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!