Wordsmith at Work: The End

This is your stop.

Ta-da! The new website is finally up and running! Go check it out! WordsmithAtPlay.com

No, seriously, go on. This website won't be up for much longer-with any luck I'll get it to automatically redirect to the new website. Change your bookmarks and everything. WordsmithAtPlay.com It's awesome.

Wordsmith at Work: Dealing with Insanity

bookofjoe.com

First off, one week till the new website! I can't wait until it's ready to be released. As soon as I get my new blog up, I'll order new business cards with my new web address. I'll be able to show them to you and wander around handing them out. I'm even planning on making flyers, not to mention the online mailing list.

Not to mention I'm going to get a hot new logo! I love my little bloody rose, but it doesn't really have anything to do with being a wordsmith. No idea what the new one will be yet.

Also, my computer is currently in the shop. It should be fine, and I made sure I had everything I needed to work before I left it, but working from the other computers is just not the same.

Lastly, as I've been alluding to on Twitter, there have been some changes. You may have noticed that there was no post on Friday. That wasn't an accident. From now on, there usually won't be a post on Fridays. There is a very good reason for that, but as I am The Wordsmith, I will show rather than tell.

5 Ways Role-Playing Games Can Help (or Hurt) Your Writing

You may have seen these weird RPG dice around.
I own several. Although mine look cooler.
... Well, they do.

I have a confession to make. I am a roleplayer. Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, freeform text-based RPGs (role-playing games), I like to roleplay. Setting aside the social implications of gaming (because here at Wordsmith at Play, we like to ignore what most people would consider important), I would like to focus on the potential effect of roleplaying on my writing skills.

Aside from increasing my nerdiness level, getting involved in RPGs has had some interesting effects on my writing habits, some of which are good, some of which are bad.

For the purposes of this post, I'll be focusing on text-based RPing games, although most of my points will be applicable to other forms of RPing, such as D&D game sessions and Live-Action RPGs.

Wordsmith at Work: Writing and Rewriting

Corrections are in order. 

First, an update on the new website. I have most of the technical stuff figured out, now I'm down to two things that need work. Most importantly, I really need to order some high-quality images for my header, and possibly for my design. And I need a logo.

Second, I need some programming. The Hire Me page in particular is undergoing major reconstruction. It should be way more useful on the new site. Now, on to the post!

As The Wordsmith, I get a lot of orders from my family and friends, mostly because they want me to give them a discount. One such order just came in from Jim Crocker of Interactive Circuit Deisgn, who wants my help rewriting his About page.

Vulnerable, Just Like Me: How to Make Your Characters Relatable

Cover art!

I am very fond of notes. This note says that this blog post might make more sense if you read Chirault first, but I will try to keep that from being a requirement. If anything in here is confusing, let me know and I'll try to explain it better.

The other day one of my friends linked me to a webcomic that fascinated me. Not necessarily because of the art (which I liked a lot, despite the fact that I was unable to recognize anyone besides the two main characters and the handwriting became difficult to read halfway through), but because of the characterization.

The main character is a demon named Kiran, and he is the strong, silent, epically awesome type. When he is introduced he single-handedly takes down a demon that was attacking a man without breaking a sweat.

Wordsmith at Work: One Word

I have one more moment to pull from the critique of my friend Micosil's short story I blogged about last week, a brief exchange that I thought was rather compelling. We were discussing the italicized word in this sentence:

"The mountain of a man held a black double-bladed axe in his other hand, the great weight seeming not to trouble him in the least."

Here's the mini-conversation for you:

Wordsmith: I wouldn't say black in the first paragraph. It's uneccesary for the visual at that exact moment,
you mention it later, and it's usually good to cut out words where possible.
Micosil: Oh come on, that's one word!
Wordsmith: Yep.
Wordsmith: One word matters.
Micosil: Which is why I did change it.

Hashing Out the Lore

Vampire Killing Kit

This is Monday's post. I'm sorry it's so late. Today's Wordsmith at Work post will be up sometime tomorrow because I'm sleepy and recovering from being sick. Sorry about the delay.

While my declared genre is fantasy with a sprinkling of science fiction, I also enjoy writing vampire stories. I've been writing about vampires for years (since before Twilight hit the stands, thank you very much) and recently I haven't had much time to write about vampires. It's been more important to work on Heaven's Wrath, my novel.

However, as I mentioned in Is Writing A Solitary Art?, I am currently working on a collaborative story with one of my oldest writing friends. After a long hiatus, we've picked it up again, and we've been working on getting more of it written.

This story happens to involve vampires, and in order to write it properly, we have to figure out all of the related lore. This, naturally, leads to a lot of questions, and all of them must be answered in order to have a cohesive storyline.