Ender's Game

Ender's Game; a very popular story, turned into a film garnished with conflicted responses; not so much about the film, but about the author.  

Originally a short story published in Analog magazine, Orson Scott Card later expanded it into a novel in 1985, and winning the Hugo in 1986. Card has since added sequels to the original story of children trained to be soldiers, including a side spin-off series.  

The film is what I like to think of as the best bits version of the novel, except that would suggest it left out the bad bits of the novel, which it doesn't.  However, it does leave out a lot of exposition that gives the reader some context to put Ender's life into perspective.

The film does have some wonderful special effects that realize the battle room where Ender beats the Formics, and is well worth watching just for that.

Reading wise I'm still working through Wireless by Charlie Stross; a collection of short stories and novellas. All good, but I find that when I read short fiction when I come to the end of a story I want to put the book down, unlike a novel when I come to the end of a chapter and want to read more.

Moving on.

This week I've managed to do three different drafts of act one of my novel.  

The first draft was based on two very detailed critiques from Nigel and Colleen.  The second draft incorporated the majority of the other points made by Caroline, Hilary, Jehangir and the other writers who critiqued my work.  While the third draft included some style edits from a couple of the other writers who commented.  

Currently the third draft is being given the once over by my Alpha reader, and then I have a late critique from Vivien, to work through, who did a thorough job of giving the story the once over too.

I've also been talking to Clive, one of my Beta readers, who came around for a curry on Friday night.  That was very productive conversation, and he is looking forward to seeing the next novel, which is good news for me.  Brian, my American Beta reader remains a stalwart supporter who has given me some unique perspectives on the writing process that I cherish.

So I end this week having done mostly editing, which is like writing, and my log tells me I've written 1,122 words, but I can only account for -255 and +514 of them.  

It's the one area where Scrivener doesn't quite manage to keep track of work, given the fact I put out three act one drafts that all hover around the thirteen thousand word mark; after editing three thousand words out of the submitted draft.  

Still mustn't grumble, and more importantly I have an article coming out in the next issue of Miniature Wargames & Battlegames magazine.  Woo-Hoo!