Fakeminsk TG Fiction: Constant in All Other Things

Writing Update: 22/09/23

Start of week: 30,787

End of Week: 34, 375

+3588 words

Not a bad week for writing.  Word count hides the fact there was a fair bit of editing in there.  Some bits trimmed away, a few tweaks here and there, and some interstitial stuff to tie the chapter together.  At this point I'm thinking the Interlude is likely to be about 40k words in total, split between three chapters or parts.  I'm considering organising it along the lines of the five stages of grie...

First Draft: Interlude 2, part 1

First draft of part one of the Interlude, comin

Sneak Peek: Scooter's Special Patient

A good week of writing so far.  Been tinkering with a very important scene - thought I'd share it with you here.  There's meant to be a noticeable shift in David's behaviour at the Clinic, from his belligerance at the start to greater compliance in the second half, all hinging on his experience outlined below.  Meeting Jonathon's special patient is meant to have a profound effect on him.  Scene is still in its first draft form - I'll be expanding and refining it over the w...

Sneak Peak: Constant 2 - Interlude; what happened at Dan's place

It was a pretty good week for writing: polished off an earlier scene (David and Jonathon visitng the Tank), setting up a crucial moment that should explain some later scenes.  And worked through David's account of what happened that night at Dan's.  It's by far the most explicit scene I've written for Constant.  Considering the nature of the story and the genre, there really hasn't been that much... smut? is that the right word? at least as the focus of the narrative.  To ...

Writing Update: 15/09/23

Been a pretty good week for writing.  Worked through a tricky scene - I'll be sharing it as a sneak peak: David's story of the night Cindy spent at Dan's.

Previous word count: 26091

Current word count: 30777

Word count: +4686 (with lots of editing along the way)

Writing Update: 11/09/23

Hello!

Well, holidays done and firmly back in the work routine.  Upshoot being, back into the writing routine, especially now that jetlag's finally done with.

Previous word count: 24,134.

Week's writing: +2421

Current word count: 26091.

There's a fair bit of editing in there as well, trimming excess away in one place, and padding up others.  Finally made a bit of a breakthrough on a middle bit that's been blocking me for awhile,, and working through to ...

Sneak Peak: Nearly Complete (Interlude 2)

Writing on holiday should be easier than during

On Knitting

Holiday greetings.  Though opportunities to write have been fewer than I'd hoped, I've still managed to squeeze in a couple of sessions, thoroughly enjoying the hour here and there when possible.

I've written a scene between David and Crystal with which I could use a little help.  I'm using knitting as a metaphor for exploring some ideas of identity, liberally borrowed and adapted from a Crash Course: Philosophy video on Youtube--there, the metaphor is links in a piece of chai...

Update: Summer Holiday

Hello!  Apologies for the delayed update - been a busy few days of prepping and packing.  Off on a bit of a summer holiday--though one in which I'm planning/hoping to complete a fair bit of writing.  Have a bit more to share--but for now, it's time to travel.

Writing Update: 29/07/23

Current word count: 19,669.

For the first time in ages, managed to carve out a little free time for a solid few hours of uninterrupted writing.  The word count doesn't quite reflect this: where I managed 2000 words in a day, on another I cut a few hundred from an earlier scene as I try to slim the chapter down a little.

Overall, though I wish it was all going a little faster, I'm pleased with recent progress.  I'm beginning to lean towards splitting the chapter into two,...

Sneak Peak: Interlude 2 - David and K

A little sneak peak at the week's writing: the scene I'd initially skipped over between K and David.  Chapter 5 ended with his arrival at Asklepios and K waiting for him in his room.  Here's that scene; it clocks in at about 2500 words, though some of those were stolen from chapter 1.  (I've killed the bit where K is sat at his bedside on awakening, and migrated some of that content to here.)

As always: this is first draft stuff and liable to change!

***

Who a...

How Much is Too Much?

Or rather, how long is too long for a chapter?

As the current chapter (Interlude 2) approaches 20k words--about the quarter of the average length of a full novel--I have to ask if, perhaps, I'm overdoing it a bit?

