A month ago, I posted my first ever progress update, and I’m happy to say that I’ve kept pace with the goals I set for myself in that post. My middle grade sci-fi novel has a working title: A BOY FROM NORRU.
At this point, I’ve finished the pre-draft plotting, and I’ve written over 11k words of the story. This means that, when you include the content I created for this website, I wrote about half of my typical output last month. Which is phenomenal, considering most of my attention recently I’ve spent on my move to Austin.
So, so, so much work goes into moving. Obviously, there’s the big stuff, like actually moving yourself and your items. But then there’s the smaller stuff that you don’t consider ahead of time, like learning what days trash collection comes through your neighborhood. Each of those smaller tasks creates a small headache. And those little headaches add up to one big migraine.
But as with most ventures worth undertaking, the reward doesn’t come without the effort.
By the time this article goes live, I will have lived here in ATX for a week! And despite all the painstaking details of pulling up my roots and replanting, I can’t wait to see what the future brings. I’m almost completely settled in, anyway. There are only a few more things I need to finalize.
What I’m Doing
With any luck, I’ll have shifts scheduled at a new job within the next week. I’m moving forward with some opportunities to this end, and I like my odds. More importantly, I like the places to which I’ve applied. Assuming all goes well, I will feel a legitimate passion for my day job, and I’ll grow as a person while I do it. Both are privileges that will not go unnoticed.
In terms of writing, I plan on spending the next month continuing to write the first draft of A BOY FROM NORRU, along with my normal blog posts. Of course, I don’t know that I can expect to meet my previous average of 30-40k words per month any time soon, what with the other responsibilities I’ve taken on. But with a new lifestyle comes a new norm. And word count goals are only helpful so much as they bring inspiration and discipline. Not when they discourage me.
I’m still keeping up with the queries I sent out for MIRI MEDERA, INTERPLANAR POTION-MAKER. And I’ve received several form rejections from literary agents, each one a badge of honor. Candidly, I will say that A BOY FROM NORRU is much more high-concept and commercial so far. Which, as an unpublished author, means I may have more luck pitching it to agents. Not to say that I’ve given up on Miri; quite the contrary. I’ll make sure she has her time in the spotlight.
Wrapping Up
In short, I moved, and I’m writing. The latter will be true for as long as I’m alive, so I suppose it doesn’t warrant reiterating. In the next month, I intend on finding a decent flow between housework, my day job, and my stories. Oh, and I’m gonna enjoy the city. Can’t forget that.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read a bit about my current endeavors.
– AJG
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Throughout grade school, I made several attempts to write novels. My most successful attempt was in high school; I managed to write the first 25,000 words of a fantasy novel in the span of two weeks. I was so proud of myself! Granted, I’ve looked back on that story, and it’s rife with rookie mistakes. But without writing those words, I never would have believed in myself enough to finish my first novel a few years later. And now, I’m at a point where finishing my projects isn’t a question–it’s a given.
Moreover, as I continue to finish first drafts and to revise them, I feel myself growing as a writer. Things that once required my constant attention, such as minimizing use of passive voice, now come as instinct. And yet, I can still feel so much room to grow.
What helped me get from having seven unfinished manuscripts in my writing folder to writing multiple first drafts a year? And how did I become a better writer in the process?
If you’re a fledgling novelist, whether you’re about to start your twelfth attempt at writing a novel or you’ve yet to write a word, these tips should help you finish your stories and see long-term development.
1. Form a Writing Habit
Start writing your first novel today.
You may not want to hear this. But there’s an incredibly simple way to become a better and more prolific writer. It has nothing to do with extensive plotting, watching writing lectures, or waking up at the perfect time every single day.
No, the trick is this: write. A lot.
I mentioned that I finished my first novel a few years out of high school. Well, that one was pretty bad, too. Of course, while I was writing it, I felt sure that it would see publication in no time. Accepting the truth about the quality of my novel didn’t come easy.
But without finishing that novel, I never would have finished the next one, the next one, nor the next one.
