Monthly Archives: January 2020

Today’s Art (31st January 2020)

Well, today’s digitally-edited painting was originally a chance to practice painting realistic lighting. And, although it initially didn’t turn out that well, I was able to salvage it during editing (amongst other things, I digitally changed the palette/colour scheme from an orange sunset to something a bit more gothic and atmospheric).

As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.

“The Secret Staircase” By C. A. Brown

Top Ten Articles – January 2020

Well, it’s the end of the month. So, I thought that I’d do my usual thing of collecting a list of links to the ten best articles about writing, reading etc… that I’ve posted here over the past month (plus a couple of honourable mentions too).

All in all, this month’s articles went reasonably well – even if, behind the scenes, creating them was a little bit slower and more erratic (due to being busy with other stuff) than usual. Still, thanks to a large enough buffer of pre-written articles (seriously, if you’re starting a blog, you need one of these!), it didn’t affect the posting schedule 🙂

In terms of reviews, there were less game reviews than I’d expected this month (“Doom II” WADs aside, the only game I reviewed was the excellent “Dreamfall: Chapters”) but this meant that I could review twelve novels this month 🙂 My favourites were probably: “Deathday” By Shaun Hutson, “Sunburn” by Laura Lippman, “Rosewater” by Tade Thompson, “Lair” by James Herbert and “The Damnation Game” by Clive Barker.

Anyway, here are the lists 🙂 Enjoy 🙂

Top Ten Articles – January 2020:

– “Three Things To Do If Your Story Gets Stuck On A Mini-Cliffhanger”
– “Four Things Writers Can Learn From 1980s Shaun Hutson Novels”
– “Three Things That Writers Can Learn From 1980s Clive Barker Novels”
– “Four Reasons To Read Older Novels”
– “Three Tips For Choosing A Book To Read Next”
– “Four Tips For Adding Pop Culture References To Your Story”
– “Four Thoughts About Writing Modern Noir Fiction”
– “How To Use Signposting To Make Your Story Less Confusing”
– “Why Dismissing The Past Is Bad For Creativity- A Ramble”
– “Four More Tips For Making Your Thriller Story More Gripping”

Honourable Mentions:

– “Using Themes And Focus To Innovate In Genre Fiction – A Ramble”
– “Should Writers Take Influence From Films?“

Using Themes And Focus To Innovate In Genre Fiction – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk about one way to make your genre fiction (eg: horror, sci-fi, thriller, detective, fantasy etc.. fiction) story stand out from the crowd. I am, of course, talking about using different themes and/or having a different focus than many other stories in your chosen genre.

This was something that I ended up thinking about whilst reading a really interesting sci-fi novel from 2014 called “The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers that I’ll probably review fully in a couple of days time. Needless to say, this article will contain some mild SPOILERS for this novel.

One of the interesting things about this novel is that, although it contains all of the stuff that you’d expect from a traditional sci-fi story (eg: futuristic technology, spaceships, alien civilisations, galactic alliances/politics etc…), the focus and themes of the novel are surprisingly different to what you’d typically expect to see in traditional sci-fi.

Whilst the main focus of many sci-fi stories is on “STEM” (science, technology, engineering and maths) stuff, this novel tends to focus more on “the humanities” (eg: languages, empathy, culture, introspection, imagination, art etc..) and this makes a surprisingly large difference to the story.

It changes the atmosphere, mood, style etc… of the story in a really interesting way. To give one small example, when the main characters’ spaceship is boarded by space pirates, this situation isn’t resolved with a dramatic laser battle or through technological trickery.

Instead, it is resolved by the fact that the ship’s clerk can speak a second language and has just enough historical/cultural knowledge to come up with a way of persuading the heavily-armed pirates to steal much less than they’d originally planned to. It’s a really tense and dramatic scene that catches the reader off-guard whilst also coming across as more “realistic” than many things in the sci-fi genre do.

And all because the author made a decision to write a sci-fi story that focuses more on humanities than on STEM. It’s a brilliantly subversive take on the genre – especially given that we live in an age where STEM stuff often tends to be valued more and seen as more “useful” than humanities stuff.

