luckykaa

I recently finished The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness.

The premise is that in a world where heroes exist, and supernatural events are an every day occurrence, most people just want to live their day to day lives. In the background we have an alien race wanting to take over, but the prince falling in love with one of the chosen ones but that's just what's happening in the background. The actual story is a slice of life about a group of ordinary kids in their final year of school, their dysfunctional parents and the rest of the things that are going on in an ordinary life. The supernatural story is irrelevant (and actually really hokey).

I really enjoyed it! But this is not about a review. It's about a fairly simply fact that a lot of writers seems to miss. We don't actually give a damn about the end of the world. We care about the people it will affect.

A world ending, or universe ending plot is just a MacGuffin. It's not important. In Titanic, it's not really important that the ship sinks. We could replace that with any disaster, as long as there's a possibility of class warfare and peril. Star Wars it doesn't matter so much that the Death Star needs to be destroyed so much as as Luke is the one to destroy it. We want to see the hero beat the odds. We want to people to win.

Far too many stories seem to be about upping the ante, and then fixate on that. Discovery season 4 was about something threatening the galaxy. The Force Awakens had an even bigger Death Star. The Rise of Skywalker upped the ante again with a fleet of planet destroyers, but they fixated on them and they weren't what's interesting. We don't have a a connection to what's at risk. People loved the recent Superman movie. Why? Because it's about the people. Superman says it himself. He's flawed and makes mistakes.

What I don't understand is this; this is not a revelation! This is some pretty basic writing advice that anyone with an interest in writing will tell you. Make characters that people care about. Yet these are professional writers and they seem to think that what we want is bigger MacGuffins. The thing any writing guide will tell you not to focus on. So what's happening?

Are the story decisions being made by the money men? Maybe. Whoever is doing this has lost touch. Don't tell us about the world ending because unless we're invested in the people who just live there, who cares?

It's often been asked "are videogames art"

It seems an odd question because the answer is very obviously "yes". Art requires creativity. Games require creativity. Art demands an audience. Games demand an audience. Art evokes emotion. Games evoke emotion. Gamers have been treating games as an artform for as long as I can remember. Reviewers went into detail about the components of the games. The Last Of Us was converted to a crttically acclaimed TV series virtually unchanged. By any test that matters, games are art.

Outside of gaming there are a lot of outdated notions of what games are. For a lot of non gamers, the term "video game" conjures an immpression of something like Mario, or perhaps a first person shooter. Of course these still qualify as art. Even if you strip away the interactive elements, you have a plot, you have music, and a visual component. The interactivity adds an entirely new element, and the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Doom were iconic examples of the medium.

However games have never been limited to twitch based action games. Even way back in 1975, we had Adventure, or Colossal Cave Adventure - the first text adventure. Games were in their infancy but we already had a game with a clear plot. Here you're an treasure hunter exploring a cave system. It wasn't long before the concept was expanded with Zork, giving a definite story with descriptive text showing us the world we're experiencing.

These later evolved into the modern role playing video game. These games take the player into a fully realised world. Here we see detailed worldbuilding and complex interwoven storylines. This gives a platform to discuss complex moral issues; see the issue from both sides and make a choices balancing our views of justice, morality, and often practicality. The issues to deal with are elements on the way to solving the major crisis threatening the world. Is it justifiable to sacrifice one innocent person in order to save millions? Do we let a brutal criminal escape justice for the stability of a kingdom? Not only do we have to consider these choices, we actually have to make them. No other artform can be so personal.

If we head away from the mainstream we see a burgeoning indie scene. Many of these address more real concerns. Papers, Please puts you in the role of an bureaucratic official in a 1980's communist dictatorship. Some people are desperate to get in. Perhaps you want to be kind, and you let them in, but mistakes like these result in fines. You have a family who need food and heating. Perhaps you feel we should follow the rules as written. That is a choice you can make. Of course there are opportunities for making some side income by breaking the rules.

Games tackle complex social issues such as environmentalism, loss, even cancer. Unlike other artforms we're usually put directly into the situation rather than simply watching others suffer.

Even without plot. In fact without most of the elements of other artforms, games can be a thing of beauty. Mini metro simply requires you to build a public transport system. The trains are rectangles. The stations are geometric shapes. The passengers are smaller geometric shapes. Conceptually this is almost childish. Yet the game provides a relaxing, almost zen like experience. Dorf Romantik requires connecting forests and villages together to earn points. The result is a massive nation, and even the lose condition results in a beautiful landscape ful of forests, rivers and railways.

Games contain not only the elements that make other artforms work. they add interactivity. In other mediums, interactivity is avant-garde. An element of post modernism. In games it's fundamental to the experience.

