Author: Grant Gardner
Engineer and novelist.
Protected: Chapter 01 (Betrayed Beta)
Protected: Beginnings
Writing Excuses 10.01 – Homework
From this last week’s Writing Excuses podcast.
Writing Prompt: Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less. Generate these ideas from these five sources:
- From an interview or conversation you’ve had
- From research you’ve done (reading science news, military history, etc)
- From observation (go for a walk!)
- From a piece of media (watch a movie)
- From a piece of music (with or without lyrics)
- From an interview or conversation you’ve had: What would Spiderman do if he lived in Kansas? A question that came up during a conversation I overheard and I loved the idea of Spiderman standing in a field, looking around without any buildings to swing from.
- From research you’ve done (reading science news, military history, etc): Girls sci-fi adventure story (ala Heinlein Rocketship Galileo or Rolling Stones) featuring asteroid clumps held together by van del Waal forces. Was reading an Ars Technica article about van del Waal asteroids.
- From observation: Story of a girl who is homeschooled on a train. Her mother has died or left or wasn’t know or something, but she travels with her father on a train (conductor or engineer or coal man) but the nature of his life is such that they have no permanent home. He lives on the train at night, sleeping in a car, paying for his meals from his salary, and ensuring that she is educated. As they travel, she experiences in real life the locations she’s learning about. Like a personal tour of the historic site in Europe or the US. Haven’t decided which.
- From a piece of media: From BOM reading, the story of a man who survives the complete destruction of his people and had to integrate himself into the encroaching society. His people killed themselves off and the wanderer runs into a new civilization. Would he pretend he was mute? How would he survived?
- From a piece of music: Jack Johnson song “Situations” on the In Between Dreams album. I’ve always wanted to do sci-fi story that coincides with these situations. There’s a race that lives in the Oort Cloud that does not like us that is directing comets at us to kill off our race. The way of writing the story would be to make it all seem like some natural occurrence (the situation that’s just begun, but is too late, only chance for you controlled by denizens of hate, the one that no one sees dismissed as fate.)
Star Wars Finger Puppet Templates
Now for something completely different.
We saw these Star Wars felt finger puppets a few weeks back, though they were posted to Make and Takes website a few years ago. Simple felt finger puppets using basic shapes and easy to put together.
Of course, once we sat down to start working on them, I wanted to come up with a faster/more efficient way of cutting out the felt pieces. That got me hand drawing which rapidly turned into an Inkscape project because I knew I could reuse elements.
It spiraled out of control.
Once I had gotten all the felt templates done, I realized just how far I had gone and knew it would take us a while to get the puppets made, but the troops were getting restless. So, I took the templates and turned them into printable/colorable pages that could be used to make finger puppets out of paper.
Huge hit and it gave us time to get the felt ones in work.
So, all the templates have been compiled into a downloadable PDF – felt template, a color printable, and a black-and-white printable for coloring.
Included in Volume 1 are Luke Skywalker, Obi-wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and Yoda.
Star Wars Finger Puppets vol 1
More will be coming soon as I’ve already been asked for Darth Maul and R2D2 and C3PO.
The Writing Process – A Blog-Hop Post
Tag! I’m it.
This post is about my current writing process and the work that my process is both forming and informing. The idea is courtesy of M. A. Chiappetta. She and the ladies at Purple Ink Writers started this blog-hop with the intention of getting some discussion going about the writing process and the things that we writers are working on right now. I want to thank Michele and company for tagging me as part of the hop and hope that it can provide some insight and exposure for me as I continue my work.
They came up with four questions to answer and explore for this post, so without further intro, let’s jump in. Continue reading “The Writing Process – A Blog-Hop Post”
My Review of Classic Messenger Bag 2014
Great Bag with Great Customer Service
By G-squared from Tulsa, OK on 5/1/2014
Pros: Durable , Attractive, Comfortable , Roomy , Lightweight , High Quality, Good Strap Length
Cons: Quality Escape
Best Uses: Airplane travel , Commuting, Computer, Extended trips , Office
Describe Yourself: Practical, Comfort-Oriented, Career, Modern
Was this a gift?: No
tl;dr – great bag, good size, great strap, and supremely AWESOME customer service.
I LOVE nearly everything about this bag and the two gripes I had I’ve found fixes for. I got the Medium size in Dusk Blue with Surf Strip. I love the color; works well in professional environments with just a hint of fun due to the three-color straps. I’ve gotten a ton of compliments.
The new compression strap layout is so nice – keeps the bag small on light-load days and I love that I can stash my jacket under the bag on days when I don’t have space for it on the inside. The clips being under the flap looks very nice, but you do have the trade-off of it being not as fast to open. I prefer the 2014 look, but be aware that the clips are harder to get at. Not much, but noticeable.
I love the organizational panel layout, though I would make them just a bit deeper to handle pens better.
I love the size – perfect for carrying my work laptop around, lunch, books, and all my other EDC; it should go without saying that the side pocket (Napoleon pocket) is one of the best designs on a messenger bag. It just works.
I did have a small quality issue – the zipper toggle on the Napoleon pocket slipped free. I can see how the design is supposed to work and I think the shrink wrap wasn’t quite far enough up on the zipper to keep it from slipping off. I was able to re-thread the toggle and moved the wrap higher onto the zipper. A quick hit with the hot air gun and FIXED.
