Six Sentence Sunday #22 – Revenant (Part 2)

Welcome to the second installment of my Six Sunday Serial, Revenant. This scene picks up directly following last week’s opening paragraph, at only six sentences at a time this story is going to take a while but I am quite enjoying the challenge of crafting these sentences so that there is some small nugget of information that will (hopefully) maintain reader interest and carry the story forward. The sentences below have been written and rewritten at least two dozen times, and that was after they replaced the original six I had in mind. 🙂

If you want to see the story so far please follow this link.

    His heart raced. Finally, after a decade of searching, he’d found one of them.
    “It’s just a name on a list, Ryan, don’t go nuts,” he said. “There’s still plenty that can go wrong.” Perhaps talking to oneself really was a sign of madness, you’d have to be crazy to do what he did.
    Still, finding the doctor was huge step forward, and if he could get her off this ship humanity might actually be able to get Earth back.

You can find more Six Sentence writers here.

Review: Templar One

This post will include my review of the book Templar One by Tony Gonzales. It is another of his novels set within the EVE Universe and tied in to the EVE-Online MMORPG. Released January 3rd 2012.

The text below is taken from the blurb on the back of the book.

“There will be neither compassion nor mercy; Nor peace, nor solace For those who bear witness to these Signs And still do not believe.” Book of Reclaiming 25:10 New Eden: the celestial battleground of a catastrophic war that has claimed countless lives. The immortal starship captains spearheading this epic conflict continue their unstoppable dominance, shaping the universe to their will and ensuring a bloody, everlasting stalemate. But a powerful empire is on the verge of a breakthrough that could end the war and secure their rule over mankind forever. For deep in a prison reclamation camp, a secret program is underway…one that will unlock dangerous secrets of New Eden’s past. It all begins with inmate 487980-A . . . Templar One.

This is the second EVE releated book I have read by the same author, the first being “The Empyrean Age”, and I will start by saying I preferred this one to the other one. That said it took a while for the actual story to start and for the action to appear like it was heading in a consistent direction.

The opening 20 chapters were spent in outlining back story and introducing characters and I found myself wondering if there was any real plot behind all these scenes. Don’t get me wrong, I found the scenes interesting and as a fan of the EVE game I was very happy to learn more about the history of the EVE universe. About the Sleepers, the Jovians, and Empress Jamyl in particular.

But once the story got started it never let go. The action and politiking was relentless in the final parts of the novel and I cannot begin to imagine how many thousands of people were killed by the time I finished.

If you are a fan of the game and you are interested in the story behind the game then I thoroughly recommend this book. It is a good way to add an extra dimension to the gameplay without spoiling the online experience in any way. If you’re not playing EVE then this book may be little harder to get into. The names and places will be meaningless (and there are a LOT of them) and you may find it difficult to understand the signficance of the events in the story.

It’s a fun read but its probably not for everyone.

Mistborn By The Numbers

In my opinion, Brandon Sanderson’s writing is excellent. Others have described it as being technically perfect. His novels are epics in both concept as well as size but they are very accessible. He structures his sentences in ways that make them easy to read, I don’t need a dictionary beside me and he doesn’t give the impression that he swallowed a thesaurus. Put simply, if my writing in any way approached his I would be proud of myself.

My opening paragraph contains numerous subjective statements. I firmly believe that they are accurate but how am I going to prove them? The answer is, sadly, I don’t know that I can prove them. All I can do is put forward my opinion and – provided it is shared by enough people – I might be considered correct. The purpose of this post isn’t to prove my belief that Brandon Sanderson writes well, that is something that you will either agree with or disagree with, but there is something that none of us can deny. He absolutely writes well enough to have gotten himself published and to have him personally selected to complete another author’s magnum opus.

So, questions of quality aside, I thought it would be interesting to do a little digging, to pull apart his writing and see what its made of. In this post I am going to take all three of his hugely popular Mistborn books and break them down into some key metrics that will hopefully be an interesting baseline by which I might measure my own writing.