So games are art. Those who say otherwise - they're simply wrong. It doesn't even matter that they're wrong. Those of us who now the medium can enjoy it for what it is.

The Nanowrimo time of year is coming up. I plan to do a text adventure.

Basic design philosophy: There should be more than one way to achieve things. And you should never have to repeat the game. A puzzle when solved remains solved. Having to solve it again just involves lots of tedious typing. Whether that means there are no death events, or jsut a regular autosave.

I quite like the idea of using first person rather than the more typical second person. I don't really think second person works as well as it should. A lot of old adventures were a bit confused over this ("You look through the eyepiece and... I see nothing special"), but even if they get their narrative voice consistent, it can be frustrating. If you get a message saying you can't do something it removes free will, and breaks the illusion. If a third party refuses to do something then it just adds a layer of petulance to the character.

Ideally I want to avoid blockages entirely. They're frustrating and not interesting. Failures should be interesting. A simple way of doing this is something like the babelfish puzzle in the HHGTTG, where the babel fish flies out of the vending machine. You can stop than it, but then it goes down a drain... Things carry on like that. And this is near the start of the game. It's way too frustrating, as is the game in general, but it's a good puzzle in principle.

Locks are dull. Find a key to unlock is not an interesting puzzle. It's also a frustrating blockage. A better solution is "soft locks". The Legend Of Zelda series does these all the time. There are several locations that you can't get to, or are even really aware of until you get a certain toy. For example, in Twilight Princess, there are areas with quicksand. You can run through short sections. At a later point, you get a hover spinner, and that allows you to cross larger areas of quicksand, and follow tracks along walls.

Inform7 allows other characters to have abilities of their own. You can order them to do things. You can interact in all sorts of ways. I like this idea. I really want to add a flirt mechanic. No idea how to make that work.

The other thing I want to not have is puzzles that have no discernable purpose. Beneath a Steel Sky has a puzzle that simply allows you into a building. There's no reason to want to go into the building, except that you're prevented from going in. Getting in achieves nothing. You acquire no equipment and learn almost nothing. You just need to get in to trigger the next plot point; which has nothing to do with getting into the building.

Similarly bad is meaningless choices. If you have a choice between two doors, there should be some reason to pick one door over the other. Perhaps there's a clue somewhere. Ideally this sort of puzzle should be avoided entirely though. The best choices are ones with no right answer. For example, do you help an accused criminal? If so you get a criminal record. But the accused criminal might help you later.

So that's some basic rules.

What else do good adventure games (text and point and click and anything else) do?

Crossposts: https://luckykaa.livejournal.com/630216.html

I've been looking at text adventure scripting systems recently. It appears that most games are written using Inform, or TADS. Inform is interesting. It uses a natural language approach. So a program looks something like this:

The Warehouse is a room. A box is a closed openable container inside The Warehouse. instead of opening the box, say "It's taped shut"

Which is great. Another plus is the IDE. It has a tile for developing, and another tile for Documentation of running the game; and also provides some tools to tell you everything that's defined in the game. The tutorial goes through things at a steady pace, and has some helpful examples; with IDE integration; so the examples can be copied to the main page with just a click. The natural language system understands a lot of concepts. For example I can say "if going into the ballroom for the third time...", "a bottle is a type of container. A bottle is usually opaque" It doesn't always work as expected. For example, if I write:

inside the warehouse is a box and a cat.

things work fine.If, on the other hand, I say:

inside the warehouse is a container called the box and an animal called a cat.

we get a container called "the box and an animal called a cat." The other problem is that the documentation is limited. There is a tutorial, and a "cookbook", but no reference manual. I want to know if the verb "cut" exists, and what it does by default. I'd also like a list of the basic properties and rules. This doesn't seem to exist. TADS is a much more programmer oriented language. Looks a little more like this:

hallway: Room 'Hallway' "This hall is pretty bare, but there are exits to west and south. " south = startRoom west = study ;

So perfectly readable. Might be worth switching.

Downside I see is that the IDE isn't as good for learners. I don't have the screen real-estate for a separate help window. I could always use my tablet as a help screen. Doesn't allow copy-pasting though. Also wondering if it has the ease and flexibility. Might give it a go but I feel I should at least get to the end of the inform tutorials.

Crossposts: http://luckykaa.livejournal.com/625291.html

Nano's starting again soon. Although they haven't wiped the database yet.

I've tried this every year since 2007, with mixed success (lose, win, win, lose, lose, win, lose). Last couple of times it was kinda stressful though and I didn't really have a lot of fun. I also have absolutely no idea what I want to do this time. I have no stories that I'm desperate to tell.