The genre is one that lends itself to excess--all those loving descriptions of clothes, the repetition of adjectives to highlight the sense of humiliation or shame, scenes of dressing up or makeup, etc--but still... when does it tip over from "titillating" to "too much"?...

Writing Update: 16/07/2023

Slightly better than the previous week:

+1292 words.  Not great, but an improvement.  Two weeks of illness also left a work backlog to catch up on, but that's nearly done, and I managed to squeeze in a bit of writing.  Went surprising well, actually, as I shifted to a different scene.  Chapter 5 ended with the 'cliffhanger' of Agent K waiting for David in his room at the Clinic.  At first I'd considered dropping that and rewriting that ending, which is why I sta...

Writing Update: 07/07/23

Hello!  I hope all is well with you.

Not much to update, unfortunately.  Covid lingered on during the week--a strange Covid, one part traditional flu or cold (alternating between runny and congested nose) and the Covid I remember (dry cough, headache, tiredness and exhaustion).

Yesterday was the first day in two weeks I felt almost normal, and the first day I felt able to return to the keyboard.  Wrote about 400 words - not much, but felt positive after a few weeks ...

Writing Update: 30/06/23

Absolutely dreadful week for writing!  Started to feel poorly on Saturday, rough through Sunday and by Monday, terrible.  Missed a day of work and finally tested: our old friend Covid had decided to pay a vist to the household once again.  Though nowhere as bad as previous visits, it's still been an exhausting and dispiriting reunion.  Tried sitting and writing a few times, but left with the attention span of an amnesiatic goldfish, I just couldn't get anything of substanc...

Writing Update: 23/06/23

Struggled a few days this week, but still stuck to the target 500/day, exceeding it in a few places.  Think quite a bit of it'll need trimming in the revision, though!

19/06/2023: 11776-->12206, +430

20/06/2023: 12206-->12999, +793

21/06/2023: 12999-->13576, +577

22/06/2023: 13576-->14225, +649

23/06/2023: 14225-->14798, +573

This scene, the meeting between David and Scooter, started with a lot of momentum and felt easy to write but is t...

A Question: Rewriting Constant 2, Chapter 1

Several years ago--during the decade-long interregnum between chapters 3 and 4 of Constant--I started rewriting some of the older chapters.  I wanted to tighten up a few bits, correct some inconsistencies and otherwise tweak a few things.  This is an ongoing process - I can see now that once I've hit the penultimate chapter of the story, I'll have to go back and revise the whole thing to finish it properly.  I think.

In any case, I never really felt satisfied with the fir...

On Writing with AI: Sea of Wonders, pt 2

Continuing the experiment in writing collaboratively with AI, I started chapter 2 of "All in a Sea of Wonders" last week by tidying up the chapter outline and by writing detailed "beats" for the AI to follow.  This experiment sort of started as "what if Constant, but simpler?" but, as I'm working on it, it's taking on a bit of life of its own. My intention is to keep character motivations simple - he's a bastard, she's vengeful, etc... - and avoid any real world-building and stuff like t...

Writing with A.I.: My Style

Continuing with my experiment in A.I.-assisted writing, a few days ago I stumbled across an option on the Style input box I hadn't noticed before.  When using the "Story Engine" function in Sudowrite, there's a place for defining "Style" - this is supposed to influence the AI's output (a lot!) when writing the outline and the prose.  I'm not convinced it does much, but I'm also not sure how to actually tell.

In any case, I discovered a button by the input field for "Match My S...

Sneak Peak: Constant, Interlude 2

Updates showing numbers going up is one thing, but at some point I imagine you'd like actual evidence the story's progressing.  Here it is!  This is a sneak peak extract from the current chapter.  A while ago I posted the scene leading into this (Katherine reviewing the footage of the incident at the cafe).  This is (at least for now) the next scene.

This is the scene I abandoned when I stepped away from the keyboard.  I found this, initially at least, very diff...

