Restriction Breeds Creativity

So recently I've been forcing myself to work with some restrictions. Specifically every one of my latest rough drafts have been short side stories and I've been forcing myself to use only nine chapters (ten with a prologue) for each of these rough drafts. It has put my stories into tiny little boxes that I can easily deal with and decide what is or isn't important for the story in question.

Its been an experiment for me to test out a new method of writing I call module writing, I'll get more into that at a later date. For now I just wanted to say that it is essentially the idea of squeezing the story into a box or series of boxes. If it doesn't fit in the box it might need cut, but the point is the story becomes more concise, and more focused. So far it's been really improving my creativity and spurring on a lot of interesting ideas.

It is still a big restriction though. The last rough draft I finished for example had a lot of creative ideas but it was a real struggle to go through writing it. I'm hoping more than expecting it to come out good, but even if I end up having to revise a lot of it, or worse yet, cut said story out, I still learned some valuable things from it. I don't think I would have come up with some of these ideas had I not forced myself to use these restrictions.

It does has draw backs, for example I'm not sure yet how well this method of writing will work for longer fiction. Writing from multiple view points, or about a larger cast of characters would be a challenge. Since it's still a new method I'm sure I'll find more issues as I go. Still even with these challenges it actually makes me want to write more and harder.

These are just a few thoughts on how restrictions have been helping to cultivate my creativity. Anyone else have any experiences or thoughts to share on how restrictions can help creativity grow?

Book Review: Halo: Cole Protocol

Welcome to my review section something that I am hoping can go to add a bit of extra learning and interest in the blog. For this review I'm choosing the most recent book I read; Halo: The Cole Protocol. I'll go over a few points and talk about my general experience reading it and some personal thoughts about the work.

The Halo series is probably my favorite video game universe to date. The lore, the characters and the setting just managed to hit a very special place in my heart at a very young age for me and has stuck with me ever since. So getting the chance to go through and finish off the books I missed reading of the Halo universe has been an interesting experience to be sure. I must admit my thoughts going into this particular book was one of the more unique ones in the series to be sure and that had me both worried and excited.

The Plot: The Cole Protocol is one part the story of Lieutenant Keys as he gets back into the military and his rise to becoming the Commander we all know and love, in the other part it is the story of a young Delgado and his investigation through the asteroid colony known as The Rubble. While Lieutenant Keys seems to be there to show us more of the setting and the world through his journey across space enforcing the new 'Cole Protocol' a new law that means any ship under attack by the alien Covenant forces must delete their nav databases before losing, Delgado is on a mission to find out who is trying to steal and sell the very same information to the Covenant in his home colony. One story is filled with more guns a blazing and the other more political intrigue, neither is focused on enough to really bring out the best of either unfortunately and this may be a result of the third character I hadn't talked about yet.

Thel is an alien Elite and the leader of his keep. His journey across space to find out who is selling weapons to the humans illegally and to bring them and the humans involved to ultimate justice with intense plasma fire. His journey is filled with as much intrigue and gun shooting as either of the others and seems to be a sort of middle ground between the two feelings in the book. His story I would argue is probably the most emotionally rewarding and perhaps the most interesting of the three, which was a pleasant surprise.

The Structure: How well is the story written? Well maybe it was just my digital copy of it, but I continued to find editing mistakes, typos, and incorrect words all over the place. It got so heavy in some places that it kicked my butt right out of the story. Many a Facebook post was made in protest to this. Where there isn't typos, however, I can say that the narrator and the voice of the story were on point.

The Characters: There are three 'main' characters in this story that really matter. Keys, Delgado, and Thel. The three of them all have personal ideas and views on the war, the people in it, and how things all work. Each one of them goes through a journey and start having their views and ideas disillusioned as they realize that things are not what they believed. Keys, as much as I love him as a character in the Halo series as a whole is the weakest of the trio in terms of personal story, not really being more than a tool to explain the setting for most of his story. Delgado is a much more active character but his path to investigation is far too straight forward with few red herrings if any. Thel on the other hand actually has a journey which goes to show us how the Covenant's religious views and Elite honor affect their culture, laws, and actions Thel's personal journey to learning that things are far more complicated in politics than he could have imagined, and worse yet the leaders of his civilization, The Prophets can actually make mistakes changes him into a much different person than he started out as.