Don't seem to be doing a lot of creative stuff recently. Maybe I should do this just to give my imagination a bit of a kickstart.

But what should I write? Should I perhaps have a stab at the backwards story (Memento, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind style)? Should I use TVTropes random story generator? Should I just not bother? It was a lot more fun when I had a local community to exchange ideas with. Seems a shame to break my perfect run of attempts, and an attempt with the intention of failing is cheating. If I do that I might as well not bother at all.

Words written: zero

Hi concept: 30 connected stories each approx 1666.67 words long.

Setting: No idea

Genre: No idea.

At least I don't have anything like a social life to et in the way this year.

Maybe I should request prompts.

As ever I need to come up with ideas.

So I'm thinking an erotic sci-fi pirate romantic satire with vampires set in a steampunk universe, against the background of the French civil war, with a conspiracy thriller subplot. Aimed at children. Because I can't think of any way to have it relevant to the few remaining genre lounges on the forums.

Maybe not.

A decent satire or parody would be fun but I seem to have trouble finding a target.

Think Nano's a dead loss. Didn't manage to motivate myself to do any writing this weekend. Now I just can't come up with enough ideas, or spin out the ideas I do have for long enough. Not without completely ripping off actual bond movies, which I don't want to do.

And getting so tired. I'm just not having fun. It's become a chore. I feel grumpy and would rather spend the time doing other stuff. especially when other stuff involving such things as going out and eating sushi with friends or cooking dinner for

estelliane.

So I'll come back to this as and when I feel like it.

Maybe I'll actually try and rough out a plot next year. Roughing it out at the same time as thinking about what's going on is something my one-track mind can't do.

It was a shame to turn down a friend's invitation, but this place is a tip, I have a visitor tomorrow. I seem to spend so much time just keeping this place tidy. I'm not even in a lot of the time. Junk just piles up. And I have the eternal issue of too much junk and too little storage space. I should get rid of some of this stuff.

The problem really comes from those weeks when I have 2 weeks away followed by a busy weekend. I produce a whole load of laundry, have a car full of stuff to clear up, have most likely spent a weekend making stuff that produced a pile of debris. It builds up. So I now have a slightly tidy home, and while by bedroom is still a tip, at least I can see where the floor is. I shall have another attack tomorrow.

Next step is to work out what the hell I should do with my computer setup. I suddenly have too many printers. I should probably retire and dispose of the Deskjet 550C but that seems such a shame. Plus, I have far too much media that only works with the inkjet. Seems a shame to waste it. Ink is getting harder and harder to source though and less and less reliable.

Failed to get any writing done. Maybe I'll bash out a few words later but all I want to do is collapse.

Do I actually bother with Nanowrimo this year?

On one hand, so far I've managed about 3000 words. Ideally I should have managed about 10 times that by now. On the other hand, I can probably easily knock out another 10000 words at the weekend. Do I want to?

I do actually rather like the concept. It's far from original - a blog of a supervillain henchman. Basically Bridget Jones merged with Austin Powers henchmen. It is rather good fun to write but I don't really want to rush it. Plus I'm really a bit short on ideas. There's not a lot new to say with the ditzy blogger or spy tropes.

I've done Nano before. It's a hell of a lot more fun when we have weekly meet up with other earnest strivers. And I can produce a complete novel. And I can find time to actually write outside of Nano. Perhaps I should spend the time actually finishing one of my other stories I've played with. Especially because I quite like one of them.

Must decide whether I want to spend time doing this.

Honestly, I already doubt I'm going to succeed this year. I finally have a concept - somewhat plot-free and story-light, but it's fun.

My first two attempts yesterday just didn't work. I had an idea for a collection of amusing fantastical first dates (sort of a date with a superhero, an alien, a time traveller and so on without any remark on how bizarre it all is) but that ran out of steam. The other one was a concept that's been floating around about pot apocalyptic magicians who know how to use technology. It just seemed to be way too dreary.

So attempt 3 is "Blog of a Henchwoman". Online diary of a young woman entering the male dominated world of evil villainy. No idea why I keep feeling the need for a fed a female main character, but I rather liked the idea of doing it blog style and given a choice between foolish boy and ditzy girl, the ditzy girl just seemed more likely to have a blog.

That Nano icon is getting a little bit old and crusty. I could really do with a new one. Someone did kindly make a "loser" one for us last year, but I don't think I have a copy.

Wondering whether I should try to do it this year. I'm completely without ideas, apart from a bit of fanfic - a rewrite of Star Wars episode 1, 2, and 3. I want to avoid that sort of thing.

