too much ambition, too little fuel

My goal was to make a blog post every Saturday. Didn’t happen last week because cat shenanigans & Dad-sitting; won’t happen this week because tabletop gaming convention (excitement!!!), and probably won’t happen next week because Maryland Sheep & Wool.

It’s very strange, having a social life. I spent 26 years without much of one.

But I do want to blog, and post short pieces of fiction (interactive or not). All the ideas I come up with tend to be longer than I can write, code, & post in a weekend, though. I feel like I haven’t really hit on my thing yet. The thing I can be passionate and articulate about, that I love enough to love publicly without being afraid that I don’t know enough about it to fit in.

Something will click eventually. Just got to keep throwing different kinds of paint at the wall.

In the meantime, an excerpt from my current project:

I don’t realize something is wrong until I notice that we’d somehow skipped nightfall. It’d been late afternoon when I’d parked at the base of the mountain. School hadn’t even let out until at least three. But judging from the sun, right now it can’t be later than 10 AM. It should be 6 P.M..

The next thing I notice is a city where my car should be.

a different way to story

Instead of working on Callisto, I spent this morning outlining a new work. It’s not really a game, but it’s not really a story either — there’s no plot to it. It’s just an exploration of a town. Depending on who you talk to, you see different parts of it.

I had to adopt a different way of thinking in order to do this outline, which I wasn’t expecting.

This is how I normally outline.

You come to a decision point. You pick between two options, and/or you make a decision which either succeeds or fails.

When I started outlining this town exploration this way, it didn’t feel like an exploration. It felt like a story struggling to find a plot.

So instead, I made a very rough map of the town.

And then I filled in the little extra bits that show you different portions.

Because I want time of day to be a factor, I had to make a to-do list in a separate document to make sure that, when I write this, I write all the material I need to cover it.

It was a real challenge for me — and will probably be even more challenging once I get around to actually writing the text and coding it in Twine. But it was also a lot of fun, immersing myself not in a plot that must move forward, but in a place. In a way, it’s like reading Charles de Lint’s Newford series, or the Bordertown anthologies, because they all give you new perspectives on the same location, and it usually doesn’t matter what order you read them in.

We’ll see how much I end up pulling out my hair when I go to actually write this, but I think it’s a method of storytelling I’d like to try again.

sleeping beauty + invisible disorders

Once upon a time, a beautiful princess lived in a beautiful castle with her kind and loving parents, who wanted nothing more than to shelter her from every harm. On the day the princess was born, all the crows shouted “A curse! A curse!”

When she fell ill after the fete celebrating her fifteenth birthday, they executed the cook who had tried to poison her. Every day after, her maid would taste the food before it passed the princess’ lips. When the princess collapsed after the annual hunting party & picnic, the maid was executed as well. The king & queen did not believe in curses. The princess grew thin as a willow, with skin as pale as the moon, and all who saw her felt that she walked as if in a dream.

One day, the princess knelt at the side of her old nurse. The old woman asked how she could serve the young princess, and the princess said: “Teach me how to spin as you do.” The nurse showed her how to work the wheel, minding her to be careful of the spindle. But the princess’ hands were unsteady and she pricked her finger. She fell to the ground and the old nurse cried for help, but none could wake the sleeping princess. Her skin was so cold and pale, it seemed as if she had become a living statue, marble granted the breath of life.

“A curse,” the king & queen cried as they knelt by her bedside. The crows had spoken truly.

nyangoro

Also found a piece of flash fiction I wrote based on a friend’s prompt.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-——-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—–

The orange tabby cat dug its claws into the nearest soft enough surface and yowled its displeasure.

—-—-

“/You’re giving up your seat to your cat?/”

The old man stroked the tabby’s head. The cat trembled anxiously, yet was otherwise frozen in a deluge of sights and sounds and smells. “/Yes./”

The young soldier had been warned that not everyone would evacuate willingly, but the old man’s matter-of-factness still flummoxed her. “/Sir, radiation will reach critical levels in just a few hours. You need to leave now./”

The old man shook his head. “/I am an old man. But Nyangoro is young. She deserves a chance to live./”

To the soldier, sending a cat into space seemed like animal cruelty, but she kept that thought to herself.

“/Life isn’t only for the young/,” she told him. “/The Kashiki-dokoro will need the wisdom of its elders./” She wondered if she sounded as ridiculous as she felt.

But for a moment, she thought she won, as the old man did nor said nothing. Then he kissed the cat’s forehead and pressed the terrified creature into her arms.

“/Forgive my selfishness./” In that moment, the soldier understood his fear and the comfortable certainty of death. And she knew she neither had the time nor the words to help him. She could only take the cat.

—-—-

The orange tabby did not care for space, nor was it shy in letting the humans around it know. The young soldier cursed her weakness and the old man’s sentimentality. What kind of life was this for a cat? Cats didn’t like change. Up was supposed to be up and down was supposed to be down; Newton’s law of gravity was, in fact, the Law of Nyangoro.