Before I start though I am making an assumption you are aware of the books I am talking about (and if you aren’t I will asume you either live under a rock or have just awoken from a coma). To refresh your memory here are the cover images. Click on them to take you to the amazon page for each book where you can read reviews and whatnot to assure you that his work is well liked.

Let me start with some high level numbers for the three books.

	Book 1	Book 2	Book 3
Word Count	213,348	245,172	234,908
Sentence Count	22,368	25,951	24,108
Paragraph Count	7,785	9,091	7,397
Unique Words	10,043	10,199	10,110
Average letters per word	4.5	4.4	4.4
Average words per sentence	9.5	9.4	9.7
Average sentences per paragraph	2.9	2.9	3.3

What does this tell me. Well firstly that all three books are very similar in terms of size and structure. The words, sentences, and paragraphs are all about the same size. Some of you might recognise these measures as being inputs into certain readability models. Regardless of which of the many such models you subscribe to the one thing they have in common is that words per sentence, and letters per word is relevant to how readable a particular bit of text is. So I would argue that the fact that all three of these books are very similar in these measures is no mere coincidence.

Next I want to examine the words themselves. To do this I have a table showing the ten most frequently used words in each of the three books. I will show the word, how often it appears in the text and then the average gap between subsequent occurences of the word.

For Book 1 the ten most frequently used words were:

Word	Avg Gap	Count	Percentage
the	18.4	11607	5.4404%
to	35.9	5934	2.7814%
a	42.9	4974	2.3314%
of	51.3	4159	1.9494%
and	61.3	3479	1.6307%
he	79.2	2678	1.2552%
she	82.2	2536	1.1887%
you	87.8	2418	1.1334%
her	88	2393	1.1216%
that	89.9	2372	1.1118%

For Book 2 the ten most frequently used words were:

Word	Avg Gap	Count	Percentage
the	19.3	12709	5.1837%
to	35.7	6873	2.8033%
a	46.5	5274	2.1511%
of	52.5	4666	1.9032%
he	59	4153	1.6939%
and	61.6	3977	1.6221%
i	78.9	3108	1.2677%
she	78.7	3104	1.266%
that	79	3102	1.2652%
you	86.9	2818	1.1494%

For Book 3 the ten most frequently used words were:

Word	Avg Gap	Count	Percentage
the	17.5	13444	5.7231%
to	34.8	6749	2.873%
of	43.3	5427	2.3103%
a	49.3	4756	2.0246%
he	55.6	4227	1.7994%
and	59.9	3922	1.6696%
that	71.4	3291	1.401%
it	79.5	2953	1.2571%
in	82.9	2835	1.2069%
was	83.8	2802	1.1928%

What strikes me is how similar these lists are. Sure there are words in some that don’t appear in others and some are in a different place but overall there is a huge correlation between the three lists. And not one of those words is a proper noun. In case you are interested there is a site that lists the most commonly used english words and their top ten is very similar to what we have here. I guess the message to draw from that is if your own writing has a wildly different top ten then maybe you have some revision to do.

So far there hasn’t been anything particularly mind blowing in any of these statistics. So I am now going to turn to those trouble words that editors warn you to watch out for. How often do they show up in the Mistborn trilogy.

Word or words	Book 1	Book 2	Book 3
Turn / Turned / Turning	386	530	389
These / This	1,007	1,154	1,196
Realized	46	48	71
Seem / Seemed	278	331	327
Smile / Smiled	249	220	161
had	1,331	2,096	2,577
“ly” words	1,333	1,179	1,258

As you can see, with the exception of the use of “had” in book 3 these are very low counts for a 250,000 word piece, even “had” only rates a one in 100 mention in that book. I selected these words (or types of words) because they are words that I typically overuse. Your habits may be slightly different and if you are curious how your pet word fares in the Mistborn series then ask me in the comments and I’ll reply with the results.

My goal in putting this up is to show you a statistical breakdown of a well respected author’s work for a highly acclaimed series of books. This alone is not the mark of good writing but it is a piece of the puzzle. So, if your writing results in statistics like this then you are at least somewhere toward having good sentence structure, and are selecting your words carefully. Of course you’ll still need to have a well considered plot and engaging characters and no amount of statistical analysis can show you how to do that.

