what is up?  The Writing Prompt Generator!

Took a bit of a change here, not adding new vocabulary or prompt structures, but jazzing up and extending the ones I’d created.  It’s actually made it a lot more interesting and diverse, and made me think about a few things.

Mostly I think of generators as involving a structure and language in the structure when they’re simple, or a kind of “tree of possibilities” when more complex.  Superhero names are of the former variety, a character generator where you have certain things that can or can’t happen (having hair) or that relate to each other (“x item produces y occurrence”).

But the prompt generator feels more like a kind of matryoshka doll, a bunch of nested patterns.  I need to have the place-word-in-slot complexity on one level, but overall complexity isn’t quite linear, but is a series of elements that can relate linearly.

There’s the overall structure (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”), lower-level components (“The X of times”) and then the words itself (“best”, “worst”).   In turn you could also complicated it (By randomly adding “She was sure it was . . .” to the start), or randomly adding something to the end, (“, so said my father”).  But in turn I could make those complicated as well, by adding multiple beginnings or endings.  You could have “I was sure it was the most disgusting time, and the most glorious age, but who listens to me?” emerge from slotting words and groups of words into a similar structure.

Yet the relation of the parts is a tad tenuous, because I need them to be unpredictable and not connected to inspire the imagination and create diversity.  It’s nested randomness.

I’m quite sure the generator will never be perfect, yet at the same time it’s already far better than my worst-case scenarios – enough I can declare it to be out of Alpha and into Beta.  I certainly learned a lot!

I’ll probably take a few more stabs at it, get it to at least decently release-worthy, then take a break and maybe get to some other generators.  This is one I may have to revisit.

But some results for you with my thoughts . . .

• Then came the mutants, or that’s what he thought. – Not mutants, but aliens, good job lousy space adventurer, now your sidekick has to sort it out.
• Such a common time, this time of science and space wars. – Space combat is automated so people are used to it.
• Terrorist attacks, political collapse, sanity and wanderlust. – Sometimes you have to get away from the chaos to stay sane.
• The crazy girl was weeping all night. – . . . this doesn’t end well.
• I will be a linguist, with my lamps. – A linguist-interrogator, checking others for unlawful language.
• I’ve found that all supervillains lack any understanding of religion – he was the exception as well as my friend. – Your best friend is a religious fanatic supervillain, teenage years just got complicated.
• I have a tale about war, alchoholism, and a king – your story. – The king drank himself into oblivion and amnesia – and now he has to remember who he is as his advisor tries to help – and the story is written as if someone is talking to YOU.
• Like a person, a political collapse is always sleeping. – And always ready to wake and turn over and crush things.
• Everyone predicted there will be a mass murder, and that’s when everything when wrong. – What happens when a group of criminologists make an embarrassing prediction that doesn’t come true?
• It will be the month of scheming. – A very organized supervillain is preparing . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

So the Writing Prompt Generator got another upgrade!  Inspired by the famous Dr. Who line ‘I am definitely a mad man with a box,’ I realized there should be more lines qualifying people and dealing with objects, and put in a lot of new vocabulary and sentence structures, as well as fleshing out some old structures with the new data.  The result feels far more inspiring and satisfying than the last version – I think this is coming together.

By my estimates it’s probably around 2/3 done.  I’ve also had to realize, sadly “done” is really in the eye of the beholder – I could go on for ages with this thing (and well may).  So at some point I’ll have to say “good enough” and stop or take a break.

(Also I want to get back to some other generators and projects, darn it!)

I am also thinking as this is one of the most complicated generators sentence-structure wise, maybe at some point I have to just rewrite it and apply my lessons, as I’m literally learning as I make this.

Here’s some of the latest results!

