Writing: Fear of the Second Novel

So I like to write. I’ve written one book, Darkness Fell and the Demon’s Sceptre. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve even managed to sell to a few people that I don’t know and had my first royalty cheque (£10.71 doesn’t sound like much, but believe me it’s a huge confidence booster)… but the tales of other authors abound. The fear of the second novel looms and, if I’m honest, for a long while I was trapped by it.

Many people say that the second novel is the hardest. Why wouldn’t it be? You’ve invested a huge amount of your time and emotional energy in completing your first big story… When you finish you feel tired. Big Nap Tired. Several days are spent napping and dreaming of the future. You’ve published your first work on Amazon, iTunes or used Smashwords to handle the whole caboodle. You’re trying to plan your marketing strategy and, if like me, you’ve only the internet to guide you. You’re feeling positive. You’re on a high… and at the back of your mind you’re yearning to get started on your next writing project; another novel that you either just want to get out there or dream that it could one day top the best-seller lists on every marketplace you could ever dream of… but wait. You’ve got some ideas. You’re full of energy. Where do you begin with your next project?

This is a tale of caution, dear reader. I’m sure that it’s one that anyone who has written over a hundred thousand words of anything can relate to. This is not a tale of fear…. it’s one that, I hope, can be of aid to others and, if not, what the hell is the point? I say that with a distinct LOL, but the point is serious.

A brief, I promise you, background. I suffer from mild schizophrenia. I hear voices. I hate crowds, though I love the people in them. I shop at quiet times and hope to high heaven that the gym is quiet when I go there in the mornings. I would never harm another person. My mental state is frightening to me but, to my psychiatrist, I’m very able, not matter how or why or when or where I try to reason the details of the mental state that I’m in. When I last saw him – they’re on a six month rotation, so always new but he put it more clear than most – he looked at my Amazon web page for Darkness Fell, read the reviews and said I’d achieved quite a lot for someone with ‘my condition’. He offered to host a free version in the hospital’s library, citing reasons of encouragement to people that were struggling with similar conditions. I honestly thought ‘F*** me’ and decided it was a good idea… but the reasons behind his comment really struck home. I’d written a novel. I’d succeeded in ignoring my voices and trying to reason away their terror to achieve something that I’d always wanted to achieve.

I came home and thought. A lot. I dreamt. I enthused. I sat and thought about my next work… and almost eight moths later I was still struggling with what to do, and more importantly how to do it.

If you’re a writer, you’re aware of the power of nuance. You know that you have an idea but there are seemingly infinite ways to describe and actually write those ideas down and turn them into gripping works that will enthral even, at the least, just a single reader. You want others to be captivated. To read. To buy. To rave. To… simply just enjoy.

This is where we return to my point… you’ve done that first book and, no matter what your state of mind, I think this is highly cromulent… for, riding on that high of self-publishing, you want to continue… and that’s where the cautionary aspect of my tale kicks in.

I had lots of ideas for my second book. I story-boarded. I mind mapped. I filled countless pages of A3 paper with ideas and tried to whittle them down into something useable. There was nothing wrong with that approach. I got a lot from it… what did it was that I was so eager to continue on my high that I jumped in and started writing.

That might work for you… It didn’t for me. I wrote my starting chapter all full of energy and convinced that what I was doing was right… then I rewrote it. And rewrote it…. and rewrote it again. As of January 2013 I’d been through six months worth of re-writes, headaches, too-long napping filled with stress and worry that I wasn’t good enough to do anything else. I was always meant to improve as a writer, yet now I was stuck. Nothing I did felt right. It wasn’t good enough for me… How would it ever turn into something that I could publish, be happy with and say ‘Yes! I did that!”

My views on achievement are simple: I’m now thirty-seven, but I’m still alive. That might be a tad negative for some, but I find it’s a very soothing measure of gain; my worries pale into insignificance compared to some, but if you’re still here then that’s a biggun. You should feel proud. Life has its ups and downs and if you make it to whatever age you’re at… you’re a winner. Plain and simple.

So I went back to the drawing board. I tried to focus on what I was achieving… and went back again,

then,as if my magic, my partner Paul said a few and, frequently I kick myself for not listening to him, wise words: your first chapter has to achieve three things. You have to grab the reader (duh!). You have to establish sympathy for your main character (OK, I thought, Professor Edward Grimly-Knight is X Y and Z) and you have to demonstrate your premise… the evolving, as you initially approach it, formulae of X does Y to do/overcome Z… and it hit home. Then, just as Paul was uttering the words ‘and always you should signpost the rest of the book’ the thought hit me… Bam! Like a Spice Weasel.

