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00:00:00.980 Speaker 1 Hello. So I wanted to take some time to introduce myself, talk about what this
00:00:05.780 Speaker 1 podcast is about, and then with a little bit of time left, I'm going to talk about
00:00:09.960 Speaker 1 the most recent episode, "Planescarred" one and two. Okay, so hello. Uh,
00:00:15.940 Speaker 1 Collected Forge is a podcast where I get to take my writing and turn them into audio
00:00:21.560 Speaker 1 stories. So I'm learning the art of sound design, and this is a place for me to
00:00:26.080 Speaker 1 practice and share, and hopefully, uh, give you some entertaining stories along the
00:00:30.540 Speaker 1 way. So right now I'm in the process of publishing 12 stories, two episodes each.
00:00:36.400 Speaker 1 This is a sorta- sort of shotgun approach. We're gonna see what sticks, what's
00:00:40.480 Speaker 1 exciting, what makes me excited, and then I'm gonna take two of those story worlds,
00:00:46.020 Speaker 1 maybe the same stories, and I'm going to go much deeper into them. Uh, about 12 to
00:00:51.500 Speaker 1 13 episodes, so probably a full season, and those episodes will be more polished.
00:00:57.500 Speaker 1 Uh, so that's where I'm going with the podcast, right? Uh, I'm gonna slowly dive
00:01:01.560 Speaker 1 deeper, less of this sporadic new story every week thing. Um, I'm really just trying
00:01:06.700 Speaker 1 to figure things out right now. So a little bit about the format. Uh, you're gonna
00:01:11.840 Speaker 1 keep getting two episodes per week. Uh, I have designated episodes that do not have
00:01:17.680 Speaker 1 any sound design, uh, as raw. That's what the word raw at the end means there. And
00:01:23.160 Speaker 1 when I get a chance, sometimes I will go back and remaster sections of the episodes,
00:01:27.820 Speaker 1 uh, with, uh, full sound design, uh, audio cleanup, music, stuff like that. And if I
00:01:33.120 Speaker 1 do that, I'll post it again. So that's what that format means. If you don't see raw
00:01:38.340 Speaker 1 next to it, that means I've done some amount of sound design. So that means there's
00:01:42.400 Speaker 1 atmosphere tracks, music, Foley sound effects, there's spot effects, um,
00:01:48.700 Speaker 1 all that sort of stuff. Uh, and usually I don't get all the way through the full
00:01:52.120 Speaker 1 episode. I kind of just focus on certain pieces that are interesting to me or that I
00:01:57.180 Speaker 1 think, uh, will teach me something. So it's a little sporadic, uh, so bear with me.
00:02:02.100 Speaker 1 When we start getting into the full seasons, the episodes will be more and more
00:02:06.620 Speaker 1 polished as I not only get better and more efficient, but, you know, I s- I'm gonna
00:02:11.940 Speaker 1 spend a little bit more time, and the release schedule will slow down to one episode
00:02:16.020 Speaker 1 per week instead of two.
00:02:18.760 Speaker 1 So that's where we're going. Uh, that's what it is currently. Uh, I have much bigger
00:02:24.260 Speaker 1 plans, and maybe I'll get into the master plan another time. But for now, it's just
00:02:28.700 Speaker 1 gonna be new stories every week, and we can treat them like short stories. Okay. So
00:02:34.160 Speaker 1 I think that's enough backstory. And so let's talk a little bit about "Planescarred"
00:02:40.140 Speaker 1 episode one and two.
00:02:43.180 Speaker 1 What I love so much about this story is really the world. Uh, I knew about the world
00:02:49.000 Speaker 1 and the magic system long before I knew about the characters, and that's really how
00:02:53.460 Speaker 1 I've been approaching, uh, each of these stories really is I, I come up with the
00:02:57.780 Speaker 1 magic system. I come up with the rules of the universe beyond the magic system, uh,
00:03:02.940 Speaker 1 which is a super set, and then I think about, what kind of people would this create?
