Time travel and Simulated Realities

Blog - Reading and Reviews

Written by Sofie
Monday, 13 May 2013 00:00

I love infographics and charts of things. I would make them if I had time and more than marginal graphic design skill. Then every so often some one comes along who reminds me you don't need mounds of graphic design to make cool stuff:

"Mr Dalliard" has two awesome infographics, one showing the various forms or rules of time travel in numerous movies, and the other doing the same for simulated reality. They're really worth a look - I'm not posting them here, because they obviously contain spoilers (especially the simulated reality one, where the major plot point of the movie is typically "what's actually going on".)

Just goes to show that with a good idea and some effort and brain power, you can make cool stuff without needing extra graphic cookies.

Highrise cities

Blog - World Building

Written by Sofie
Tuesday, 07 May 2013 00:00

This is awesome: an infographic on how a set of interconnected highrise buildings became an entire city in its own right - Kowloon Walled City, which house 50,000 residents in 1980 in Hong Kong, complete with schools and day cares, metal fabricators and basic industries, unlicensed doctors and dentists, etc.

Click image for larger view (6mb)

Shane Black - King of the Hollywood Script

Blog - Writing Craft

Written by Sofie
Monday, 06 May 2013 00:00

There's the rule we all know of 'show, don't tell'. It's especially important in screenplays, where words are at a premium, and you have to paint and entire scene in a sentence. And then there's this guy, writer of Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Last Boy Scout who breaks the rules so hard they form whole new scultpures of entertainment.

Article on his screenwriting here is a great read.

Arguing with art

Blog - World Building

Written by Sofie
Tuesday, 30 April 2013 00:00

I love worldbuilding, but I often struggle to realise it in words in early drafts.  I'm all about the ideas: how the world works, how it fits together how it interacts. There may be one or two cool notions about how it looks, but not many. That's not what makes a world, to me - I start with the logic first and foremost. The basic construction.

It makes first drafts difficult because I feel I know so much about this world already, but when I'm tryin gto immerse the reader in it by sneaking in descriptions, even by having a character do ACTION in PLACETHING I really grop for how to visualise it in order to describe it.

I stumbled across a new technique which is working wonders for my current science fiction novel (the fantasy one is on hold until I get my fantasy voice to stop being Generic Archaic Fantasy Voice because it's driving me nuts. I needed a break, so - sci fi novel it is). I found some art that is kinda-close-to the concept of my world, but not quite. And while I thought the not-quite would be a problem, it's actually so much better. Because this happened:

No, there aren't any flying cars, they have a net of pathways through the buildings.

Yeah, like that except it would be grungier and darker and the ceiling would be lower.

Yes, like that but less Tokyo, more broken.

I started arguing with the pictures, defining how they didn't quite fit. And the sights, sounds and smells of the world crystalised in my head as I did so. The pictures helped me greatly, not by representing what I was looking for but by forcing me to define the world by how it wasn't the one I was looking at.

And now my loungeroom wall is covered in a rainbow of post-it notes and taped-up printouts of artwork.  

Disturbing ingenuity

Blog - The Writer's Life

Written by Sofie
Monday, 29 April 2013 00:00

So, there's this thing called 'mushfaking':

It seems to have first appeared in underworld slang back in the early 19th century in England. “Mush” by itself was, in that period, slang for an umbrella, from its similarity in shape to a mushroom. The verb “to fake” during the same period was criminal slang for “putting something in shape to sell by covering its defects.” So a “mushroom faker” or “mushfake” was a con artist who repaired discarded umbrellas just enough to make them briefly functional and then sold them on the street, preferably during a downpour...By the 20th century, “mushfake” had become prison slang for making useful objects out of cast-off or less-useful materials.

The site where I found the quote above, aptly named 'Criminal Wisdom', has diagrams and details about impromptu tools and weapons inmates of prisons have created from the materials lying around. Like a shotgun from bedposts and curtain tape. A little scary, but my MacGyver-brain is fascinated.