Even the fact that this is a novel (eg: a “low tech” storytelling medium that requires the audience to think, empathise and imagine) is a part of this change in focus – since the structure, style, pacing, tone, atmosphere etc.. of the story is designed specifically for the strengths of the written word. In other words, it does loads of subtle and large-scale stuff that can’t really be done in more “high tech” storytelling mediums like film, television, videogames etc…

So, one way to tell an innovative genre story that will surprise your readers and linger in their memories is to look at the themes and focus of your chosen genre and try to do something a bit different with them. But, not only does this require a good knowledge of the genre you’re writing in (so, get reading) but it also has to be done for a good reason too.

In order for your reader to not only get used to the change, but to actually consciously notice it, your reason for changing the genre’s themes/focus has to matter to you enough for it to shape the entire story in a profound way. It has to be something that is important enough to your story that your story wouldn’t really “work” without the change.

But, how do you think of an interesting change? Well, the easiest way of doing this is to look at what is wrong with the genre you are planning to write in. When you spot a large enough deficiency, oversight or problem that annoys you enough to actually make you notice it, then you have the beginnings of your story’s change.

But, although changing the themes and focus of your story can be a great way to innovate, you still have to handle this well. In other words, you still need to write your story in a way that people will still want to read even if they are a bit surprised or confused by the changes you have made. Things like characterisation, atmosphere, worldbuilding, good writing etc… matter even more than usual when you’re doing something innovative.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Review: “Behead The Undead (v1.2)” (WAD for “Doom II”/”Final Doom”/ Zandronum)

Well, since I’m still reading the next book I plan to review and because, at the time of writing, I’d been obsessively playing the early access preview for “Ion Maiden Fury” (rather than any new full games. EDIT: Yes, I write these reviews very far in advance), I thought that I’d take a quick look at a really interesting “Doom II”/”Final Doom” WAD from 2019 called “Behead The Undead (v1.2)“.

Although this WAD (technically a “.pk3”) will apparently work on other source ports if you have the right spawner files, it works “out of the box” with the Zandronum source port. So, out of laziness, I used this instead of GZDoom.

So, let’s take a look at “Behead The Undead (v 1.2)”:

“Behead The Undead (v1.2)” is a nine-level co-op/single player WAD that includes new monsters, levels, weapons, player sprites, sounds etc.. and (despite apparently being inspired by “Timesplitters 2” and one of the “Call Of Duty” zombie modes) also seems to takes heavy inspiration from the “Left 4 Dead” games.

And, yes, it’s always great to see “Left 4 Dead” stuff in Doom II WADs 🙂 The only other example I can think of is “Aeons Of Death (v 6.06.1)“

Since I have very nostalgic memories of playing the “Left 4 Dead” games during the early 2010s (back when I didn’t mind Steam’s always-online DRM and before they stuck their middle finger up at Windows XP users – of which I was one until several months before preparing this review) and since I enjoyed the “Timesplitters” games when I was a teenager, I was intrigued.

Although there are some “Timesplitters” references, this mod doesn’t have the precision aiming needed to copy the “Behead The Undead” mode from “Timesplitters 2” (which is probably a good thing, given how frustrating that game mode could be). So, it is more like Left 4 Dead 2’s “survival” mode, where you choose a level and then have to fight wave after wave of monsters for as long as possible. You get a ten-second break between rounds and ammo/health/weapons will also respawn too.

In terms of the gameplay, this is a challenging WAD (on single-player, at least. Unlike L4D2, there are no AI companions here) that can be enjoyed in either short bursts or for longer gaming sessions. Even on the middle difficulty setting, you won’t last more than a few seconds if you get surrounded by zombies. So, just like in games such as “Alien Shooter“, the best strategy is to never let yourself get surrounded – either by constantly running/shooting or by finding an area that the zombies can’t get to easily.

Of course, if you’re playing co-op, then you probably stand slightly more of a chance against the zombie hordes.