00:03:08.520 Speaker 1 What kind of cultures might you get out of this? And then you sorta zoom in from
00:03:12.640 Speaker 1 there. Okay, what kind of cultures might be in conflict? What would their problems
00:03:16.840 Speaker 1 be, uh, if they could have this? Like if you've got magic that can purify food
00:03:22.040 Speaker 1 [laughs] or make food appear, right, you have a very different kind of problem, uh,
00:03:27.660 Speaker 1 from people who can see the future or who can go into the past. Uh, who knows,
00:03:33.240 Speaker 1 right? Uh, the magic systems have a profound effect on how the world works, just
00:03:38.060 Speaker 1 like how the rules of our world has a profound effect on how the world works. So
00:03:43.100 Speaker 1 once I know the magic system and then the world and I start to dial in on the
00:03:48.540 Speaker 1 setting and the time period, uh, that's when I start creating characters. Uh,
00:03:54.480 Speaker 1 so the characters in this story
00:03:58.280 Speaker 1 are at war, uh, and it's two different planes. And we haven't gotten into, you know,
00:04:03.080 Speaker 1 how many different planes there are, how you move between them, uh, but most of that
00:04:06.980 Speaker 1 is already spelled out. This one was pretty well flashed out-- fleshed out, the
00:04:10.180 Speaker 1 world anyway. Uh, so we've got a delegation of magical people who
00:04:16.300 Speaker 1 are on the physical plane or the mundane plane, which is basically where we live,
00:04:22.800 Speaker 1 uh, and they have dwindling resources, and they've been cut off, and, oh, spoiler by
00:04:28.520 Speaker 1 the way, if you haven't [laughs] listened to this episode, you should, uh, you
00:04:32.900 Speaker 1 should, you should pause. But I don't think you should be surprised that there's
00:04:35.540 Speaker 1 conflict. Spoiler, there's conflict. Uh, you should pause this and go listen to it
00:04:40.380 Speaker 1 first. So they're stranded, uh, and they have to make friends quickly in order to
00:04:45.720 Speaker 1 survive. They've basically been left out to dry, and I won't go too into detail on
00:04:51.360 Speaker 1 what's going wrong, but suffice to say, many things are going wrong, uh, uh, all
00:04:56.320 Speaker 1 over the place. Uh, and they may have to save the people that they were more or less
00:05:01.220 Speaker 1 sent here to fight. So that's the story. Uh, what really drew me to
00:05:07.200 Speaker 1 this story, uh, is the magic systems. Uh, sometimes it plays a central focus, uh,
00:05:12.960 Speaker 1 sometimes it doesn't. Uh, in this one, it was fairly important for the magical
00:05:18.160 Speaker 1 people, uh, for obvious reasons. Uh, the one that was most exciting to me,
00:05:24.240 Speaker 1 uh, is the School of Villomancy, the ability to have magical diseases that you can
00:05:29.880 Speaker 1 derive from the environment, and you can shape and tailor the effects that it has on
00:05:34.160 Speaker 1 people. Uh, it's just really cool. Uh, it's-- it has a lot of room
00:05:39.980 Speaker 1 [laughs] for use and I guess abuse, uh, and I very quickly turned it
00:05:45.820 Speaker 1 into a weapon. Uh, so it has-- not only is it an interesting plot
00:05:51.620 Speaker 1 device and the main character's stash of magical diseases is now stolen and
00:05:57.840 Speaker 1 somewhere [laughs] in the hands of a nefarious group of actors-
00:06:02.512 Speaker 1 Uh, so it is not only a plot device, but it's just a really cool school of magic,
00:06:06.612 Speaker 1 and we'll get to explore a little bit more about what it can do and what its limits
00:06:10.092 Speaker 1 are. Uh, but I just thought it was interesting 'cause I, I had never seen a magic
00:06:15.752 Speaker 1 school quite like this. You know, there's lots of gross magic, [laughs] like body
00:06:20.812 Speaker 1 magic, transformation stuff. Um, there's lots of gross schools of magic, uh,
00:06:26.672 Speaker 1 in stories. Uh, but this wasn't, in, isn't just gross. It's gross in a very weird
00:06:32.392 Speaker 1 and not obviously useful way. Like, what, what are you gonna do with magical
00:06:36.932 Speaker 1 diseases? How, [laughs] how useful could this really be? Uh, and what makes a
00:06:41.272 Speaker 1 disease magical instead of just mundane? Uh, and the answer is it has lots of very
00:06:46.992 Speaker 1 interesting effects that, you know, don't really seem to make a lot of sense. But,
00:06:51.672 Speaker 1 uh, as an author, I write for, at least in part, what is cool and