I hope you have found the above data interesting.

Six Sentence Sunday #21 – Revenant (Part 1)

For something a bit different (well a bit different for me, at least) I am going to embark on what I am referring to as a Six Sunday Serial. Each week I will post six sentences from a story that will develop as the weeks progress. Today’s six sentences are the opening lines of the series and each subsequent week more text will be added.

So without any further ado, I give you Revenant – A Six Sunday Serial

    The buzz of servo motors vibrated through the floor while docking clamps established a seal on the airlock. A slight crackle in his ear told him his ship was now linked with the computer on the floating hulk, century old protections being no match for modern counter-measures. Core system diagnostic information appeared in his visor, confirming that communications, navigation, engines, and environmental controls were all offline. Thankfully structural integrity remained at 100 per cent despite the extensive battle damage marring the dreadnought’s hull. He ignored the remainder of the data and ordered a search through the derelict ship’s crew manifest. The results appeared instantly, listing over a hundred crew, with one particular name, Doctor Kassandra Evans, flashing red in his display.

You can find more Six Sentence writers here.

Six Sentence Sunday #20

I can’t believe I have now reached twenty of these. It’s been fun and I can’t see myself stopping any time soon.

This six is taken from my novella, Bonds of Honour. In this scene my two protagonists have managed to find a moment of peace on the dancefloor at the Earl’s gala ball.

If you’re interested in reading the entire piece just click on the cover image and it will take you to the amazon site.

Her body pressed lightly against his. He took the lead, and she followed so gracefully that her feet didn’t seem to touch the floor. The music buoyed them; they were dancing on a cloud in their own private world. “You’re good,” she said. “Surprised?” “Not really, any man growing up with three sisters should know how to dance.”

You can find more Six Sentence writers here.

Review: Stoneweilder

This post will include my review of the book Stoneweilder by Ian C Esslemont. It is another of the Malazan novels he writes set the world he shares with Steven Erikson. Released May 10 2011.

The text below is taken from the blurb on the back of the book.

Greymane believed he’d outrun his past. With his school for swordsmanship in Falar, he was looking forward to a more settled existence, although his colleague Kyle wasn’t quite so enamoured of life outside the Crimson Guard. However, it is not so easy for an ex-Fist of the Malazan Empire to disappear, especially one declared a traitor. For the new Emperor is dwelling on the ignominy of the disastrous invasion of the Korel subcontinent. In the vaults beneath the Imperial capital lie the answers and out of this buried history surfaces a single name: In Korel, Lord Protector Hiam faces the potential annihilation of all that he holds dear. With few remaining men and a stone wall that has seen better days, he confronts an ancient foe. The Stormriders have returned – and the cult of the Blessed Lady which had stood firm for millenia against the sea-borne enemy now threatens religious war instead. While chaos looms, a local magistrate investigates a series of murders only to find he’s at the heart of a far more ancient and terrifying crime…

Like all the Malazan books there’s a lot going on. Both Erikson and Esslemont write big books with many characters and complex storylines that don’t always find their conclusion in a single book. Esslemont’s handling of these for me seems tighter yet Erikson is better at making characters and places come to life.

In this book we get our first real look at the Korel subcontinent. Previously this part of the world was only mentioned in passing. There was a sense of tradgey and romance about the Korelri Chosen and their millenia long vigil against the Stormriders – their mission to protect humanity at all costs seemed noble yet unappreciated by the people who benefited from their sacrifice. Unfortunately this aspect of their character wasn’t really shown it was inferred and by the end of the book I was actually hoping for them to be overrun. That storyline had the potential for causing a conflict of morality but it never came.

Similarly there was an entire storyline of the people’s rebellion of Jourila. By the end of the book I found myself wondering what was the point of that? I couldn’t really even be sure who won or what they were really hoping to achieve.

The storyline involving Kiska and Jheval never seemed to go anywhere, but I expect that will find some conclusion in a future book. A little frustrating but not surprising given that’s how these stories go.

