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Archive for October, 2011

Kindle 4

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

No one tell my mom about this blog post! It’s a secret, okay?

I bought my mom a Kindle 4 as a combination birthday/Christmas present. Yes, I know I’m early, but she’s so hard to buy for and this way I have time to download all kinds of books for her. I’ve already gotten all of my books on there for her and it’s charged, wifi setup, etc.

I wanted to pass along my thoughts about the latest Kindle. First of all, this is not the touch version. I’d happily have bought her one of those if I thought she’d take advantage of it, but she’s very techno-phobic and the simpler the device the better. Because this isn’t the touch screen model, it means the keyboard that pulls up on the screen can only be used by using the 4-way button on the bottom. Kind of a pain, but it was usable and my mom will never type on the K4, so no worries.

The first and most noticeable thing was how much lighter and smaller the K4 is compared to my K2. That’s an awesome improvement and one that’s good for my mom. She won’t have to work as hard to hold the device. I rested the K4 atop my K2 and there was probably an inch on the top and an inch on the left showing of my Kindle. That’s how much smaller the K4 is, but with no keyboard, it can shrink.

The back of the device has a little texture to it to improve grip and prevent it from sliding when it’s put down on a table or counter. I plan to buy my mom a case as part of her gift because it will be extra protection if she falls asleep while reading.

The page forward and previous page buttons are on the sides of the device more than on the top of it. There is also one of each on both sides so it’s easier to go backward no matter which hand you like to use to hold your device. On the K2, the previous page button is only on the left side, the home button only on the right. The K4 has the home button on the front. There are a few other button differences, like the on/off switch is on the bottom and not that top, but this isn’t a big deal.

Aside from the smaller, lighter K4 and the lack of keyboard, the reading experience was identical to the K2. This is good because I’ve loaned my K2 to my mom and she liked that. I need her to feel comfortable with the Kindle or she won’t use it.

Next up, downloading a lot of books to my mom’s Christmas K4. I need enough to keep her busy reading for a long while.

Tags: kindle, reviews
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Here They Go Again

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

Since I wrote my posts about the characters in my Works In Progress (WIP), one of my heroes informed me that his name isn’t his name. I hate when they do that. Last names aren’t a very big deal because when I think of them, I rarely use their surnames, but changing the given name does throw me.

The thing that’s so frustrating is that this is a character that’s been around for a long time and his name has always been Michael. Until now. Now he tells me it isn’t. That his name changed when he moved from a contemporary story to an alternate universe, and that in this alternate universe, he’s different from who he was before and he has a different first name.

His logic made sense to me, but the problem? He’s not telling me what his name is supposed to be. Oh, he’s happy to tell me what it isn’t. And apparently it isn’t any name I’ve come across online or in a naming book. At least so far.

I can’t even get him to give me a hint. A simple It starts with a B or whatever would help tremendously. But nope. No help from him whatsoever.

So in the meantime, I’m still thinking of him as Michael. If he doesn’t like it, maybe he’ll reconsider his level of cooperation.

Tags: characters
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It’s All In How You Look At It

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Two of the fields on my rarely used character sketch worksheets are: How does the character perceive him/herself? How do others perceive the character?

To give an example, I’m required to go through assorted training classes for my day job. One was a two day training class in Human Factors. On the second day of class, the instructor made some comment about my being an extrovert. It stopped me in my tracks and I was like, whoa! Not only am I not an extrovert, I’m also shy and tend to be nervous in situations with people I don’t know well. I also tend to be quiet in those types of situations. So who’s right?

Let me explain what the instructor saw. I’d been through enough other training in the recent past that I’d learned a few things. 1. when the instructor asked a question of the group, no one would answer. 2. the lack of response dragged the classes out even longer than they were already. 3. If someone gave the right answer, things moved much, much faster.

So whenever a question was thrown out to the group and no one else immediately spoke up, I would give the answer to get the class moving. I hate sitting there with crickets chirping. "Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?"

The instructor perceived my willingness to speak up when he asked a question as outgoingness. But I’m far from outgoing; I was answering questions as self-preservation. It made the class move faster. I also had some hope of getting through the course material ahead of schedule on day 2 so we could be dismissed early.

Despite my speaking up in class, it actually shocked me that he thought I was an extrovert. I had to take a mental step back to assimilate that and figure out why he could possibly believe something so false.

