Gearing Up...

In the morning yesterday, I thought of this nice idea for this year's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I usually come up with story ideas based on "things hitting the fan" because that can bring on the climax of the plot.

I thought up a ship name: RedShift, and thought of the idea that it would be a civilian commerce ship. The story will be about how the crew is trying to maintain the ship and afford to stay in business as wars at the fringe of human colonized space begin to affect the economy. The crew of the RedShift will transport cargo and civilians and then discover that a batch of cargo isn't what is declared on the cargo manifest. But to really make the idea catch, I've decided that this revelation should not occur until the ship is being inspected by the Colonial Administration Armed Forces who are stopping random ships for inspection.

This is not a good place to get caught with illegal cargo, even though the commander could show the official manifest and get the crew out of trouble, the load might get confiscated and create a breach of the contract for shipping the cargo. There's still details to be worked out and things to revise and change, but that will happen in the crucible of NaNoWriMo next month, and not right now.

Hey, it might just take off...

Last year, I tried to set up a database in MS Access to create random strings of letters. As a science fiction writer who dabbles occasionally with fantasy stories, I like the idea of having a quick way to get a language up and running. Last year when I tried this, I got a few nice words like "aucokian" and "zokoturu" to come out of the database. But it was randomly creating other things like "naoifdliuleiugbn" and "ahoksbduigfdliuh" and that just wasn't acceptable.

It took me a while to get up the nerve to gut the old database and redesign it. Mind you, I was doing this at about 3 in the morning a couple of days ago. I figured out how to implement rules, add weight to letters, and find the readable parts in almost any string of gobbledygook (how is that spelled anyway?).

Surprisingly, it showed a bit of promise with fairly little frustration. Meanwhile, the databases I use at work are getting very cranky. I must not be giving them the attention they feel they deserve.

I may have to post more on this later. If it works out, I could be well on my way to having a much more "official" looking language. My favorite part about the latest installment of database-building hobby is that I can see this one catching on. Once I set up the automation, I may have to share it.

Tag, You're It!

I've hit the moment I knew was coming. There is a place in my novel draft where I stop narrating from the point of view of the Commander of the ship. His point of view is still included, but I also start narrating from the view points of several other characters.

My draft has two possibilities:

1.) Short and sweet: cut out the extra characters and include their dialogue "over the radio" with no extra descriptions.
2.) Lengthy and detailed: turn the rest of the draft into a narrative with multiple points of view.

In the meantime, I know that I need to continue writing my synopsis so I can try to submit the draft. Every time the point of view changes, I'm using bold text to remind myself of the shift. But if my draft does make it to an editor's desk, the change in perspective might get the book rejected.

I deliberately "forgot" this problem so I could finish the draft. Now, I have a feeling I will be required to think of a solution.

And I still think writing science fiction is fun.

Is there anybody out there with another idea?