I just finished my second feature length screenplay or the first first draft of one.


165 pages I didn't have before.


Hazzah...

Being unemployed, feeling an itch, finding a local writing group and the online Brandon Sanderson lectures website http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/ , I took it upon myself to start writing an Epic Fantasy Caper of my own devising.



7931 Words and counting.


Checking a few boxes off the "Ideas I've always wanted to use" list.

Spent a few hours today at a Panera Bread in Redmond and broadly outlined a Superhero Serial Killer Movie I had had in mind for a while.


It was fun...and a bit disturbing...


Even if it never gets made it'll be fun to write a first draft.

Dusted off a shelved idea on a whim, an Epic Fantasy with a twist and a gimmick I am excited about. I have been making strides to work on the project a little bit each day so I would be writing each day.


So far I have been World-Building, researching, plotting a macroview and am working on the outline for the novel itself. Although I could hope to write a series, I'll write the first book as though it's all I'll get with room for expansion.


A total of about 65% of the pre-writing done so far. If I want to actually finish the thing then after finals next week I'm going to have to content lock the world-building so that I can actually start writing scenes and not get scope creep.

This past session of GMing, I took my party back in time to 1934 Seattle. My players get to get into shenanigans...with Time. I could use some help with a system I'm going to use to model the effects of Time Travel.


Specifically I want to use a Time Stress Track. At the end of every Scene the Time Travelers make an "attack" against Time and Time defends against it. However, Time can't be "taken out" instead you have to mitigate the damage with Consequences which I think will be a great way to model "ripples in the currents of time".


Also, I wanted to allow my players logically to mitigate the damage by spending Fate Points. "We're going with the flow. That was supposed to happen."


Sounds good on its own to me, but I need help with 3 things:


1. How many stress boxes should Time get and how often should they be cleared out if at all ? Along with that, how should the strength of the attack be modelled and what would be the attack score?


At this point I'm considering like 5 stress boxes and never clearing out the Stress Track.
I was thinking the strength would be arbitrary case-by-case with no empirical scale. If anyone has use or has ideas for an empirical time scale I'd love to see it.


The attack/defense rolls would be straight dice.


2. I want to let players use Fate points to mitigate damage. Should this be 1 fate point negates all damage if they come up with a good story or just some of the damage?


I'm inclined to say all of the damage since they will probably get into trouble because of compels.


3. What should be the scale of time consequences?


I'm confused on this one.


I feel a Mild Time Consequence is a change that is mostly aesthetic that doesn't really change much.
Example: The Mall in Back to The Future. Marty McFly went back in time from "Twin-Pines Mall". The first thing Marty did in 1955 was drive over the farmer's Pine Tree. When he gets back to 1985 the Mall is now called, "Lone Pine Mall." That's a small change comparatively.


But after that I'm stumped. There are only 4 levels of consequences normally but for something as big of scope as this I'm willing to make more. Note that our game takes place in 2008ish and my players are in 1934 so they will be running into ancestors of one or more important characters.


I know the consequences I need though:


1. A Consequence that affects a Major Character like the Face of a Location. Like
a. changing the Face of a location into a non-Face,
b. replacing the Face of a location with another or
c. turning a non-Face into a Face.
2. A Consequence that affects the Theme or Trouble of a single Location.
3. A Consequence that affects the Theme or Trouble of the Whole City. (I hope it doesn't come to this.) 
4. A Consequence that affects the entire family line of a character. We have a few family lines in the game.
5. Similar to 4, a Consequence that affects the "Theme" or feel of an entire Organization.


Any input on this would be appreciated.

I'm estatic that Jim is coming to Seattle....but I have class in Bellevue at that same time and I can't miss...

On my own front, revisiting a project I had shelved a while ago. Going back to school this coming week, I still want to write everyday.


Current writing problems I need to solve:


1. How to write a "First Book" without falling into the traps that lead to readers telling their friends, "You have to slog through the first book" because I hate when I hear that and when I have to tell people that. The only solution I can think of is, "Don't save the dinosaur riding for book 7. Give to me in Book 1!"


2. Avoiding #1 while the only plot that makes sense for the beginning of the epic narrative is, "The Main Character stumbles around for a while and has to learn the tools...blah blah blah...because heroes can never find their own A** with both hands and a map at the beginning of their journey." I wish I were a fan of the gritty fantasy like Joe Ambercrombie and George Martin that throws that kind of narrative out the window...but I'm not. >_<


3. Whether or not to roll with the idea of Obi-Wan Kenobi as my main character instead of Luke Skywalker(Metaphorically speaking). It fits and I find great humor & drama in the moment of "These are the kids I have to train to opposed the Empire and take the Death Star? We are so f****ed..."