Tag: twine

On the Dangers and Merits of Sequels: Or a Post in Post-Haste

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

This post is late. Actually, I’ve had to redo this post at least two or three times already in that I had no idea what exactly I wanted to write about. In fact, I wasn’t sure I was even going to write about anything.

It’s been those kinds of days.

Usually I have some posts in reserve–as I’ve probably mentioned before–or I get one done the very day of Monday or Thursday. In fact, I think some of the few times I’ve been late with an entry have been on special occasions such as holidays: you know, like New Years. This was not New Years: at least I really hope not.

I have been busy. I recently finished writing an article for Sequart which I plan to send to them with some associated images once it gets a look over. I actually got all fancy and annotated it: doing some of the very academic things I swore off because of how tedious and infuriating they can become. Still, it’s kind of like creating a formulaic ritual around your words: either keeping the forces of skepticism out, or binding them inside the circle.

My analogy of academics as formulaic magic aside, I’m pleased with how it has turned out so far and I look forward to showcasing it: one way or another. I’m also now brainstorming more elements for the plot of my Secret Project: though there are some details–both practical and otherwise–that I have to get before I can go forward. I am also working on a short story and doing research for that. In addition, I have had to reread some of my Twine rough draft notes so that I can eventually go back to working on that lovely monstrosity. I almost gave up on it because it really has been a while, but my plan involves finishing one or two “chapters” and then work on one “chapter” that I can experiment with Twine proper. This one chapter will be an excerpt for people to read and play through: or a standalone piece of game writing. I think focusing on this one part captures the spirit of what I want to talk about and will be a good example of what I want to do. So there is that.

As for the rest of it … I guess I can sum it up like this. Sometimes an event in life is like a film. And even if that film becomes “a downer,” it can still be a very good and detailed work of art: something complete in and of itself. Despite the highs and the lows, that film is unique and it has a happy ending: in that it actually ends. Unfortunately, in most cases a film interests people so much that a sequel is created and most sequels tend to be shoddy and derivative shadows of their predecessors. The story should have just been ended while it still had some dignity. But there is another phenomenon to consider: that of trilogies. While some trilogies are degenerations of that first movie, more often than not it is the second film that serves as a bridge to that much more effective and satisfying end story.

So the way I see it, right now my life is The Empire Strikes Back–a very good sequel–and maybe, just maybe I can get to the place where I can blow up AT-ST chicken walkers with teddy-bear Ewoks.

I have quite a few things to look forward to and not the least of which being next week, on Tuesday, when I finally get to meet Neil Fucking Gaiman. Anyway, that’s it for tonight. I’m glad that I got to end this on a more positive note and I will see you all later.

Take care.

Looking Outward

What I’ve Been Up To and Where This is Going

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 2 Comments

It’s been some time since I’ve taken a step back and talked about what has been going on with my creative projects and myself. And while I’m glad I actually had the opportunity to post up some actual fiction here for a change, this has been long past time.

The more the game changes, the more it stays the same: both figuratively and literally. Let me start with the practical matters first. I need a job. That’s pretty much it. I need to find a job and do some volunteering that can help me get more contacts. The good news–aside from the fact that my worker is the first person to ever get a Mythic Bios business card–is that my social assistance program that I’ve been on for a while is actually giving me a little more in the way of concrete advice.

For instance, I have some websites now that seem to tailor more to the kinds of things I do or that I’m interested in. There was at least one job looking for a potential creative writing teacher: which would be a strange role for me given how I have been–and I am still–the student for so long. But that is one avenue. Another possibility that was given to me is that perhaps I can join a newspaper and help create or add to a column that matches with my “Geek” interests. This would be a major boon because I would have something out there in print, get more of my stuff out there, and potentially even get paid for it. I won’t lie: getting paid would be very nice at this point.

On the other hand, I am now motivated to really and truly start asking questions. What I mean is that even if I can’t get a job at one place or another, I can ask “interview” questions to someone about what it is that they do, what I should expect, what I would need to focus on with regards to my resume, and if they know anyone who is looking for anyone. I can ask questions. And I suspect there will be some business card trading. All of this is a focus that I have been fighting to keep clear as time has gone on.

