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.

Callisto - excerpt

This one’s going to take me a little while to finish, so to keep myself motivated, I thought I’d share an excerpt. I’ll probably keep sharing more as I work on it.

I can see a faint crease in their brow — annoyance. “It didn’t work,” they say. “Will you help me or not?”

On the whole, people usually want to help other people. Even if they don’t want to help someone, it can be kinda hard to turn down a direct request. So that “will you help me or not?” in response to a perfectly reasonable question doesn’t come off like a desperate plea – it sounds like bullying.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” I tell them. Because I hate bullies, I don’t even suggest other detectives they could try. “But I appreciate your consideration.”

Before I can stand to lead them out the door, they sigh. “Fine.” They look at me, and I notice for the first time how perfectly grey their eyes are. There’s no hint of color — no cool blues, no warmer greens, nothing.

“Please get this ring from Dr. Avery Woodmont,” they tell me. And I have to. I don’t want to, but I don’t got a choice. They smile at me. “I’ll thank you when the task is complete.”

one thing at a time

I try to do too many things at once. Not even just in a multi-tasking-myth way, but in a project way. I am trying to, all at once:

• Write a short interactive story on a quasi-weekly basis (not going so well)
• Make/modify a CSS stylesheet for my Twine stories (also not going so well)
• Complete Codecademy’s JavaScript course (not going at all)
• Read more books (going splendidly)
• Do more crafts (not too shabby)

This is the problem when you enjoy having done things more than the actual process of doing them. Reading is inherently fun for me, and crafts are easy to do while watching cheesy old space dramas with my roommate (Andromeda may not be that old, but it sure is cheesy). Writing is fun, but more time and attention intensive. The coding…well, if there’s a mirror universe me who codes for a living, I doubt she lives very well.

This is all a very long-winded way of writing myself into putting the JavaScript course on hold for awhile. I do think knowing JavaScript would help me with Twine, but I don’t have to know JavaScript to do what I want to do.

I should probably put the stylesheet attempts on hold too. The Simple Box stylesheet from Glorious Trainwrecks suits my mini-stories well enough. I’ll need different stylesheets for my larger projects, but I’m not going to be ready to seriously work on them for awhile, so that’s okay.

So there we go. Read more books, do more crafts, and focus on writing one short interactive story a we– let’s say month. One interactive story a month. That’s more manageable.

Now let me get back to work on this story about a butch femme fatale and “please” & “thank you” as literally magic words…

An Assassin Needs Lunch

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A vampire assassin is thinking about lunch when a client walks in.

Background

This is a variation on a MadLib — you get to make a bunch of choices at the beginning, and then read the story that is created from your input. It was a really interesting format for me to write…even if that’s kind of hard to tell, because the story and the writing style are really rough. But this is a practice piece.

The point of this exercise for me was two-fold: first, learn how to make an attractive character creation page. I only partially succeeded, but I learned a lot in the process. The second was how to have a lot of complicated variables interact without completely falling apart. Originally it was going to be even more complicated, with the option to choose from numerous gender identities and sexual preferences. That turned into a hot mess really quickly, so I ended up cutting out a bunch. The game now randomizes the PC’s gender identity (between male and female, with apologies to non-binary players), and you can choose between being pansexual, being asexual, or having the game choose for you.

The main thing I’ve taken away from this whole experience is that I need to do it a lot more before I can work on a longer story with complex variables.

Also, JavaScript is finnicky as fuck. Man.

Brains are weird

This is a slight variation on what I usually say, which is “Brains are dumb.” And this post has me wondering whether I have the courage to go all-out with the meta puns, or if that would just come off as pretentious. I worry a lot about seeming stilted & faked. (I worry about a lot of things. Brains are dumb.)

Thoughts about my mind that have been on my mind —

listening

I was talking with a guy yesterday about audio books, and how I have trouble getting into them because, when picking the book back up (so to speak), I have trouble remembering the story thus far. I also have a tendency to space out while listening to things, which is really annoying because audio books would be the perfect way to get more books in my life.

And I don’t really understand why that’s the case, other than “brains are weird.” Which is not a particularly satisfying explanation.

learning

Today I was thinking about the JavaScript course I’m taking at Code Academy and how I’m struggling with it. I’m not confused by anything — they’re taking me through in nice discrete chunks, each lesson one block on top of another. But I’m finding it kind of frustrating because I don’t have an image of the bigger pictures. It’s like being walked through how to build a house without being shown what a house looks like.

Part of that frustration might just be it’s been awhile since I’ve taken any kind of actual lessons. The little I know of CSS mainly comes from finding a big chunk of complicated code and then mucking about going “Okay. So what does this line do?”

And part of it is just I need to understand the big picture before I can retain the details. At the same time, it’s hard to present someone with the big picture when they don’t already know at least some of the details, as I’ve discovered while prepping for my very first tabletop roleplaying game as GM. I keep finding details about the rules I need to explain before the larger picture of the game makes sense, but details without larger context are difficult to remember. (I have until Friday to work it out.)

overload

I’m also trying to get into Twitter again. (You can find me @monsterfictions !) It’s strange and I don’t know how successful I’ll be at it… I honestly don’t remember how to make friends outside of games.

I tried using TweetDeck as my Twitter client, because I love the idea of sorting my Twitter feed into categories. A column for friends! A column for the apps I use! A column of celebrities! On metaphorical paper, it sounds like a great way to cut down on information overload, because you don’t have to look at everything at once.

In practice, I found it even more overwhelming. I could separate things into lists, but I couldn’t hide the lists I didn’t want to look at right now. Instead of being organized, my feed felt cluttered and in my face. I’m only following 17 people.

I’m now giving BirdDrop a try. It just sits in my menu bar and lets me peek at my timeline when I click on it. Which is all I really need from a Twitter app (even though the ability to actually filter content would be really awesome).

that dress

Just looking at that dress makes my anxiety spike. It’s a reminder that everybody sees the world differently, in a very literal way. But it also freaks me the fuck out.

People can look at the same object and see it completely differently.

How can we trust our senses if that’s true? How do you verify anything? How can an objective reality exist? Does an objective reality exist?

Yes, I’m reading way too much into one badly light and badly composed photograph. Like I said, brains are weird.

Jayla Gets a Pet

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Jayla the vampire is on vacation and bored, so she decides to get a dog. And then zombies get involved. (CW: Foul language)

Background

This is a super short CYOA based on some prompts my friends gave me. It was originally intended to be a test of writing in systems other than Twine…and about a third of the way through writing it, I found that learning how to get the other systems to do what I wanted them to do was too much effort, so I finished the whole thing in Twine.