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Sorry for ‘very long time, no post’, but there hasn’t been a huge amount to update. Spirit/Fall Book One: Spirit, the first of two distant prequel Super Power novellas has been released, and I’m making good progress with Spirit/Fall Book Two: Fall, which should be published next year. Book Two is not a sequel, but more of a parallel story. Without spoilers, it involves a Roman-style culture and…

This year, 2023, I came the closest I’ve come so far to actually having a creative project produced. A screenwriting manager on a list I had of screenwriting managers requested a script read for my ultra-low budget comedy movie, Larrikings! I received my first-ever script read request from the creative industry. Now I know a little more about what happens when an unproduced writer actually…

This is completely hypothetical, I don’t have secret knowledge about Square Enix, but recently, I wondered what it would be like if S-E thought about remakes of Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III, with reimagined stories written with modern video game writing quality standards and modern game design. Imagine such a remake of Final Fantasy I with high-quality writing and a…

There seems to be a double-standard with fantasy-genre creative stuff in the West – the gist is ‘if it’s live action, it can be mature rated, if it’s animated, it will almost never be mature rated’. For example, compare Game of Thrones (R rated) to The Dragon Prince (PG rated), or even Game of Thrones versus the original 80’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (G rated)! This…

I finished Final Fantasy XVI about a week or so after release. Here’s my full review: Writing: 8.5/10 – it had better writing than FF15 (especially plot), and, avoiding spoilers, some dialogue was reminiscent of religious-y language (which I liked). If there are any major ‘flaws’ with FF16’s writing, it’s that it maybe leaned a little too heavily on Game of Thrones influence – some of the…

I bought FF16 on release day, and have been playing it since. I haven’t finished the game yet, but here are my quick thoughts on the game so far: Pros: Better writing than FF15 More memorable soundtrack than FF15 (I was disappointed with FF15’s soundtrack – I didn’t agree with the choice of Yoko Shimomura composing Final Fantasy music, too different from her usual style) Hardly any grinding…

To those who may not know, Final Fantasy X has a reputation of having a bad script. The script was written in a mere 3 and a half months (and I assume JRPG scripts normally take 6 months or more), and even though there is competent writing in some parts, it’s not consistently competent. I’m in the process of finishing FFX for the 3rd time (once on PS2, once with the PS3 HD remaster, and this…

I’m pleased to announce that the Revised And Expanded Edition of The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How to Supercharge Your Creative Writing has been released. Next, will be the long-term book promotion plan using book promotion services to help achieve as many sales as possible and empower as many young aspiring writers as possible. The future for young writers is really starting to…

The Revised And Expanded Edition (a.k.a 2nd Edition) of The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How To Supercharge Your Creative Writing is still in the publishing process – I estimate it’s release date might be towards the end of March ’23. There were two writing tips that didn’t make it into the final manuscript, since I came up with them when the publisher was nearly finished with…

One trend I’ve noticed in the creative industry that grinds my gears is TV show reboots – they take (usually) a TV show that was successful in the 80’s or 90’s and then reboot it. There are a few issues with that trend. Firstly, and most importantly, it makes it more difficult for original I.Ps by up-and-coming writers to get produced (as if it wasn’t already difficult enough for unproduced…

Update About Publishing and Translations Plans

Here’s an update about my plans regarding the Revised and Expanded Edition of The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How To Supercharge Your Creative Writing. My publisher told me they’re not currently offering translated editions, so I’ve had to put my book translation goals on indefinite hold, but I am still able to publish the Revised and Expanded Edition, which I’ll start the publishing…

Book Plans for The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide

My book plans for the foreseeable future for The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How To Supercharge Your Creative Writing are in two stages: Finish working on and publish the ‘Revised and Expanded Edition’ that adds 18 pages of extra content Book translation – split into separate translation goals. My ‘target languages’ are French, Italian, Spanish, German and Japanese. The French…

Game On For Game Writing!

For anyone interested in writing for video games, I’ve recently finished reading the book Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Video Games, and would highly recommend it. The book discusses various things that are specific to video game writing rather than screenplays, and also explores the different formats that video game scripts are written in (there is no, single universal script format for…

A Little More Modern Know-How…

After doing some brainstorming, I noticed there were a few small bits of writing advice that didn’t end up in The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How To Supercharge Your Creative Writing, so I’ll list them here. Silent Protagonist (mostly in video games): If you want to write a video game that has a Silent Protagonist, try to have as many dialogue options and Choice and Consequence…

The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide is LIVE!

My non-fiction book of creative writing advice, The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How To Supercharge Your Creative Writing, was released 29/7/22. I hope it reaches as many unproduced writers as possible. I would love for creative opportunities to result from the book in some way, but that’s far from a guaranteed outcome and wasn’t my main motivation for writing and publishing the book…

Progress Report – July 2022

This is my writing progress at a glance since my last progress report. Devil After Dark – Season 2 complete, started work on Season 3 this month (July ’22) Unfinished Projects: 10 untweaked Midnight Eyes scripts (39 of 49 written scripts already tweaked, aiming to have the whole series with tweaked scripts to improve humour)Dream Destiny’s script (4/5 complete as of July ’22) Completion Date…

I’m currently part-way through the publishing process (the error correction phase, to be precise) for The Writer’s Quick-Start Guide: Modern Know-How to Supercharge Your Creative Writing. Getting that book out there into the world will be one of my greatest achievements, and will help me manage my frustration with the creative industry. I hand-wrote 10-11 A4 pages of potential benefits of…