I won’t lie to you. A part of me is scared: scared that I won’t find anything and that my help will run out. But there is another part of me that is also concerned that if I do get a job, it will me take away from the very Projects that I need to get to where I want to go: that my energy and my equilibrium will be so drained after practical work that I won’t want to do anything more. Of course I know a lot of that is utterly ridiculous given that I know what I can do and what I love the most.

Also, I need a change of pace. I need to make a new routine and schedule that will allow me to get out of my house, wake up earlier and have more time to myself and even get more opportunities to work with other people and explore again. It is exciting, even as it is utterly terrifying in a lot of ways. I have a lot of stuff I need to overcome and, in my way and in this past while, I have been endeavouring to do so.

The fact of the matter is this: in order to shape the life that I want and grow and maintain the relationships that I need, it is imperative that I reach my full potential: or as much of it as I can. And oh god is it terrifying to fight that anxiety, but invigorating to also realize that I have so much to actually look forward to.

And I do have things to look forward to. First, I am going to be getting Neil Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane soon. I look forward to finding it in, or near, my mailbox. It’s the first Neil novel in ages and I am going to enjoy it. I know that I will. Also, for the first and last time, and if all goes according to plan I am going to be seeing Neil personally–along with countless fellow geeks and fans–in Toronto itself: at the Danforth Music Hall. It is his last signing tour for the foreseeable future.

I had to go through some hoops: cancelling an Amazon order to get a Chapters-Indigo order so that I’ll have a proof of purchase and thus be allowed to have that book signed. This tour is also not a free one and it has cost $31. I know that bothers some people and deters them from going. But there was also something else that made me hesitate initially. That fear again. I’ve looked forward, so much, to meeting Neil but at the same time it scares me. It scares me because meeting the person who pretty much helped reshape my writing style in a very paradigmatic way is kind of intimidating. He’s not going to be the writer behind the narrative of his novels and Blog, or the tweeter of his Twitter, or the man in some of the videos I see online. He is going to be an actual human being–which he is–sitting for a long bloody time at a table or something signing books.

And I know I probably won’t sound as eloquent talking to him briefly as there would probably not be that much time. Okay. Fine. I’m going to be a fan-boy. Are you happy now? Neil is the closest thing to a hero that I have and this is his last signing tour. And it makes me sad even as I feel something kind of fitting about how the first time I meet him like this will be the last in a while.

The fact is, I just hope that when I do get my chance to meet him that I can just say to him, “I am really glad I finally got to meet you.”

Now, that aside, let me go into some of my creative matters. I have been insanely busy. I have been working on my Twine novel. Novels are fucking intimating. When you make a novel, you make sure to have an outline of plot and character, or you will go crazy. Also, as you’ve probably heard before, you cannot write each novel in the exact same way. I outlined to you what beginning this Twine Project has been like, and it has more or less continued the exact same way. I am still writing it all out by hand. I have decided all of my creative projects worth making need to have that “automatic first-draft” experience of being ink on paper before being typed into another draft.

But this Project … I set out to expand on the details of all the plot-branches in relative order: from upper all the way to the lower tiers. I have finished about six of the places I want the player-reader to go to and there are about nine or ten more places left that I need to expand on. Also, I did something different: I decided to write the happy ending before anything else. It is the closest thing to a utopia that I have made, and I am not sure that anyone is going to get to it.

Sometimes when I look at what I’m making, I sometimes feel like it is getting too long and what I’m planning may be too exact. .I wonder how many people would see this Twine, play some of it and then click away as they lose their both patience and their interest. Sometimes I wonder why I’m doing it. The content is unorthodox and sometimes controversial and I just wonder if people will like it, hate it, or simply not care. I am not doing it for money or fame. And I haven’t even toggled with Twine yet beyond watching some video tutorials and sometimes I think to myself: why am I working on this thankless thing? What is the bloody point?

And then I remember: I want to work with games and having something like this would be good to add to my portfolio. But more than that, it is something I have to do for me and finishing it will help me grow as a creator.