• People call her Isabelle. – Have her meet Ishmael!
• It was Tuesday, and you know what that means. – It’s that last line that gets you as you don’t know.
• Hyperspace distortions, plague, good and getting old. – I imagine someone marooned on a plague-infested world, trying to make it better as he/she comes to grips with mortality.
• Call me William. – Meet Isabelle.
• He was eternally an odd boy. – There’s an intriguing line, I imagine a strange child in a little neighborhood who doesn’t age . .
• She was resting, and that’s when the murders began. – Subconcious monsters of the id go on a rampage – or is she the guard against them?
• All the robot rebellions were her fault. – I imagine there’s going to be displacement of blame here.
• He never wanted to be a supervillain. – Parental or peer pressure perhaps?
• This is a story that concerns a good girl. – I’m pretty sure she’s going to turn out not to be good by the end.
• Getting old is my friend, ambition is my partner. – Your protagonist uses his sense of impending death to drive himself.
• That man, that thing of pure science, with his red statue and his bottle. – I imagine a guy who’s rather religious about his profession and has a statue of a famous scientist – and a drinking problem.
• That boy, that being of flawed good, with his book. – A religious young man who doesn’t quite get the deeper moral issues.
• That lady, that being of total peace, with her statue and her book. – A woman becomes famous and writes one book – and though she doesn’t ask for it, it comes to her.
• I have a story about Thursday. – It’s the next line that would make it.
• The sun was howling, and that’s when the murders began. – Sounds disturbing, as if some person believes he has to kill people to shut the sun up.
• Violet was my greatest betrayer and my worst enemy. – . . . I can’t say much except Violet is a jerk.
• I have a story about Saturday. – I’m sure you do.
• The immoral woman was bleeding all day, which was really awesome. – Disturbing. Sounds like some kind of religious fanatic torturer with teen lingo, which could lead to many stories.
• He was just a boy with a dangerous weapon. – There’s an opening line that could go many directions, and it has a lot of resonance – I imagine the weapon is some magical or technical artifact that isn’t obviously a weapon . . .
• This is a story about political collapse. – A bit generic, sadly.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

Hey everyone, so what’s up here at the Sanctum!

Well, the big thing is I’ve wanted to add more ways to socialize – and try out a few ideas I had.  So I’ve got the official Seventh Sanctum Tumblr – AND I created automated updates for it.  Not only does it repost links to what’s at The Codex, but every day there’s a new, randomly generated story!  Yep, every day you’ll have a story untouched by human hands, delivered straight to Tumblr!

I may also be adding some more things over time as I experiment, and of course reposting Sanctum related things.

I also played up our social media on the site – for instance I never really promoted our Twitter.  It has a randomly generated idea every day, plus posts from here and anything I think to send down.  So now I’m promoting it – join up!

I want to see if this provides some more socializing to the Sanctum before I look at other elements like a more active Facebook community or a mailing list.  Yep, still working on that adding-more-social elements goal!

OK, with that done, the Writing Prompt Generator!

I haven’t done much with it recently since I’ve been pretty busy with work – and this takes a certain level of creative energy I just wasn’t feeling (sometimes it seems writing code is more workmanlike than building the data files and kind of relaxing).  However the plan is still to get it working well enough and then posting it to get feedback and ideas from everyone.  That’s my next goal, actually.

Meanwhile with Way With Worlds, I’m now working on a four to five part series on Worldbuilding and Sex.  If you assume that’s going to be exciting, you’re probably going to be disappointed unless you really get into Worldbuilding.  Then again you’re here. . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

Well, what’s up?

• First you probably saw the Action Animal Generator.  That’s a way to keep my mojo going as I cope with rounds of business, illness, work, etc.  Q1 was not the calmest quarter.  Also this was fun -and there’s a kinda-related-inspired generator I want to do that is more useful.  I think I think I will have to block out time to do those more complex writing generators I wanted though.  Then again this quarter really ambushed me.
• One of the reasons I was so busy was . . . a rewrite of my first book!  Now there’s Fan To Pro’s Second Edition.  I updated my career guide with lots of new information, reorganized it, and more.  I learned a lot over the years and wanted to get that done – and that also was a larger drain on my time than expected – especially formatting.  If you do a print book self-published, get ready to spend time or money to format it right . . . (If you want any advice, email me).
• I haven’t sensed a lot of enthusiasm for the mailing list so I left that by the wayside for awhile, but am considering it and other social options.  Also, again, being darned busy.
• We’ve got more posts coming from me and Solar Scortch, and I’ll be diving deep into religious worldbuilding!

– Steven Savage

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum and at MuseHack]

Have you ever read a story and things just seemed to work . . . wrong?

• The hero defeats one guy and then the world is safe, the Evil Army is destroyed, he gets the girl, and his chin is still awesome?
• The superpowered alien who somehow manages to release massive, colorful, well-animated attacks that just well . . . have no side effects, no source, and no real explanation?  I mean how do you release a “gravity buster” without messing up everything but the guy you aimed it at?
• The villain who’s massive, connected, complex plot works perfectly while in the real world you aren’t even sure the game you’re working on will ship without a day one patch and an apology?

You know that feeling. Things happen easily in stories and games – too easily. Cause and effect apparently are having a trial separation and you worry they’re going to get a divorce before the book ends.. Simple actions have massive and unwarranted repercussions. We snicker, we laugh, we roll our eyes – and we’re out of the world because things just work wrong.

