I hate the idea that a writer of fiction has to suffer in order to write well. Somehow, it seems that only comedians are exempt from this rule. It's something about needing a source of conflict, something about "write what you know," something about "show, don't tell," but the whole thing sounds miserable to me. Maybe this is why I haven't finished a short story. I haven't suffered enough.
I suppose pain is an integral part of the writing process. Suffer, come up with a story idea based on that suffering, write some of the story, suffer from writer's block, write some more, forget to save your work and lose most of it, write some more, submit it, get your rejection letters, start over. I don't know if that type of suffering is particularly useful for coming up with new stuff, though. Stories about writers are like films about filmmakers - everybody in the audience knows you had no better ideas than your own life, and your own life is clearly no more interesting than your job. I mean, at least use a metaphor. I train dragons and I'm having a terrible time getting them to listen to me, but once I get a dragon trained to perfection, I can sell him to a famous warrior and make a lot of money. Character growth can be found in the dilemma between training dragons for a love of dragons and training dragons to become as rich as Rowling - I mean as rich as the richest trainer of dragons.
So, the boring pseudo-suffering of a writer's life can be translated to something interesting and whimsical, but there will probably be some realism missing, some details left out. That's why it is useful to watch other people suffer. Talk to strangers. Read people's Facebook statuses. Take the interesting parts from what's wrong with everybody else's lives, and use it to flesh out your character.
This is also where showing instead of telling becomes important, and what makes it so difficult to accomplish if you have seldom had real issues. Suppose you have never felt lonely when you were not alone, and you want to explain it through your story. "She was lonely" won't cut it, I can tell you that now. But if you've never had such a thing happen, and you can't easily see such a thing by watching other people, how will you know what kind of a scene to craft to show the emotion instead? So perhaps some little bit of suffering is important after all, in order to know to place your character in a crowd of people who don't interact with him, or to leave her crying near somebody whose mind is elsewhere - don't you feel a little lonely yourself just envisioning these scenes?
But I have been crazy blessed throughout my life, and I have no desire to bring suffering upon me. What then shall I do? After people-watching, the easiest thing to do is augment one's own little experiences, and pretend they were much more than they actually were. Every bad day feels blown out of proportion while it's happening; you just have to capture that and make it seem real instead of histrionic. Make the causes bigger, but the emotions the same.
So, for all writers who are content or - dare I say it? - happy, be glad in knowing that there are loopholes to the Suffering Rule,
Showing posts with label metawriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metawriting. Show all posts
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Bronze and Interactive Fiction
For a class I am currently taking, we were required to play through a piece of interactive fiction called Bronze, by Emily Short. You can download it here to play through it yourself, though if you don't have Zoom (on Mac/Unix) or Frotz (on Windows), you'll need to download that first in order to play. They are linked on the same page as Bronze. Alternatively, there is a Frotz app for iPhone/iTouch (and possibly other devices) that comes with Bronze, if you prefer a portable version.
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After playing through Emily Short’s Bronze, an interactive fiction take on Beauty and the Beast, and achieving its four endings, I had to go watch Disney’s happy version of the story to cure my daydreams of Bronze’s haunting and vivid twists. The characters, rooms, and objects crafted by Short form a deep and disturbing world, fitted with puzzles that effectively engage the reader and force exploration of the text-based castle.
In this version of the story, the player becomes the protagonist, the nameless Beauty, who is returning from a week-long visit to her troubled sisters and negligent father. It is darker than the usual love story, and is presented in fragments. Examining objects and looking around rooms gives bits of the background between Beauty and the Beast, using Beauty’s memories as a creative way of giving information. A contract book, a room full of castle records, and the personal notes of an enchantress named Lucrezia provide more direct information. Finally, once the player dons Lucrezia’s shoes, the Beast occasionally invades on the protagonist’s thoughts with commentary and further story. These methods of delivery are indirect, elegant, and rewarding - the more the player seeks, the more the player will find.
The built-in puzzles force the player to seek more, and to explore the castle. The first puzzle is simple – locate the Beast. The Beast, however, can appear in one of many of the rooms that are open to the player when the game begins, and will not appear until half have been searched, so that the player is forced to explore. Each further puzzle presented involves a goal, and its sub-goals. To destroy the contract book and free the servants, one must enter the crypt, but a complicated string of tasks is required before the player can bring light into its darkness. Each series of tasks opens more rooms, more of the story, and more possible endings, until one of the four finales is achieved.
