Nick Bryan

Story “Troubling UnderCurrents” to appear in Superhero Monster-Hunter anthology!

June 9, 2014 by Nick Bryan

New fictional anthology appearance! My short story Troubling UnderCurrents is appearing in the upcoming collection The Good Fight from Emby Press, a fun new publisher amazingly devoted to stories about monsterhunting.

The theme of this particular book is superhero monsterhunting, as you might guess from the cover off to the right. And let’s all just take a moment to look at that cover, because I love it.Okay, enough slack-jaw for now. Here’s a summary:

Troubling UnderCurrents is about a poor man who grows a second personality called UnderCurrent after an accident. They share a body, they squabble, sometimes UnderCurrent takes over and goes for a joyride. But the host persuades him to channel his constant aggression into punching criminals, as it’s better than any alternatives they come up with.Still, violently stalking people on the street isn’t ideal. What these guys need is a punching bag. Some kind of big, straight-up evil… monster.

Publication apparently scheduled for autumn 2014, which is exciting. Rest assured I’ll talk about it more nearer the time as I enjoyed writing this one – it’s a good meaty piece too, over seven thousand words. Hell, I might even bring UnderCurrent back some day, he’s got a certain something.

(Me and my constantly squabbling duos, I know. At least these two share a single body for added efficiency.)

So, that’s the big announcement for now. You can see the full list of included stories over on the Emby Press site, and if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do some kind of gleeful dance at the prospect of finally getting to write a superhero. Feel free to gaze at the cover again, god knows I will.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past – “Open Mouth. Insert Wolverine.”

June 6, 2014 by Nick Bryan

This week, I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past, a movie attempting to properly fire the X-Engine back up for their cut of that sweet Avengers money. There are millions of characters in the X-Cupboard, after all, and they were among the first entrants in the current run of super-movies.

So, hell, do a comeback, why not. But, oddly, this isn’t a reboot or straight continuation of the excellent X-Men: First Class prequel. Instead, they’re bringing back cast and director from the first two films and mashing everything together into an epic time travel story.

Wow. That’s so comic book. I’m totally on-board. But will it be a good movie?

WARNING: Full spoilers throughout. And the ending is impressively weird, so if you’ve somehow avoided ruining it for this long, I’d keep going until you see it.

X-Men: Second Class?

Despite the returning of the Halle Berry/Patrick Stewart timeline dominating most of the promotion, this is far more a sequel to X-Men: First Class than older X-Movies in plot terms. However, thanks to the higher budget and return of Bryan Singer as director, the movie feels more like the old early-2000s efforts. It’s a strange mish-mash, and I occasionally missed the less actiony character focus of First Class, but the driving plot keeps things moving, and I was never bored. Manages a more serious tone than the Marvelvengers movies without seeming dour.

As you may gather, there are a lot of characters in this movie. So many, to be honest, a lot of them don’t get much to do. It’s particularly frustrating seeing Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart up there again, but without space to shine. Anna Paquin apparently had her entire subplot cut – I suspect the director’s cut DVD of this film will be a good one. But really the old cast are just there to jack up the stakes for the First Class section of the plot.

Still, we get Peter Dinklage as a villain – puts a lot into a small role – along with some impressive Sentinel effects. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy have intense moments, as does Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. Future-X-Men (the new characters, rather than the returning cast) get cool fight-power-demo opportunities too, even if they stop short of developing personalities. As everyone says, the Quicksilver bit is great.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Wolverine

And Wolverine, yes, he is there. Central to the film for cash-based reasons, yet so inessential that Magneto literally wraps him in metal and tosses him into a river with twenty minutes to go, where he stays for the whole final showdown. I can’t bring myself to get internet-furious about this, as Hugh Jackman is very charismatic and watchable in the role still, but nor can I pretend it doesn’t feel a bit perfunctory.

Still, manipulating events in service of the franchise is hardly new in these movies, and at least it doesn’t derail the story itself much.

Indeed, shoving Wolverine centre-stage just because he’s popular is precisely the sort of thing the comics have been doing for years, and you don’t see me ditching them. Between the multi-character-cramming, the plot that demands a decent understanding of past movies and the straight-faced delivery of ridiculous codenames, this is one of the most comic-booky superhero films I’ve seen in a while. It manages to feel like a single movie rather than a TV episode, but still does a lot of shifting bits around the X-Men game board. Ambitious considering we’re talking about a series which began over a decade ago.

(And again, I’m not complaining. Love me a good superhero comic.)

One More Days of Future Past?

The most superhero-comic thing in this film is the ending, though – and this is where I do real spoilers, so last chance to turn away.