Setting: The setting is arguably the most interesting part of any Halo novel in my opinion. There is just something special about this universe that I have always loved. This novel goes deeper into the politics behind warfare, and shows some interesting ways humanity has survived in the face of an impossible alien threat hellbent on their extinction. The Rubble being a colony made out of different asteroids stuck together was insanely interesting, and seeing all the political madness was also interesting. They could have spent a bit more time on showcasing each of the unique settings in my opinion though. For example I'd have liked to see more of Thel's home other than having it described as a 'castle'.

The Theme: Finally we have the themes of the book. Here is where I struggled unfortunately. With having at least half a dozen view points through the story, with only three characters truly being important, and a bit of jumpiness to the story as a whole it was hard to pinpoint any particular theme. Hard but not impossible. I believe the theme of this book would be something like, 'discovering that the world doesn't work the way you think it does.' Each character goes through a sort of 'revelation' moment where they seem to find out that what they knew was false and the truth usually sucked. I won't go into exactly what they learn as that would ruin the climax of the story, but I feel for Thel's journey it was not only the strongest, but had some real weight behind it.

Final Conclusion: I personally enjoyed this novel. As a fan of Halo I would suggest this to anyone else looking to get deeper into the Halo lore. For people who either haven't played the game or wouldn't want to, I can't strongly recommend this tittle unfortunately. I enjoyed it, but it's my love for the setting, universe, and games that really helped me with that. There were lots of nice parts of the book, but the entire whole of the novel feels somewhat flawed or shallow due to lack of time to go indepth with any of the ideas shared in here.

My rating would be 3 alien smiley faces out of 5

The Deadpool Character Archetype.

So I'm gonna be honest and just say that the Deadpool character archtype is one of of my favorite villian/anti hero archtypes. What do I mean by the Deadpool character archtype? Let me start with just a few examples I know of. Obviously we have Deadpool, the most fourth wall breaking of them all possibly, then we have Handsome Jack, the most villainous of the three... maybe, finally I will activate my Alucard... bad pun, not sorry, yes Alucard (From the abridged series specifically) is the last example of this I can easily think of. What is it that makes these three characters so fun, funny, badass, and most importantly entertaining?

well let's take a look at what these characters actually 'do' in order to achieve some of these things. First of all their funny, almost universally in this sort of 'better than thou' arrogant and sarcastic way. The humor is on par with characters like Harry Dresden who constantly acts better than his opponent berating them and feigning anger at some of the silliest things on rare occasion. But then why is Mr. Dresden not on this list. That is because of reason number two that makes them so awesome. They have the skills, power, and expertise to backup their sassy mouths. They generally have power on the level of any good old fashion Marry sue. Of course unlike the timed honored Marry Sue, everyone usually hates these guys. Especially the good guys. How many good guys really like Deadpool or Alucard? Not many, if any (other than Japanese Pinkie Pie of course, she loves deadpool XP) And as for entertaining we can't go wrong in talking about how much fun it is to say, watch Alucard enjoying a good episode of Adventure Time, have his TV destroyed and then go on a vampire hunting fit of rage because it was a 70 inch flat screen plasma TV that the vampires just so happened to destroy. Not because you know, the vampires are killing people, not they hurt his tv, so they must die. Or Handsome Jack naming his diamond pony Butt Stallion after you, the player. These are entertaining, selfish, and usually very hilarious feats.

So I covered some of the things that make this character archetype work, now how to implement it? Really it takes a lot of work, and I'd imagine mostly in learning how to tell a good joke. Even in the middle of an epic combat scene, learning how to set up a good punch line and follow it through with both physical action and word play is important to crafting such a character. Red vs Blue has some of the best examples of doing this in combat, sometimes foreshadowing the joke early in a season only to pay off at the very end of the season.

Now there is one other aspect of this that can usually go forgotten and it is that some part of these characters are often times relatable. Almost always they have a dark origin story that makes you understand why they are so careless about killing if not outright loving it. A story that shows you that these characters don't respect the world for good reasons. This last part can be the real challenge, because how does one go about creating a dark, sad, and often times twisted background story without hurting the humor of the present day? This tight rope balancing act truly is one of the hardest to achieve, but if you can manage it, you've got a goldmine on your hands.

As Always thanks for reading. XD

If your interested in some of my free original fiction click HERE.

Character Spotlight: What Makes Hit Such an Interesting and Fun Character?