00:06:57.612 Speaker 1 interesting to read. Uh, I try to make it coherent within the rules of the w-
00:07:03.612 Speaker 1 the world that it's in, and that's really the rule of thumb. It's not, does it make
00:07:08.452 Speaker 1 sense, but does it make sense in their world? So I just have to construct the rules
00:07:14.052 Speaker 1 of the universe and keep them consistent, and that's really what readers are looking
00:07:17.652 Speaker 1 for when you're looking for logic. Uh, it just, it has to be internally consistent,
00:07:22.872 Speaker 1 not necessarily [laughs] consistent with our world. Uh, that's one of the rules that
00:07:28.232 Speaker 1 I try to follow with magic systems. I don't always succeed. Uh, you gotta follow the
00:07:33.012 Speaker 1 rule of cool sometimes, uh, and I think that that's perfectly fine. So yeah, that's
00:07:38.932 Speaker 1 the story. It's the School of Villomancy. There are eight schools of magic. I'm sure
00:07:43.072 Speaker 1 we'll get around to all of them. Uh, we briefly saw a few others. I think Mother
00:07:47.092 Speaker 1 Lissandra was, uh, using Gristview, the, basically the ability to spray magical
00:07:52.872 Speaker 1 concrete. Uh, it's really not more com- complicated than that. Uh, but yeah, we'll
00:07:57.912 Speaker 1 explore the world a little bit more, uh, and the cultures and the clash between
00:08:02.352 Speaker 1 them, uh, and what makes the physical plane physical, what makes the magical plane
00:08:06.792 Speaker 1 magical. What are the other planes? How do you get there? So I'll explore all that.
00:08:12.731 Speaker 1 Uh, it's a pretty cool setting. It's one that I've thought about for a long time. So
00:08:17.512 Speaker 1 yeah, that's Planesguard. Next week, we are also going to be revisiting an older
00:08:22.712 Speaker 1 story of mine. Uh, it's a character from a book I wrote. Um, this is basically the
00:08:28.472 Speaker 1 backstory to his story. Uh, and it is in a place called
00:08:33.932 Speaker 1 Everhouse. So we'll get to that next week. I'm excited to write that one. It's
00:08:38.492 Speaker 1 definitely lower magic. The setting is a little more wild. Um, but there's
00:08:44.412 Speaker 1 definitely less magic. Uh, but there's always some. There's always some. So yeah,
00:08:50.492 Speaker 1 that'll be The Lightslinger, I think is what the name of the book or story will be.
00:08:57.252 Speaker 1 Uh, yeah, and I think that about does it. I'll try to publish episodes where I talk
00:09:01.312 Speaker 1 about the stories and really what I think makes a good story. Uh, it's really a
00:09:07.152 Speaker 1 theory, right, a work in progress, and what I'm learning about sound design and, uh,
00:09:12.232 Speaker 1 the struggles I had in creating the episodes and, you know, stuff like that. Uh, so
00:09:17.572 Speaker 1 speaking of which, moving on to the sound design of Planesguard. Um,
00:09:25.172 Speaker 1 you know, there was a lot of outdoor scenes. Uh, so I spent a lot of time going
00:09:30.612 Speaker 1 through, uh, sound effects for, you know, people in crowds. But you know what's
00:09:35.072 Speaker 1 difficult is when your time period doesn't have cars or trucks or planes and
00:09:40.192 Speaker 1 somebody flies a plane overhead on your sound effects. [laughs] Like, okay. Uh, it's
00:09:45.772 Speaker 1 actually exceptionally difficult to get, um, the right time periods for atmospheres,
00:09:50.912 Speaker 1 and there's a lot of times where I try to cover it up or [laughs] hide the fact that
00:09:56.192 Speaker 1 there's a car driving by, cut it off in editing. Um, so that's always an interesting
00:10:01.012 Speaker 1 challenge. Uh, uh, I got to do sound design for a fryer. Uh, that ended
00:10:07.012 Speaker 1 up being... That scene ended up being a little longer than intended, [laughs] the
00:10:12.032 Speaker 1 Fry Anything stand. Uh, but it was funny, so, uh, hopefully that was
00:10:17.672 Speaker 1 appreciated. I, I poured a lot of love into that scene specifically for sound
00:10:21.812 Speaker 1 design. Um, yeah. Uh, I think on this episode I really spent a long... I
00:10:27.972 Speaker 1 spread my sound design evenly, whereas in some past episodes, I've really focused on
00:10:32.912 Speaker 1 just a few minutes, and then most of the rest of the episode is basically dead air,
00:10:37.972 Speaker 1 uh, other than my voice. But on this one, I really did spread it out fairly evenly.
