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/

So, I sat down recently to plan my next Way With Worlds Column – and realized that I had no more to write. I had all the rewrites I wanted. I had added all the new content I was inspired to add. I had completed my goal.

That goal? Revisit what I’d written over 15 years previously to update it with all the things I learned since then. Mission accomplished – but now there’s more to do.

I’m now going to gather all these columns and do what I should have done all those years ago – edit them into a book. Once that’s done I’ll have the definitive word on my theory of world building for the next fifteen or so years. That’ll also give people something to have and read and keep – much as I found some people had printed out all my old columns.

While editing the columns into a book (and doubtless improving and updating them), I’ll probably be inspired to write other columns. You’ll see those pop up here and there as the mood strikes me – and they will be integrated right back into the book.

This is going to get the full book treatment – multiple edits, organizing the columns into appropriate categories, and so on. I will surely tweak, rewrite, and expand the work, integrating the feedback and insights I’ve had since I started this mad effort. When it’s done it’ll be worth your time.

How long will this take? Not sure because I want to have fun with it – and because I’ve got other projects going on. Right now I’d guess the release would be no earlier than late 2015, and no later than a year from now.

Will there be other non-WWW writing here from me? Probably. You know me, I can’t shut up . . .

. . . though I should also get to some more generators. That Plot Twist one is still hovering over me, and you folks keep sending ideas . . .

Respectfully,

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

Hey all, hope you’re doing good.  So what’s up with the Sanctum?

Well first, you’ll notice the badge there in the sidebar – the Sanctum was declared one of the 101 most useful sites for writers by Writer’s Digest!  Glad to know the site’s so helpful – and be sure to check out the other resources in the latest issue!

Next up, generators.  Though I’ve got a few ideas (because they never stop) I want to take a hard look at the idea of a Plot Twist generator this summer.  However my issue right now is what form it should take.  Genre based?  Abstract?  Wild?  Bounded?  What kind of options?  Or in short . . . suggestions welcome.

I may do a poll once I get some kind of idea in mind.

I got back from Fanime, which of course was awesome.  I did some career speaking there and hope to do more events next year.

Way With Worlds will indeed be wrapping up soon – then I start editing it into a book.  That probably means I’ll get a few more column ideas, but there probably won’t be anything regular.

I may start doing other creative posts here, let’s see where my mojo takes me . . .

 
http://www.fanime.com/

Hey gang, hope everyone’s doing good!

Our latest big news, is that after my last Way With Worlds, Blaze over at Trilobyte Studios decided to do a MB effort to define language for worldbuilding!  Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Respectfully,

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

And my first generator in awhile is up – the Undead Generator!  I wanted something to jumpstart me a bit, and then I saw a review for the game Cave Evil, which has an amazing “death metal” design and plenty of undead.  That made me think about the various undead in other games and their unique natures compared to garden-variety monsters.  I got inspired to make an undead generator and make monsters a bit more metal . . . and disgusting and rotting.

So you can get monsters like:

• Consuming Ripper of The Sands
• Doomed Slayer
• Dread Shambler
• Enchantment Wraith
• Exhumed Warrior
• Festering Grinder of the East
• Ghoul of Hell
• Hellish Festering Lasher
• Interred Homonculus of The Ocean
• Resurrector of the West
• Rogue Phantom of The Sky
• Rotting Atrocity
• Vampire Atrocity of Stone
• Wind Poltergeist
• Wraith Rock Rakshasa

I consider this a first release – it probably needs a bit of tweaking from feedback (some of the elaborate names seem overly elaborate).  Overall I’m quite pleased, because it’s “on” quite a bit – and when it’s on, it’s really on (Hellish Festering Lasher is an extremely ‘metal’ monster name.)

What was interesting with this generator is that it was reminiscent of others I’ve done.  “Themed” generators often have a mix of words that fit the theme and that are general.  Thus you could have a Rotten Shambler (suggesting undeadness) but a Rock Shambler has no “undeadness” – but a “Rock Ghast” does sound udead.  So getting this to work was a case of mixing words that suggest undeadness and general words to suggest creatures and beings.

OK folks, go to it, and let me know what you think!

Respectfully,

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

Merry Christmas Everyone!  And for Christmas let me give everyone the Fantasy Metal Generator!

