Interview notes 3 (January 2023)

Interview notes (January 2023)

What I do with the Gnomon Chronicles

"Explain to the readers what it is you do with the Gnomon Chronicles. Just give a lowdown of what it is"

An idea will come to me, for example the title of an imaginary movie, say two real movies, the source movies, mashed together.

Usually the first thing I do is create folders on my computer desktop: one for the imaginary movie, one for each of the real movies (if I don't already have them on file). I download links and images for the real movies. I mashup images from the two movies to make my new movie poster. I do much of my work in GIMP; occasionally I use an online editor for simple mashups.

Now that I have a title and poster for my imaginary movie, I may upload the image to the Gnomon Chronicles wiki, and create a new wiki page with the article, title, and a description of the movie.

Or, I might wait to make the wiki page, and first post my fictional movie to Twitter and other social media. I like to accompany the post with links to YouTube showing trailers for, or scenes from the two source movies. Then some time later I will make the wiki page, in which case I make another Twitter post, this time including the link to the wiki page.

When I create the wiki page, I cross-reference it to one or more (usually two, to start) other Chronicles. The images and a brief description for the other Chronicles appear in the "In the News" section of each wiki page. The idea here is that the reader is presented with thumbnail images of other Chronicles: bright shiny objects to follow. My hope is that readers who enjoy this kind of thing will click from page to page to page, one Chronicle after another.

There is one more step to a complete Chronicle: making it appear on the wiki home page at least once a year (typically three times a years). The home page is made up of a series of date-coded templates, one for each day of the year. So for example there are 365 templates for "Better Than News", 365 for "Beyond Plausible", and so on. The home page displays the templates for that day. I'll add the new movie post with brief description to (say) three "Better Than News" templates, spaced roughly four months apart. I like three: not to often, but more often than once a year.

The point is for the home page of the wiki to have fresh material every day. As long as I keep adding new material, the page you see today will be different from the page you saw a year ago. This allows me to publish fresh material while making good use of old material.

That's about it. That's a Chronicle: at least, a movie mashup Chronicle. I do a lot of movie mashups, but there are other kinds as well: essays, photographs, drawings, nonfiction articles, and so on. These will have wiki pages, and cross-references to other Chronicles, but not always images.