Writing

Context-free Friday: as huge as a huge beast

M. J. Magee - Friday, the 1st of July, 2016

Cuthbert Tattersall barely managed to stuff down a scream. His hands desperately crammed into his mouth, he stared in horror at the beast in front of him.

It was huge - as huge as… a beast. A huge beast!

And it was ugly, as ugly as it was huge.

And hairy, too. Huger, uglier, and hairier than any nightmare Cuthbert could have envisioned.

In fact, if Cuthbert’s worst nightmare had had a baby with the nightmare of someone far more imaginative, and then covered it in glue inside a wig shop…

Context-free Friday: the treasure of the giants

M. J. Magee - Friday, the 24th of June, 2016

I spent a little time this week, while I was waiting for code to compile and interviews to be organised and sobs to stop heaving chests, to organise my massive all-of-the-Cuthbert-documents-ever folder; it’s a messy, haphazard collection that’s built up over the years – ideas that have struck me at three am, jokes I wanted to write down before I forgot them, scenes I’ve composed on long train journeys, slowly getting whole carriages to myself as I cackled and snorted and shrieked at my own illegible scrawls like a madwoman… The usual sort of thing.…

Writing

MVP: Myth, Very Poignant

M. J. Magee - Wednesday, the 9th of December, 2015

I was quite chuffed with myself for writing 50,000 words of Cuthbert last month; they were messy words, leaping between different scenes as I scrambled for something new to write every time I finished a scene or (as happened with a bit more frequency) got stuck and started a new one instead of wasting time staring at a blank-aside-from-all-the-finger-smudges-I-should-really-clean-my-laptop-in-fact-I-should-clean-my-whole-flat-perhaps-I-should-get-a-new-flat-perhaps-I-should-be-spending-this-time-investigating-mortgages-and-also-a-new-career-in-the-circus-that-comes-with-food-and-board-I’d-save-a-fortune-and-get-a-lot-more-exercise-and-nope-no-clowns-are-terrifying-that’s-a-terrible-idea-screen.…

NaNoWriMo: Week Four and one day left!

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 29th of November, 2015

There’s officially twenty-four hours and twenty-four minutes left of this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’d feel pretty good about hitting the target if I didn’t have to work and sleep during a bit of that…

I’m more or less – probably coming down on the less side – on top of things, though.…

Writing

NaNoWriMo: Week Three and Worried

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 21st of November, 2015

Well, it’s the third week of National Novel Writing Month (or Frantically Scribbling Adventure Game Nonsense November, as appropriate), and I have frantically scribbled a lot of words; the current count is a respectable 25,426 words out of the month’s target 50,000.…

NaNoWriMo: Week Two and Aaaaaah!

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 15th of November, 2015

Well. I don’t know quite what happened this week. One early night seemed to snowball into no-writing-getting-done-ever, and the lack of progress seemed to snowball into quick-write-whatever-you-can-anything-anything-will-do.

That would at least explain this small busking rap:

Yeah, I get the boys together
Say, Dog, we gotsta earn.

NaNoWriMo: Week One and On-Track. Mostly.

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 8th of November, 2015

It’s the end of the first week of National Novel Writing Month – or Frantically Scribbling Adventure Game Nonsense November as I’ve been calling it, FranScrAdGaNoNo for short – and I have almost 14,000 words of… well, adventure game nonsense.

FranScrAdGaNoNo is a good way of keeping me honest and working on Cuthbert every day.…

Misc
Writing

Planners vs Pantsers

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 24th of October, 2015

When discussing the creative writing process, people often talk about writers in two different camps: ‘planners’, those who outline upfront then write to that outline, and ‘pantsers’, those who write spontaneously. Or by the seat of their pants, as you’d have to say to understand why bloomers were suddenly brought into the conversation.…

Writing

A salesman, by any other name, would BS as much

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 3rd of October, 2015

In fairy tales, characters rarely have names. Who they are isn’t as important as what they are – jealous step-mothers, kind-hearted wives of ogres, dim-witted butter-under-their-hat-wearers…

That’s what drives the story to its end.

Its inevitable, gory, eyes-gouged-out-by-birds end.

Spoiler: every single fairy tale ever written.…

Combat systems: a horror story

M. J. Magee - Friday, the 25th of September, 2015

I knew, when I first began plotting out Cuthbert, that I wanted to have a strong combat system. It made sense for the story: in a game where you can royally peeve people off to the point where they won’t help you, it makes sense that they might try and hurt you.…