This interrupted the Magical Power Generator and was inspired by the Rougelike game Dungeonmans, which beyond being a fantastic comedy/adventure/roguelike/persistent world game, also has some dynamite (and funny) sounding items and components that made me think “hey, fantasy often has strange metals.”  So in turn, I made a generator for them.  Here’s some samples:

• Demons’ Timemetal
• Dream Glittermercury
• Dream Mithril
• Evil Shadowiron
• Fatal Dream Mithril
• Flaming Bronze
• Ghostly Ice Copper
• Glitterhammer Adamant Of The Past
• Meteoric Orichalcum
• Night Platinum
• Night Windhell Orichalcum
• Phantasmal Windgold Of Arch-angels
• Rottin
• Sand Bronze Of Wizards
• Sapphireshadow Adamant
• Secret Orichalcum
• True Adamant Of The Dawn
• Unknowable Rockiron Of The Rivers
• Wordsilver Of The Swamps
• Zephyrlead

This puts me in mind of a game of fantasy weapon making where the minerals you mine are procedurally generatred.  So you make weapons and equipment out of randomized minerals with different properties, and if there’s one you like you can keep trying to mine it or get ahold of it.
– 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/.

Yeah, another delay – holidays, illness, work craziness.  I am so glad I’ve got vacation time coming up.

So first up, more detail on the Magical Power Generator idea.

Basically I noticed in things like anime (especially Fairy Tail which inspired another generator a year ago – which is how long this idea was sitting in my head) and video games there’s magic that’s sort of a “superpower” – not a ton of chants and material components but more blast-and go.  You also see this to an extent in video games.  It’s a “set” of abilities as it were with names as simple as “Dance Magic” or as complex as “Lightning God Slayer Magic.”

Needless to say, that started giving me ideas.

So what about a generator that makes these “types” or “sets” of powers, but also tosses in some good expansion.  Sure you may have “Air Magic” but why not “Wind Bewitchment?”  Why not have “Celestial Beast Snare Sorcery” along with “Animal Magic?”

On that level, why not make options that allow for some poetic alliteration?  You could have “Water Wizardry” out to “Dark Demonic Decimation Diabolism?”

So as you can guess this simple idea is fun (in fact I have most of the data),  though getting the poetic alliteration is a wee bit challenging – but is teaching me some new stuff.  Let’s hope I have enough sane time to do this!

Now with that being said . . .

The new year’s coming up and last year left me with enough ideas I don’t think I need to do a new poll (or “yes, I know, plot twist generator.”).  However I do want to consider it.

Things I HOPE to do are:

• More Tumblr feeds.
• Automate the Twitter random idea feed.
• Consider a Patreon to ditch ads and give me more layout options.
• Try to do some events/teamups/more contributors to the codex and others.

Oh and use that portable dev environment I have yet to use.

This was a pretty insane year.

Finally at Muse Hack I did two columns on the question “is there a gap in hiring in IT” – if you work in IT you’ve heard the claim it’s hard to hire people.  In part one I examined the basic numbers and what they tell us, but then dived deeper into specifics and reached some surprising conclusions.  Short form, there’s probably a gap for senior people, it’s concealed due to certain factors – and we’re making it worse.  If you work in IT check it out . . .

 

– 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/.

Two updates this time!

First the Seventh Sanctum Tumblr now has a daily random character as well as the random story idea.  This way you get interesting character ideas you can share, discuss, and challenge each other to use.  I plan to add more in the future.

Next up, the Writing Prompt Generator had another update!  I added specific locations as well as metaphorical comparisons to classic stories and legends, plus some tweaks and additions and improvements here and there.

I think one more update and I can consider this “done enough” – good enough for people to use, but something where I’ll return to it to improve it in the future.  Frankly working on it because it not only takes work to do, you have to evaluate combinations, viability, maximizing randomness and diversity, and trying to keep it all “sounding” right.  In a way it’s one of the most challenging generators I’ve made.

So clearly it will be a work in progress for as long as I’m willing to work on it here and there or make some tweaks.