I just don't have any stories bouncing around itching to be told. And I do want to finish off a couple of other stories I've been writing, but since I have a this resource of the nano community I feel obliged to make use of it.

Feel free to submit ideas. Random, useful, and stupid are all appreciated. I think I'll disappear and scribble random thoughts down in a notebook.

I've read various explanations and now not only am I still not sure where plot stops and story starts, but now I'm not sure that nobody else knows either. Still, there seems to be a consensus that story is about what happens and plot is all about guiding the story. I feel I'm rubbish at telling a story.

I'm a pretty poor writer. That's not false modesty, but it is a drastic oversimplification. I have had little practice writing. I write so that I can improve. The only way to go from being a poor writer to a good writer is to write. So I write. I create a plot, work out the story and write.

My prose sucks. It's amateurish and unsophisticated, but generally functional. I can live with that for now. I'm quite happy with my plots, and even when a plot goes horribly wrong I can at least understand why. It's simply a case of working out what the problem is what needs to be done to solve it and why the characters will want to solve it, with various complications along the way.

The complications are where it starts to get into story telling territory. Short stories aren't a problem. When I write anything of any length it the story is "stuff happened, then more stuff happened. Then more stuff happened". It feels clumsy. It feels forced. Like some malevolent deity is interfering with my characters. As the malevolent deity, I have to do this. My characters never seem to want to do anything but just sit around waiting for stuff to happen.

So it's a character thing. Or a detailed plotting thing. Or something like that.

No. I just don't have a clue.

Without a good story I'll end up with a series of bullet points and that's where I need to practice.

A very nice little thread on what people hate about fairy tales.

My take on it was the impracticality of basing a relationship of him being brave and her being beautiful, and secondly, the complete disregard a lot of humans have for personal property and even the life of non-humans. Goldilocks broke into the Three Bears' house, stole their porridge and broke the chairs. Jack broke into the giant's house, stole his property and killed the giant. Dorothy kills the first person she meets (okay - that's an accident) but seems completely without remorse since she's apparently a Wicked Witch.

I do like arguing about silly things like that, and it seems others do too.

As for my attempt - I have a feeling I'm going to get bored with it long before the end of the month. I have a murder mystery because it seemed to fit the setting, but I haven't got as far as the murder yet. It's all exposition, which is tedious. Also I want to add a little more drama and urgency and send my Zeppelin into a dangerous situation but I can't think how to arrange that. And I want more dieselpunk trappings. Problem there is that by the 1930's everything was actually pretty modern. We had cars and electricity and labour saving devices, commercial aircraft, international electronic communications...

According to TVTropes, dieselpunk is about vastness. Skyscrapers, Airship, Multinational corporations (already have one of each). Will have to keep that in mind.

Will see how it goes.

The nights are getting shorter, the forums have been cleared, and Nano is about to start again.

I'm not sure what I want to do this year. I'll probably write something. I have plenty of free time in the evenings these days after all. This year will be a little different.

I'm not going to be in Brighton:( Brighton has a fantastic community, mainly because of the awesome Municipal Liaisons (who really are appreciated and put in a hell of a lot of work to make it so awesome). And I know they'll not do it next year so hope that whoever takes on the next one will learn from their example.

But I ramble.

The main thing is I seem to have absolutely no ideas floating about. Nothing seems remotely interesting. I mean I have ideas. I can come up with a dozen or so of them before breakfast. It's just none of them seem to be anything that really leaps out as being interesting to write. The other thing is that I want to do something a bit different this year. Last couple I succeeded with hours to spare. Might even have been a day or so for one of them. I know I can do this. This makes it seem less of a challenge.

And right now I seem to be soo tired I can barely string together an LJ post. Shall have another bash at composing my thoughts when I've slept.

I'm really not sure.

I'm trying to write something every day. Not always succeeding. In addition to that, I have 4 stories on the go.

Nano 2008 - a near future conspiracy thriller about a cybernetic eye.
Nano 2009 - a yarn about a 20th century highwaywoman
The childrens' story I wrote a precursor to Nano 2008 involving an eternally cheerful wizard.
The story I'm writing based on the Steampunky Anchor setting I was working on with

flannelcat.

With the writing for the sake of writing, occasionally I come up with something that I quite like. Sometimes I come up with something extremely tedious. This is all good. It's worth trying different ideas. Some will work, some will fail. Need to be more adventurous.

