Check out my new merch design. Like what you see? Head over to my teepublic store.

Last Thursday—while I should have been working—I was watching this Worldcon panel. I kept pausing to reflect on things they’d said, and one of those times I cast my mind back to the origin of my writing career. And that gave me today’s blog post idea.

‍

Here’s that video in case you missed it.

‍

What is the plot continuum? Well, when it comes to writing, authors typically fall into one of two categories. Pantsers and plotters. Or, as George R.R. Martin puts it, architects and gardeners.

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.”
― George R.R. Martin

I prefer to use the terms gardener and architect because they sound more professional and because I like them better than pantser and plotter. While I have nothing against the term plotter, the pantser was that creepy kid in elementary school who tried to yank your pants down while you weren’t looking.

But what I meant with the title of this blog post is that I feel these are just opposite poles of the same thing. Like many things in life, your writing style will land somewhere between these two extremes. As I thought back through my projects before deciding to become a professional writer, I realized that I had changed over time.

My first two projects were role-playing games. An untitled generic fantasy game that didn’t get much further than thinking up some character classes that I thought would be fun. And the second Mech VS Monster (MVM) that I took all the way to beta before abandoning the project. I realized that I don’t have much success playing roleplaying games these days and wrangling adults to play a campaign on a schedule is just awful. That, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time tweaking rules. What these two projects have in common is that I just had something spark my mind, and I started working. I was very far on the gardener side of things.

After switching to writing stories and not games, I tinkered around with some short stories and then moved onto a couple of stories that I gave up on. The first one was about kids back from college going on a road trip. The second was about a psychologist coming out of retirement to help a family friend (which I might revisit someday). By the time I had moved onto these stories, I was less on the extreme end of plot gardening. With both stories, an interesting idea hit me, which gave me the elevator pitch. Then I sat down and thought up the characters and then set out to figure out where these stories were going. The first story went on and on, sometimes entertaining, sometimes boring. Without landmarks to guide me, I just got lost in the woods. And the second one was much the same except before that could happen, I reread what I had when questioned where the story was going and realized that I was bored. And if I were bored, the reader would be really bored. So, I gave up on it before I got completely lost.

By the time I started working on Walk Amongst the Stars, I was a few steps into architect territory. My imagination sparked from a joke I heard on a podcast, and then I noted it down. Later, when I was deciding what to do next, I mentioned to my dad that I liked the small amount of world building I had done in my roleplaying game; he suggested I use that somehow. Before I could get back to the computer, those two worlds were colliding. Then I had a brainstorming session, and my prewriting came up with most of the cast of characters and, for the first time, the beginning, middle and end of the story. This time when I set out for adventure writing this story, each section of the story expanded like memory foam as I unpacked it.

And finally, I started the second book in the series while my editor was working on my manuscript. For the second book, I did the same thing as before except this time when I was writing up the beginning, middle and end they came to me as an empty container that I filled with scenes that I wanted / needed. I’m not a speedy writer, so I only got a couple of chapters deep into that one before my work came back and I needed to switch tasks. But that’s been my journey from plot gardening to being pretty deep in plot architect territory. It seems like those first two books would have been better if I had been an architect back then. But then again, most writing teachers will tell you that the typical author has a few bad books in them before they really nail it.

‍

Today I have sci-fi on the brain, and I want to talk about something equal parts ridiculous, impractical and awesome... Mechs: Multi-ton, bipedal, vaguely humanoid death machines. So climb into your cockpit, power your systems on and initiate enhanced imaging while we look at some of my favorite mech content from pop culture.

‍

Voltron: Defender of the Universe

This show was new when I was very young, and while I don’t hold it in high regard, it was my introduction to the concept of giant bipedal war machines. In the show, the mech pilots all drive big robotic lions. When all five of them come together, to form a giant mech. A quick web search revealed to me that this show was kitbashed together from two anime and dubbed. Pretty cool.

