New laptop!

June 29, 2013 at 23:16 (Uncategorized)

My old laptop kind of said more or less goodnight a while ago(so my co-op in my previous post probably went down the drain as I haven’t been able to exchane emails), and when I saw this Samsung with alright specs on sale, I couldn’t help myself. Though I can’t say Win 8 is what I had hoped for. It’s surprisingly similar to Apple(and it has a touch screen, which is kind of cool), and good lord in heaven how I searched for that damned controlpanel! Startbutton? No such thing! What do you need that for! I got lots of messy tiles you can play with!

So I just reset the damn thing to a more classic view:P 80s kid with a controlfreak-issue. Sue me!

So now I’m doing a cleanup of all my files which where pretty much one big mess on my old laptop, particularly my documents-, and images-folders(surprising I know). Got so much crap there I didn’t know where to start.

But now I feel a bit nostalgic about my old laptop. It will probably become a stationary backup-computer with Linux OS as it is so broken I can’t even close it anymore to take it with me(it’s a huge beast anyway). You have served me well, old laptop. Enjoy your retirement in bermuda shorts and fruity drinks!

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Keep it simple?

June 9, 2013 at 19:25 (Fantasy, General, Uncategorized)

I’ve recently been working a lot with my story The Unheard, and it kept bothering me that the monsters I created didn’t have a place or point of origin. They were just there. It bothered me that I didn’t know where they came from? I had a legend in the story itself of their creation, but I didn’t want it to be the truth. It’s kind of the same as with Zombie-movies; what caused the zombie outbreak in the first place? I sat there with the same issue.

Now, normally I come up with incredible complex ideas of how it all happened, terrified of face-planting into a cliché(although I probably do so more often than I am aware of from time to time), because surely, monsters don’t just rain from the sky(although that might actually have been an interesting twist too…!).

But I couldn’t bring anything up to a boil in that black pot of ideas I have in my head. I kept obsessing about where the monsters came from since they are central to the story. All I knew was that they could not always have existed as it would damage the storyline.

Then, my penpal, who has no interest in writing, suggest something so incredible simple, yet it solved all my problems. A curse. Simple and straightforward, and everyone knows how a curse works.

This idea didn’t just solve the issue of creation, it rose more questions which had to be answered. Who cast the curse? Who did they cast it on? Why were they able to do so? Why did they do it?

And thus, the story thickened. It was like adding salt to a watery porridge:)

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Let’s Collaborate

June 9, 2013 at 19:19 (Uncategorized)

Thought this was a great idea for a lonely writer!

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To plot or not to plot

June 2, 2013 at 22:40 (Ideas, Plot, Writing)

Writing in English can be a treacherous thing to do. It most definitely has its pros and cons. I keep stumbling the cons every-so-often, and I recently did so again. I went to a forum to ask for help on a story, and posted it, obviously at the time, in the plot section.

It didn’t belong there.

Why? Because the plot wasn’t what I was having trouble with. Plot meant something different than I thought it did. Apparently the Norwegian equivalent of the word plot means something a little different. Wouldn’t have hurt to have known that a little earlier…

The plot is what drives the characters towards, or away, from the goal; their motivation. I already know what drives the character in this particular story forward, what his motivation is. But the clues that leads to his goal, is what I was having trouble with. He’s got the motivation to reach the goal, he just doesn’t know how to get to the goal. I have to drop a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow, each time a little closer(or further away, I might be an ass and drop some moldy crumbs!) to his objective.

So now I feel a bit dumb to be honest! But now another question arises; just what AM I in the need of help with? What do you call the breadcrumbs as I have just named it?

I normally ask a friend for a lot of help and brainstorm with her, but she is so busy with work that it feels like my head is going to explode with ideas I cannot air out to see what she thinks(Yes, her opinion is important to me). So in the end I ended up bugging my penpal on Skype for over an hour with my problem. He actually had a few good ideas I could spin of on, but unfortunately nothing that could turn into a breadcrumb. But maybe it will be easier to put them out as I have more of the storyline? I’m writing down the rough outline as a result of our chat, so maybe that will help.

Gonna go sleep on it!

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