Writing Update: 16/06/23

Another solid week of writing:

Date          :Prev-->New-->Words

12/06/2023: 8846-->9377-->531

13/06/2023: 9377-->9901-->524

14/06/2023: 9901-->10721-->820

15/06/2023: 10721-->11130-->409

16/06/2023: 11130-->11776-->646

... at times, it feels a bit frustrating, a bit slow - but it's proving sustainable and achievable, which is key, I think.

I'd orig...

On Writing with A.I.: Getting it to write better

Yesterday showed what the A.I. can generate when given free reign and little guidance.  It was readable - but not exactly great literature.  How to make it write better?

One trick I've found is to put a little extra effort into the Outline.  The AI tool I'm using provides a 1700-words space for the whole story outline, and a 2000-words space for each individial stort outline.  The character box allows for 700 words.  Generally, I've found that the more you put i...

On Writing with A.I.: Chapter 1 Prose

Yesterday, the A.I. generated a detailed chapter outline for an experimental story exploring how to use these tools to help with writing.  In my experience, these tools are a lot of fun and they can certainly help, at times.  They're also very limited, require a lot of work by the human user in the background, and aren't a substitute for a 'real' writer.... at least, not yet.

So, what can the A.I. write, left to its own devices?  See below!  I've got a few comments a...

On Writing with A.I.: Chapter Outline

Previous post, I showed the A.I.'s effort at generating a whole-story outline based on the user-provided "braindump" of ideas.  This included some basic ideas on style and genre.

The next step in this process is getting the A.I. to generate a detailed outline for the first chapter.  It can do this for every chapter of the whole-story outline, developing it forward into something more granular.

My experience with this is that it's not very good.  The outline is writt...

On Writing with A.I.: Story Outline

Yesterday, I showed how an A.I. can take a user-defined "braindump."  This collection of ideas, keywords and themes, bits and pieces of character and plot and setting, and things you'd like to see in the story and vague ideas of style and genre - the AI processes into a story synopsis.  From this, it can then generate core characters for a story which, with a little user-manipulation, can be guided into something a little more specific and useful.

Today, I'm using that synopsi...

On Writing with AI: Brainstorming

So, one of the intriguing new functions with the Ai tools at hand is the ability to do a little "brainstorming."  While I don't find the idea-generating part of writing particularly difficult--ideas are easy, writing is hard--I can imagine this being really useful for some.  It's also a fun way to see how an initial seed might grow into something unexpected.

Basically, it works by dumping every and any idea you've got into the box, and hitting "generate" - this is further infl...

All in a Sea of Wonders, Chapter 01

So, I went back into my "collaborative" effort with AI writing, and gave it a final look-through.  Gave it a title, changed the protagonist's name around (I want to keep "Summer Allen" for a different writing project based on Stephen King's "Billy Summers".)  Corrected a bunch of inconsistencies, expanded a few bits, hopefully tightened up a few others, and I think it now works pretty well as an opening chapter.  As you know, Chapter 2 is already well underway, so I'll have tha...

Writing Update: 09/06/23

Alongside experimenting with A.I.-assisted writing, writing of Constant continues apace:

Date                Prev         New         Words

05/06/2023 5954 6550 596

06/06/2023 6550 7119 569

07/06/2023 7119 7571 452

08/06/2023 7571 8237 666

09/06/2023 8237 8846 609

On Writing with AI: Summer's Story, part 2a

Well, since people seemed to have enjoyed part one of this collaboration with the AI--and there's some interest in seeing how the process works--I thought I'd show some of the steps I take when working with the AI to write this story.

So: first, here's a cut-and-paste from the "story engine" Outline.  This is a 1700-word space in which it will create a full outline for your story, based on other information you've written, broken down into chapters.  However, I've completely r...

An Experiement: Summer's Story, Part 1

So, one of the things that got me back to the keyboard was messing around with various AI writing tools currently available online.  I'd played around with Dungeon AI a few years ago, and found it both fun and remarkably bad at writing, and NovelAI more recently, which was better but still not great, more of a toy than a real writing tool.  

About a month ago I decided to try out newcomer SudoWrite.  It also has its flaws.  Many of them.  It's forgetful, like al...