To bring this back to writing and characters, how your character behaves in certain situations will shape how other characters see him/her. Maybe your character answers all the questions in a training program, so one set of people see her as outgoing, but she stands in the corner at a house party. Those people will perceive her differently. Other characters act on how they perceive the hero/heroine. Maybe the instructor asks the heroine to lead the discussion on day 2 of training. He asks because he sees her as outgoing, not realizing that she’s dying over the thought of being in front of the class. (This did not happen in my class.

So it’s not enough to just know that your character is perceived differently by his mom than by his sister. You have to have these characters behave in a way that fits their expectations of who the hero is.

I’ve been dealing with some of this in one of the Works In Progress (WIP). My hero has long hair, stubble, and is hanging out with secondary characters of questionable morality when he meets the heroine. My heroine isn’t going to treat him the same way she’d treat a clean-cut man who worked for a charitable organization to feed starving children. There’s going to be a big dose of wariness on her part. There has to be because of her perception of who and what the hero is.

Perception always colors reality. IMO, of course.

Tags: characters
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Scrivener

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

I bought Scrivener shortly after getting my iMac computer. For those who’ve never heard of Scrivener, it’s software for writers. Along with the word processing, it has features to help organize the work and research. It used to only be available for Mac, but now there’s a Windows version being made. It was in beta testing the last time I checked, but it’s expected to be released soon. The program isn’t only for fiction novelists. It also has templates for short stories, nonfiction, screenplays, research papers and so on.

Anyway, I’d heard a lot of awesome things about Scrivener, but I didn’t find the program to be intuitive. At least not the way my brain works. Every now and then I’d open it, look at, mess around a little, and close it again. When the beta Windows version came out, I gave it another try. I could see the potential, but I just couldn’t figure it out on my own and I’m not big on reading instructions. I did watch the video tutorials, but it wasn’t enough.

Then I heard about a Scrivener class, and despite my killer schedule, I signed up for it. It was awesome! If you want to use Scrivener and are having trouble figuring out how to wrap your arms around it like me, I highly recommend checking it out. To find out when it will be taught again, visit Gwen Hernandez’s website. She’s the instructor. Course material was posted every weekday and it was broken down into small enough pieces that nothing felt overwhelming. It was also presented clearly and concisely with screenshots to aid comprehension. I highly recommend the class.

There were some features that really sold me on Scrivener as a writing tool. There’s counters available. More than one. It has one that allows you to set word count, due date, days of the week when you’ll be writing, and then it keeps a running tally of how many words you need to write each day to make the deadline. How cool is that? So I can tell Scrivener I want to write 100,000 words by June 1 and I won’t write on Mondays and it gives me goals.

The second counter is just as awesome and I think it’s really going to help me on my daily word/page count goals. You set how many pages/words you want to write, and as you go along, it lets you know your progress. When I was working on a fight scene for Enemy Embrace I set it for 2,500 words. The visual line at the bottom starts red, goes to orange, lighter orange, yellow, pale green and then darker green as you progress. It worked as motivation for me to keep going because that red/orange color is kind of, well, mocking.

Another Scrivener feature that I’m excited about is the ability to import a web page. This is great for me on the research front. The page is static so if it updates, I won’t see that, but for 99% of my research that isn’t a problem. One of my biggest frustrations is when I’m writing at work during lunch, need to reference information and can’t because I do not have access to the net. This way if I need to reference something, all I’ll need to do is jump down to the Research folder and everything will be there.

It has a corkboard feature with index cards on it, allowing those writers who like those cards to have that. I still have horrible flashbacks to when I was in junior high, but maybe I’ll get over that. Some day. But on those index cards is color coding. I set mine up like we did in class with Point of View (POV) characters because that’s helpful. Too much heroine POV? I can tell in a glance because it can be setup to actually color code the scenes names in the file tree.

For my Blood Feud world, I setup the color coding to keep track of what the hero and heroine are–Demon? Vampire? Vampire hunter? It’s a quick, visual way for me to keep track of a world that’s quickly becoming filled with stories.

And previous versions? Instead of doing a "save as" before making major revisions, Scrivener allows me to take a snapshot. One click instead of the cumbersome process I use in my word processing software. I can go back to a previous version, too, if I decide the original was better.

There are many, many other features. Some of them I might not use, but that’s okay–I don’t have to use everything, just the parts that work for me.

I’ve moved my active, to be written projects over, but not everything I want to be there is there. There are just a few too many extra files that I don’t really need, it would be nice to have them there going forward. Once the transition is complete and I’m starting new projects in Scrivener rather than importing them over, I think that’s when I’ll really know just how awesome this program is. It’s already pretty dang cool.

Tags: reviews, software
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