Although it’s not the whole point of the movie (which is good), a major effect of this time-screwing is to somehow erase the events of X-Men: The Last Stand from history, restoring the school and several dead characters to life.

Now, that movie was awful and pointlessly destructive, I have no problem with this, but it’s always a risk making this your big ending as it skates close to being self-indulgent. Fortunately there’s enough meat to the story for this to just draw a laugh.

Also, it makes the meta-narrative of the movie great fun: director Bryan Singer reaching back in time to stop the X-Men movie he didn’t direct from happening. Bryan Singer is Wolverine. Excellent.

All You Can Eat Media – Nick vs Netflix, Man vs Marvel Unlimited

June 2, 2014 by Nick Bryan

In the last few weeks since my birthday, I’ve catapulted myself hard into the world of unlimited on-demand media. Yes, I already had things like BBC iPlayer, 4OD and American equivalents, but this was the next level: Netflix for TV and the Marvel Unlimited service for comics.

After years of only watching carefully selected shows and targeted media, going back to having a wide range of stuff I might like available and choosing from it has been a strange experience. It’s like when I was young and I used to read TV guides and consider watching new stuff.

Only with comics too, which is where the comparison breaks down.Anyway, after two months in the new world of everything-you-could-ever-want rampant consumption, here are the observations I’ve made.

Staring At The Menu

First big discovery: how long I can just gaze at the list. If all the time I’ve spent scrolling through the contents of Marvel Unlimited and Netflix was used on content consumption, I would be the GURU by now. More than once, I’ve opened up the apps because I have half an hour to kill and want to fill it with a show/comic, only to spend that entire thirty minutes just browsing the catalogue.

Marvel Unlimited is particularly good for window shopping, by the way – hours of fun tittering at silly covers and titles from the past of superhero comics. Like good old Giant Size Man-Thing, or the 1992 X-Factor cover pictured to the left – a devastating warning from history about the dangers of cybersex.

This brand of procrastination eases up after the first few weeks, but my tiny brain is always kinda paralysed by the volume of stories I could be consuming. What if I’m not watching the right ones? What if I’m missing a classic? Do I worry about stuff too much?

(The correct answer to that last question is YES.)

The “Might As Well” Generation

Honestly, I never got into channel-surfing. If I have a few minutes of free time, I generally find a book/DVD/comic from the list of Important Stuff I’ve Planned To Experience, rather than switching on the TV and seeing what’s showing.

But the discovery of already-available all-you-can-eat media deals has gifted me the opportunity to finally see a lot of shows I’d glanced at before and decided, well, I’ve already got enough to watch. It’s all there, one click away, so I can put it on in the background while I’m doing low-brain activities (like typing out and proofreading blog posts, or fiddling with Scrivener compile settings, or just surfing the internet without the slightest pretense of achievement).

Or I can sit back and read comics I’d not bought because I only quite fancied reading them, rather than desperately wanting to, and comic books are rather expensive. Or at least, they were before the advent of the Comixology sale. Digital comics saved my interest in the hobby, to be honest.

Controversially, I’ve discovered it’s fun to watch a few silly comedies or entertaining-but-not essential procedural TV shows, read well-executed-but-not-genre-redefining superhero comics. In a strange way, it helps me relax.

So, that’s my big reveal about my feelings for today. Do post about your similar feelings in the comments if you want to help me feel okay about myself.

Oh, and if you too have Marvel Unlimited and want some good reading material, I wrote a homage to Christopher Priest’s Black Panther series a few weeks back, and I stand by every word. Check it out.

This blog post was finalised whilst half-watching an early episode of Castle.

Devil Deal Novel Draft #3 Word Count – By The Numbers

May 30, 2014 by Nick Bryan

All on target this week, as I sailed through the final stages of Novel Draft The Third. This will be a familiar tone to regular readers of this blog, most writing updates in the last month or two have broken down to: “Today I reached another book milestone!”

But just to reiterate what it all means: I am now at the point where I will show my book to some other humans. I’ve recruited a few volunteers from my writing group and personal life, now just gotta email it over to them. Once I’ve plucked up the courage to tackle Scrivener’s sometimes-horrific ebook compiling options.

Anyway. In a bid to keep the blogs interesting, I’m going to run some actual stats for the whole project, to see how much I cut, where it went, what it all means, etc. Will the numbers tell me anything of worth?

I don’t know, as I haven’t generated any of them at the time of writing this intro. Better go do that now.

THE BIG ONE: Total Word Count

First up, and most tedious to calculate as Scrivener clunks and struggles when putting a whole novel of scenes together: the total word counts of the three drafts.

