Month: October 2019

I have pondered quite a few what if scenarios over the years. Some of my favorite ones are what could Sega have done to actually make the 32X a success, or what would it be like if Atari had stayed relevant? But there is one question I have really wanted to try to get an answer to that I decided to tackle head on.

I recently shot a series of long form videos breaking down the different aspects of what the world might look like if Nintendo had never released the NES in north America following the video game crash of 1983. What would the arcade, home console and PC gaming landscape look like? How would the mobile market or handheld market have developed without Nintendo taking the lead? Would we even have smart phones today?

I break it down by topics in each video going through who would have been affected, who would have found success without Nintendo and who would have failed without their partnership propping them up? Would Blockbuster video still exist? Would Netflix have ever turned to Streaming? Would we have HDTV’s in a world where Nintendo didn’t exist or was relegated to some obscure little company left in Japan?

I will be releasing the video in pieces. I am still looking for ways to augment the story with visuals but I want this to be more of an analytical what if scenario based entirely on conjecture and speculation. Not grounded in hard facts or bogged down with actually predictions based on things we can’t firmly hold to. It should be a fun little diversion from the norm.

I recently finished the rough draft of my crime thriller, Goldfish on the mountain. As I was going back and separating out the chapter, making some minor edits along the way and generally cleaning up the formatting to make the editing process easier on me, I realized something. This book, the story as it developed, is not the same story I set out to write. I can see there are still traces of the story I wanted to tell but it, well to be honest got away from me.

I am hopeful that as I begin the editing process I will start to picture in my mind the story as it unfolds. Then I will try to compare this to what I had originally conceptualized to try and reconcile the two, if at all possible. I understand all of this is going to be a tremendous undertaking. In a way I kind of feel like I might have wrapped it up a little early in an attempt to just get it done so I could move on to the next phase. This is fine as I can try to fix things as I go along, rewriting what needs to be, cleaning up and even throwing out the stuff that doesn’t serve the story.

The real issue though is just that, the story. I don’t know who the main character is anymore. As it is written it’s not making much sense. I know how I wanted to do it originally. But as things developed I realized there wasn’t an easy way to do that without really stretching the imagination so I chucked it mid-way and let the story take a different path.

Now as I look at it I am trying to decide if I made a mistake in diverting away from the original intention to go towards a safer type of story? I suppose there is a way I could make it work if I take the time to dig in and change who the focus is of the story. In a way I was letting Fargo get in my mind and I wasn’t quite able to separate myself from that as it was partial inspiration for the story. In the end I have to decide if I want to take the story in a darker, more focused, direction or if I want to explore the depths of this mans despair. I realize one thing is clear, I have over used a couple of tropes I told myself to avoid. I need to fix that.

As it stands even if the grammar and spelling mistakes were fixed, as a reader I wouldn’t get too into this story. I need to spend a lot of time in the second draft making sure I really clean it up.

Right now I am in the mind set that I want to walk away. I know that isn’t in my best interest so what I am trying to do is find inspiration to reignite the spark that originally inspired the concept in the first place. It’s not the best example but I’ve been watching a lot of Psych and that has me getting back into the murder mystery mindset. But, the thing is there is no mystery. I flat out identify the killer up front and the purpose of the book originally was to explore how a person could turn evil. I don’t do a good job with that. I have a few flashbacks that were meant to set the stage but they come off more as heavy handed than insightful. I need to figure this out.

I will take a break from the writing and editing for now and finish up the formatting of the chapters to prepare for the rewrite process. In the meantime I think I need to watch a few actually good thrillers to see if I can remember what it was I set out to do.