The central theme throughout was the worship of The Lady. How over the years it had lost its way but why thet happened was never really explained. It could simply have come about as a result of human greed and complacency but again this was never really delved in to.

Esslemont’s previous work “The Return of the Crimson Guard” was in my view a much more polished work. This one was interesting inasmuch as I am curious to find out what I can about the world the two of them have created, but it seemed to simply describe events with no real attempt to make me understand the significance of those events.

If you are a fan of the Malazan world then I am sure that you will find things to keep you interested throughout. It was a solid story with some interesting characters who keep the narrative moving, not the best book in the series but important to the overall storyline.

Six Sentence Sunday #19

My untitled WIP now has a title; “Flames of Thunder”. I have a new snippet from this to share but I am also going to include a revised version of last week’s snippet as well. Hopefully the SixSunday moderators won’t object to this slight deviation from the guidelines. I received some feedback regarding Jasper’s reaction that was very helpful in guiding the changes so I felt I should share how it now reads.

But first the current Six. This scene takes place after a combat between Arillia’s crew and the enemy. Jasper is injured and Gareth uses his magic to finish off the soldiers and save them from being overrun. The magic was effective but brutal.

    Bern aimed his crossbow at Gareth and stepped forward. Disgust warred with terror on the older man’s weather-beaten face.
    “What did you do?”
    “What I had to,” Gareth said, his attention now focussed on their fallen comrade.
    “Get away from him.”
    “Put it down!” Kit called from the shoreline, her crossbow now aimed at Bern.

You can find more Six Sentence writers here.

And now for the revised version of last week’s Six, with what is (hopefuly) a more understandable reaction from Jasper. Thank you for your comments I am appreciative.

    “What if that was your family in there?”
    Realisation dawned. Jasper’s home was in one of the hardest hit parts of town. “Selene and the twins?”
    His jaw tightened and he looked away, making no attempt to wipe his tears. He’d obviously seen a lot of death tonight.

A chance to give back

I finally have the opportunity to give something back to the wonderful community of writers I have met and interacted with on the internet. Since starting this blog several months ago I have had the opportunity to engage with a wide range of extremely talented and helpful people who have given freely of their time to assit me in acheiving my dream of becoming a writer. And in case I’m not being clear about who those people are, if you’re reading this post then chances are you are one of those people. 🙂

Well, now I finally have the chance to give something back.

My day job is in IT, specifically software development, and for a while now I have been tinkering with the idea of a tool that can be used to quickly see how frequently words appear in my writing. I did a post in November last year called Revision – A Primer where I described how this information was used to tighten up a short flash fiction piece. I was keen to use a similar technique on a longer work but the thought of doing it all manually was daunting.

As I’m sure you know any task that is tedious to do manually is an ideal candidate for some automation and what with me being a programmer surely there was something I could do to make my life easier. Well I found a site that had a basic macro that did this at Allen Wyatt’s Word Tips and used that as the basis for my own version of the tool. There’s been quite a few modifications to the original but I have no desire to take credit for someone else’s work.

From this I added the screen to control the calculation, sent the results to a HTML file and added the ability to expand contractions (can’t to can not, I’ve to I have, etc.) and also to treat possessives as the additional versions of the same word (fred and fred’s count as fred).

What I have now is a quick and easy way to see what words I am abusing without the tedious task of counting the by hand, or the slightly less tedious task of using search and replace. It is this little utility that I now share with you.

I have tested in with MS Word 2010 and 2007 but it should also work in older versions (though I haven’t tried).

