Experimenting

Being a Better Writer: The Importance of Experimentation

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Hello readers, and welcome back for another Monday installment of Being a Better Writer! Confession time: This post was actually written early, as will be the next few week’s worth of Being a Better Writer posts, as I am going to be out of town for a few weeks in May. I’m getting a head start, in other words.

So, with little to no knowledge of the news that will be occurring at the time of post outside of “Hey, I’m planning on being away, Alpha Readers on Starforge get a blissful few weeks to rush ahead of me” there’s not too much reason to say anything other than “Let’s talk writing!”

So let’s talk writing! And the importance of experimenting. Hit that jump!

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Where Stranded Went Wrong … and Right

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Well, I figured I’d better do something to have more content this week than Being a Better Writer, and I wasn’t feeling another OP-ED today since I’d rather finish another writing project, so how about we talk about that other writing project for a moment?

I mentioned Stranded earlier this week and mentioned that it was a bit of a flop. This is true: It doesn’t seem to be resonating with Alpha Readers the way my other works have. More to the point, a number of them find it either A) boring or B) not to their liking.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to finish it. Experimental as it is (and it’s an experiment that seems to have bombed), I’m only a few thousand words from the end as of today. And even though it appears to not be what my audience is interested in, there’s still chance that it’ll find a home with a different audience, though I consider that a low chance at this time.

But I’m not disappointed with it. The whole point of an experimental piece is to learn, and I’ve definitely had some moment of that with this one. I took on Stranded with the goal of stretching my writing capabilities to some new areas, and I hold that I managed to do that, despite that it didn’t quite aim for my audience.

So … what did go wrong, and what went right? Even though the story isn’t finished, and all I’ve got is some Alpha Reader feedback, so maybe it’s a little early to say for certain, well … I’ve still been thinking on it as I wrap the story up.

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Being a Better Writer: Why Writers Should Play Games

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I’m back!

Yup, got my replacement ethernet port installed and I’m back in business. I actually did get a pretty good amount of writing done too. Two weeks without internet notwithstanding, as Jungle isn’t in any position at the moment where it requires internet. Okay, well, it required some worldbuilding documents on Google Docs, but those I could skim on my phone.

Jungle, by the way, is still in the finale. Everything’s blowing up, similar to Colony, and that’s not really that much of a surprise as this is a sequel. Hopefully I can be done by the end of this week. There are only a few chapters more to go, and everything’s coming together pretty well. Editing is going to be a chore, but … that’s the writing life!

Okay, enough yammering about current events in my writing queue. Now to yammer about something else. Just a quick reminder, if you’re a Patreon Supporter, check the reward posts! I checked the stats on Patreon yesterday and some of those posts have only ever seen two views despite the number of supporters! I’m not sure if I’m not making them visible enough, or what, but I was genuinely surprised (especially as a few supporters have hinted that they didn’t feel there were enough Patreon rewards for being supporters … and yet a large majority of those rewards have barely been looked at). There’s retrospectives, worldbuilding extras and notes for various books, and even previews and short stories I’ve not posted anywhere else!

If you’re a supporter, don’t miss out! Those posts are for you! You can check out the entire backlog here, or just head on over to my Patreon page if you’re not a supporter yet, but would like to become one.

Okay, that’s all out of the way. Now how about I get down to today’s topic. Which is a bit of an odd one, sure, but one that’s worth bringing up. Today, we’re going to talk about why writers should play games. And no, I’m not talking about the kind of games where you find a maybe significant other and lead them on. Not those games.

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Being a Better Writer: Forward, Pioneers

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Today is Pioneer Day in the state I live in, a day when everyone celebrates the forward-looking, pioneer spirit of the old west that sent so many explorers forth. And I thought “You know, I can make a Being a Better Writer post out of that.”

Which brings us to the here and now, where I am. Writing this post. About pioneers. Man, that was a short recap. Like the thirty-second backstory of a cartoon. Anyway …

So, pioneers. Don’t worry, this is still a writing post. This is still about sitting down and putting hands to keyboard, pen, whatever, and creating a world of wonderful characters and adventure, tragedy, comedy, or what have you. But what does it have to do with pioneers?

Well, I’m going to take a step back further in history to look at an earlier explorer. Namely, a man who put his name on history for the ages by insisting that India could be reached not by traveling around Africa or over land, but by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, we know this man as Christopher Columbus, who stumbled across the entirely unexpected Americas and got a lot of credit for discovering them in the modern eras. And yes, I know the vikings and the people that lived there beat him there, but Columbus was the one that put the Americas on the center stage and kicked off … well, just about everything that lead to the shape of the modern world.

Anyway, why do I bring up this story? For one reason, and one reason only: Most everyone considered Columbus insane. They thought the voyage he was attempting was going to be too treacherous. Pop-culture claimed that his detractors thought he would sale off of the edge of the Earth (despite people knowing back then that the Earth wasn’t flat). A lot of people simply thought he would get caught up in a storm and he and all his men die at sea.

Basically, there were a lot of fearful reasons that no one had ever attempted the journey west before. And if they had, they hadn’t made it back, so there was more to those fears.

Of course, we know the result of this story. Columbus secured his funding at last for his trading expedition. And as it turned out, his calculations were wrong. There wasn’t a direct, westward path to India because someone had put a blasted continent in the way (not that they realized this for a while). But soon they did, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. All it took was someone willing to take a chance on sailing west, against the “common current” that ruled the minds of the current climate.

Why I am I telling you this and what does it have to do with writing? Well, let’s look at one other success story first. Have you seen Stranger Things?

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