In other words, this is a frantic, fast-paced WAD that is a lot of fun to play. The new weapons help out here a lot, with a balance between power, rate of fire, rarity and ammo supply that keeps you constantly feeling vulnerable. About half of the weapons are powerful enough to actually give you a fighting chance (eg: the dual pistols, double-barelled shotgun, sniper rifle, minigun and nuke launcher), but have some kind of disadvantage to balance them. For example, the double-barelled shotgun’s manual reload takes a second or two, the ammo-guzzling minigun has a “spinning up” delay, the nuke launcher appears very rarely and only has three shots (plus, a blast radius you can easily get caught in) etc….

This weapon is ridiculously powerful, but you can only use it three times…. on the rare occasions that it appears in the first place.

Likewise, this minigun is literally the only truly useful rapid-fire weapon in the game. But, it guzzles about ten units of ammo every second.

This feeling of vulnerability works surprisingly well because this is actually a vaguely scary horror game too. In addition to some ominously gloomy locations (which allow for lots of jump scares when screeching zombies rush out of the darkness towards you), some creepy ambient music and the eerie item pickup sound effects from “Silent Hill”, several of this WAD’s levels also have a very grey and desaturated look to them which really helps to add a bleak, hopeless atmosphere to the gameplay 🙂 Seriously, it’s a “Doom II” WAD about shooting zombies that is actually mildly scary 🙂

Yes, there’s actual horror in this WAD 🙂

As for the monsters, there’s a good – if limited – variety. In addition to hordes of fast, weak “Left 4 Dead 2” zombies, there is also the “Spitter” monster from that game (who is weak, but can fire projectiles) and then the game uses an enlarged version of the mummy monster from “Heretic” as the equivalent of L4D2’s “Tank” monster. These large, slow-moving projectile-firing monsters are absolute bullet sponges, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the plus side, they provide a formidable challenge that also adds variety to the gameplay. On the downside, the game will sometimes throw 5-10 of them at you during a wave, which can almost border on unfair.

Although only three of them can be seen in this screenshot, this level will often throw 5-10 of these giant monsters at you during the later waves.

In terms of the level design, it’s fairly good. The nine levels you can choose from are a good mixture between wide open arenas, claustrophobic smaller levels and sprawling corridor mazes. Each level type has it’s own set of advantages and disadvantages that really help to add some variety to the gameplay.

For example, it’s easier to find ammo, health and new weapons in the smaller levels, but you’re more likely to get surrounded by zombies. It’s easier to run away and circlestrafe in arena levels, but more zombies/monsters tend to appear. Zombies tend to be more spread out in corridor mazes, but there are more “jump” moments and finding the last zombie of a wave can also be a challenge (even with the in-game radar). So, the level design is fairly good.

Interestingly, some levels also have “safe areas” which can’t be reached by the monsters. This doesn’t feel like too much of a cheat thanks to some clever design and balancing. Here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: The monsters can’t get into this building in the “City” level, but don’t expect to find much ammo in here….

Example 2: In the “Docks” level, hiding behind this crate will keep you safe during the earlier waves. But, when projectile-firing monsters start appearing, you’ll be trapped with little to no cover.

Yes, there are the dreaded invisible walls in some levels – but these double up as spawn points for the monsters, so this isn’t too bad. And, yes, some levels feature atmospheric custom textures whilst some others just use the ordinary standard textures (with maybe a new skybox), but the actual design of the levels is fairly good.

Likewise, I cannot praise the variety of sprites/textures in this game highly enough – in addition from being able to choose between about twelve player sprites (mostly from the “Timesplitters” games), the game also features graphics from several other games (eg: Left 4 Dead 2, Shadow Warrior [1997], Silent Hill 2, Blood, Heretic etc..) which helps to make everything feel a bit more unique. Yes, the styles of some of these textures clash with each other a bit, but I absolutely love it when modders convert stuff from 3D games into the 2.5D “Doom” engine 🙂

All in all, this WAD is a lot of fun and a is a bit like a trimmed-down version of “Left 4 Dead 2” for the “Doom” engine. Yes, it’s limited and the difficulty level can almost border on unfair in single-player mode – but, if you want a challenging, fairly well-balanced, fast-paced WAD with some genuinely creepy horror elements that can be enjoyed for both shorter and longer gaming sessions, then this one is well worth checking out 🙂

If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get four and a half.