Which brings me to the last part of this Blog entry. In addition to this Twine Project, I’m going to undertake something else. And it is going to be big. And, when I say it is big, I am not exaggerating. This is going to be big. This totally took me by surprise. And I didn’t even see it coming. But now that I know it is here … I don’t know what will happen with it, or if I will succeed but I can’t–in good conscience–turn this possibility down. Sometimes I think that some things all happen at the same time for a reason, or at the very least they make for a good motivational story.

I’m actually not sure if I can get away with this. I will say, right now, that it will be the basis of–or will become–a novel because it has to be. You have to understand: I have gotten so used to writing short stories and vignettes–which have their own set of intrinsic challenges–that sometimes I can’t even begin to conceive of writing a novel on a professional level. It is daunting. It will take time and energy and, like I said, I can’t turn this prospect down.

I won’t.

If it succeeds, even to a point, my routines will change. If it doesn’t, they will still change. I can never just do things simply. And if it even goes further …

Anyway, I was wondering what I was going to write here today on this Blog and here it is. A whole lot of very daunting challenges and busy days and the realization that I need to parcel out my time. It feels like summer: in so many different ways right now. I also intend to keep up this Blog and let you all know what’s going on: as much as I can.

It never ceases to amaze me to see how many new Followers I keep getting and how many people are starting to read my Blog and its multifarious branches of content. I am definitely going to keep you posted on what is going on with this last Great Challenge in particular. In the meantime, thank you for Following me and I expect to see you again sometime soon. Take care and good night.

The Heavy Weight of an Unwoven Twine

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 3 Comments

I’m writing late to state that I finally started working on my Twine game in earnest.

It was a long time coming and it is a long time going. This particular odyssey began in the wintertime when I finished reading Anna Anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters and I felt this burning urge to create my own game. Yes. The urge is that bad and it’s something that neither medical science nor organized religion can cure. No, my only bet after that is embracing the spiritual practice known as my creativity and delving into a place I know fondly as “What the Fuck.”

“What the Fuck” and I go way back: so much so that I usually use it for punctuated emphasis. But here it has become its own pronoun. Its own self.

So first off, I do have to say though that when you start to make a Choose Your Own Adventure Game of any kind–on paper or electronically–you begin to realize that you will have a lot of work ahead of you.

The first issue was figuring out what kind of story I wanted to tell. I mean, the fact of the matter for me is that I more or less know what I am going to say. It is the details that are challenging. It is not so much what I am going to say, it is how I am going to say it.

I do have a few things in my favour already however.

The main thing is that I know that there will be alternate branches and pathways in this story: and this aesthetic will determine the narrative structure. I won’t leave it at that, though, because I know how entirely boring talking about structures can sound. I actually started working on the idea of this game months ago: specifically writing the different worlds and places that I planned for “you”–the player–to visit and interact with. I typed up said Notes in the Draft section of my gmail account and then printed them out: to which I started writing extra places and notes on the margins.

All of the above has been the easy part. Now I am going to tell you the rest of my experience so far in fulfilling this promise–this challenge–to myself.

After I finished my notes on planes and worlds that embodied some key concepts that really stick my head, it occurred to me that this sucker had neither a title to its name, nor a name to its title. Pick one. ;P You might think that, in the initial stages that I was in, this would be nothing but in actually it is everything. I mean, sometimes I even have difficulty defining a Blog post I’m working on, so you can only imagine what this this like.

A title to a work summarizes and focuses everything that you are trying to say in a clear way that gives the reader, or in this case the player-reader, a sense of your own slant: your own vision. So for a while, I had nothing. I realized that I couldn’t flesh out what I had if I had nothing. Then, to make things even more messed up, I had parallel game ideas start to manifest at the same time: each vying for control over my Notes and trying to unify with one dominating over the others. It is an internal struggle that still threatens to manifest even at this time.

I’m not finished yet. So in addition to not being able to find a name to unify these warring idea-states, I also realized that I didn’t know what my narrative perspective was going to be. Quite simply, you know that second-person “You” pronoun? Yes. You. I’m talking about you. I was stuck between making “you” neutral in a futile attempt to make the illusion of a one size fits all, or a “you” that was more specific and had particular experiences that you, as the person and not the player-reader, do not necessarily have.