So I recently began watching the anime Dragon Ball Super in earnest a few months ago. The first couple of story arcs replicated the movies for a less than stellar performance. Of course the first unique story arc I got to was the tournament arc with universe 7 fighting universe 6. The stakes weren't about death, they were about what would happen if the battle was lost. So tensions were more about winning the fight then killing the opponent, something I think has a lot more emotional weight to it then merely dying in the Dragon Ball series.

What really impressed me though was the character Hit. Introduced as the guy who'd have to fight Goku he was quiet and mysterious at first, and then once he did begin fighting he was much more terrifying than I thought he could be. Terrifying and fun. What made him such a stand out villain in the series though? That's what I am to try and uncover today.

The first thing about Hit was that he appeared to be on a completely different level of power from even the main heroes. An opponent they couldn't even think about touching. I know this has been done to death before in the Dragon Ball series but Hit went above and beyond with the fact that they couldn't even touch him. It made you wonder what his power was, if he was just that much stronger or if it was a trick?

The next thing I noticed was how he fought. Unlike most bad guys throughout the Dragon Ball series he didn't just throw some punches and kicks that looked vaguely martial arts like. He actually had his own combat style which stood out as almost alien to what we were used to. To top it all off, unlike every villain since Dragon Ball Z, Hit didn't throw any magical looking Ki attacks at his opponents. He used pure martial arts, and his unique power in combination to defeat his opponents. This was kind of amazing considering it meant we would not see a giant Ki clash where two energy beams met and pushed against each other until someone won. We would see brutal and hard combat based on skill rather then power.

Another thing, his power itself. The way he seemed to attack people without touching them, and the way he seemed to be unable to be hit. These two things created a mystery for us the viewer to be confused by. Goku was also confused, but intrigued by it as well. Part of the battle wasn't just trying to defeat the enemy but understand him.

Finally a breath of fresh air for Dragon Ball villains. Hit actually loved the combat, the act of fighting made his blood run, just as much as it did Goku's. He wasn't a bad guy that needed to be killed, he was one that we wanted to see get powered up and excited to fight Goku. He continued to grow stronger in the fight making it to the point where he actually won the fight after Goku pushed himself past his limits. This cemented Hit as not just another bad guy, but a likable character who was perhaps morally corrupt, but one we would like to see time and time again.

So to round it all up the things I noticed about him that stood out were;

1. He was a far superior enemy to Goku or Vegeta. Who didn't hold his punches.
2. He had a unique fighting style and special ability, and did not use the same tactics everyone else did.
3. His power was played as a mystery to uncover, rather than a simple wall to overcome or break through.
4. His attitude and personality made him likable and less of a bad guy, but more of a an interesting and fun character that would make us want him to live, not die.

These are just some thoughts about Hit as a character and what make shim work so well. Do you have anything to add? Maybe I missed something, please let me know how you feel about Hit down in the comments below.

As always thanks for reading.

If you want to read some of my free original fiction please click here.

Welcome to the New Blog!

So a quick mission statement to keep things simple and understood.

This is a safe haven for writers to learn, to discuss, to study.

Free thoughts and opinions, no judgement.

Political Agendas kept to a bare minimum.

Now you might find yourself asking, "Why would there be a need for a politically free blog about writing tips and tricks?" To which I'd have to explain that when I first started to get deep into writing about five years ago I studied like mad, like crazy. Back then people were a lot more open minded about different opinions and beliefs. Much to my dismay this has changed over the years. A lot of the authors I used to idealize started to get into political agendas, usually spewing them at their fans like vomit after a Christmas eve party gone wrong, horribly wrong. Some of these authors I used to like have actually gone out of their way to harm people, their lively hoods, and by extension their fans. We seem to be in an era where people just can't feel safe being who they are if it's not part of the 'correct' values and opinions.

While I can't single handedly change the world. I can create a place where people can be free of these things. Now there might be discussion on occasion of political views, but only so far as it relates to the story or topic at hand. I would never want to shove any sort of bad advice, or agenda down peoples throats. So here I am, one lone dude, like a cowboy in the old west facing a dangerous scary world, and trying to make a place that is safe for people to just exist.

So if your interested in following, disusing, or just staying around for a quick minute, your welcome No mater your background, no mater your beliefs, no mater your politics. Your welcome to come here so long as your a peaceable open minded person looking to learn, discuss, theorize, or just have fun.

This has been TheCrimsonDm, thanks for reading, and I look forward to what the future holds.