Though it is easy to get lost in the story, it is not so easy to get lost in the castle, thanks to a few innovations. The castle has fifty-five rooms, and spans multiple floors, but Short evidently wanted the complexity to enhance the story without furthering the confusion. She included a status bar that shows the name of the current room, how many rooms have been visited, the total number of rooms, the directions the player can go from the current location, and which directions the player has already visited. That makes it easy to walk the castle and keep the compass directions straight. The directions are always stable; if the player leaves a room by going west, going east again will return the player to the original room. Short also included a special “go to” command which, when followed by the name of a room or object that the player has seen, will bring the player directly to that room or object. After all, the protagonist has allegedly lived in the castle for some years; the player is merely drawing on her knowledge.
The protagonist at first appears to be in love with the Beast, which plays on expectation. As the story is revealed, the relationship between the two seems more tenuous. Dialogue plays its part here, when the player is shown old conversations between the characters, when the player finds and wakes the Beast, and when he speaks to the protagonist via the magic shoes. He seems remorseful, and when the protagonist summons the woman who enchanted him, she learns why. All the endings reveal Beauty’s ambivalence regarding the Beast, which is the author’s intent – the only bronze object in the game is the one that viciously destroys the Beast.
The subtlety and complexity of the story, characters, and location of Bronze create a gripping piece of interactive fiction, and the puzzles lead the player through the tale and the castle like an enchantment. I couldn’t put it down until I’d reached every ending.
I fell utterly in love with the piece, or game, if you will. After playing through Bronze, we were required to write reviews about it, and I am offering mine here. Please note that if you want to play though it spoiler-free, you should play it BEFORE you read the following. You don't have to play it at all to read what I have written, of course.
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After playing through Emily Short’s Bronze, an interactive fiction take on Beauty and the Beast, and achieving its four endings, I had to go watch Disney’s happy version of the story to cure my daydreams of Bronze’s haunting and vivid twists. The characters, rooms, and objects crafted by Short form a deep and disturbing world, fitted with puzzles that effectively engage the reader and force exploration of the text-based castle.
In this version of the story, the player becomes the protagonist, the nameless Beauty, who is returning from a week-long visit to her troubled sisters and negligent father. It is darker than the usual love story, and is presented in fragments. Examining objects and looking around rooms gives bits of the background between Beauty and the Beast, using Beauty’s memories as a creative way of giving information. A contract book, a room full of castle records, and the personal notes of an enchantress named Lucrezia provide more direct information. Finally, once the player dons Lucrezia’s shoes, the Beast occasionally invades on the protagonist’s thoughts with commentary and further story. These methods of delivery are indirect, elegant, and rewarding - the more the player seeks, the more the player will find.
The built-in puzzles force the player to seek more, and to explore the castle. The first puzzle is simple – locate the Beast. The Beast, however, can appear in one of many of the rooms that are open to the player when the game begins, and will not appear until half have been searched, so that the player is forced to explore. Each further puzzle presented involves a goal, and its sub-goals. To destroy the contract book and free the servants, one must enter the crypt, but a complicated string of tasks is required before the player can bring light into its darkness. Each series of tasks opens more rooms, more of the story, and more possible endings, until one of the four finales is achieved.
Though it is easy to get lost in the story, it is not so easy to get lost in the castle, thanks to a few innovations. The castle has fifty-five rooms, and spans multiple floors, but Short evidently wanted the complexity to enhance the story without furthering the confusion. She included a status bar that shows the name of the current room, how many rooms have been visited, the total number of rooms, the directions the player can go from the current location, and which directions the player has already visited. That makes it easy to walk the castle and keep the compass directions straight. The directions are always stable; if the player leaves a room by going west, going east again will return the player to the original room. Short also included a special “go to” command which, when followed by the name of a room or object that the player has seen, will bring the player directly to that room or object. After all, the protagonist has allegedly lived in the castle for some years; the player is merely drawing on her knowledge.
