*giggles helplessly at self*
I should not. I should not be this weak, but there is a perfect and irresitable Princess Bride homage setup at the end of this chapter.
I *should not* end this chapter with, “We’ve a wedding to plan, a throne to topple, and Scotland to frame for it.”
but i’m GOING TO
My editor will probably make me take it out. My editor probably *should* make me take it out. But by God I will keep it in until somebody makes me remove it. :)
Man. Writing today felt like pulling teeth. There were a couple of bits that were fun (and I’ve stopped in the midst of one of them, so hopefully it’ll be fun to pick up again tomorrow), but mostly, man. I’ve reached this part of the book where I sort of feel like I’m standing back watching it appear on the screen, and I have absolutely no idea if I’m doing it right or if it’ll come out properly, but I can’t do anything else except keep going. I have no idea if this is normal. It probably is, but I can’t quite actively remember this being normal. I made it to quota, and then quota was just 800 words shy of 100K, so I had to grind my teeth and plug along to 100K, and then I was just a couple-three hundred words short of 5K for the day, so I ended up with 5K and 100,000 words on the book.
carrot carrot carrot STICK!
Sadly, 105K on the book is not an especially exciting number (110K is the next exciting number, but it’s not all that exciting), so I don’t know if that’ll work again tomorrow. It worked yesterday, but 95K is a more interesting number to strive for than 105. Don’t ask why; I don’t know. (Know what else is a nice number? 125K, or better yet, DONE. DONE is a *very* good number.)
(ETA: See, the worst thing about this job is that I have to apply my own discipline…)
miles to Isengard: 302
ytd wordcount: 335,100
News at 11: Kit is Silly.
That’s not *actually* news, is it? :)
I love putting in homages and Easter Eggs and things in my work. When you write a 360-page adventure module you have plenty of room for it. Plus, there’s the endless problem of names, so you need to put in those, too.
It’s even more fun when people notice them and come to you and say “Oh my god, are those the names of the two spinsters in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ you have used for the two sisters who run the boarding house?” and I say, “Why yes, yes they are.”
I was always wondering about this, when I was writing my own novel. In genre fiction, it seems that the standard is to ignore the rest of the body of genre fiction. People don’t include allusions to other texts. Characters haven’t even seen SF blockbusters. Why is that?
Personally, if I had (oh, for example) a piece of science fiction set in 2050, I’d expect the character to be familiar with Star Trek and Star Wars.
My guess would be that it has something to do with gaining permission to use trademarks.
Some of us may still have been unaware.
I always wonder how they got to 2350 (or whenever it is) and the Enterprise doesn’t have Star Trek in its video library (programmed into the holodeck – whatever).
It’s a bit like way the the characters on Eastenders never sit down to watch a soap.
Well… the convention that people don’t get to see the media they’re being portrayed in is a quite reasonable one. It’s been violated occasionally, (Fushigi Yugi, Number of the Beast, etc.), but it always feels a bit clunky.
But there really should have been some Star Trek character who made a reference to 20th century classics like Star Wars. Particularly with the occasional viewing of 20th century movies on… Voyager, was it?
I suppose the trademark issue could be the real thing behind my original story. Although I wonder–is it okay for a character in a book to order a Coke? Or go to Disneyland? I would think so…
It’s product placement, isn’t it?
Maybe the authors are holding out for fees?
Yeah, it is, because that’s fair use. But, for example, DC has asked Harlequin to not use their superheroes by name in HQN books–I had some Superman reference that they asked me to change, for example.
*LOL* That is awesome! If it stays, you should run a constest to see how many people can catch it.:)
Hee!
With the disclaimer that I’m not a writer, just someone who does a little writing, I’m very bad about the little practice story I’m writing, where the several protagonists meet in several scenes stolen directly from Silverado.
“Marrwage… marrwage is the reason we are gavered here todaay.”
Love that movie.
And, in any case, it bears repeating.:-)
Just read Wil Wheaton’s comment below, in a review he just wrote about ST:TNG’s The Last Outpost:
He quickly finds Data, who again uses the word “intriguing” to describe things. He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
*giggles back*
Where have /those/ people been hiding?
*laughs out loud*