The Nano 2008 story - had a problem in that it didn't make sense. It was a MacGuffin issue. The MacGuffin has been replaced. The rest of the plot needs to be replaced. Will need to get on that.
Nano 2009 - This one worked. It was also kinda dark and depressing. Should get onto it again at some point. Several people have expressed an interest.
Children's story about a wizard - run out of plot. Will have to get onto it again since I like the character. A character who's always cheerful is great to write for. You can throw so much at them and they don't mind.
Steampunky Anchor story - stalled. I'm trying to write some dialogue. It's now working. It either goes in completely the wrong direction or sounds like blatant exposition. It's that old writers' problem of characters misbehaving. My captain doesn't want to do what I tell him to do. Bastard.

Banana banana banana
Banana banana banana
Banana banana
Banana banana
Banana banana banana

It lacks a title. I think something about bananas might be appropriate.

So the conspiracy... Taken ideas. Expanded, removed bits that don't fit. Ended up with something completely unrecognisable from when I first started. Need to fill in the details.

Person X was assassinated by Conspiracy Group because he was close to revealing their involvement in a terrorist attack. As it turns out the Conspiracy Group were duped into making the attack by Conspiracy Cult who were the nominal victims and managed to use it severely to their advantage, increase their public profile and gain considerable influence in public circles. They have full ownership of a shell company as well as members in most prominent media organisations. As far as this group is aware, the protagonists want to destroy their ~~cult~~ legitimate religion. There's another layer of conspiracy where the upper echelons of this religion want to do something unspeakably evil that I haven't quite worked out yet but may involve genetically targeted bioweapons.

Well, it's a start. I think I might need a red herring conspiracy group as well or something.

Seems I reached a state of writer's block trying to write a scene with some inept foreign aid workers, so I've put that on hiatus.

In the meantime, I'm rewriting last year's nano.

I still need a new Conspiracy MacGuffin. If anyone has cool ideas for a conspiracy for me to ignore, please post here. I had a cool conspiracy involving presidential assassination but that doesn't explain why my (British) characters are interested and I'm not going to relocate them to the US since they're way too British in attitude. And It's set primarily in Bristol which is something that's much more important than a mere McGuffin.

What would make a good international government conspiracy?

Prologue! It's a great idea. Managed 2100 words today just on the train. And it turned out I hadn't actually written a prologue at all. Just a character introduction. So that means I can write a prologue. Hopefully that will be another thousand words or so.

That leaves just 4000 words. I have a couple of ideas kicking about. Hopefully I can get all this done this weekend.

And then I can start editing. Except I'll be editing last year's attempt. I think I'm going to be a bit sick of this one.

Now I just need to work out what to do with the other one. Notes on that

It needs a title.
- It's about a geek, a free runner and some ditzy chick with a cybernetic eye.
I'm going to have to cull at least 60% of the plot. Maybe 90% The remaining 10-40% just needs to be rewritten.
- I had a funky casino section, a fun bit with the three of them tracking someone and a fun bit with them throwing someone off the trail. The rest of it doesn't really work.
- I do like my fashion designer character. I'll have to make sure she stays in there. Many people will perhaps see Edna from The Incredibles in her but that's mainly because I based her off the_smut_fairy (and I'm sure Pixar did too)
- Need more emphasis on the prisoner's dilemma and get that more involved in the plot somehow. It's a theme. It's a good theme.
There's a severe macGuffin issue
- My tech macGuffin (cybernetic eye with lots of storage) is pretty cool.
- The conspiracy macGuffin just doesn't work. I was actually quite fond of the idea of a complex presidential assassination plot but I have no idea why two Brits might be remotely interested. Well, one of them has the hots for the American romance macGuffin but that desn't really provide enough motivation.
- I don't want to set this in the US. I like Bristol. Besides, I don't think I can make it work. I never really have been able to get my head round America's love for their elected officials.
My characters are too capable as a team.
- Honestly, most of the plot development involves splitting them up so they have to deal with problems themselves. One of them is a genius with a photographic memory, the other one is sufficiently athletic that he can manage just about anything physical without breaking suspension of disbelief.

I still have a Mary Sue-esque children's story that I was having fun with as well. A hopelessly positive protagonist just makes me relish throwing plot at him.

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Entries tagged with writing

Stories, and the things that really matter.

Video games as an artform.

NaIFwriMo. musings on text adventures

Text Adventure Time.

Nano or not

Nano day 1

Nano is just around the corner

Nano abandoned at less than the 10

Sisyphus had nothing on me

It was a dark and cliched night

Nano 2011 third time lucky

Nano 2011

Plot and story (and the rest of the ingredients for a story)

More Nano stuff - fairy tales and murders

It's that time again...

How is the writing going?

A Poem

It's all perfectly simple

(no subject)

Soon to start: nanoeditmo 2008