Say you have a story you want to tell. For argument’s sake, let’s further posit that this story doesn’t take place on Earth in the year 2010. It takes place in 2055, or on some other planet, or back in the Renaissance. Provided you’ve done your research or laid a good foundation in terms of notes, sketches or perhaps audio logs some post-apocalyptic adventurer will stumble across when our oil runs out, you know who’s who in the world in which your story takes place.
The reader, unfortunately, is likely not as acquainted with the setting as you are, especially if you made the world yourself. If that’s the case, nobody should know the world better than you. Until they start writing fanfiction – and if they do, my friend, then you’re doing just fine.
What I’m getting at is that sooner or later, you’ll need to introduce the settings, concepts and ‘rules’ of the realm in which your tale takes place. That means exposition. Expository writing isn’t really all that hard, as it’s mostly rattling off things already rattling around in your head. However, to the reader, the things you find so fascinating about the distant lands of Yourworldia can be downright boring if you don’t do it right.
I’m a big fan of Tolkien. I’ve talked before about how his descriptions can be a bit dry. The Silmarillion, something of a history of Middle-Earth, is basically a collection of his notes on the subject of how the world came to be and some of the myths and legends that propel the characters of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It’s about as fascinating as it is dry and difficult to read. The point is that it’s a novel-length exercise in expository writing.
Good exposition, in my experience, is woven into the plot, not set aside and served up as a very dry appetizer to the main course. It detracts from the flow of the plot and bores the reader.
Last month I discussed the possibility of helping people return to the nostalgic days of ferrying commodities from one planet to another in the darkness of space while shooting lasers at one another. The major problem with running pure Trade Wars is lack of a static IP, the necessity of having a box in my apartment running constantly to satisfy everybody’s need, and other potential setup issues. I searched the Intertubes for a friendlier solution, something that could run in this webspace and take advantage of the fine PhP/MySQL setup used by this very blog, and I came across a little something called Alien Assault Traders.
For the last month, I’ve been playing the ‘Main Game’ on their site, and so far it’s delivered everything one could ask for. Let me cover some of the things familiar to old hands at Trade Wars, some of the new stuff that’s fascinating to me, and things I haven’t even been able to touch yet that others might have an interest in.
Buy Low, Sell High, Avoid The Mines
The trading component of Alien Assault Traders has a couple of advantages over its BBS-based counterpart. For one, it’s a GUI. Every port in which you arrive as you warp from one system to the next has a friendly interface that tells you what they have to sell and what they’re willing to buy. When you find a lucrative trade route, you can program it into your main menu control panel thing and repeat it as many times as you have turns and make yourself a pile of credits. You’ll need them if you plan on establishing and expanding your territory. How do you do this? Genesis devices.
Genesis? What’s That?
Genesis devices in AATraders come in two flavors: regular, and Sector. Standard-issue Genesis devices create planets. Stable ones, too, without any worry of resurrected Vulcans or pesky Klingons. Once you have a planet, you can establish a base on it, give it some defenses both in the system and on the ground, and generate resources that you can trade. I haven’t really spent much time on that last bit, as I found a really nice pipeline trading entertainment software and communication satellites between two stations, but I know it’s possible and I understand its appeal.
Sector Genesis devices create entire new sectors. This opens up a whole new aspect of the game. You can, with enough time and resources, branch off from the established galaxy with a cluster of systems entirely under your control, with a single point of access that you can carefully hide from the other players. Every planet in a sector created using a Sector Genesis device, sectors called “SGs”, works just as well as planets created or conquered in the main galaxy. You’d best defend that point of entry, though, because someone is probably going to find it, and if they’re an aggressive player, things are likely to start blowing up but good.
Burnin’ Lootin’, Bombin’ Shootin’!
I’m using Warcraft 3’s Mortar Team derivation of Bad News’ “Warriors of Ghengis Khan” because that kinda describes the process of blasting other people’s planets, though in a slightly different order. Shoot down any fighters in the system, burn through the minefields, bomb the base into submission and loot the place. Now this happens in a series of text screens with the occasional image, so the feeling of Trade Wars is preserved there. Unless you want to do a ton of math, though, it can be difficult to gauge just how effective your assault is going to be. Just don’t forget that you can pick up probes to scout ahead for you. I forgot about that, and it’s cost me trillions of credits. Ugh.
I haven’t really done any ship-to-ship combat yet, so I can’t comment on it. But I suspect it’s similar to the planetary combat.
If this sounds like it might sate your desire for old-fashioned Trade Wars action, I recommend clicking the link below and reading more about Alien Assault Traders. If you try out the main game to be sure, I’m operating under the name Joseph Frimantle. Try not to be too cruel.
guest@blueinkalchemy:/$ make me a sandwich
What? No! Make it yourself!
guest@blueinkalchemy:/$ sudo make me a sandwich
Okay.
Eagle-eyed readers will see right away that I pretty blatantly stole that gag from xkcd, specifically from the unixkcd portion introduced on April Fool’s Day. I’ve done this for two reasons. One, I have sudo command lines on the brain since I was wrestling with Ubuntu and Wine last night to get World of Warcraft working on my jalopy of a laptop. Two, I do in fact have a point to make about writing that this little joke illustrates.
The existence of writer’s block is somewhat dubious. Sometimes it’s easy for writers to say, “stop whining about being blocked up and just write something” when the subject comes up, and sometimes those same writers stare blankly at an empty document wondering what the hell they’re supposed to type next. Sometimes this stare goes on for hours. Sometimes they just type “tits” over and over again. …Wait, maybe that’s just me. Let’s move on.
