Weekend update time! Picture Sunday Night Football music here.
First off, I think you ought to read the webcomic DOUBLE K (capitalization from original). It’s apparently half a fan comic of an anime series I’ve never heard of, but the other half is a send-up of 80s buddy-cop TV shows, and it’s full of awesome antics the likes of which I wish I could write (or at least write more often). Secret of the Dutchman’s Cross is going to feature some antics, at least.
Second, I finished Tomb Raider. No spoilers, but it’s the first game in a while I’ve played to its conclusion, and as an exercise in character writing, I think it’s a pretty amazing accomplishment. Given the history of the series, I didn’t expect to think that Lara Croft was more interesting than the gameplay.
Third, I’ve decided on a gimmick for future Sam Hill stories: I’m going to try to do them in a similar vein to Rashomon, the Kurosawa classic I haven’t seen. The short version is that the mystery isn’t in the facts and their discovery so much as contradictory testimony. We’ll see if I can pull it off—one of these days I’m going to do another Sam Hill tale.
Speaking of which, I promised a postmortem on the last Sam Hill story, so here’s the abbreviated version (a long one may not be forthcoming—I’m sleepy, and I have writing to do during my other Many Words time). Point the first which I wanted to work on: distinct characters. I think I was doing better at than than usual, with the caveat that I frequently took the lazy (and only partially-explained-by-Sam) way out of describing characters’ emotional states rather than showing the outward signs thereof. That’s something I’d want to work on in the next one.
I also thought the mystery was merely mediocre. The setup was good (my notes say ‘a murder that looks like a suicide that looks like a murder’, which is a hard description to resist), but I think it was as a concept than it turned out to be as a story. I’m hoping that the future concepts will work out a little better. I admit, some additional planning may help.
Anyway, there’s that. I got a good bit of writing done this weekend, so I’m in good shape to do a regular-sized update on Tuesday (no promises about Friday). This Nathaniel Cannon story is looking like it could be one of my longest yet; I guess we’ll see in a few weeks. Until then.