‍

Return of the Jedi

This is another one I saw very young. (I saw the original trilogy *way* out of order.) Anyway, I didn’t even consider this one until I did a web search to refresh my memory and saw it among the many thumbnail pictures. The AT-ST seems to fit the bill. Bipedal, check. War machine, check, internal pilot(s), check. It’s honestly not that different from some MechWarrior stuff. The AT-AT checks off a lot of the same boxes but has more of a dog-like shape.

‍

Robot Jox

I found this one somewhere before my teen years, and watching these large mechs do stop-motion battle blew me away. Looking at clips of it with 2025 eyes is rough, but at the time I was captivated.

‍

Exosquad

Primarily, Exosquad was about humanity engaged in a civil war with the Neosapians, a slave race they created. But the way they did battle in that show was via E-Frames, which are a kind of light mech with flight capability, even operating in space battles. They also used exosuits, which came in the form of power armor with similar but more stripped-down capabilities. Very cool.

Here are a couple of the old toys I keep on my shelf:

‍

BattleTech

Right on the heels of Exosquad was the BattleTech cartoon. I honestly can’t remember anything about this show except that it was a good ole American cartoon in that it existed to sell you toys. (I had the big mech toy that had a weak point in between its legs that caused the arms to pop off. A valuable lesson for any young man to learn.)

I do remember that the show came up with a good gimmick for the poor-looking 3D animation of the time. They would switch to “enhanced imaging,” which would be simplistic 3D animation, which to me made it look much more like a PC game.

‍

Megaman X

Megaman X isn’t all about mechs, but it featured something that really stuck with me. In one or two levels, you get a mech that you can jump into. And the antagonist, Vile, uses one to fight you as well. I was so taken by this thing that I built one out of Lego with wheels instead of legs and wrote down the instructions.

‍

MechWarrior 2

A friend lent me his copy of MechWarrior 2. At the time I found it a bit difficult, and I don’t think I finished it. The game has a host of systems to make the game much more of an immersive sim, like heat management, customizing your weapon loadout, environmental factors and more.

Just look at this intro. Very cool.

‍

Metal Gear Solid

The entire plot of MGS is that a terrorist force has a mech called Metal Gear Rex, which has nuclear capabilities. Thus, your mission is to find and disable it. When you finally encounter it, you can only beat it with the help of a crazed cyborg and tons of missiles.

‍

Gurren Lagann

I found this anime on Sci-Fi channel’s Ani-Monday block of animation. It has a cheesy kind of coolness to it and a power creep that is amazing. The main character finds an old hidden mech he mistakes for a mining machine at first but finds out it has the ability to lock onto other mechs and multiply their combined power. By the end of the show, the mech is operating at cosmic levels of power.

‍

Sucker Punch

Again, mecha isn’t the focus of this movie. I really liked it, but it seems like a very divisive movie. Anyway, during one section, they are dropped into a sort of steampunk WW1. One character hops into the mech depicted below and provides cover for her allies. Very cool.

‍

Pacific Rim

I love this movie, just wow. It features kaiju versus mech combat throughout the movie. I rewatch this one anytime I stumble upon it. It was this movie that inspired me to make my own roleplaying game Mech VS Monster, or MVM for short, years ago. A project I abandoned but kept the world building I had done. World building you can see in my upcoming book Walk Amongst the Stars. (it’s also not about mechs)

‍

Titanfall

I ultimately didn’t play Titanfall 1 very much, but the concept of the game was amazing. Do battle as a footsoldier until your mech is ready, then call it down from low orbit and hop in to deliver a whole other caliber of mayhem, or keep going on foot and let the mech autopilot do the heavy lifting.

While I liked Titanfall, it was really Titanfall 2 that really did it for me. They kind of perfected their formula, and I played the game as much as I could. Unfortunately, it never got that popular, and I couldn’t really recruit any of my friends to play it. Oh what I wouldn’t give for a Titanfall 3 with a single-player campaign somewhere on par with the second game.

‍

If your favorite isn’t here, I probably didn’t see that one. Plus, the list is based on my recollections, so I probably forgot something. Also, while I was digging through the web, I noticed a lot of debate about what exactly qualifies as an exosuit, power armor, mech and more. I’m sure I’ve cheesed off some fellow internet nerds, but do me a favor and put those complaints up your butt.

‍

‍