Weekly Update - June 7

Novel

World-building, no writing this week.

Miscellaneous

Still working on needa.

I have been drawing again, to see where I stand with my art skills. This is something I drew, recently. Link to instagram post, here.

Since I am understanding storytelling much better now, I started branching out to other forms of literature. Partly because there are some things I never studied, but also because it takes a lot of work to grow as an artist.

I was always intimidated by Shakespeare's sonnets, since they are wonderful on several levels. I find them difficult to write, and it will take a lot of study to reach that standard, if I ever do.

Since finishing the novel comes down to labor and bandwidth, I started writing Shakespearean sonnets to grow while working on the novel.

Going in, I knew it would be difficult, since he tended to take syllable stress, and syllable count in tandem with rhyme, motif and theme.

It's been pretty difficult so far, since with the additional layers of rhyme, stress, and using the right syllables, my range of words have been severely restricted.

Since it's been so difficult, I have also started a draft on this process.

If done, this article would go into the Follow Along series, since the sonnet is not finished, and the student can watch the process.

My thoughts on poetry will be more useful than my thoughts on plotting, since poetry is something I started in 6th grade, and never formally studied.

Since I have a track record of being a poet, it will be useful for the student to see me struggle, since I am miles from being a Shakespeare.

Also, poetry has a reputation for either relying too much on artistic license, or being extremely intimidating for newcomers.

I hope my articles help students see that the struggle of learning is the same, whether they write worse than me, or better.

For bad poets, seeing the transition of my bad poetry, to better, will be incredibly validating.

For the latter, they are technically my competition, but if I do my job right, there will be something useful they can see in my style that they can do better.

My ink pen arrived, so I have been trying my hand at some calligraphy. Thought this video was useful!

While I was thinking about Needa this week, I realized a board game set in my universe would wash 3 birds with 1 bath - board games, world building, and simulation.

A long time ago, I really wanted to simulate the bigger battles in my novel, so that I can check for realism...well, realistically.

However, the world my novel is set in only started coming together in tangible ways last year.

Initially, I wanted to make a program simulation, since that project would also double as a good demonstration of my system engineering and design skills.

Now that my leetcode skills are picking up, I am thinking about a rule system instead, so I can test my scenarios quickly, and efficiently.

Consistency is a weird thing - if you do it right, no one notices, but if you do it well, everyone feels it. Consistency of voice and realism, combine into an aesthetic.

Since I like board games though, this is actually a win-win.

I was always drawn to complexity, and some historical war-games are very, very much like a simulator.

This snippet from Noble Knight's blurb on Card-Driven Wargames summarizes my fascination with complexity well:

In other words, if I design the war-game well, in addition to being fun to play, and useful for my novel, players can technically alter the fate of my novel's characters by playing scenarios not in my book.

I am pretty sure this has been done in some ways before, like for established franchises.

They can also criticize my novel, by proving that what I wrote is not realistic.

That's it for this week.

Thanks for reading, and happy Friday!