The protagonist at first appears to be in love with the Beast, which plays on expectation. As the story is revealed, the relationship between the two seems more tenuous. Dialogue plays its part here, when the player is shown old conversations between the characters, when the player finds and wakes the Beast, and when he speaks to the protagonist via the magic shoes. He seems remorseful, and when the protagonist summons the woman who enchanted him, she learns why. All the endings reveal Beauty’s ambivalence regarding the Beast, which is the author’s intent – the only bronze object in the game is the one that viciously destroys the Beast.
The subtlety and complexity of the story, characters, and location of Bronze create a gripping piece of interactive fiction, and the puzzles lead the player through the tale and the castle like an enchantment. I couldn’t put it down until I’d reached every ending.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
On Suspense and Solid Stories
"Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me." --the narrator, Death, in The Book Thief
The book I am currently reading, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, has a particular quality that I adore. Not only does it not rely on suspense, it deliberately flouts it. It tells you that something will happen, and then it deals with the details of it later. My first taste of a book that did this was Slaughterhouse Five, which completely throws suspense and linear story out the window. Among other things, the narrator keeps pointing out that someone named Edgar Derby eventually gets shot to pieces. The first time it is mentioned I found it almost appalling, but it soon became meaningless, almost humorous. Vonnegut regularly refers to him as "poor old Edgar Derby" as if the only thing that matters about his character is the fact that he eventually gets shot to death, and yet, as if the death hardly matters at all.
The book I am currently reading, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, has a particular quality that I adore. Not only does it not rely on suspense, it deliberately flouts it. It tells you that something will happen, and then it deals with the details of it later. My first taste of a book that did this was Slaughterhouse Five, which completely throws suspense and linear story out the window. Among other things, the narrator keeps pointing out that someone named Edgar Derby eventually gets shot to pieces. The first time it is mentioned I found it almost appalling, but it soon became meaningless, almost humorous. Vonnegut regularly refers to him as "poor old Edgar Derby" as if the only thing that matters about his character is the fact that he eventually gets shot to death, and yet, as if the death hardly matters at all.
People generally like to avoid spoilers. I understand this to a degree. I have seen Fight Club, after all. The first time you see it, if you don't already know the twist, you see the story one way and receive a tremendous surprise. The second time you see it, you see the exact same story in a completely different way. It is a story well-crafted. However, there are plenty of cases where the so-called "spoilers" are essentially worthless, in that they don't change the preceding story at all. Consider my experience reading Harry Potter.
I wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter when I was younger. By the time I was in high school and the sixth book was out, my parents didn't care anymore and I was finally curious enough to try the series. I was still in the first chapter of the first book when my dear friend Casey said, "Oh, you're reading Harry Potter? In the sixth book, Snape kills Dumbledore." I didn't know who either of these people were, and by the time I did, it still didn't affect the story preceding the event. Poor old Dumbledore. But it didn't make a difference that I knew it was coming.
One of my main troubles with stories that rely on suspense, or that rely on the audience not knowing something, is that I like to re-read books and re-watch movies. If I like a story, I want to experience it again. Yet, if the foundation of the story is the element not known, then I can't possibly enjoy it a second time, unless I am a profoundly forgetful person.
Therefore, what I seek is the story well-crafted. I seek a story with good characters and with jokes that still make me giggle when I hear them for the thirtieth time. I seek a story with layers and small details, things I might not catch the first, second, or fourteenth time. I seek a story that takes place somewhere I'd like to go and can't, like Narnia or Middle Earth. I seek a story that tells the truth through fiction. I seek a film that is beautiful or a book that evokes beautiful images. I seek the stories that still come to mind even when I haven't read or watched them in ages. I seek solid stories with a solid foundation.
Of course, there are many things besides suspense that can destroy a story, for me. If it is told poorly, if most of the characters are awful, or if I can't relate to the premise, I likely won't be interested. But the issue of suspense, of the story that focuses on the end instead of "the machinations that wheel us there," is an issue that can bring any otherwise-decent story to its knees.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
On Good Stories
A good story, as we generally understand it, has certain aspects that make it good. A plot that has its share of suspense, but does not rely on it. Characters who are real to us, and have depth. A setting that we can imagine well, and rules of the setting that the story continually follows--that is, if a bird of prey cannot fire while cloaked, there better be a lot of fuss from Captain Kirk if he sees such an event occur, as well as a good reason for the physical rules of that world changing.
