Is Anybody Out There?

Every once in a while I wonder how many people actually read this blog. If you're currently reading, that's me in the (admittedly somewhat creepy) picture looking at you through the window of my computer screen. Thank you for being here!

I mean, I know for sure at least some people read it. One reader brought a printout of this post to the Volume One Relaunch Party back in April 2013. And my speaking engagement for The Green Apple Project in Lewiston, Idaho in 2017 was a direct result of one of their board members coming across my blog.

Besides that, Blogger tells me that I've had hundreds of thousands of total views over the blog's lifetime since it started in 2012 (of which only about a thousand or so are me), and my per-post view count spiked up pretty significantly after I announced that I'm neurodivergent this past May.

Still though, despite all that, to this day the blog only has a total of 27 comments spread across 711 posts. Eleven of those comments are from for-sure real people (seven from the same one), five are from me, and eight are obvious spam. That leaves only three comments that may possibly be from other readers that I don't already know.

I mean, I get it, believe me. I'm not a big commenter myself. For example, I've been an avid reader of the Seattle Mariners-related blog Lookout Landing since the early aughts, but yet I think I've only commented...maybe twice? Three times? That's right, I'm a lurker of the highest order. So maybe my blog simply attracts readers of a similar nature (great minds think alike)? Or maybe my posts just aren't the kind that really invite discourse? Or maybe...

A good amount of those thousands of views that Blogger tells me I'm getting are (gasp) bots?

I'm hoping not. So this week, if you would be kind enough to humor me with an experiment: if you are a real reader, please leave a comment on this post. It can be as simple as "Hello" or "Yes, I'm real" or as detailed and opinionated as "Brian, that picture of your eye is SUPER CREEPY I HATE IT NEVER DO THAT AGAIN." Either way, I promise I will reply!

Movie Roundup: Autistic Representation(?) Edition

I recently came across this article on Autastic.com (a neurodivergent-led website for adult-identified autistic BIPOC, good stuff, check it out) that lists movies and TV shows featuring characters who are autistic or coded as such, and are women and/or minorities. Now, I pride myself on my familiarity with autistic representation in popular media, so imagine my surprise when, after going through the list, I realized I had seen only seven out of the 36 films and shows they mentioned! After that, my completist tendencies kicked in and said, "Challenge accepted" (I love checking things off lists), and I proceeded to sit down and binge-watch. Here's my progress thus far:

Chocolate

A Thai movie about an autistic girl who uses her exceptional martial arts skills to collect money owed to her dying mother from various gangs, this was obviously a low-budget, independent production (nothing wrong with that) that had, in my opinion, some awkward pacing but absolutely incredible fight scenes. Which, really, is kind of the point of a movie like this. I tried to find out if the star is actually autistic, but wasn't able to. My guess is not, but let me know if you know for sure.

Temple Grandin

This is a biopic about Temple Grandin (you know who she is, right?) that is based on a couple of her memoirs, including the fantastic Thinking in Pictures. Claire Danes, who I am quite sure is not autistic, portrays Temple, but apparently they met and Temple approved, so I assume we're all good there. Speaking of meeting Temple, did I mention that I met her some years ago at an autism conference in Portland? She autographed my copy of Thinking in Pictures, and I even gave her a copy of Joel Suzuki, Volume One and asked for her advice on how to promote my book. Her reply was something along the lines of, "Don't just focus exclusively on the autism part of it." Noted!

Jane Wants a Boyfriend

A sweet little rom-com about an autistic young woman who, well, wants a boyfriend (as they say in show biz, it does what it says on the tin) but is smothered by her well-meaning, overprotective older sister. As a fan of rom-coms, I liked this one, even though the actress playing Jane isn't actually autistic (but she is one-quarter Japanese, which I never would have guessed), and I found myself at certain points saying out loud to my TV, "you know, you don't necessarily have to set up autistic people with other autistic people." At least Kerry Magro was a consultant on the film.

Loop

This is a short film from Pixar about a couple of kids, one of whom is a non-verbal autistic girl named Renee, who go paddling at summer camp. Renee is performed by an actor named Madison Bandy, who is actually non-verbal and autistic, which makes this film the only one in this roundup with a confirmed autistic actor (hence, the "?" in the title of the post). The film also apparently used consultants from the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

The Accountant 2

This one wasn't in the Autastic article, but I'm including it here because I just so happened to watch it before I saw the list and figured I might as well lump it in. I had a lot of the same thoughts about it as I did the original, which I wrote about in this blog post from 2016. And yes, there are flaws. But overall, I found it pretty entertaining, even though having some actually autistic actors would have been nice (although I suspect that there are a lot more autistic actors working in Hollywood than are letting on).

