Writing and the process of creating stories is an activity that has always interested me. I’ve written a heap of stories of one sort or another and created a number of tools to help with story generation. The projects presented on these pages showcase some of my writing activities.
Writing
Recent Writing
The following articles contain recent short stories and snippets I’ve written for my own entertainment and as exercises with the writing group I belong to. You will also find experimental pieces written using the interactive fiction tools Twine and Inform7. I have included a description of the background for each story and the planning tools I used.
Stories Written as a Member of the Hurunui Writers’ Group
When I moved to the South Island in 2022, I was keen to continue the association with the Writer’s Plot Readers Read Writing Group in Upper Hutt which I had belonged to since 2019, but also saw the need for a local writer’s group. The Hurunui Library in Amberley, the nearest township, were very supportive of me starting one. In October 2023 we had our inaugural meeting with a large turn out. Since then a regular core of six others have been meeting to discuss writing, techniques, inspirations. Because I found them so valuable, we also have writing challenges.
Hurunui Writers’ Group Writing Topics
Each month the Hurunui Writers’ Group has a topic to discuss and challenge to take away as homework, based on that topic. With some topics I’ve struggled to find a good article to use for the topic handouts so have had to research and write my own. These articles and essays are presented below.
- Using the ATU Index in Story Inspiration
- Romance in a Short Story
- Writing Flawed Secondary Characters
A number of the topic handouts make heavy use of material from other people’s blogs. Seeing as they are cobbled together from bits copied and pasted together with a few additonal links and stuff, I can’t claim any credit for creating them. I present the handouts here as reference material in a pdf form to provide the background topic information for some of my stories. All sources have been acknowledged. I would like to say thanks to those writers whose websites, blogs, and guides have been such a rich source of information on the craft of writing. I know I have grown as a writer as I have researched and put together the topics for my Writers’ Group.
- 7 Techniques for Better Pacing in Your Story
- Foreshadowing
- Symbolism: How to Use Symbolism in Writing
- Creating Suspense
- Using Description
- Character Agency
- Writing and Structuring Dialogue
- Rythm and Flow
- Archetypes in Writing
Stories Written as a Member of the Writer’s Plot Readers Read Writing Group
Between 2019 and October 2023 I belonged to a writing group who met in the Writer’s Plot, Readers Read bookshop in Upper Hutt. Each month we would have a new challenge. The following stories are responses to those writing challenges.
Really Old Writing
These are stories that I wrote many years ago, primarily to plan cartoons, and secondarily in competition with my Sister to see who could write the most gross story. She won that one every time. Now she teaches.
Writing Tools
I have created a number of tools for helping create stories.
- A Scribus script to take a text list and distribute it across a multipage grid.
- A Scribus script to apply a business card size images across a multipage grid.
The most significant of them is StorySoup Main page, a tool for providing story prompts.
Download the StorySoup App for Windows, Linux, and Android through Itch.io.
Graphic Novels and Comics
Most of my early writing was planning for producing graphic novels. This also prompted me to start dabbling in Computer Generated Imagery in an effort to speed up the cartooning process. Little did I know that it would completely stop my cartooning efforts when I discovered how powerful 3D modelling was for building cool images.
Piss-Take Essays
All material presented on these pages are the copyright of Hamish Trolove.