Three Things To Do If Your Story Gets Stuck On A Mini-Cliffhanger

Well, I though that I’d talk about what to do when you suddenly come up with a brilliantly dramatic idea, usually a suspenseful mini-cliffhanger (eg: a puzzle, a predicament etc.. that you characters have to resolve), for part of your story but then suddenly realise that you have no clue how to finish it. I probably haven’t described this very well but, if it’s ever happened to you in the middle of writing a story, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

So, how can you solve it?

1) Take a break, play some games and/or think logically: If you’ve created an intriguing puzzle for your characters (eg: how do they escape from a dangerous situation?) but suddenly find that you have no clue how to solve it, then taking a break and either playing some computer games and/or thinking about your situation logically can help a lot. But why?

First of all, taking a short break from your story gives your mind time to work on the problem in the background. Although daydreaming or distracting yourself until an answer appears can work, one useful way to coax some story solutions out of your brain is to play a fun, challenging computer game that you are good at. But, why?

Simply put, games are designed to be fair. Whether it is a challenging battle in an old first-person shooter game or a tricky puzzle in a “point and click” game, no game is designed to be unwinnable. If you play challenging games, then you’ll get into the mindset of finding solutions to seemingly “unwinnable” situations. You’ll re-load saved game after saved game, try different things until something works etc.. It’s more of an attitude than anything else, but this “nothing is unwinnable” type of determination is really useful when faced with one of these story problems. And playing a challenging game that you are good at can put you in this mindset.

But, more than all of this, computer games also train you to think logically. They have a defined set of “rules” and it is up to you to use them to your advantage. They force you to look at everything and then try to find some clever way to get the best out of it. And, well, thinking about your story problem this way can result in a solution that feels like a consistent part of your story. It forces you to think of things from your character’s perspective and pay close attention to what they can and cannot realistically do. And, if you take the “nothing is unwinnable” attitude that I mentioned earlier, then you’ll probably crunch your way through every possible solution (or way to apply the “rules”) until a good one appears.

2) Avoid contrivance: If possible, avoid suddenly throwing in a contrived “solution” to your problem. Like games, stories are at their best when the reader feels that they are following a series of clearly-established “rules”. These can be ordinary things (eg: the laws of physics, legislation, human nature etc..) in a realistic story or a pre-described set of limitations in more fantastical stories (eg: how magic works, the limits of teleportation technology etc..). These rules are what makes your story feel real and believable.

Yes, it can be tempting to just drop in a solution out of nowhere, but this will make your story suffer. For a cautionary example, take a look at Daniel Suarez’s 2017 sci-fi thriller novel “Change Agent” (SPOILERS ahoy). This novel has a really gripping puzzle-like premise – an Interpol agent has been injected with a substance that alters his DNA so that he looks like a wanted criminal and he has to find some way to change back into himself whilst also avoiding not only the authorities but also the numerous surveillance devices lying around the story’s futuristic setting.

This is a challenging puzzle and, for the earlier parts of the novel, it is so much fun watching the main character come up with realistic solutions to all of the tense and suspenseful predicaments created by this premise. But, after a while, this story tends to drift towards contrivance a little bit (eg: the main character needs to cross a heavily-patrolled stretch of water? Luckily one of his friends just happens to have a shark-shaped submarine lying around etc..). The story is still enjoyable to read during these parts, but it loses a certain something thanks to the “deus ex machina” solutions that just appear out of nowhere.

So, as tempting as it might be to just throw in a contrived solution out of nowhere, don’t do it. But, if your puzzle is truly unsolvable, then….

