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I write software for money and fiction for fun. Tools for writing fiction are not as good as tools for writing software. When I began writing fiction I started with Google Docs, but this became unwieldy as my book grew beyond a few thousand words. Scrivener, a popular choice, was a big step up in chapter management, but I found it clunky and cumbersome. Eventually, I switched to using software…
In computer science we say that naming things is hard , and the same is true when writing fiction. While choosing names for characters is tough, it is also tough to choose names for technology in science fiction. I've been wrestling with the problem of what to call the robots in my novel Ageless . The book features various types of robots: robot soldiers; robots prison guards; in-home robot…
I like swearing. Swearing can be rude, funny, sexy and insulting. Day-to-day I swear a lot, but in my writing I don't. When spoken, a well deployed swear word can be effective, but in writing profanity has lost it's power. We've all seen so many of books with F*ck in their title that it no longer delivery any shock value. The fashion brand FCUK was once provocative, but not anymore. We've seen it…
There's a lot of discussion about the consequences of Generative AI on creators. This is important, but I'm this post I want to look at how GenAI might be used to support writers, rather than compete with them. Certainly we don't want AI writing for us, but can these tools help us and provide useful insights into our work? I can think of a few useful use cases for AI when we're writing. These…
While working on my novel, I've become increasingly frustrated that the tools available for creative writing are not as good as the tools used for writing software. I've been a software developer for over two decades, I've written a lot of software, using a lot of different tools, and I can tell you that software developers hate crappy tools. The eco-system for software development never stands…
As a genre, science fiction has a proud heritage of shaping the future. We find it entertaining to imagine what the world could be like. Science fiction enables us to explore possible futures, and through exploring them, decide for ourselves what future we want to create. For example, the space-race of the 1950's and 60's, was driven by a spirit of optimism and excitement for humanity breaking…
World building is, for me, one of the most enjoyable parts of writing fiction. Creating a world inside my head and exploring it through my characters is a lot of fun! When a fictional world is set in the near future, I may want it to feel familiar and yet otherworldly. To do this, I begin by thinking about the world as it exists today, and imagining what our future might look like as a springboard…
I came to writing late in life. It had to wait until I was happy. There's a common archetype of the tortured artist, the writer who writes driven by daemons and trauma. I am not that writer, as least not directly. I could not write while I was unhappy. While I was unhappy I struggled to create anything at all. My childhood was happy. I was blessed with a loving home, full of fun and creativity. My…