April 2014

Write Here, Write There

Submitted by Graham Brand on Tue, 04/29/2014 - 14:01
Sign outside cafe in Edinburgh saying "J K Rowling never wrote here"

J. K. Rowling famously wrote Harry Potter in the cafés of Edinburgh (though not, apparently, at the one in the photo).

I was in Edinburgh too this weekend, with my days free while my wife was at a storytelling workshop, and I can recommend writing while pottering around the city. Awful pun aside, this is a really good way to get words down. I stumbled into it by accident, but I'll definitely do it again.

Space Marines and Hippy Goats

Submitted by Graham Brand on Sun, 04/27/2014 - 16:23
Storium game selection screen showing Goat Simulator

What does a grizzled space veteran called Crabbe have in common with a hippy goat named Moonbeam?

They're both characters I'm playing in games on Storium.

Storium is an online storytelling game. You play it in your web browser; there's nothing you need to download and install. You can narrate a story yourself, or play as a character in someone else's tale. When you log in, you're shown a list of the stories that are looking for players, and you can create a character to join the one that takes your fancy.

What do the Bad Guys want?

Submitted by Graham Brand on Thu, 04/10/2014 - 11:57
Mock up of an evil plan in a gantt chart

I've been planning a novel over the last couple of weeks, and although I've got 20,000 words of outline and setting I was getting a bit bogged down.

I realised that I had the same problem that I'd had with my outline back in 2012 for the first novel that I drafted: I didn't really know what the bad guys wanted.