I completed the second draft of “Tom Swiftly and His Incredible Traffic Model”. It is an improvement, but there is a problem I haven’t decided how to deal with yet. I’m not sure if Tom Swiftlys are considered puns or not, but I would lump the two together. They are both words at play. As… Read Article →
Posts By: James Beattie Morison
Like most people who think of themselves as creative, I write notes about the ideas I have. I pulled together a few of these ideas to discuss. My ideas list isn’t well organized and I am always surprised by what I find written on the backs of envelopes. Some times it is hard to tell… Read Article →
I surprised myself this week. I actually finished the first draft of “Tom Swiftly and His Incredible Traffic Model” just like I said I would. It came in at just a bit over 2,000 words. That makes it one of my non-formulaic short stories. That could change after a few more drafts. Most lines are… Read Article →
I made some progress on my short story: “Tom Swiftly and his Incredible Traffic Model”. I broke it up into seven sections and I have four done now. I might get a first draft done next week, although it looks like it will be busy. There were a few lines I wasn’t happy with, but… Read Article →
About 20 years ago I got an idea for a story about transportation planning. I’ve started and abandoned it several times. I think I’m finally on a track to get it done. The initial inspiration for the story came from the book “The Wealthy Barber” by David Chilton. After several attempts, the story I have… Read Article →
I haven’t done much on my “The Disruptors” story idea for a while. This week I had a few ideas on how to overcome some of barriers I face. Characters and Their Relationships One mistake I’ve made with some of the stories I’ve worked on was not to put enough thought into the characters and… Read Article →
I haven’t done anything on my science fiction story “Felix” since last fall. This week I came across a couple articles on-line about a proposal for Martian exploration similar to what I had thought of as the back ground for my story. Last year I wrote a blog post where I laid out how I… Read Article →
I downloaded and tried out a trial version of nawmalMAKE, the replacement for Xtranormal. I wanted to see if I could use it to do a final version of “The Barrier”. I had planned to leave any evaluation of nawmalMAKE until later when I was ready to redo “The Barrier”. This week I got a… Read Article →
A while back, I posted a new short story, “Pete’s Plan” on my website, then I forgot to tell anyone. https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/petes-plan/ “Pete’s Plan” is a short science fiction story set in a future where mind uploading is a reality. (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading) It is not the Utopia that many had expected and Pete has a plan… Read Article →
One of the challenges of writing a story is that the protagonist needs to be dumb enough to get into trouble, but smart enough to get out of trouble. It occurred to me that cognitive biases could provide easier explanations for a character’s bad choices. Characters need to make bad decisions in order for there… Read Article →