But a story that someone from the land of Narnia would consider "good" is a very different thing from what our current culture considers a "good" story. What type of story does our culture crave? We crave stories about people. Not necessarily valiant people, or honorable people, or good people who have done amazing things. We'll take stories of foolish people doing mundane things, or mundane people doing foolish things. We have a People magazine that is all about well-known people doing things like getting married, having children, going to the store, wearing clothes, and expressing opinions. We gossip about the people we know. If we have nothing in common with someone else, it is easiest to fall back on discussing some mutual friend. We like sitcoms and soap operas, shows and movies about other people having normal lives that somehow seem more humorous or more dramatic than ours.
Maybe you, personally, do not appreciate these types of stories, and for that I give you an approving slap on the back. You are perhaps a higher-minded person than I, for even as I begin to condemn our fixation on the lives of other people, I find myself enjoying Everybody Loves Raymond or Seinfeld or, until fairly recently, a neat bit of gossip about someone in my social sphere. And, why? To what end?
What about stories of Valor, and Honor, and Virtue? The stories of battles and heroes that I ignored as a child are the stories I wish I knew now. In the Chronicles of Narnia, when they sit around telling stories, they speak of great wars and great peace-times and great Kings and great Queens. They speak of Aslan, the representation of Jesus in that world. They tell true and virtuous stories, and they seek truth over all. Are the truths within Narnia better, or more interesting, than the truths on this Earth? I don't suppose they are.
And so, I leave you with this thought, often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though I don't suppose anyone knows for sure who said it: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." It is an incomplete thought, but the spirit of the thought is very much worth considering.
P.S. There was a fair amount of drama and the like even as far back as Bible-times. Consider Genesis chapter 30, or really, the entire story of Rachel, Leah, and Jacob. Yet, the stories were told for a higher purpose than to entertain by the lives of other people. This drama, and all dramas within the Bible, are told for the sake of showing the Glory of God.
But a story that someone from the land of Narnia would consider "good" is a very different thing from what our current culture considers a "good" story. What type of story does our culture crave? We crave stories about people. Not necessarily valiant people, or honorable people, or good people who have done amazing things. We'll take stories of foolish people doing mundane things, or mundane people doing foolish things. We have a People magazine that is all about well-known people doing things like getting married, having children, going to the store, wearing clothes, and expressing opinions. We gossip about the people we know. If we have nothing in common with someone else, it is easiest to fall back on discussing some mutual friend. We like sitcoms and soap operas, shows and movies about other people having normal lives that somehow seem more humorous or more dramatic than ours.
Maybe you, personally, do not appreciate these types of stories, and for that I give you an approving slap on the back. You are perhaps a higher-minded person than I, for even as I begin to condemn our fixation on the lives of other people, I find myself enjoying Everybody Loves Raymond or Seinfeld or, until fairly recently, a neat bit of gossip about someone in my social sphere. And, why? To what end?
What about stories of Valor, and Honor, and Virtue? The stories of battles and heroes that I ignored as a child are the stories I wish I knew now. In the Chronicles of Narnia, when they sit around telling stories, they speak of great wars and great peace-times and great Kings and great Queens. They speak of Aslan, the representation of Jesus in that world. They tell true and virtuous stories, and they seek truth over all. Are the truths within Narnia better, or more interesting, than the truths on this Earth? I don't suppose they are.
And so, I leave you with this thought, often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though I don't suppose anyone knows for sure who said it: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." It is an incomplete thought, but the spirit of the thought is very much worth considering.
P.S. There was a fair amount of drama and the like even as far back as Bible-times. Consider Genesis chapter 30, or really, the entire story of Rachel, Leah, and Jacob. Yet, the stories were told for a higher purpose than to entertain by the lives of other people. This drama, and all dramas within the Bible, are told for the sake of showing the Glory of God.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
On the Fiction of C. S. Lewis
If you know me decently well, you know I am a big fan of C. S. Lewis. Most folks just seem to know him for The Chronicles of Narnia, but he has written far more than just that. I've read most of his fiction (including the Chronicles, his Space Trilogy, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and Till We Have Faces), and hope to delve into his letters and his apologetics at a later date.