Speaking of which, if you want to see a film with an actual autistic actor playing an autistic lead character along with other autistic actors (some of whom are playing neurotypical characters!), check out a little something called Hold My Beer on YouTube...

Benefit Show For Autism Empowerment

Believe it or not, Second Player Score is occasionally a band! And we will attempt to prove it by playing our first show since last November (man, does time fly) at Ole's Outpost in beautiful east Vancouver, WA this Saturday.

We'll be opening the night at 6:30pm, followed by our friends Flying Whammy. And best of all, the event is a benefit for Autism Empowerment!

So if you're in the area, head on down to 11202 NE Fourth Plain Blvd to enjoy some great beer and rocking tunes while supporting an amazing cause. Hope to see you there!

Third AE-NCC Workshop!

The third workshop of Autism Empowerment's Neurodivergent Creators Collective (AE-NCC) is this Saturday!

And the instructor will be...yours truly! I'll be giving a high-level overview of what goes into writing and publishing your own book, based on my experiences with the Joel Suzuki series. I'll be covering topics like:

- Do you need previous writing experience or credentials?

- What are some good resources to help you get started?

- Are you a Plotter or a Pantser?

- How to set goals, overcome writer's block, and stay on track

- Options for publishing your book

And much more!

If you're in the Vancouver/Portland area, please join us at Stephen's Place, 501 SE Ellsworth Rd, Vancouver, WA, from 2:00pm - 3:00pm Pacific Time. It's free, but space is limited, so prior registration is recommended (you can sign up here). If you can't be there in person, it will be simulcast via Zoom; you can get the link via the same registration page. It will also be recorded and available to watch later.

Hope to see you there!

Overcoming Writer's Block

One of the tips I like to give about overcoming writer's block is this: just write ANYTHING. There's a scientific term called "activation energy" that basically refers to the amount of energy needed to start a chemical reaction, which is usually a larger amount that it takes to maintain said reaction. Think of it like starting your car (this may or may not be an accurate description of activation energy; I'm a writer, not a scientist). The idea is that getting started is the hard part. After that, it's easier to keep going.

So in the context of writing novels, this means having your characters doing any sort of random, silly activities, even if it makes no sense to your overall story. Like, say you last left off with your protagonist having narrowly escaped from a treacherous dungeon with a number of serious injuries and no healing potions or spells, but you're not quite sure where to go from here (even though you have an outline - you do have one, right? - sometimes you find yourself having to fill in gaps along the way). Instead of banging your head against the keyboard several times before giving up for the day, simply switch gears and do something like this (paragraph breaks and lack of indentations are for blog format purposes):

Joel looked up to see an outstretched hand near his face. He realized he was lying prone on a hard, flat surface. He craned his neck a little further and saw that the hand belonged to Felicity.

"C'mon, dude, get up," she said.

"Um...what happened?"

"What do you mean, 'what happened'?"

Joel took Felicity's hand, and she helped him up. "The last thing I knew, I had escaped from the Caves of Wrath," he said. "But now, I'm..." He glanced around. To his left was a GameStop store. To his right, a Hot Topic. The distinctive smells of Cinnabon and Hot Dog on a Stick wafted through the air. "...at the mall?"

"Of course you're at the mall," Felicity said. "Where else would you be?"

"Um...outside the Caves of Wrath?"

Felicity shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about, dude." She sniffed. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I..." Joel inspected himself. He remembered having multiple lacerations on his arms and torso, and his standard Spectraland-issue vest had been torn to shreds. But now, he was wearing an intact T-shirt (short sleeved, green, with the Hyrule logo from The Legend of Zelda emblazoned on it), and his wounds were gone. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Good," Felicity said. "Well, let's get going."

"Where?" Joel asked.

"To Mount Doom."

"What?"

"I'm kidding," Felicity said. "To the shoe store. Remember? We're here to get you a new pair of Chucks."

"We are?"

"Hmm." Felicity narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Joel wasn't sure, but he decided not to pursue the matter any further. "Um...yeah," he said. "Yeah, I am. Let's go."

** Back to Blog Post **

See how that works? I just started writing anything - in this case, Joel and Felicity shopping for shoes at the mall - and ended up with 271 words, which is a little over one page and could very well have met my word count quota for the day (my most common previous quotas for the Joel Suzuki series were 400 or 500 words, but 250 was still considered not bad). And I could have easily kept going.