We’re creatures of habit. And if we sit down to write every single day, maybe at a certain time of day or after a certain activity, we’re going to find it a lot easier to see progress in the long term. Rather than writing 25,000 words in a two week burst, you’re going to see yourself accumulating 100,000+ words over the course of months and years.
And even if your work is “bad” in the beginning (such a broad and subjective qualifier), don’t get discouraged. No one needs to see that work. As with any other skill, you can’t expect to be a master straight away. You need time to exercise all your different writing muscles.
As Neil Gaiman says, “Assume that you have a million words inside you that are absolute rubbish and you need to get them out before you get to the good ones.”
So stop saying you’re in the “research phase” of your novel and write consistently. You can worry about constructing a fictional language for your fantasy race of not-elves later. You’ll get to those good words a lot sooner if you chip away at the bad ones every day. Even if you’re only writing a hundred words a day. Or fifty a night.
2. Read, Read, Read
Learn from the works that work.
In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King writes, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Most of your development as a writer will come from writing. The second most beneficial activity is reading. If you can write and read consistently over time, you’re perhaps 90% percent of the way there. The other 10% is revision, feedback, and querying, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I can’t stress this enough. Read, read, read. Read anything and everything you can get your hands on. Get a library card. Visit used book stores. Ask friends for recommendations. Reread your old favorites. Not only will you grow your vocabulary and learn what makes a good story, but you’ll also learn what you like. You’ll mimic the voices of the authors you love before you find your own. That’s okay. Figure out what you enjoy, and write something that you would want to read. Chances are, someone else will too.
If you read slow, that’s also okay. The key here is consistency. Can you do fifty pages a day? No? What about ten? Five? If you can’t read every day, what if you read a whole book every Sunday? Find a way to fit it into your schedule. Make the time, and you will be rewarded.
3. Revise and Reflect
Get ready for some criticism.
When you’ve formed a consistent habit of reading and writing, it’s time to work some new muscles. They’re related to the ones you’ve already exercised, but they’re also surprisingly different. Go through your first drafts a couple months after you’ve written them. How would you improve them now that you’ve grown as a writer? Don’t be afraid to say that you’d rip them up and start from scratch. Writing a bad novel gives you key information on what does and doesn’t work, so be honest.
Once you’ve done some editing on your own, show your work to friends and other writers. Form or join a writing group. Others will have perspectives on your writing that you would never have expected, not if you guessed at them for a hundred years. These perspectives are extraordinarily beneficial, even when they’re harsh.
However, be careful not to let others’ advice discourage you. Even well-meaning advice can be detrimental. Other writers have a tendency to say, “If it were me, I would have written it like this…” They didn’t write it. You did. Mitigate their advice through the lens of the story you’re trying to tell. But before you dismiss their advice, ask yourself if you’re being honest or stubborn.
4. Believe in Yourself
You will finish your first novel.
As Syrio tells Arya in George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, “The man who fears losing has already lost.”
Forming any good and healthy habit is hard. Fitness, dietary, and financial habits all come to mind. Think of the healthy habits you’ve successfully formed, and think of how many times you failed on your way there. Writing is no different. You’re going to trip and stumble and fall and spend six months on the worst novel anyone’s ever seen, and maybe you’ll stop writing for a while.
Don’t give up. You’re still a writer.
Very intentionally, I chose not to use the words “aspiring writer” in the title of this article. If you enjoy writing, what else do you need to consider yourself a writer? Don’t be afraid to assign yourself that label, especially if it helps you feel more legitimate in your work. You don’t need to wait until you quit your day job to be a writer.
In fact, I would argue that everyone should be a writer. Articulating one’s thoughts in a more permanent medium than speech begets reflection and development.
So write consistently. If for no one else, then for you.
– AJG
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The video game sub-genres “Metroidvania” and “Soulslike” are inextricably intertwined. The term Metroidvania, named for Nintendo’s Metroid series and Konami’s Castlevania series, implies a 2-D sidescroller with a heavy emphasis on non-linear exploration (read: extensive backtracking). Soulslike games are a modern iteration of the Metroidvania sub-genre and refer to games similar to those in FromSoftware’s Dark Souls series, with a focus on unforgiving combat, challenging boss fights, and infrequent respawn points. Classic Metroidvania games, such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, have these elements too, but Soulslike games take them to a new level.