3) Rewrite: Yes, your story has to follow a consistent set of “rules” but the good news is that you get to make those rules. So, if something really doesn’t work, then one way of solving the situation is to change the rules. But, and this is really important, you need to do this before the scene in question. If you suddenly change a rule when your character runs into difficulty, then it will feel very contrived.

So, go back to an earlier part of the story and establish the rule change there. I cannot stress this enough. Likewise, when you’ve changed the rule, you also need to think about how it will affect both previous and future events of the story. Again, your story will be at it’s best when the reader feels like it is following clearly-defined rules, so make sure that you don’t accidentally end up breaking your rules in other parts of your story once you change them.

Even so, if you are really really stuck, then going back to an earlier part of the story and changing something can help a lot. But, again, be very conscious about other parts of your story when you are doing this – because changing one thing earlier in the story will probably also require you to change other stuff too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Review: “Change Agent” By Daniel Suarez (Novel)

Well, I thought that I’d take a break from horror fiction and read a sci-fi novel that I’ve been meaning to read for at least a month or two. I am, of course, talking about the second-hand copy of Daniel Suarez’s 2017 novel “Change Agent” that I found online when I was looking for cyberpunk-style novels.

Although this novel is actually a mixture of biopunk, cyberpunk and thriller fiction, the idea behind it seemed interesting enough for me to get a copy – even if I didn’t get round to reading it for quite a few weeks.

So, let’s take a look at “Change Agent”. Needless to say, this review may contain some SPOILERS.

This is the 2017 Dutton (US) paperback edition of “Change Agent” that I read.

Set in 2045, the novel begins in an illegal gene editing clinic run by a company called Trefoil. Two lawyers, Mr and Mrs Cherian, are visiting the clinic in order to look at some possible improvements for the baby they are planning to have. Although the couple are a little uncertain about everything, the clinic’s augmented reality presentation and the fact that all of their friends are having enhanced babies wins them over. However, before they can sign up for anything, there is an armed police raid on the facility. In the chaos, Mrs. Cherian is shot by a police officer.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, a programmer for Interpol called Kenneth Durand spends some time with his family before talking to one of the detectives, Michael Ji Yu-Chang, he works with. Kenneth has heard about the raid on the clinic and feels responsible for Mrs. Cherian’s death because he wrote the algorithm that allowed the authorities to locate the clinic. After some discussion about this, they report to the HQ of Interpol’s Genetic Crimes Division, where a visiting FBI agent called Marcotte gives a presentation about a mysterious human trafficking gang called the Huli Jing that have also been hoovering up as much genetic data as they can get their hands on.

On the way back from work, Kenneth’s self-driving taxi has a mysterious error, forcing him to get out and walk to the nearest MRT rail station. On the way there, someone in the crowd injects him with something. He has a violent allergic reaction and falls into a coma. When he wakes up in hospital several weeks later, his Interpol colleagues are there… to question him. Whatever was in that syringe has turned him into an exact duplicate of the leader of the Huli Jing, a very wanted criminal…

One of the first things that I will say about this novel is that you shouldn’t judge it by the first seventy pages or so. Although the novel is fairly slow to start and begins with a lot of background stuff, ethical debates etc… it does turn into a more compelling and faster-paced thriller novel after this 🙂 The best way to describe this novel is that it’s a bit like what you’d get if you mixed certain William Gibson, Clive Cussler and Alex Garland novels together with the movie “Face/Off” and the TV series “Burn Notice” 🙂 Yes, it’s a bit cheesy, preachy and/or contrived at times, but it is still a reasonably compelling sci-fi thriller.

Still, I should probably start by talking about this novel’s sci-fi elements. Although the novel contains quite a lot of backstory about how the growth in synthetic biology has reshaped industry, geopolitics etc… it is very much a 2010s sci-fi novel. In other words, this novel includes, explores and/or name-checks almost every piece of “futuristic” modern technology it can (eg: CRISPR, drones, cryptocurrencies, lab-grown meat, self-driving cars, augmented reality, big data etc…). Whilst this lends the novel a certain degree of realism and the author has clearly done a lot of research, I can’t help but get the feeling that this is the kind of novel that probably won’t feel very futuristic in 20-30 years’ time – which is probably both a good and a bad thing.

