by ·Comments Off on The Incomplete Works

I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions.  I think they’re daft and only set you up to look stupid when you inevitably fail.  Not only that, but if something is worth doing, you might as well just do it instead of needing to tie it to some date-triggered calendar event.  Despite all of this, I do have a sort-of-resolution-of-sorts.

I have a chronic problem whereby I constantly start projects and leave them hanging.  I know that I am not alone in this, but my problem extends to the point that I get distressed about their incomplete state, procrastinate, get more stressed about it, assign some arbitrary requirement for ultimate quality on the project, panic that my work will never be good enough for it and then never progress at all.  I have one project in particular that was born out of a five minute think on the bus about what I would do if I had to do a 24 hour comic, grew from there and now sits in my “I will never be artistically good enough to tell this story” pile with everything else.

My resolution that is happening at new year but is not a new years resolution is therefore the following:

This year, I will work on at least one of my unfinished projects and see it through to either completion, or a state where if it was never continued, it wouldn’t be considered unfinished.

In order to do this I’m going to source a little help from anyone who is interested.  Over the next week or so, I will be posting information on each of my unfinished projects and samples of them and inviting any criticism or encouragement for which, if any, projects have wings and which, if any, projects should be buried.

I might not take any advice or suggestions, but I thought I might invite it, partly to see if anyone beyond a few people I know actually reads this, and if anyone out there really desperately wants comments on at all.

by ·Comments Off on Process Maps

A process map is meant to make a process more obvious by displaying it in a visual form.  I occasionally have to do this in my current role.

Things like this baffle me:

A process map apparently can't just have two boxes. That's less of a process and more of an event I suppose.

This is not from my company and I’m not saying who it’s from, other than it’s from a regulated financial services firm, all of which are potentially facing some slightly stricter complaint handling requirements fairly soon.

 It seems mostly unnecessary.  The obvious diagram for me would just be “complaint received” followed by “log complaint”, but maybe that’s just me.

I see this quite a lot at the moment.  Documents that have a purpose and are a business requirement often take so long getting to the point and so much longer talking around the point that by the time they’re finished and published, nobody in their right mind is ever going to read them, much less update them.  In fact, the only people that will read them are going to be regulators inspecting a business, by which point you have provided your own noose by producing process documentation that nobody has read, nobody updates and most likely does not reflect your current business practises.

All the same, inexperienced staff like myself look at these things for inspiration on how they should be doing things and feel their productions are inferior if they don’t have a similar word count, so the cycle repeats. 

 

by ·Comments Off on Angry Marr Criticizes Bloggers

In a beautiful piece of flame-bait, the BBC’s Andrew Marr has criticized bloggers the world over, stating that they are socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements.”  He goes on to say that most bloggers are very angry people writing late at night whilst very drunk and that this will never replace journalism.

Is he right?  A little bit.  Is he wrong?  A little bit.  Is his comment a bit stupid?  A little bit.  Has he missed the point?  Probably.

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by ·Comments Off on The Point of Fanfic

I have just seen the vapor trails of an argument concerning the value of fanfic that has flown around a corner of the internet quite recently.

Fan Fiction (Fanfic) is a curious beast. It is summed up nicely by wikipedia as “stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator.” Fanfic stories can be encouraged by the original creators or not but are very rarely accepted as canon.  You get different levels of quality in fanfic and different tones running from that which would be in keeping with the tone of the original piece  to comedic interpretations through to the exploration of… “romantic”…themes.

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by ·Comments Off on The Script Game

This is something that a friend of mine has got us doing which is, in my humble opinion, great.

The rules are simple and the game is played over a long period of time via email. The first player writes two minutes (which is approximately two pages) of script involving two characters. The second player then starts something new with two new characters and writes two minutes of script but has to include the first two characters at some point in the background doing something in character. The third player then does the same but with the second player’s characters. This is repeated until you have run out of players.

We have  just started our game, and it’s highly manageable. Two pages isn’t that much but it is enough time to get an idea across, establish two characters, and get something to happen. More than anything else however, it is fantastic script writing practice.

I’ve had my turn, so maybe I’ll post the results if I get permission.

Additional Notes:

In fact, if you’re on task, you can establish whole films and multi-season TV shows in two minutes. Next time you watch something good on TV or see a decent film, pay careful attention to the first couple of minutes and see just how much they cross off in a short space of time. An example from the top of my head would be Serenity, which as soon as you get to the opening credits with director / producer names materializing on the screen and it starts moving through the ship, they manage to establish the seven major characters, the relationships between them and the situation they’re involved with in well under two minutes. Plus, it’s actually quite funny.