In my opinion, Hollow Knight is the definitive “Metroidvania Soulslike,” for those looking to experience both sub-genres in one game. I love Hollow Knight, and I will forever rank it among my favorite games of all time. In fact, I even earned the achievement for finishing the game in under five hours.
This article isn’t about Hollow Knight, but it’s important to know that before this week, I had never played anything from the Castlevania or Metroid series. Therefore, all of my opinions should be viewed as those of someone who played nearly 100 hours of Hollow Knight before any classic Metroidvania game.
And yet, as a long-time fan of Soulslike games, and as a more recent fan of Metroidvanias, I felt compelled to try the most iconic Castlevania title to date, released in 1997 for the Playstation 1.
What made Castlevania: Symphony of the Night work so well? What is it like playing it for the first time over 25 years after its release? Does it hold up?
Allow me to answer these questions and more.
Atmosphere
As a fan of gothic horror ever since I started DMing Curse of Strahd, this game won my heart from the concept alone. Four years after the defeat of Dracula, his castle has reappeared. Richter Belmont, the man who killed Dracula, has gone missing. You, Dracula’s rebellious son Alucard, must venture into Castlevania and destroy your father’s domain.
And in case you didn’t notice, your name is Dracula spelled backwards.
There’s plenty of nineties cheesiness here, compounded by poorly-translated and clunky dialogue. In that sense, the game doesn’t age well. Unless you like that sort of thing, which I do.
Surprisingly, though, the graphics have aged wonderfully. Many modern games have sought to recreate the graphics of this era and found success, especially indie games. One such example that comes to mind is Shovel Knight.
As in Hollow Knight, you explore numerous varied environments in this game, each with their own unique visual feel. What’s more, each area has an absolutely stellar soundtrack. Many genres of music are represented across the OST, and they all blend perfectly to create a cohesive whole. To get an idea for the quality and variety of music we’re talking about, listen to a few songs. I recommend “Wood Carving Partita,” “Wandering Ghosts,” and “The Tragic Prince.”
Exploration
As with any good Metroidvania, this is where the game truly shines. Personally, I would attribute the success of the sub-genre largely to this point alone. There is an immense satisfaction upon realizing that since you now have a certain upgrade, you can go back to an area you couldn’t reach earlier and keep exploring. Or that there’s a secret passage you nearly missed that leads to a whole new area with powerful items and bosses.
In order to fully enjoy the experience, I recommend not looking up any guides until you’ve seen at least one ending of the game. More on this later.
Exploration seemed to me the most challenging part of the game, as well, with enemies respawning every time you enter or exit a room. To discuss this in further depth, we need to talk about combat.
Combat
The combat in Symphony of the Night was the weakest part of the game for me. Unfortunately, this is where Soulslike games, with their difficult bosses and hard-to-master combat systems, shine over Metroidvanias. Not to say that there weren’t challenging bosses in this game, nor that the combat system was easy to master. However, the difficulty of the bosses dipped severely after the early game. With a bit of exploration, I soon became stacked with powerful equipment that would allow me to shred through bosses. (Except for Galamoth. That boss severely humbled me.) I will say, though, that unique boss designs often made up for the lack of difficulty here.
I still haven’t mastered the combat system, but I don’t feel that it’s hard to master for the right reasons. Half the time when I try to cast a spell, the game doesn’t pick up my inputs. When an enemy hits me, I may go flying into another enemy, unable to move, and get hit again. Which then sends me flying back into the first enemy. These stunlocks made exploration more difficult, but oftentimes, they felt frustrating and unfair. Certain enemies would make me groan when they came on screen. Looking at you, Flea Men. And Gremlins. Oh, and Imps, too.