This was the state of creation at that time. I left it for a while and then, one day, I was sitting at my parents’ computer and I remembered a place: a particular realm that I wanted to make. So far, I gave my game idea a lot of working titles and names. “Hell” was at least part of one of these.

I was thinking to myself, not for the first time, that I am better at creating hell than I am at heaven. And then I thought to myself, “Matthew: how would you make a utopia?” A perfect world … I mean, we all know here that there is no such thing: at least not on the human plane. But I started thinking about what the closest thing to a utopia there was that I could get behind: something hard but something to work at.

Then I thought of a word I hadn’t remembered in a while. I wrote it down on a pre-scribbled piece of notepad paper in front of me: one of many that tend to form around me in my hazardous capacity as a writer with ideas. And it was then that this idea for a world or a state of being became part of the title for my game.

Hell still remains. You can thank my year-long reading of Paradise Lost for that and my own twisted mind. But I had something else now. I had a much clearer goal and something to work towards. I realized it was always there: I just had to name the bloody thing. Anyway, I still had some issues starting this because the ideas were still not recognizing the title that wanted to unify them into its twisted weird Twine narrative empire. They were still fighting.

So I did something else.

I did what I call now a “work-around.” I sat down and wrote out a list of books and other media that I could relate to. I imagined them as places or references that I could get the reader to relate to: making the outline of a ground that we might have in common. Then I went to sleep. The next day, I began working on the introduction to the game. Actually, that is a lie. It was the second introduction. I wrote the first introduction a while ago before I came up with the working title. It … got my point across, but it was too heavy-handed, kind of contrived and full of jargon. Still, it had some good points and some of those things will have a place in this version of what I am making now. Actually, I am making one world where you can choose to go that has Jargoning in it.

But I wrote the second introduction which hopefully sets the mood for the exploration and struggle that is about to happen. I made that and finished creating the Jargoning World.

And that is when the second level of difficulties have reared their heads.

You see, I am already feeling that this second introduction will potentially have to be rewritten. There is so much that I have to say. But I am also hoping that I can use another place to expand on it. If not, well, hopefully I will have enough of the writing done at that point to revise the beginning accordingly: Time Lord style. I’m also writing a lot of notes on a lot of the margins of this work. Bear in mind: I am writing this all down on note paper before typing it out. Think of this, all of this, as my first draft.

I am in the next part of this Project before I realized that I really needed a Travel Chart linking all of my worlds together: and where you can travel from where. So I did that, somewhat messily, and I know that will change as well: especially since I forgot a place to add already. :p I began to realize that all of these places that my game interrelate in ways I didn’t consider and it is mutating into a writhing nervous system that I need to keep growing and keeping track of.

Then I added another element that I want for the Ending and I am hoping that the Twine software–of which I have not really experimented with–will accommodate me. Yes, I did say that: though the tutorials make the overview look simple and I have played Twine games before I have not even experimented with Twine yet.

So this is the State of Chaos. And it also tells you something about me as well. I originally wanted to make a straightforward game that was, albeit, epic. Then I wanted to narrow it down into something more personalized and accept it as an early and not necessarily refined experiment. Now I realize I might well be writing a Twine novel.

I can never do anything simply. Ever. It tells you a lot about me.

I both love and hate it when this happens. I’m almost kind of … afraid. Because that is a lot of effort and it can take a lot out of me: something I know from experience.So far I’ve only worked on short stories, vignettes, and even some poetry. I have not worked on an epic work in a while and it can be terrifying: especially at the stage in my life right now. Even as it can be glorious.

It also helped, and didn’t help, that I played some awesome games these past couple of days and realized that I might be out of my depth, and even should I finish all of this–and I intend to because I feel like I really do have something to say–I don’t know if I will be making another one. It might be a one-off. And here I start to question if anyone would even bother to play it, or if I should be spending my time trying to find something that will “pay off” for me: whatever that is.

In the end though, I think my major hurdle is how personal this game is to me and I can’t not make it. So there it is. A whole post with vague details about an unmade Twine game with massive emphasis on creative process and no pictures to say that it is happening.

And despite and because of all this, I am still excited to be doing it. I will keep you all posted as this world continues to unfold. Until another time.