First draft: 99,165 words.
Second draft: 94,923 words. (4,242 words shorter.)
Third draft: 90,605 words. (4,318 words shorter.)
Total cuts: 8,560 words. (8.63% of first draft total.)

The good news: I almost cut out ten percent of the novel, which I’m sure someone said was a good baseline amount to chop. It’s a good bit shorter anyway – a relief, as there were times I thought I wasn’t making much difference in length terms.

Much more surprising is the news that I removed more (just) with my second big pass than I did the first. During that draft, I chopped out, rewrote and condensed whole scenes, whereas the one I just finished was merely me picking through it line by line, improving flabby prose, reading it out to myself – generally beautifying the fucker before I let beta readers have it. Because if the main beta feedback is “You used the word actually too much, actually,” it won’t be hugely useful.

Does this mean I have more to do in terms of second-draft plot refining stuff? Possibly. But I’m in such a love-hate spin with the whole book after four months of intensive editing, I’d rather like to get some other opinions to bat against before doing any more sweeping changes.

Scale of Offcuts – The Butchery Index

And now, a stat I find compelling, but others may not. Let’s find out together.I have a Scrivener directory called Offcuts where I collect any scene I’m removing, rewriting, substantially changing or any other degree of alterations beyond minor text-picking. I don’t want to delete them, in case they’re one day called into service (in this project or another), but it’s possible they will never see the light of day.

The size of this directory at the various stages was…

First draft: 3,906 words.
Second draft: 43,924 words. (3,906 more.)
Third draft: 43,924 words. (Yes, it’s the same.)

Wow. That is a lot of unused flesh. Nearly a whole NaNoWriMo novel, approaching half of the current book length. A lot of it isn’t material that was necessarily deleted, just heavily rewritten, but still. I enjoy looking at this number, it makes me feel like I must have obeyed the editing commandments and killed at least a couple of darlings.

It makes fair sense this wouldn’t change much in the third draft – after all, chopping and changing whole scenes is the preserve of the second. The third was line-by-line stuff, and I have full copies of the first and second draft saved if I desperately need to resurrect them. Constantly resaving the same thing gets silly after a while.

Break it down, down down down…

I have three parts to my novel, because there’s nothing I enjoy more than a rigid beginning, middle and end. So, in the interests of science, how did those change over the three drafts?

PART ONE

First draft: 29,071 words.
Second draft: 29,742 words. (671 words longer.)
Third draft: 28,510 words. (1,232 words shorter.)
Total change: 561 words shorter.

PART TWO

First draft: 35,782 words.
Second draft: 31,817 words. (3,965 words shorter.)
Third draft: 30,394 words. (1,423 words shorter.)
Total change: 5,388 words shorter.

PART THREE

First draft: 34,287 words.
Second draft: 33,339 words. (948 words shorter.)
Third draft: 31,676 words. (1,663 words shorter.)
Total cuts: 2,611 words shorter.

To my not-particular-surprise, the middle part took it hardest. I did a lot of work tightening that up, because it was flabby and because that’s where there’s always the most waste, in my experience of stories. I rewrote a couple of whole chapters, pulled a few bits in and out. Interestingly, the first part grew slightly longer in the second draft, I guess I did expand a plot point.

Most impressive, though: I took a similar amount of words from each part during the third draft, which demonstrates I have roughly the same amount of useless bibble in any given bit of writing.

Dates to celebrate in later years

Just out of interest, based mostly on Scrivener folder creation dates…

First draft started: 11th April 2013
First draft finished: 24th November 2013 (Draft time: 7 months and 13 days.)
Second draft started: 3rd January 2014
Second draft finished: 30th April 2014 (Draft time: 3 months and 27 days.)
Third draft started: 1st May 2014
Third draft finished: 28th May 2014 (Draft time: 27 days.)
Three-draft time: 1 year, 1 month and 17 days.

And that’s with December and February basically off the job, working on other projects and/or Christmas. I was editor of a TV website for the whole of 2013 too. I have this dream of hammering out another whole first draft before the end of this year, but we’ll get back to that in later blogs.

For now, considering it was once a hundred thousand words long, I’m considering this an okay effort. Good head of speed towards the end there.

Okay, did I miss anything?

That’s probably numbers aplenty for today, considering this is a novel draft only a small percentage of you will ever read. But if this tells you anything about my writing achievements and helps you compare/contrast/feel good about your own, that is excellent.

If there are any obscure stats I haven’t run which you would be interested in (or think I would be), give me a shout in the comments. Make sure to show your full working, I’m a simple soul using Windows Calculator.

