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April 12, 2007
Vonnegut's Passing
Hello All,
Just thought I'd offer up a moment of silence for the brilliant Kurt Vonnegut who passed away today at the age of 85. If you've never read any of his work, you should. It's good stuff! We should mourn the loss of such a literary treasure.
For me, Kurt Vonnegut has alway been there and he's had a profund impact on writing. Not necessarily the tone or the texture or even the subject matter, but the clarity of vision and his mastery of words. He took science fiction and made it cut through the clutter and noise of a genre. In doing so, he created literature. A most impressive feat, wouldn't you say?
Remembering him for his wry wit and common sense, I present the following list of his eight rules of writing a short story for your enjoyment and edification.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Regards,
Sean
Posted by razorwise at 09:59 PM
April 09, 2007
Sunshine and Daffodils
Hello All,
Here is the place where I come to rant and ramble. Though, I suppose, I do more of the latter than the former. My rants are far too spontaneous to be confined to a keyboard, though I can make do and get a good ramble on just about anywhere.
I'm happy to say that the Iron Dynasty playtesting is going awesome, that Pinnacle has announced the availability of the RunePunk hardback through them (and, yes, it's still shiny) and you can get it just about everywhere else, including Amazon.com. It's awesome to know people all over the world are undertaking their first journeys into ScatterPoint and even more awesome to realize there are already people with well established campaigns of RunePunk since its debut and there is a dedicated newsletter - The ScatterPoint Sentinel - out there as well. There are a bunch of good people who have gather around Reality Blurs and I've not got a bad word to say today - hence today's title of sunshine and daffodils. I'm not going to complain about wishing I had a higher word count today or that the internet connection was a bit spottier than I'm used to. (Actually, I will complain about that, but I'm sure I'm to blame. I rarely do a full reboot and I know better. I keep typing and putting this mechanical beast on standby, in case I have a sudden burst of inspiration. Which I actually did by the way, but it's filed under Iron Dynasty, so you'll have to wander over there and see what my epiphany was.)
At any rate, I'm super busy and juggling projects and getting quite in the groove. Still reflecting a bit about the whole Guest of Honor thing and I suppose I should give it a more serious treatment, but now is not the time. I'm in full on ramble, rather than reflection today, and am trying to be shiny. Speaking of shiny, I noted earlier this afternoon on RPGNow, that the True20 Companion is the hottest moving property and I'm glad to have worked on the thing. Very, very cool. I'm working on RunePunk stuff as well as Agents of Oblivion and Iron Dynasty and somehow managing to keep a smile on my face and my fingers to the keyboards. Okay, not always. I'm getting more playtest sessions in of this and that and getting to do a bit of M&M gaming as well. Do I have plans for some more Superlink stuff? Why, of course. Do I keep myself entirely too busy? Yeah. I do that too.
Take care.
Regards,
Sean
P.S. And buy RunePunk (in whatever form you can.) ;)
Posted by razorwise at 10:45 PM