Remember when I talked about Grunt Work a few posts ago? If you haven’t done any of that yet, this is probably where your project dies. All those exciting ideas you had at the beginning have been in your head so long they’ve become boring. You’ve now read that clever thing you wrote a hundred…
Aversion to criticism is probably the number one thing that turns things into Bad Idea Debt rather than Actual Products. You all know that person. The one who always wants to tell you about their novel or screenplay or game or whatever, but who doesn’t want to show it to anyone until it’s done. If…
So you’ve got this Thing I’m Working On, which means that sometime in the very near future you’re going to become a miserable bastard. It might not happen right away, but it’s going to happen. During those early stages when the theoretical project is just an idea, it’s lots of fun to think about and…
Last time I talked about that step of deciding whether you’ve got a viable project on your hands or just an idea that still needs some work before you can turn it into something. Once you’ve made it past that step, you’re really in danger of entering the Chapel Perilous of potential idea debt. In…
So, you’ve woken up the day after having your initial idea and (1) you haven’t completely forgotten it and (2) you don’t think it sucks yet. Don’t worry, before it’s over you’ll think it sucks at least a few times. That’s part of the process. But for now, it seems like a pretty good idea….
Since I don’t have anything new to talk about on the Cinemechanix front right now (I’m in the process of implementing all the things I’ve already talked about), I’m going to spend at least a few posts musing about the “idea debt” concept I rationalized my way out of believing in a few posts ago….
When Snakes on a Plane came out, Samuel L. Jackson told a story on the talk show circuit about how Snakes on a Plane was just the working title of the movie and it was supposed to be renamed something like “Terror at 10,000 Feet.” In Jackson’s version, he’s the one that convinced the producers…
I first read about the concept of “idea debt” in a blog post by Jessica Abel that Leighton sent me some indeterminate amount of time ago. Basically, an idea debt is that project you want to do but you’re not working on. Abel’s advice is to throw away that idea debt because all the time…
Turns out I’m going to be working util 7 on Mondays, so I’ve tentatively moved new blog day to Wednesday. We’ll see how that works out and maybe change it again later. This week instead of a blog, I did a new random generator script, the Random Christmas One-Shot Adventure Generator. Give it a try!…
I was hoping to use my 4-day weekend to finish and post the (hopefully) long-awaited next draft of the Cinemechanix rules to the playtest group, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Partly it was because I ended up having to work Saturday, but since I knew that ahead of time I probably should have gotten right…