I cannot say enough good things about the strap adjuster cam – it is inspired design and engineering. I was nervous that it would bind or require a lot of effort to move. But it is nearly frictionless. Again, it just works. I love it. And because it is so easy to adjust, I have a new method for carrying the bag – adjust the strap to its shortest length, and then I can quickly grab the bag from my car and sling it over my shoulder like a backpack when you only use one strap. If I’m just walking from driveway to house, this is the easiest and fastest way to carry the bag.
When I carry the bag “normally” across my chest, everything is very comfortable. It took me a couple of tries to figure out exactly how the bag was supposed to hang, but now, it’s effortless. The cross-strap works well, though it does cause the main strap to bunch a little. The default strap pad is nice and comfortable; I’d like to test a bit more before calling it perfect, but for my day to day use, it is very nice.
The internal water bottle pockets are great, keeping everything upright and water-free. The medium sized bag is just slightly too short for my preferred Klean Kanteen 27oz bottle with a sport cap. With the flat cap, I think it would be fine. An 18oz fits perfectly, so for the short term, I’ve switched to that, but plan on getting the flat cap for my 27oz. Not a ding against the bag, just a trade-off.
I did have two gripes, both concerning the cross-strap.
1) The elastic band that is used to capture the tail is basically worthless – it holds the tail out of the way only in the most simplistic of cases. But, I fixed that. I ordered a 3/4″ thin bar slide online (Google it). Works SO much better, though it was a bit tricky to install; FIXED.
2) When I’m not using the cross-strap, the way it hangs annoys me, gets hung up on things, or nearly caught in my car door. However, Timbuk2 customer service rep Antonio absolutely made my day. I suggested that they make the female end of the cross-strap (the part that goes on the main strap) available for people to attach to the other cross-strap point on the bag to serve as a storage anchor. He agreed and is sending me one, no charge. AWESOME policy. Well done Timbuk2. Once that’s installed, I’ll just clip the cross-strap into that to keep it of the way. So, also FIXED.
(legalese)
Story Structure Analysis – Aladdin (film – 1992)
UPDATE 2019: With the release of the live-action remake of Aladdin in the summer of 2019, this older post has seen a lot more traffic, I think from people looking for reviews and information about that new re-make. If that describes you, you can find my reaction to the new film here. But a lot of that reaction is based upon how I understand and enjoy the original animated film, so you might as well read the post here too. 🙂 – GMG
Been a while with life getting in the way, but here is the first story structure analysis that I’m going to post – Disney’s Aladdin.
Now, I haven’t seen this film for a long time, but found myself thinking through it a lot over the last day and figured it was time to get this train rolling.
Continue reading “Story Structure Analysis – Aladdin (film – 1992)”Story Structure Analysis – (or How I Plan to Keep Learning)
I am continually looking for ways to improve my craft of writing.
One of the things I am most grateful for when trying to write is that I always have new ideas. They’ve even started coming in my dreams, which honestly I find very freaky as I’ve never really gotten anything useful out of my dreams except entertainment, but that might be another blog post. But it is becoming easier to come up with stories and easier to find ways to change little story seeds into stories.
And one of the things that I think has helped is slowly gaining an understanding of story structure and it’s impact on telling a good story.
Maybe it’s the old adage, “When all you have is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail,” or of finding an application for new knowledge, but story structure has become my new way of understanding stories that I like.
My craft learning goal is to spend some time actively deconstructing stories that I like into the story structures I’m more familiar with. Thus far, that’s the 7-point Structure (Dan Wells did an awesome presentation on this), Dan Harmon’s Story Circle, and the Hollywood Formula as related by Lou Anders on the Writing Excuses Podcast.
I’m going to take a story or film that I enjoy and break it down using these elements to try and better understand what it is that I like about them. Hopefully, that will translate into a better ability to apply it to my own writing, both in outlining and revision.
Winner, Winner – Just wish it was chicken dinner
July came and went and boy was it busy. 26,000 words in on How to Kill a Cyborg. That puts me just past halfway in the story, so looks like it will be shaping up to be a shorter piece. But that also means I reached my stated goal of 25,000! So another win for Camp NaNo! Yes, it’s not like last November, but every time I buckle down it seems I’m able to get something done that I didn’t think I could. There might be a life lesson in that somewhere. 😉
Re-reads on Betrayed went well and I’ve started rewrites I think the nicest thing that happened to me while writing last month was getting to the last 5 chapters of Betrayed and realizing that I wasn’t reading for content, but for pleasure. It’s such a heartening feeling to re-read your own work and not be utterly horrified by it. Plenty of typos to be sure (how did I miss SO MANY?) but the story still speaks to me and that’s got to be a good sign.
And now off to my next adventure – I think I have a problem. I committed to writing a series of radio-style mini-plays that will be produced by my friend Nathan Christensen for a set of performances he’s arranged with the city of Collinsville.
And I am so nervous.
I’ve tried to behave of myself as a writer, to act and think as one, to “fake it till I make it,” but now the rubber really hits the road. I have to produce something on a deadline and I have to do it under pressure and it’s going to be performed live.
Ah!!!!!!
I am both super scared I’m going to fail miserably and super excited to see something I’ve written performed for an audience. There’s this fine line of confidence and fear that I seem to constantly walk when I take on a new writing challenge. But I have a story idea and I have a plan. Now it’s just a case of sitting down and working it out.
Whew! Writing is hard work.
Grant Michael Gardner 