Sometimes I meet people who understand this love, completely. Other times, I meet people who don't understand at all. So here, I shall try to explain.
I suppose the first things I love about his writings are the most basic, obvious sorts of things. His descriptions are so full, so vivid, that I may as well be watching it on film, or walking about the book myself. The characters have character. The plot has suspense without relying on it, so that you may read the books over and over again. The good humans have their human flaws, and the bad ones are perfectly despicable.
This despicable quality is the next thing that I so appreciate in his books. Lewis did not write the sort of bad guys that anyone wants to emulate. They are foolish and horrid and at times perfectly disgusting, and almost always quite pitiable. You want them gone, to be sure, for they pose a real danger, and yet you pity them and their miserable states. In his life, Lewis wrote each work purely for the side of good, and he allowed no mistake, no question in that.
So of course, I very much enjoy the goodness of his writings. I like the holiness of the heavenly characters. I like the freshness of Narnia, of Perelandra and Malacandra, of the Heaven in The Great Divorce. I like the portraits he paints of virtuous people, like Psyche and Dr. Ransom. When he wrote these things, he had a clear distinction in his mind between what is good and what is unholy, and every book is a portrait, a verbal portrait, of that distinction. As you read it, he works it into your mind, weaving this tapestry without you noticing it is being woven until it is almost complete.
Perhaps the thing I like best about his works is this portrait-painting. Where the Bible is straightforward in giving you a class on goodness, listing things like the Fruit of the Spirit and the sorts of actions that God despises, Lewis shows these things instead of telling them. He hints at it, meanders through its gardens and leads you by the hand, as you look about you in wonder and realize, "This is what they meant." The Psalms and the prophets proclaim the glory of God, and Lewis, with the verbal paintbrush that God handed him, shows the glory of God to us small, childlike, foolish people, who forget to see the wonder in the setting sun, and who never before could see the things the Psalmists could see.
The Holy Bible is the only true and complete Book of Truth, and Christ is the only One we should strive to emulate. With that warning in mind, I bid you to try the fiction, or the letters, or the apologetics of C. S. Lewis. It is well worth the time.
Sometimes I meet people who understand this love, completely. Other times, I meet people who don't understand at all. So here, I shall try to explain.
I suppose the first things I love about his writings are the most basic, obvious sorts of things. His descriptions are so full, so vivid, that I may as well be watching it on film, or walking about the book myself. The characters have character. The plot has suspense without relying on it, so that you may read the books over and over again. The good humans have their human flaws, and the bad ones are perfectly despicable.
This despicable quality is the next thing that I so appreciate in his books. Lewis did not write the sort of bad guys that anyone wants to emulate. They are foolish and horrid and at times perfectly disgusting, and almost always quite pitiable. You want them gone, to be sure, for they pose a real danger, and yet you pity them and their miserable states. In his life, Lewis wrote each work purely for the side of good, and he allowed no mistake, no question in that.
So of course, I very much enjoy the goodness of his writings. I like the holiness of the heavenly characters. I like the freshness of Narnia, of Perelandra and Malacandra, of the Heaven in The Great Divorce. I like the portraits he paints of virtuous people, like Psyche and Dr. Ransom. When he wrote these things, he had a clear distinction in his mind between what is good and what is unholy, and every book is a portrait, a verbal portrait, of that distinction. As you read it, he works it into your mind, weaving this tapestry without you noticing it is being woven until it is almost complete.
Perhaps the thing I like best about his works is this portrait-painting. Where the Bible is straightforward in giving you a class on goodness, listing things like the Fruit of the Spirit and the sorts of actions that God despises, Lewis shows these things instead of telling them. He hints at it, meanders through its gardens and leads you by the hand, as you look about you in wonder and realize, "This is what they meant." The Psalms and the prophets proclaim the glory of God, and Lewis, with the verbal paintbrush that God handed him, shows the glory of God to us small, childlike, foolish people, who forget to see the wonder in the setting sun, and who never before could see the things the Psalmists could see.
The Holy Bible is the only true and complete Book of Truth, and Christ is the only One we should strive to emulate. With that warning in mind, I bid you to try the fiction, or the letters, or the apologetics of C. S. Lewis. It is well worth the time.
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