Your inciting incident is always important. It does all of the above and leads into everything that follows… yet I realised the crucial point. In Darkness Fell I’d actually started at what is now Chapter Four – the first point at which my imagination as a writer had first been gripped. I loved the scene where Darkness had examined the threat posed to her. I’d written it enthused with her character… and why the hell shouldn’t I approach my second book in the same way?

In my enthusiasm to repeat my meagre success I had launched into what I love: writing… but I had missed that vital energy. That one scene that somehow highlighted everything that I wanted to achieve… and it’s so I present to you the similarly meagre words that might help focus your mind and help prevent you from falling into the Second Novel Trap.

• What is your your premise?
• How do you grab you’re reader’s attention?
• How do you instil, in you’re reader’s mind, sympathy for your main character/s?
• How do you sign post the other events in your story?

The answer, for me, was to produce a very long treatment. A treatment should normally be concise and be only three or four pages long… That isn’t what I’m doing. What matters is that you consider what is right for you. You might start at page one. You might start at page eighty-six. You might just stick some much-valued posts in the sand and say that those key points are what your story will hinge around.

What matters is that you take a step back and consider what really energises you… for therein lies the secret. You’ll not only not be held back by pre-conceived ideas or the details of your own expectation… you’ll remain free. Freedom is the ultimate weapon of the writer. By all means, and ultimately it’s a must, you should bare in mind your target audience… but damn it, write and plan and theorise what ever gets you going. Don’t be held back by the pressure of trying to repeat what you’ve done. Every work you do, no matter how small, is worth every one of the thousands of words you produce.

Just take a step back. Consider the points above. Think about the mood of your work and revel in it… for when your imagination gets going, no matter how that might be… you’ve got it.

Just don’t be limited by what you perceive or remember as what has come before. You’re fluid and your work is. Believe in yourself and don’t give up…

Your imagination is worth it.

ZBrush Panel Loops: A Saviour For Vehicle Concepting in ZBrush?

I’ve got to be honest, I love to work on concept vehicles in ZBrush. It’s easy, quick and gives an artist a huge amount of freedom to develop and change a model without getting bogged down in polygon edge flow, smoothing, creasing and… well, you get the point. It saves a lot of time and hassle, and allows you to produce some really nice work.

Being just as honest, though, I’d almost given up on it. The work is always high polygon, and I always want to take the work into Maya for extra detailing, texturing and rendering: extracting a door from the model, for example, but leaving the edges of the extracted pieces nice and smooth, but low enough in polygons to easily go in and extract edges for body panels around windows, or to have enough, low-resolution pieces to start extracting out the interior of the vehicle. ZBrush didn’t give me that, and drawing new topology over old pieces just left me frustrated and, occasionally, pretty depressed.

Pixologic released ZBrush 4.5 last week, though, and it introduced some cool new features. The most useful for me, that I’ve looked into so far, addressed a lot of the above concerns… and maybe saves me from frustration and hours that seem to produce no solutions.

Click on the image below for a rough guide to Panel Loops, from base sculpt to individual body panels, with nice edges, tight corners and useful geometry, all with a reasonably low polygon count.

Another Alien WIP!

Sculpted, retopologised and textured in ZBrush 4.5.

Darkness Fell and the Demon’s Sceptre: ebook released!

My book “Darkness Fell and the Demon’s Sceptre”  has been released! It’s currently listed on Amazon and Smashwords for various formats, with other marketplaces coming soon… Please check out my Darkness Fell blog for news and links!

Space Ranger: Update, with Zbrush Ship Concept Sculpt

So here’s an update to my Space Ranger. I’ve added some texturing to the figure, plus his basic clothing (with texturing). The clothing was created in Topogun, using the base Zbrush figure as a guide; a really easy process of drawing out polygons over the figure’s surface. I’m not sure that the denim texture of the trousers will stay; I don’t think it really says ‘Space Ranger’ TBH, so that will be re-done.

I’ve also created the shoulder strap and his rifle (which will be slung over his back), and there’s a blaster that needs to be modelled to; I’ve not added the rifle or shoulder strap yet because, if I’m honest, it looks rather fine and it’s almost a shame to have it covered up from view in the final scene. Some thought is needed there, I think.

Next up, we have the work in progress for his ship, from Zbrush concept sculpt, to topology in Topogun (with a little help from Maya for the circular shapes that I wanted to keep perfectly shaped), to the beginning of the refinement back in Maya.

I’ll probably go much further than I need to with his ship; I like to detail the insides as well as the exteriors of ships and, hey, it’s not for a production environment so I can go the whole hog if I feel the need.

As the final scene wasn’t based on an initial concept sketch (just an evolving idea), everything’s still pretty free-form right now. Once the basic ship is modelled, I’ll assemble things as a composite in Photoshop and do a sketch-over to rough out that final image, then build everything else around that concept.

