Freak Thoughts

Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, talks about his new book, Anathem. He has some interesting things to say about writers doing readings and about the process of writing. I saw him do a reading and talk in Chicago for the release of this book, and it was interesting. Here, as in the talk I attended, he has some interesting insight into the question of writing routines that we were talking about on the blog earlier in the semester.

Enjoy, and if you feel inclined, comment.

Speaking of zombies. . .

The first poem that he reads has them. But more important is the central idea that he talks about: the importance of writing and stories.

He’s got a very good point about the state of the short story, a creature that is now mainly housed in literary (college) journals and one or two archaic and monolithic magazines that are too stubborn (thankfully) to die. It’s not only sad, but strictly at odds with the trend in reading these days. Short and interesting should sell well, one would think.

This one is a long one, but if you haven’t heard Gaimen speak, at least hit play. You’ll probably find yourself watching the entire thing.

The interviewer in this one sort of fumbles through the questions, at one point even confusing himself.

I like how Palahniuk defines what a good story is. It’s somehow organic, and I can see that, even with the stories we tell one another without pens or paper or computer screens or blogs. At the same time, he is speaking to the point about marketability and even, on a larger scale, universality.

He also outlines what a typical writing workshop is, outside academia–essentially a small party a few friends who love to write read each other’s stuff and comment on it. There’s really nothing that can compare to it, after the formal classroom setting is no longer available. It keeps you writing, and it provides a sounding board of honest people interested in craft.

Here’s a short clip of some of the advice Kurt Vonnegut has on short fiction.

With all the novel ideas that he had, like so many other writers, Vonngut insists that the center of any work is character. It’s true in every story that I have read, too. I can be impressed by a plot twist, fooled by a bit of literary slight-of-hand or admire a writer’s command of a subject. However, it’s the characters that we keep coming back to read about again. That’s true whether we like them or just like to hate them.

Guillermo del Toro has the first book of  The Strain trilogy hitting on June 2, and it seems that it comes with a trailer, courtesy of Harper-Collins. The trailer shows some dark visuals, typical of del Toro’s style, but the book reviews that are starting to appear on the Net aren’t real promising. His discussion of the inspiration for the novel was pretty underwhelming, too. And the first book (and presumably the others) is co-written, never a good sign. I’ve been a fan of his films, and the interview at Wired had me thinking a lot about the future of narrative. This trilogy is far less promising.

I read a recent interview that Wired did with Guillermo del Toro, in which he talked about his vision of the future of what he calls the “hybrid narrative.” Basically, it’s a sort of gamer’s dream about the way that stories will be told, and one that legitimizes what is now seen as a mere form of genre entertainment. del Toro points toward the current video game companies in ways that are analogous to the sort of creatively stifling ways that Hollywood monopolizes the stories that make it to the big screen. True enough; once corporate powers gain control of the market of stories, very few good things can happen outside the formulaic money-making versions of stories that have the potential for much more depth than the merely marketable.

However, the legitimacy or literary merit of “hybrid narratives” will have very little to do with Sony or Blizzard producing them.

The literary “hybrid” won’t be born until the genre embraces that thing which separates it from the other forms of fiction that we are used to. There’s a parallel in the birth of film and its maturation as an area of artistic study. In its infancy, film was another way to present books. It wasn’t until it was able to separate itself from the written word, not until the creators of film realized that it was the visual aspect that separated it from traditional narrative that it could be seriously studied as “film.”

Video games have a distinction, too. It’s something that works horribly in print, for the most part.

Second person point of view.

Video games have struggled with things like long cut scenes (wannabe movie moments) or, frankly, bad cliche writing as back story. They have lifted from each of the genres of narrative from which they were born in a way that has not served them well, if the goal is to create a “literary” gaming genre. This is due only in part to the companies that produce the games, employing people with less than admirable skills in storytelling–people who do, however, know that sex and violence will sell titles. Having good writers and graphic artists with creative freedom will help, but it isn’t until the gaming storyteller fully embraces the idea of interactivity on every level that the genre will be recognized for its literary merits as a “hybrid narrative.”

Are there any models out there? Not fully developed. But there are some functions within some of the existing games.

Factioning. Probably one of the less cultivated Western features of the video game world (more developed in the East). Any interactive narrative will require the “player/reader” develop a “relationship” with the characters of the story. That relationship will shape not only the central story, but allow for the creation of personalized tangential narratives for the “player/reader.” Everquest employed faction, but there it was a form of punishment for killing the wrong thing at some point in the player character’s history. Rebuilding faction was a repetitive time sink, where the player could spend days carrying plate after plate of muffins between two NPCs in the game in order to get another NPC to talk to him or her. In more sophisticated narratives, factioning is something that will be central to the way the story unfolds, and making it entertaining is going to be crucial.

AI. The current games are sophisticated enough to develop stories in a way that can be not only convincing but thoroughly entertaining. The countless NPC’s and combat mobs in any number of games are proof enough that there isn’t much development required in this area.

The Writing requires far more subtlety than anything yet published. And it has got to shift away from the mere fantastic. It has to mature beyond the quest model that every game currently adheres to. While these patterns work well with the kind of interactivity that is inherent in gaming, using them exclusively will forever link the “hybrid” to the Fantasy genre of fiction.

User Created Content is a staple of games like Second Life, and has only been explored in other, more financially successful MMOs and games to a limited degree. World of Warcraft and other MMOs offer player housing and tradeskills by which players can select from a small degree of customization. Games like Spore and the Sims also offer a degree of customization. However, some sort or fusion between the story/quest-driven games that lack freedom and the storyless but complete creative freedom of Second Life would serve the type of story that can born of the video game well.

Payment is, of course, a concern. It’s on this level that del Toro is absolutely right in his critique of the current companies creating these new narratives. They offer a subscription model for MMOs, where players demand new content constantly, as the “beat” the game. However, it’s possible to use this method for narratives that aren’t simply hack and slash or raid-based. Novels used to be serialized, after all. And plenty of television shows tell stories that run for years with the same group of writers.

The Collaborative Nature of such narratives is one of the things that will keep the stories alive and malleable over long periods of time.

The potential is amazing, in either single person narratives or massive reader experiences.

Still toying with some of the site look and the links that I will display.

I will provide some content (stories, etc) on separate pages as I can. I would rather provide the downloads themselves, once published, rather than scraps of pieces I am working on.

I will have more time in a few weeks, when the semester is over and grades are turned in.

I’ve never blogged. I guess the idea of public journaling has always seemed a little bit foreboding to me. Who cares what I have to say about things, anyway? Right? But over the past few months, I have been thinking more and more that venues such as these can be a great way to voice concerns about what we’re interested in–the “we” being all of those people who have made time to write down their thoughts on everything from tech to the environment to politics to romance. The more I think about it, the less I lean toward “who cares what I have to say” and the more I think, “who cares whether anyone does.”

FreakThoughts is an experiment. I hope that this blog will begin to take some sort of shape from my interests, however mutated that shape may be. As a fiction writer and teacher, my first inclination was to write scraps and throw in some pedagogical bits on writing. However, I don’t see much of that creeping onto this blog. Instead, I want to use it to respond to the non-fiction interests that I have, those things that will hopefully congeal into interesting creatures and make their way into my writing.

I don’t expect any sort of readership. I expect to be able to log onto a virtual notepad from anywhere I may be and respond to whatever I may be reading, seeing, or doing in a way that it spontaneous, yet can be accessed at a later point.

If anyone does read this blog and has comments, please feel free to contact me with them.