Someone even wrote that on the door of the medbay with black eyeliner, along with other laws such as “Breakfast is at 7 am without fail” and “The litterbox must always be blessed after cleaning.”

The cat’s dour personality made it surprisingly popular. Instagram didn’t really work without an Internet connection, but the kids could still take pictures with their phones, and pictures of Nyangoro managed to go viral, if somewhat more slowly. Memes were made, of course. Nyangoro eloquently expressed dissatisfaction with everything from cafeteria food to nosy neighbors to the decisions of the Provisional Diet.

Once the soldier saw Nyangoro sitting in a young boy’s lap as an older man showed him the best way to pet the cat, and she was struck by the Buddha-like serenity in its expression. Nyangoro was more than just the station pet or station mascot; the cat did more than just bring the residents together.

Then the child tugged on a mat and Nyangoro jumped and howled in rage so exaggerated, she couldn’t help laughing.

a little scrap of a beginning

Work is quiet, so I’m taking a few minutes to clean up my computer files, and I stumbled across the first few paragraphs of last year’s NaNoWriMo. Life lesson: writing an alien invasion story set in Regency Britain revolving around a black protagonist is a terrible idea when you’re American, white, and have only read a few Jane Austen novels.

It went nowhere. It went nowhere really fast. But I still like how it began. Maybe someday I’ll do something with it again, when I can take the time to do the research and get it right.

It is a truth universally knowledged that the world ended in 1814. Britain had thought Napoleon her greatest threat, but his armies were no match for the alien forces that came to the world. They had weapons that seemed to shoot light; weapons that could dissolve a man within a breath. Great Britain; which had always prided itself on its mighty military and thought itself to be the chosen of God, was forced to its knees by powers beyond mortal comprehension.

As is often the case with these so called “universal truths”, it was not universally acknowledged. In many ways, the New World order looked just like the old world order. The only difference this time was Britain was the one being subjugated, not the one subjugating. In fact, if there is any truth which can be construed as universal, it is this: all colonizing forces are the same. They come; they want; they take; they expect you to be grateful for it.

Phyllis Huntersworth believed in God. She believed in God because of eight years old she saw how the British colonized her home country; and because at 16 years old she saw how the aliens colonized her new home, and they looked no different. Only God could make two species so very different act just the same.

Why is it always the price of butter which suffered? She hurried home from market on the late fall evening. She had gone to get ingredients for her daughter’s fourth birthday dinner, but the cost of butter had risen by almost 15 shillings. Substituting with cream was completely out of the question; she could only hope that milk would do.

when do you give up?

I’ve hit a wall while working on Callisto. Except it’s not really a wall, because I can think of things to write and put words on the page, so to speak — I’m just bored with it. I don’t know if it’s a case of terminal boredom, or if it’s a case of sickness + pet death = disinterest in everything.

At what point do you decide something isn’t working for you and rip it up?

I’ve never been precious with my work. One of the nicest things a college professor said to me was he admired my willingness to rip my stories up and not shy away from heavy revisions. (This was immediately followed by “But sometimes I think you rip it up a little too enthusiastically.”)

But I think I’ve gotten precious with this. I outlined this particular story to practice a game mechanic I want to use in a longer piece. It’s a mechanic that involves strategizing, assessing your resources and making cost/benefit decisions. Fairly standard for games, I think, but not something I’ve done in the few pieces I’ve written so far. And I think… I think I don’t like this mechanic.

When you’re writing a story where the player/reader has to strategize, you have to make certain kinds of decision-points, and these decision-points have to have pros and cons. I want to get past the guard: I could spend some of my limited amount of money bribing her, or I could try to charm her.. The player/reader then has to weigh the cost/benefit of each option (bribery guarantees success but diminishes ability to bribe later; charm has a risk of failure).

As a player, I don’t really enjoy strategizing. It’s one of the reasons I love games like Fiasco — there’s an element of strategy if you’re into that sort of thing, but it’s not a necessary part of the gameplay.

In Jayla Gets a Pet, there’s no strategy to the choices. You pick what feels right for you and are swept along in the story. My very first CYOA story, which I haven’t published because it’s a major project I’m still working on, is the same way. The purpose of the choices isn’t to figure out how to get to the good end — it’s to make the main character more like you, so that you’re reading a story where you can see yourself. It’s not so much interactive fiction as reflective fiction.

And that’s what I like. I like (as a player/reader) having a subtle influence on the story. I like to make decisions but not have them interrupt the flow of the story. I don’t want to stop reading so I can figure out the best move to make.

So the question becomes — do I power through the boredom for the sake of practicing this mechanic, which I don’t like in general but which would be a critical part of a story I want to write eventually? Or do I rip it up and try something new?

Do I go with my natural disinclination for strategy and my innate tendency to rip things up & try again? Or do I push myself to finish, because it’s good to step out of your comfort zone sometimes?

I wrote this post, thinking I could write myself into making a decision like last week, but I’m still not sure.

Ziggy

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One of our cats died on Tuesday. This is neither a game nor a story, really… more an attempt to process it. It’s going to take awhile.