To make it available is quite simple and I’ll walk you through it here. This guide assumes you are using Windows 7 and working with Word 2007 but the process should be the same for Word 2010:

1. You will need to download the Word Frequency User Interface import file here
2. Once that is downloaded you should open the extract the contents of the zip file somewhere on your computer. Remember that location because you will need to find it again later on.
3. Start MS Word and choose the View tab on the ribbon and then click the Macro button on the far right
   
4. On the screen that pops up (see below) enter the name WordFrequency as the Macro Name and then press Create
   
5. On the screen that comes up you need to go to the File menu and then choose Import File…
   
6. On the screen the pops up you need to find the files that you extracted in step 2. Select them and press the Import button
   
7. Now it will be time for you to do a little coding. Relax it is very very basic, no more than one line. What you need to do is make sure that you type the code exactly as it appears here. Hopefully the bits in blue and green have already been done automatically, you just need to worry about the line in black
   
8. Once that’s done you should save the macro by pressing CTRL+S or selecting File then Save Normal from the menu. Then choose Close and Return to Microsoft Word

That’s it. The macro has been installed and you are now ready to see what words you are using far too often. To do that just open a word document, select the View Tab and then press the Macro button like you did in step 3.

You should now see the Run Macro screen again but this time there should be the option to select WordFrequency from the list. Highlight it and press the Run button

That screen should go away and you will be shown the Word Frequency Analysis screen where you control the macro you just installed.

I’ll give you a brief run down on what each option means but hopefully they are reasonably self explanatory (if they aren’t let me know so I can change them to something more meaningful).

Strip Possessives: This means to treat proper nouns ending in ‘s as simply additional versions of the proper noun. Thus Fred and Fred’s would count as 2 instances of Fred rather than 1 of Fred and 1 of Fred’s
Expand Contractions: This means that words such as didn’t, couldn’t, I’d, I’ve and you’re will be counted as two words did not, could not, I had, I have, you are. If you leave it unticked then did not and didn’t would count separately.
Sort on Frequency: Means that the most commonly used word will appear at the top.
Sort Alphabetically: Means that the results will be listed from A to Z.
Maximum Frequency to Display: Only words that appear in the source document more than this number of times will appear in the list. Particularly in longer documents you don’t want to have to wade through pages of words that only appear a handful of times. But you can if you want to. Simply set this to zero to show every word in all its glory.
Results File: The path and filename where the frequency results will be saved. This is a html file which you can view in your browser. You can also press the […] button to bring up a file selection dialog so you can specify the results file name.
Run Count: This is the Go button. When you are happy with your selections press this button and let the macro do its thing.
View Results: This will open the file you have named as your save file and display the results in your browser.

So, if you’re wondering what the results look like here is one I prepared earlier:

Since using this I have found that “the” is by far the most common word I use, I wonder if that will also hold true of any of you?

Well, if you decide to use this tool I hope you find it useful. I have some ideas for things to add to it so I do plan to update it from time to time. If anyone has any suggestions or finds anything wrong with it please do not hesitate to let me know.

This just my way of saying thank you to the fabulous community of quthors out there.

Old School Character Portraits

A few months back I showed you an old picture of Keldirk which was drawn back in 2000. This was after the game stopped being regularly played but it was during the period of the webisodes. From 1996 to 2002 my friend and I published 66 episodes online and then we did a further 10 episodes between 2006 and 2008. I do regret letting the series lapse because we were doing something quite new. There was us and there was the grandfather of all D&D web sagas The Adventurers. That story is still going with almost 1000 episodes available online the latest was released just before Christmas in 2011.

But this post wasn’t intended as a history lesson it was more of a trip down memory lane to show you the pictures we had of some of the characters. The artist Kevin Yancey did these for our website and I thought they were too entertaining to leave wallowing in the archives.

So without any further ado I give you… the assassins.

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Six Sentence Sunday #18

This snippet is the second from my still untitled WIP. The scene involves Arillia, who made such a acrobatic entrance a few weeks back, and Jasper, one of her militia squad. Her and her team were on their way to confront the enemy when they heard some cries for help among the rubble of a collapsed building. Arillia has a difficult decision to make. I hope you like it.

    “We can’t just ignore them!”
    He had a point, if they all worked together they might be able to free whoever was trapped under there and, judging from the faces of her team, he wasn’t alone in thinking it.
    “Listen,” Arillia began, “we can’t stop and help everyone between here and the docks. Sanders and the others are depending on us, there’s few enough of us as it is without leaving him to face the enemy alone.”
    “These are our people, what if that was your family in there?” Jasper made no attempt to hide his tears.

You can find more Six Sentence writers here.