Now let’s try some results:

• And now the the sky is crying – I like this one, it could be a metaphor for raining and suggests a mood.
• His life is almost exactly like the tale of the Genji, only he was a virtual reality programmer. – Perhaps he’s reliving the tale in a game?
• He died in the epoch of war, all because of that book. – A book of advice for warriors leads a person down a fatal path, assuming they know more than they do.
• I was sure he will be sleeping. – What are you sneaking up on him for there.
• Ambition is a lady, and that’s when the murders began. – One woman eggs on people with promises . . .
• I am a mad lady, with my lanterns and my bottles. – And the bottles have candles in them, a woman obsessed with light – to keep the darkness inside at bay.
• That archer will be the love of my life, but that’s a lie. – One archer saves a prince or princess, and they fake being in love with them in gratitude.
• People call him Owen. – I got nothing.
• We survived the poverty by hiding in her library. – A library designed to be an indestructible repository also lets people hide from a horrible bout of starvation, corrupting its intention – so how do you make up for it?
• It was Monday, the day of injustice, and that’s when the murders began. – A court decision results in someone taking justice into their own hands.

Check it out!

– 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/.

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/.

Let’s talk the Writing Prompt Generator!

Based on the feedback I’ve been getting I’ve been adding new stuff – in this case disasters and antagonists, as well as tweaking things here and there.  It’s definitely spiced things up, so go check it out!

This was definitely one of the less-fun parts as I had to work out various setting-specific things first.  Putting the various words and phrases together is fun, but those moments of sitting down and listing things can be a pain (how many popular disasters are there in science fiction for instance?).  Fortunately the internet helped, and the research was pretty educational – for instance seeing trends in SF disasters – really much apocalyptic fiction really is SF.

Now when it comes together it produces some pretty frothy stuff.  I may need to take time to go through and just add more tweaks, variants, and weirdness

By my estimates I need a certain level of “base” opening lines to make this work – and I’m a bit under halfway there.  So my goal is to work on this thing through August.  It’s extremely educational.

I admit I think this isn’t going to be perfect – not in that it’ll be incoherent, but it’s hard to capture the “lightning in the bottle” opening lines, so I may be making it a tad tame.  There is a very, very fine line to walk here, and I’m learning that there’s a sweet spot in language that both explains and inspires – but you have to hit it.  Err on the side of explaining (“wham here it is”) and it’s dull and uninspiring.  Err too far on the side of looking for the combination that inspires and you risk falling into incoherent weirdness.

But again, always educational.

I also think this is the kind of generator more generator-makers should try.  It’s highly educational

That’s it for this update.  Do have some things brewing for future generators and some writing, always working on Way With Worlds (I plan to finish up my two-parter on skills and move on to the next subject), but let me leave you with a few opening lines . . .

• Political collapse – it was definitely Saturday. – A world so organized political disasters happen only on one day.
• A war is just like getting old. – You can’t reverse it and you’re filled with regrets.
• We called him John, and figured he was a comedian. – Imagine a guy who’s hilariously funny, but wants people to stop focusing on that.
• I’d never dealt with a climate change before. – Sounds like someone is aware of an issue.
• I pretended to be a librarian, that was the problem. – You CANNOT pretend to be a librarian, its a special skillset. Sounds like an odd comedy.
• I am a secretary. – Sounds simple, but I feel this is a more menacing opening.
• On Wednesday I become a chemist, which was really cool. – Childlike wonder at handling dangerous chemicals could go wrong.
• She was my worst enemy and the darkness in my life. – Well your relation is pretty clear – the question is why haven’t you done anything . . .
• Michael knew that knowledge requires injustice. – Oooh, a story on how knowing the truth doesn’t mean fairness?
• It was Monday, the day of giggling, everyone knew that. – This just sounds creepy, like every Monday everyone hears giggling
• One magical experiment gone haywire can change your life, four however . . . – A series of magical disasters make things too normal.
• I never figured a mass murder would be like this. – Sounds very “Breaking Bad” ish.
• The rogue robots were behind the starship crash. – Well, that’s simple.  But why?  Were they willing to sacrifice themselves.
• That scientist was the source of all my pain. – This can’t end well.
• I pretended to be an explorer, which everyone expected. – Getting to live your childhood dream doesn’t mean you’re good at it.
• I have a tale about hope, birth, and being a dungeon delver. – If you spend your time exploring dungeons, what if you miss your child’s birth?  What’s it like when dad goes away so often?
• On Saturday I become a scientist, and that’s where things get complicated. – I’d like to know how, maybe you know something people don’t.
• I never wanted to be a demon. – This sounds like a rather dark supernatural romance.
• It was Thursday, the day of disbelief and drug addiction. – If you have nothing to believe in, drugs are tempting.
• Because of her, the wind is weeping. – One person who fails you makes the whole world seem sad.

Let me know what ideas you get . . .

– 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/.