The point is, when the well of words seems to dry up, “sudo” yourself in some way. Do something you normally wouldn’t. If you feel your weak point is dialog, write out a new conversation between the characters in the scene, even if they’re arch-nemeses. Sure, Doctor Mercury has got Codpiece Johnson tied to a Table of Doom, but having them chat about drywall while she sets up the vivisection lasers will help you structure the verbal back-and-forth of two characters. Not normally into action choreography? Have ninjas burst into a room where the housewife is making breakfast for her kids. Those are her kids, man, and she has to protect them. That’s a great time for her to re-discover her ancient and as-yet-unrealized potential as a mistress of kung fu.
You don’t have to keep it after you write it. But it shakes off the cobwebs. Shifts you out of your comfort zone. Makes you think. It gets the creative wheels turning in your head again, and maybe a line of that drywall conversation or a bit from the epic ninja showdown in the kitchen will inspire you to go back to your original thought and carry you through another few thousand words.
I realize this isn’t a perfect metaphor, but I’m trying to keep this blog at least tangentially about writing. I’m not done with Mega Man 10 yet, I haven’t even imported my character for Dragon Age: Origins: Awakenings: Return Of The Son Of The Colons: This Time It’s Personal and now Ye Olde Laptope is giving me guff about video compatibility. Hopefully I can keep the theme of writing advice going before my comments become completely inane.
Trains are pretty amazing, when you think about it.
You’ve got several tons of steel on a couple of rails, and be it through steam power or electricity, this monstrosity of metal can speed along at quite a good clip. It carries quite a few people from one place to another, more directly than some other means of transportation, isn’t as costly as air travel and, in the case of electrics, is better for the environment. Back in the days of the coal-powered locomotive, getting a decent pace going required building up what was called ‘a good head of steam.’
I feel like I’m doing that with the novel.
I have a little notebook from the Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh, and it’s slowly getting filled with the ongoing adventures of Asherian and his friends. I’m currently tearing through one of the action scenes in the story, down in the dark dwarven tunnels. Character and world building has proceeded better than I thought it would so far, and hopefully the fact that none of it has felt boring to write will mean it’s not boring to read, either.
It’s due in no small part to this train, right here.
Even if I don’t transcribe my jotted narrative scribbles right away, I still have that big of internal knowledge that I’m writing every day, making progress. As the train pulls into the station, I’m building characters. As it hurtles along to its destination, I’m debating the morality of and impetus for open warefare. The train takes on more passengers as I describe subterranian spiders and the efforts of Asherian and his companions to stay alive and uneaten. It’s a lot more than I ever got done with my commute while sitting in traffic.
I hope i can keep the head of steam up for the foreseeable future. It’d be nice to finish the first draft before the Philly Writer’s Conference in June.
His practiced fingers carefully lay one gear beside the other. This painstaking work has taken years. Designs, prototypes, failures, so many have come before. And now, he’s so close. Experienced eyes peer through multiple lenses on specialized spectacles to ensure every wire, sprocket and connection are exactly where they need to be. Within its bright brass body, the inner workings of this mechanical wonder are surprisingly delicate. He strokes his beard, wonder if he’s forgotten anything. Shaking his head and muttering, he makes the last connection and whispers a small prayer.
Sparks fly from the thing’s belly. There’s a moment of silence, filled with smoke and anticipation. Then, the ruby eyes flicker to life. Slowly, under its own power, the clockwork creature rights itself into an upright position, resting back on its haunches with a soft clicking noise. It raises its snout towards its creator, eyes shimmering with an obvious intelligence and curiosity. Steam hisses from its nostrils and it chirps inquisitively.
The inventor cries out in joy and claps his hands. He picks up the tiny simulacrum and carries it to the window. The creature looks out across the rooftops, then back towards its creator. The old man smiles and gestures for the little thing to try out its wings. It crooks its head towards its back, flapping the multi-flapped brass contraptions experimentally. Then, turning back with a nod, it moves to face the window. It’s not very tall, about eight inches from snout to tail with a wingspan around twelve, and yet when it alighted from that windowsill it glided with a grace that’d be the envy of any natural bird in the sky. The creator, an inventor of some seventy years, had never been happier in his life.
It’s almost a shame to see his elation through the scope of my sniper rifle.
The clockwork dragon sees the reflection from my telescopic lens and flies in my direction. I’ve anticipated this. I’ve studied its creator’s work, retrieved his failed prototypes and some of his notes. The smell of specialized coal burning in the engine furnaces of my doom zeppelin will attract it, as it’s probably better quality than whatever the old man gave it to set off its spark of life. It flies unerringly towards me. I lay prone on the zeppelin’s lower deck, the wind in my hair as I lay the crosshairs carefully on the wrinkled, graying pate of the inventor. Seventy years he’s waited for this moment, to see his creation take flight on its own, and I wait for the joy on his face to reach its apex before I squeeze the trigger.
His frazzled head snaps back and the body collapses within the workshop. The dragon takes no notice, alighting on the windowsill next to me. I offer it a bit of the alchemically prepared anthricite. It cocks its head to one side, then nibbles on the brittle stone. Its metal jaws quickly chew off a few bits, and I can see the flexible tube of its throat move as it swallows. Its ruby eyes blink, and then it grabs my hand with both of its fore paws and devours the coal in earnest. In spite of the life I’ve taken, I smile. This little operation was like out of clockwork.
It’s a new life. A new device. Something potentially deadly, but full of innocent and silent wonder. I set my doom zeppelin’s course for the secret location known only to a few.
The starchild, my Doctor Mercury, is going to love this gift.
