I decided to try my new Sony Vaio Laptop with some Novel Writing Software I'd bought.
It was late, so I took it to my bedroom to use in bed (and many famous writers have written from bed. Proust comes to mind first off!) The software creates character names as well as 'pasts' for them. I've alreayd noticed it likes to come up with 'XXX stopped talking at the age of [insert number] for [insert number] of months due to the death of [his/her] [mother/father]' a lot.
That's the problem with some software, it is rather limited in what it can give you. I hope I can add some other weird options to it, but it may not be smart enough to do it.
Anyway, I had it generate about ten characters (of different sexes and nationalities etc) and some situations and prompts. It even named the story for me. 'Edmond McCarty's Accident'. Edmond McCarty was one of the charcters it created fo me.
Actually, the Edmond character is rather thin on the ground at present, as I just used the software to generate his name. I better decide on an age and stuff for him later.
I think one of the silly things the software ahs is a personality traits thing which gives the characters personailty traits based on percentages. The personality traits are important, but percentages? how do I write a character who is 50% friendly and differentiate them from one who is 51% friendly??? The percentage thing is rather annoying. I'd rather think of it in terms of a scale of one to five.
- Hostile
- Unfriendly
- Indifferent
- Friendly
- Wants to hump your leg!
I might even be able to expand on that chart a little to make it go from Zero to Ten or something, but zero to one hundred has afew too many points on it to make it meaningful.
I also don't like some of the traits. Healty - Wealthy - Happiness - Friendliness - Generosity - Agression - Introversion - Caring.
Like, how do you allocate a percentage to those things when most stories will want to change some of those things as they go along. Rags to Riches story ... Mike has a wealth rating of 4% ... what about at the end of the story ... you telling me Mike the Multi-Billionaire is still only a 4% wealth ... nope! What if we make it a rags to riches to rags to riches story ... 4% to 97% to 5% to 99% wealth ... average ... 51.25% ... doesn't work for me. I prefer to write my characters from Jungian personality types anyway. (See, there isa goo duse for that stuff!) ;-)
Anyway, I got it to generate nine situations/ideas - starting with
Idea - Mai buys an exotic stick insect for a months salary
Prompt - Where is the toilet?
Action - Start a writing group
Anyway, it's going to be a mind bender of a story to meld it all together. The point is to generate ideas and make ONE STORY from it ... but I'm going to stick them all into one fast action packed stick insect of a story leading up to Edmonds Accident ... hoe it is good an funy. ;-)
Actually, one of the REAL reasons for buying the software, is I've been writing a Saga for YEARS and YEARS which spans over 1000 years, and is the dynasty of a Royal Family on a distant planet leading up to the meeting between and humans and the war which occurs between them.
The first story [book one] starts with the Human spaceship docked with the enemy ship, and one of the characters has been set the task of researching the enemy in order to figure out what makes them tick in order to try to organise a peaceful settlement between the two races.
I've already go heaps of information on the Royal family, starting from the first King and leading all the way up to the war with the humans. In fact, I finished the first draft years ago, and haven't been back to re-write yet. Probably because I have no idea which floppy disk I stuck the story on ... and I have hundreds of floppies ... the fact I haven't used floppies for years probably proves how long ago I finished the story.
Anyway, I can start it from scratch again ... the story line is locked in my brain (along with a million other stories). I should also mention it's serious Science Fiction (called SF in writing field and NOT Sci Fi which is Hollywood movie stuff, and normally not very science oriented and very fictional! Writers like Arthur C. Clark and others like to differentiate the difference in order to keep SF pure. Though a lot of books now can be classified as Sci Fi, as they ignore common sense science and go for elaborate other things).
Whcih reminds me, I better also start on a book I call 'Teflon'. LOL
Teflon has been running around in my head for about ten years, and some of the technology is starting to come true. I'd hate to get it out only to find that I'm writing modern fact rather than futuristic Science Fiction! LOL
I might not be able to use the name 'Teflon' either, seems as it's a Trade Marked name of Duponts non-stick stuff ... but, I won't give too much away regarding it.
I'm still trying to decide on some of the pseudonyms I should write under for these books too.
Anyway, I wandered off the subject I was bloging about.
I started playing with the software last night and got up to pee. I came back to bed ... and the next thing I knw, it was five in the morning and I'd fallen asleep!!! I have little memory form when I got back into bed, to waking up with my Vaio next to me still running. I BLAME THOSE ALIENS!!!! :-)
ACTUALLY, I might get a bad reputation ... look, there he goes, the guy who brought a Sony Vaio and first night he had it he went to bed with it!!!! Now that's a reputation even a Geek can do without! lol Though, in Japan they are not far off inventing an automaton for that very purpose!!! I hope they give a lot of them away for free in the third world in order to curb population growth ... but I fear it will just sell in the first world and the first world population will continue to experience negative growth.
And there is another SF idea for a book ... see how easy ideas are. I must get a million of the friggin' things in a day and never have time to develop them fully. Hopefully, between the new novel software helpng me organise it, and the Dragon Naturally Speaking software helping me write it faster, i will get a few done this year.
Actually, i want to get my mother to use my laptop with the Dragon Naturally Speaking software so that some of her childrens stories cna be recorded. She used to tell really funny ones when I was a kid, and my nephews and neices still think she tells really funny stories. (So now you know where I get my sense of humour from!) :-)
Well, I want to illustrate some of her stories (or even help her to illustrate them).
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