A lot of world building is about Power, in the non-Machiavellian sense.  It is about how something gets a result, and when you don’t make it work right in your world, then your world is no longer “real.”

Power, from super attacks to a clever cutting comment, done wrong makes a world unbelievable. If you’re building a setting, writing in a setting, you want to make sure that you don’t trip people up so they stumble out of your world. In building your world, you have to get the power of things, of people and weapons and comments and plans, right or the world is back to being words on paper or pixels in a game.

Fortunately I have a rule for getting it right. I call it the Pyramid Of Power. Which is a useful rule, and not the place Kephr-Ra, The Never-Dying, hid the Staff of Omens to keep it from Man-Cat and the Silvermasters. (more…)

After spending last column talking about characters in continuity, in world building, it’s time to talk about creating characters themselves.

I held this off until talking about the role characters play because of all aspects of world building, Character creation is the one that can (and in my opinion, should) be the most complex. As noted, a character is in a way the summary of the setting, and in turn, extremely complicated. Because they’re complicated, a sense of where they fit is important.

Characters are your setting come to visible, relatable life. Or at least should be.

The problem in discussing “how to create” characters is the process itself is also unpredictable, personal, and unique for everyone – just as characters are unique. So I can’t give you a system or even a list of questions that’ll “do it for you.” In fact, I shouldn’t because we all do this differently.

What I can do is give a list of techniques i’ve used, I’ve encountered, and I’ve coached on to help you create characters. Some you’re doing. Some you aren’t. Some will work. Some won’t – but would work for someone else.

But you can find what works for you.

After all I said it wasn’t simple. People never are – and that’s what you’re creating. (more…)

Whew, sorry for the slow update.  Got over my illness, but still had a busy week.  So what’s up?

The Magical Guild Generator is done, and you can use it here.

For those of you not familiar with what inspired it, “Fairy Tail,” it’s an anime I’ve seen that a Sanctum user mentioned – specifically they wanted names of Guilds for wizards based on the series.  In general I think a “band of magical people” generator is a good idea, so I decided to make a Guild generator for Wizards, but also generalize it a bit more to have a diverse set of naming patters.

The end result?  I’d say pretty good.  The names are usable in the majority of cases, and sometimes it gets really inspired stuff.  I think I managed to use both the source material well and make a general generator.

There were also a few insights into language in this case – and for you language buffs, they were:

1. That many names do have a kind of alternating generic/specific pattern – something I explored before, but see prominently here.A guild named Witch Spell or Triton Potion would sound almost “too magical” but something named Witch Gear, Triton Gate, Wolf Spell, or Raven Potion sound find.  “Contextual” language is something for me to explore further.
2. Some terms for people – Queen, Watchman, etc. also act as descriptors/definers, and not just as titles.  Thus you may have a guild like King Triton.
3. I never realized how many names for groups there are – and how important it is to realize some groups are defined by using their number as part of their name.  I mean, there was the Jackson Five – not a guild of magicians by the way – and I believe some Sentai team names had their number as part of their title.  In fact that was part of my Sentai team namer, and again I see now how this is a pattern.

Now that you can go churn out Wizard guilds to your heart’s content, what’s next?  Well I still have the list of what people requested, and a few personal things I want to try.  But with skills re-primed, I think I want to do one of the writing-related requests, like plot twists or writing prompts.

Now I’m formatting a book – and of course always working on Way With Worlds, so as usual there’s no date.  But I admit I’ve got some ideas . . .

– Steven Savage

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum at at MuseHack]

I’m going to start by assuming the setting of your story has intelligent life in it. If not, well that sounds like a challenging write, and feel free to skip this part until you need it.  Or don’t because hey, you never know.

Now first, allow me to define intelligent life, so we’re on the same sheet of virtual paper here. Intelligent life is that form of life that can process information, adapt and retain this information, pass this information on to others, and possesses a level of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Intelligent life is essentially a kind of conscious computing, even if I personally dislike that simplistic terminology.

I would especially argue that intelligence contains a level of self-awareness as intelligence life as we think of itis self-modifying and self-directing. You can’t separate intelligence from consciousness, because someone has to “be in there” to be intelligent. “I think therefore I am” is also “I know I am as I think.”

With that all-to brief (and doubtlessly incomplete) journey into the philosophy of intelligence, let’s continue a to why it’s important. I’ll also try not to overdo the words “intelligent life,” but no promises here. (more…)