My Writing Music – Songs to mash the keyboard to

May 27, 2014 by Nick Bryan

Some writers don’t listen to music while they work, needing constant silence to produce their genius. However, I require an endless rolling soundtrack to drown out the screaming choirs of my own insanity (10 points for knowing where I stole that last phrase from), so I get through a lot of tracks.

A lot of the choices go in phases – new records come out, or I fancy immersing myself in the music of one artist, so I load my phone up with their albums. Then I listen to this person exclusively for a while, until I’m sick of them and don’t want to hear anything they’ve done for months.

A few songs/sounds do survive the gap though – elevate themselves above the flighty phases and become evergreen presences. Here, then, are my perpetual audio companions. Apologies if a few of them turn out to be part of temporary phases and I’m just blinded by momentary love.

Warren Ellis – SPEKTRMODULE

SPEKTRMODULE is an irregular ambient music podcast by British comics/novels writer Warren Ellis and is rarely far from my writing playlist. It helps that there’s loads of it and new ones sometimes slip out, but even with that, it’s a good soundtrack. A nice combination of atmospheric and relaxing, and always my first go-to when I don’t feel like listening to music with lyrics.

You can see all the episodes in their category on his blog, or subscribe to the iTunes feed here. Well worth a look.

In other beepy/electronic music, I sometimes listen to the Social Network and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtracks by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but they’re a little too scary to relax into.

Gorillaz – The Fall

This is the lesser-known fourth Gorillaz album, the one with less budget, very few famous guest artists and sparse/instrumental songs recorded on an iPad about Damon Albarn’s loneliness while touring America.

It didn’t top the charts like other cartoon monkey records, but it is great writing soundtrack material. Haunting and driving in equal measure. And just in general, if you like a good Blur/Albarn song, there are some nice ones on here, especially Little Pink Plastic Bags, The Parish of Space Dust and Amarillo.

The new Damon Albarn solo album Everyday Robots is pretty too, though a bit too languid for work-motivating purposes – in my opinion, at least.And to complete this segment, here’s the excellent song Amarillo in YouTube form.

R.E.M. – Up

I really like R.E.M., for which I blame their total ubiquity on my parents’ stereo when I was younger. Although considering they and Blur/Gorillaz are two of my favourite artists, it’s also possible I like music where the focus is just as much on the clever lyrics as the songs – this might be a writer trait? I don’t know. Someone tell me I’m normal, for god’s sake.

Putting self-analysis aside, a lot of R.E.M.’s stuff is hooky, attention-seeking indie-rock and not always ideal background work music. The album Up, however, shifted towards whispering, downbeat stuff or, even on the less grim songs, a swirl of noise rather than louder, more straightforward indie.

A music-minded person might say this is the album where R.E.M. most tried to replicate their good friends in Radiohead, but either way, this album really works for me as writing music. More so than most Radiohead stuff, actually, although Kid A does come out when I’m hitting the misery juice hard.And now, for a sample, the song Suspicion which I’ve always found pretty lovely.

Honourable Mentions

At this point, there is a risk of hitting some stuff that’s just a phase. For example, the new Elbow album The Take-Off And Landing Of Everything has lasted well, but I imagine it won’t be with me forever. Their classic The Seldom Seen Kid is a bit of an evergreen though.

Every year for a while now, around the time the sun comes out, I pull out The Duckworth Lewis Method album, and their 2013 release Sticky Wickets has joined it this time. Good times, very seasonal, if sometimes a bit loud and jangly for heavy work deadlines.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to most things we’ve talked about so far, I sometimes like a little higher-energy pop music, especially when crashing out first drafts. I’ve got the three-disc Genesis Platinum Collection for a lot of this, for better or worse. Also: the second Little Boots album Nocturnes, which really deserved more attention, and The Bones Of What You Believe by CHVRCHES.

That’s probably enough music to be getting on with – what can I say, after following Kieron Gillen on Tumblr for long enough, you start to think about the role of music in your writing. If you have any recommendations in a similar vein, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Ambient stuff in the style of SPEKTRMODULE would be particularly interesting to me – need a precise level of atmospheric but not too attention-grabbing.

Round table interview plugging A Chimerical World! Contains brief snatches of me!

May 25, 2014 by Nick Bryan

This is probably one for the Nick Bryan completists (who I still hope exist), but I participated in a round-table interview to promote the A Chimerical World: Tales of the Unseelie Court anthology, in which one of my stories appears.

And if you just want the hard facts about the actual story, here are the details of those particular anthology appearances. The Unseelie Court story is probably the strongest of the two, if you want to check one of them out – although the other one is much longer.