Besides getting you into a writing mode, there's an extra bonus to this exercise, which is that sometimes you may actually end up with something useable! Maybe not at this point in your manuscript, or even for this particular book, but possibly in the future (this has happened to me on multiple occasions).

So the next time you encounter a blank page and feel stuck, give this idea a shot. At the very least, you'll make progress toward what Ray Bradbury said were (and I paraphrase) "the million bad words that every writer has to get out."

Happy writing!

Start Writing Your Book With...Math??

This week, in an exclusive special article just for you blog readers, I'm going to share some specific details about how I wrote the Joel Suzuki series!

And it all starts with...math.

Not because I'm Asian, mind you - I actually didn't like math as a subject in school. I think it might have more to do with my neurology.

But anyway, after Volume Two (that book and Volume One had their own somewhat messy origin stories) I had not only finalized my characters, themes, and worldbuilding, but I'd also arrived at a system for starting a book that I applied to the rest of the series.

It goes something like this: I'm a plotter, not a pantser, which means I outline my books before I start writing them, as opposed to authors who just dive in and see where the story takes them (looking at you, Stephen King. I have no idea how you do it). So when building my outline, I begin with a target word count, and then I break it down from there, using a structure that combines concepts from both Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell and Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder.

So, say you want to make your book 75,000 words, or roughly 300 pages (assuming that a page is around 250 words, which is pretty standard). You then want break it up into Acts, which, because each Act should land at a particular point, leads you to this outline (this is an actual example from an early outline for Volume Three):

Act I: pages 1-60

Act IIa: pages 60-150

Act IIb: pages 150-225

Act III: page 225-300

Then, decide how long you want each chapter to be. I like my chapters to be around ten pages each, or 2500 words. So based on the above outline, I now have this structure:

Act I: Chapters 1 through 6

Act IIa: Chapters 7 through 15

Act IIb: Chapters 16 through 22

Act III: Chapters 23 through 30 (I know, the math isn't perfect)

Then you want to break that down further into Story Beats. I won't get into that here, but you can learn all about them from the two resources I mentioned earlier (the Save the Cat! franchise even has this handy free tool on their website that will do the Acts & Beats math for you).

After that, you'll want to write short summaries of each chapter. There's always a chance that things will change as you write - Joel and Felicity would often take matters into their own hands once I got into the weeds with them - but it's good to have a general idea of what should be happening and where you want to go. Think of it as a travel itinerary that leaves room for on-the-fly detours and alternative plans (which, if you've ever traveled, you know there almost always are).

If you're starting out with your first book (or a new book, not a continuation of a series), you'll want to establish things like character, arc, theme, and worldbuilding before you do this. But once you do that, it's time to crunch some numbers! Personally, I found this method to be very helpful in getting started and staying on track, as opposed to just opening a blank page and trying to spit out words (again, Stephen King, you are amazing).

Hope you found that helpful, aspiring authors!

Zythos: The Legend of H.M.B.

Remember back in February, when I said that the tie-in video game for Hold My Beer had arrived? Well, since then, I've been kinda-sorta working on developing the larger Zelda-style game that I talked about in that post.

And yes, that's a hand-drawn map (on graph paper!) of the village of Vanwa, where the game is supposed to start out. Old school, woohoo!

I've been slowly learning about how to develop entire RPGs, and let me tell you, it's not easy. Not that I thought it would be, but man, there is a LOT that goes into it. I mean, there's a lot that goes into writing a novel, or making a film, or recording an album, but making a video game of this scope basically requires you to do all three things, plus more. Much, much more. It's like the final boss level of creativity.

Obviously, I'm still just in the beginning stages, but so far, I've scripted the game up until the "inciting incident" point, where the player will choose whether to accept the mission presented to them or not (actually, spoiler alert: they don't have a choice).

I've also started messing around with RPG Maker MV, just as a way for me to get acquainted with gameplay logic. After just a few hours of going through the tutorial, my already-high admiration for people who can create assets, write code, etc. from scratch has multiplied a hundredfold (and trust me, I won't be doing any of the actual art or coding on the final game. I'm just a humble writer).

Oh, and I think I've settled on a name for the game. Instead of the original idea of Hold My Beer: The Adventure Game, it will instead be called Zythos: The Legend of H.M.B., which I think is a much more video-gamey-sounding title. Would you agree?

("Zythos" is the Greek word for beer and also the name of the kingdom in the game, like "Hyrule.")

We're still working on securing funds for not only the game, but Hold My Beer, the episodic series. In the meantime, you can play the original keg-washing minigame here, and watch the original short film here. Cheers!