I’ve included a few tips on the ship images that might be of some use to a modeller; concepting a ship in Zbrush is a lot of fun, but developing that into a full, neat model takes time and, in the past, has left me stumped, so here’s hoping that the scant tips help someone out.

Space Ranger WIP

It’s been a little while since I last posted; I’ve been busy writing my next book and looking for a potential agent for my first novel (which I should hopefully get sent off soon).

I thought it would be good to post a few images: the first two are of my latest project, including the original sketch and the Zbrush sculpt so far, the third image is of a slightly old project that I’ve drawn a line under. I’d done as much as I wanted to and, to be honest, I used it mainly as a means to progress my sculpting, texturing and retopology skills.

Clothes and retoplogy were all done in Topogun; an excellent program in every respect. It makes the job of producing new geometry so much easier than using Zbrush’s own zsphere method of retoplogy; it’s easier to see what’s going on, and far easier to draw out new polygons over your old mesh.

Much was achieved here thanks to a two month subscription to Digital Tutors; an excellent group of people that clearly know what they’re talking about, and that have a brilliant set of training skills. I highly recommend any aspiring 3D or 2D artist give them a look.

Zbrush itself has come on leaps and bounds over the last few years. I’ve been using it since my partner, family and a few friends clubbed together to buy me a licence for my birthday and, amazingly, it not only comes in at a reasonable price but each and every upgrade has been at no extra charge. Over the last two releases Pixologic has really worked hard to introduce and develop their Fibremesh system; a very easy way to create and style hair, fur, grass, trees… the list goes on. Digital Tutor’s have produced some excellent courses designed to show how to style hair and fur; before I watched their videos I just couldn’t get the hang of styling at all.

So a big shout out to Pixologic and Digital Tutors in particular… long may you reign!

Review: Doctor Who, The Eternity Clock

Anyone who knows me, even slightly, knows that I’m a huge Doctor Who fan. I’ve adored the series, its characters, its stories and its sense of wonder since I was a kid and so I bought The Eternity Clock with an eager need. It’s worth saying that although this is the fourth commercial Doctor Who game released in the last few years, it’s the first one that I’ve plumped for; none of the others interested me and, after playing around in the lackluster free adventure games a couple of years ago, I’ve felt rather jaded about the whole Who-gaming experience.

The Eternity Clock was to be different though; the press releases told me so… and that’s exactly where I should have realised that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The Eternity Clock has some great and time-tested ideas at its heart; a side-scrolling platformer with enemies to avoid, puzzles to solve and fun to be had. The first few moments are fun; the Doctor arrives inside the Bank of England’s vault and must make his way out, but it quickly becomes apparent that this game is a shallow, frustrating and often uncontrollable affair with very little creative effort put into its design.

The button controls dont’ behave quite like you’d want them to; your action button and jump button are the wrong way round compared to a lot of games and, honestly, they often just dont’ react when you press them. An attempt to jump and grab River’s hand doesn’t do anything; which is a real pain in the unmentionables when you’re trying to beat a hoard of Cybermen to some unmentioned goal. As you run off ahead and wait to give her a leg up, she dawdles for a few seconds and then either runs or simple walks to your side; there seems to be nothing that controls which she should be doing, despite the aforementioned chase and the urgency it should require.

The side-scrolling is very reminiscent of the recent Tintin game; lots of crawling and ducking and avoiding bad guys, and ont he odd chance you can play as River Song (why not let me switch characters when I want to?) you can grab your bad guys and stun them with a good old dose of hallucinogenic lipstick. Tintin was pleasant enough, but very boring, even for younger players; its repetitive and unimaginative level design was a huge let down, and one that prompted a quick resale via Amazon. The Eternity Clock is worse though, and for several reasons. It’s initially very charming, but after a few seconds that charm fades into frustration and obvious repetition. The collectibles (pages from River’s diary and hats for the Doctor) are a great idea, but you can’t do anything with them; why give the Doctor fancy hats to collect, let him comment on them, and then not let him actually *wear* them? Plus the clunky controls, very dodgy AI for River and the other guards, laughably ineffective cover system for hiding from enemies… the list goes on.

How could something with so much promise turn out to be so awful? How could the BBC trust the development of a game of one of their hottest and most profitable programmes to a company with such a small portfolio? How did this product ever get past the keen eyes of development managers at BBC Worldwide? Why did I chose a digital download version that I can’t resell?

These answers add up to a cliff hanger that won’t ever be answered by me… but I’m sure you can guess the answers.

A waste of time and money; full of glitches, frustration and repetition, devoid of the magic of the series. To be avoided.