This novel is very much an “issues”-based sci-fi novel too, with the story’s biopunk elements (eg: gene editing etc…) being used to discuss topics like nature, medical ethics and – most prominently – the nature of identity. Although some elements of this are fairly intriguing, the novel does sometimes come across as a bit heavy-handed and preachy at times.

Whether it is the scenes of psychological horror and body horror related to genetic editing or how the fact that people are able to change their bodies is described as a way for people to regain privacy in a surveillance-filled world and then the only examples of this shown to the reader are criminals using it to get away with stuff, this novel does have a slight conservative cautiousness to it. Something further hammered home by the rather moralistic main character.

In addition to these futuristic issues, the novel also discusses all sorts of realistic issues too. These are handled slightly better and they include things like climate change, human trafficking, refugees, economic inequality, modern slavery etc… The novel is able to make points about these things reasonably well and they also add a certain degree of grim realism that helps to counterbalance all of the novel’s more glamourous and/or “over the top” elements.

In terms of the novel’s thriller elements – they are reasonably good, even if they aren’t always used to their full potential. Although the novel takes a while to really get started, it is a compelling one that lends itself well to binge-reading 🙂 The premise of someone being framed for a series of crimes and having to go on the run is an inherently suspenseful one and, in the earlier parts of the novel, this is used to it’s full potential – with Kenneth having to hide, run, think etc.. in order to survive in a hostile world. This is also paired with some well-written action-thriller moments, some scenes focusing on the Interpol detectives trying to catch Kenneth and some tense scenes set in the criminal underworld.

However, the grippingly nail-biting tension of Kenneth being just one small mistake away from death is at it’s very best for only a small part of the novel. After a while, Kenneth just teams up with various sympathetic criminals who almost always seem to have some contrived way to solve whatever problem he’s facing (shark-shaped submarine, anyone?) or somewhere for him to hide. Yes, this allows for various spectacular set pieces, Clive Cussler-style action sequences and visits to lots of interesting locations, but you don’t always get the grippingly suspenseful feeling that Kenneth is surviving by his wits alone. Still, it is a reasonably fun rollercoaster ride of a story nonetheless.

In terms of the characters, they are a bit of a mixed bag. This is one of those novels where some of the supporting characters and/or villains are more interesting than the main character. Some of the side-characters (eg: Frey, Otto, Marcotte etc..) are interesting, complex people who have a real feeling of personality and help to add extra life to the novel. On the other hand, Kenneth is a bit of a generic “moralistic”, “family man”, ex-military and/or detective “hero” character who, whilst he has emotions and backstory, isn’t really as interesting as several of the side-characters.

As for the writing, it is really good. This novel’s third-person narration is “matter of fact” enough to both make the story very readable and keep things moving at a decent pace, whilst also being formal and descriptive enough to add atmosphere and to make the story’s locations (eg: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar) feel vivid and realistic.

In terms of length and pacing, this novel is a mixed bag. At 398 pages in length, this novel is a little on the longer side of things – but I ended up binge-reading about two-thirds of it in a single day. Likewise, whilst the pacing of the earlier parts of the novel is a bit on the slow side (with lots of backstory, debates, scientific explanations etc…), when the novel remembers that it is a thriller novel, then things improve significantly. The rest of the novel is this wonderfully compelling mixture of suspense, drama and fast-paced action, with these elements being juggled in a way that ensures that they never wear out their welcome.

All in all, whilst this novel isn’t a perfect one, it was still reasonably fun to read. Yes, it takes a while to really become gripping, the main character isn’t as interesting as the side characters and the story can also be a bit preachy too. But, if you can overlook these flaws, then you’ll get to enjoy a compelling thriller novel that also includes a lot of interesting “realistic” sci-fi, atmospheric locations and other good stuff.

If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would just about get a four.