by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 17, 2014 | Game/Writing
So the gamergate spat has finally gone mainstream, and a good thing too since there are now two women in the gaming industry who have been driven from their homes over virulent on-line threats, and the posting of their personal information including their addresses. And Anita Sarkeesian had to cancel her talk in Utah. What is infuriating me is how gamers keep making excuses for this inexcusable behavior, and how many of those excuses are just flat out lies. Let’s start with Zoe Quinn...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 17, 2014 | General
As I’ve mentioned here and on Facebook — I don’t mind spoilers. In fact they add to my enjoyment of a movie or book because it enables to examine the structure and pacing as the writer moves toward the climax. In fact there was a study that indicated spoilers actually added to people’s enjoyment. You can read about the research here in an article in Wired magazine — Spoilers Don’t Spoil Anything. I also think there is a point where accusing a person of...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 16, 2014 | About Writing
I ran up against an interesting problem today while I was working on the space opera. Given the trouble we ran into on Star Trek: The Next Generation I should have seen it coming, but it really hit home today. Contented characters aren’t very interesting and the problems that afflict them are usually of the emotional variety and that’s hard to dramatize. I’ve got two view point characters in this book (I touched on the problems that may cause in my last post) but today a...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 12, 2014 | About Writing
You may not know it but a lot of writers like to set challenges for themselves. Can I write a novel or short story strictly following the fairy tale format? Let me see if I can write an unreliable narrator. I’m going to tackle first person (much harder then you think). So the writing challenge I set for myself with the space opera was having only two view point characters — my hero and heroine, and alternating scenes between them. So I’m closing in on 60,000 words and...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 12, 2014 | Game/Writing
So a third prominent woman in the gaming industry has been threatened with rape and death. Now Brianna Wu has been forced to flee her home. You can find one of the many articles here Polygon. This is starting to send me into a headache inducing rage. Yeah, boys, we are entitled in to come into the treehouse. I love video games, but this is starting to make me embarrassed to admit the passion. And what really amazes me is the inability of these boys (I won’t dignify them by calling...