Warning: MINOR SPOILERS in this section. Skip to the next section if you wish to avoid spoilers. I am only going to divulge information I would have felt comfortable knowing before playing the game, but I understand some people might want to go in blind.
Here’s where things get strange. According to Symphony of the Night’s HLTB page, the game should take about eight hours to finish and sixteen to 100%. I was surprised, then, when I finished the game at 93% completion in just under five hours.
“I must be pretty good at Metroidvanias after all that Hollow Knight,” I thought to myself. How naïve.
Little did I know, I only finished half the game. Oh, I saw one of the game’s endings, as semi-satisfactory as that particular ending felt. But as it turns out, you need to complete a series of events involving two rings and a clock room in order to get a special item. And equipping that item during the “final” boss fight will allow you to go to an inverted version of the castle you spent the whole game thus far exploring. A second castle, upside down, with the same rooms, but new items, monsters, and bosses. Therefore, the max completion in this game is not 100%, but 200.6%! (The extra 0.6% comes from rooms in the second castle that don’t exist in the first.)
As you might guess, the first castle felt far more exciting and fresh than the second. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the extra content, and I appreciated viewing everything from a new perspective as I explored the castle all over again. Moreover, the true ending made the extra work worth my time.
Finishing the game at 196% map completion or higher, as I did, nets you the “best” ending.
Wrapping Up
All in all, I highly recommend playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, especially to Metroidvania and Soulslike fans, even 25 years after its release. The graphics, music, and exploration are all delightful. Certain aspects of the game’s combat may be lacking, but not painfully so. Most of the time.
And now, with our ease of access to Google and YouTube, we can all experience the most hidden of secrets the game has to offer. For that reason, Symphony of the Night might be more worth a shot today than ever before.
– AJG
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Yesterday, I launched my author website. Woohoo! And now, back to the grindstone.
Much of the past month I spent applying to jobs in Austin and querying literary agents with MIRI MEDERA, INTERPLANAR POTION-MAKER, a project which you can read more about here. With those tasks and my website complete, I can return my focus again to writing.
Well, that and moving. See, I’m not technically based in Austin just yet, but I’ll be out there in the next month or so. As of now, I’m still in Dallas.
What I’m Doing
For my next project, I intend on writing another novel for middle grade audiences—this time, one set in a science fiction setting. In preparation for writing this story, I’ll need to queue up some more contemporary middle grade sci-fi on my reading list. I did the same with middle grade fantasy before I wrote my last project, and it served me well.
Some pop-culture inspirations for this coming story include Cowboy Bebop, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, as I’ve repurposed story elements from each. And of course my usual favorites from the science fiction canon: Star Wars, Dune, The Martian, Ender’s Game, and the like. Recently, I’ve been playing the classic BioWare Star Wars games set in the Old Republic, including the MMORPG, which I’m sure will influence my worldbuilding to some degree.
Speaking of worldbuilding, I intend on setting this story in a universe that I created some time ago for a different, more adult project. The BBEG in that story was going to be a lich. Space lich! How fun would that be? I’ll get around to that story eventually, too, so I won’t give away the twist just yet. The space lich twist.
Of course, I’ll have to make some modifications to the setting so that it better suits a middle grade audience. For example, I originally didn’t want a human race to exist in this universe. The only sapient mammalian race took traits from the big cats of our world, specifically lions. Upon revisiting this, I think I’d rather not attempt to explain the anatomy of several non-human main characters in a sub-60k word story. That doesn’t sound very interesting at all. And so humans shall run rampant.
Although I won’t have time to explain all the internal logic of the universe either, my old setting will provide a backbone and an underlying logic to the lighthearted adventures of these ten to twelve-year-old protagonists. Do my readers need to know that my FTL jumpdrives are powered by crystals produced from matter-antimatter annihilation? No, but I’ll sleep easier at night knowing it myself.
Wrapping Up
So there you have it. The next month or so for me will consist of storyboarding, the early phases of drafting, and moving to Austin. If you’re interested in keeping up with my progress, check back regularly for more blog posts, and keep an eye on my books page.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read a bit about my current endeavors.