00:10:43.112 Speaker 1 Uh, I wish I could have spent a little more time on the action scenes at the end,
00:10:46.792 Speaker 1 but action scenes take a lot of time to do sound design for. It's the kind of thing
00:10:52.452 Speaker 1 you just, you don't notice until you're actually in there making it. Every little
00:10:56.852 Speaker 1 scuff of the foot, uh, move it, movement of clothing, grabbing clothing, uh,
00:11:02.272 Speaker 1 footsteps, uh, bouncing off walls, and that's just the sounds of movement. That's
00:11:08.092 Speaker 1 not even the sounds of, you know, all the magic that is happening or gunfire or
00:11:12.732 Speaker 1 everybody else who's moving around and saying things and they grunt and go, "Ugh,"
00:11:17.152 Speaker 1 when they get hit. So it's got a very high density of sound, so it takes an enormous
00:11:22.512 Speaker 1 amount of effort to do an action scene. Uh, but they are very exciting, and I will
00:11:26.552 Speaker 1 say that the sounds really add a lot of depth and immersion to an action scene.
00:11:31.952 Speaker 1 There's something that you get with sound that you just can't get with words. I can
00:11:37.692 Speaker 1 say, "She swung her head back and hit him in the face," and you can imagine that,
00:11:42.292 Speaker 1 but when you hear... [whooshing] [imitates punching] [laughs] "Ugh," it's just so
00:11:47.092 Speaker 1 much more descriptive of what happened, right? I don't have to say, "And then his
00:11:51.232 Speaker 1 bones broke," when I can just make the sound of crunching. [laughs] And you know
00:11:56.772 Speaker 1 exactly how bad the hit was, right? I don't need to dive into whether it was a
00:12:01.272 Speaker 1 glancing blow or not. You hear that, the huge crunch. Like, oh man, that was a big
00:12:05.832 Speaker 1 hit. Um, so I find that it, it's really, it really adds another channel of
00:12:11.872 Speaker 1 information to action scenes that
00:12:15.212 Speaker 1 is really hard to get in another format. Uh, so that's cool, uh, but it is
00:12:20.072 Speaker 1 time-consuming.
00:12:22.892 Speaker 1 Um, what else would I like to say about this episode? Uh, I enjoyed it. Uh, I wrote
00:12:28.472 Speaker 1 it in basically one, maybe two long sessions. Uh, it was,
00:12:34.772 Speaker 1 it was fun to write. It's got a lot of humor in it. Uh, I think that I reflexively
00:12:39.772 Speaker 1 put a lot of humor in my stories. I like dark grittiness every now and then,
00:12:45.592 Speaker 1 um, but I like lightheartedness too. Uh, and I think I... There's a mix of that in
00:12:50.712 Speaker 1 this story. There's a lot of, uh, gross-out moments. Sorry to give you two stories
00:12:54.552 Speaker 1 like that in a row. [laughs] I promise that is not usually how I write. It just so
00:12:59.072 Speaker 1 happens that, uh, both of these stories have magic systems that are, eh, a little
00:13:03.672 Speaker 1 bit nasty. Um, but yeah, uh, I enjoyed writing it. Uh,
00:13:09.952 Speaker 1 it was really cool. Uh, it's sort of a urban setting.
00:13:16.352 Speaker 1 Uh, next, next week's setting will be interior.
00:13:20.812 Speaker 1 [laughs] 100% interior. Uh, I'm really
00:13:26.472 Speaker 1 excited about the next one. It's one of my favorite settings. Uh, you'll, you'll
00:13:31.212 Speaker 1 recognize, uh, what novels it's inspired by, uh, if you listen to it.
00:13:37.652 Speaker 1 But, uh, I think that's it for me. I'm not gonna keep droning on, but this was my
00:13:41.372 Speaker 1 first developer commentary. As always, I want your feedback. The reason I'm even
00:13:45.312 Speaker 1 releasing this podcast at all is because I want feedback. Uh, I believe that you
00:13:50.492 Speaker 1 need to share things in order to get better. And yeah, so here's to getting
00:13:56.332 Speaker 1 better and thanks for listening. See you next week