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A Book is a Book

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A few weeks ago I entered a short essay contest at Backword Books. The Grand Prize was a copy of all eight works on the site. Second prize was a single book to each of eight second-place winners, and the contest rules asked each entrant to include mention of which individual book they might like to receive with their entry.

The book I chose, and the book I won with this entry, was Waiting for Spring by R. J. Keller.

How did I choose which book I was interested in winning? Well, a combination of factors. I read all the summaries, so content was probably the most important filter. Then there was subject matter: I like Maine, and I thought it would be interesting to read something by someone from Maine. Third, the cover interested me, because I like snow and cold. The more snow in my world the better, and if you want to drop -50° F on top of the white stuff, I’m down with that. So barren trees tends in a field of white tends to draw me in.  [ Read more ]

Online Fiction Format

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Two well-thought-out posts from Eli James at Novelr on the formatting of online fiction. Part 1 here, from August; Part 2 here, two days ago.

As noted previously, character blogs in particular and online fiction in general haven’t taken off as I would have thought they might, given that the internet is itself seems a viable new medium. The points Eli raises clearly speak to part of the problem, and I hope to contribute to this issue as well in the near future.

— Mark Barrett

One Person’s List….

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…is another person’s tool:

By winnowing the literature of anthropology, Donald E Brown collected a list of some 200 ‘human universals’. Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate” includes an alphabetical version of the full list, but I think trying to re-sort it in ‘evolutionary’ order should be more instructive:

…

environment, adjustments to
binary cognitive distinctions
pain
likes and dislikes
food preferences
making comparisons

The list goes on like that for hundreds of lines, and on that point alone it deserves notice. But consider the implications here for creators.

If you’re telling a story, any mix of these traits would allow you to develop a convincing society. If you’re working in interactive, figuring out which of these traits you can simulate would give you a subset of useful traits, and a logical way to create machine-controlled races/species.

Too cool.

— Mark Barrett

The Beatles

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I know The Beatles: Rock Band is all the rage, but when was the last time you actually listened to their music? If it’s been a while you should treat yourself , and particularly to their later (post-George Martin) work.

The Beatles aren’t just the historical sum of their hits songs. They’re the origin of an entire way of thinking about and enjoying music that didn’t exist until they came along. Part poetry, part soundscape, part unfettered genius and part storytelling, the studio work of The Beatles ranks as the single most definitive musical advance in my lifetime.

I put it on a par with Cubism, Impressionism, Expressionism, and any other Art-ism you care to mention. It’s that impressive, that important, and that influential, even today.

When I hear I Am The Walrus or A Day In The Life I hear Beck, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, and on and on. And I mean I really hear them: the connection is visceral.

What does this have to do with storytelling in the digital age? Nothing…and everything. Computers and the internet have changed the world forever. Yet Abbey Road still sounds current.

An interesting conundrum.

Update: A week later I’m listening to I Am The Walrus again and it’s just genius. It’s over forty years old and it’s as relevant and good and insane and perfect as anything anyone is doing today. It’s not just holding up. You can’t name a better song. There are no better songs. Goo goo gajoob.

— Mark Barrett

Scott McCloud

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If you don’t know who Scott McCloud is, you should get acquainted. I first learned about him when he became the darling of the interactive industry — primarily on the (considerable) merits of his book, Understanding Comics. Whether you’re into comics or not, or graphic novels, or graphic flash fiction, you should read Understanding Comics.

(I have no idea if graphic flash fiction exists, but if it doesn’t I have to think someone is falling down on the job.)

It’s extremely rare that someone can explain a medium, and particularly so when they can explain it to people outside the medium. Some of McCloud’s conclusions are not universally accepted, but his book is the de facto jumping off point for all discussions these days.

Which brings me to my real point. He has a blog.

— Mark Barrett

A Ghostwriter Speaks

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A few weeks ago I went on a three–post rant against ghostwriting as an industry practice. I didn’t comment much on ghostwriters themselves because a job is a job.

(And we don’t have to wade into sex-trade analogies here, or references to slavery. I’ve been paid to write a lot of stuff that didn’t have my name on it, but there was no lie attached. In the publishing industry, it’s the goal of willful audience deception that perverts the honorable practice of writing for money into a for-profit lie.)

Today I ran across a new blog (via LisaCollierCool) called Ghostwriting Revealed, and it delivers on the premise:

5.Can you really make a living doing that?

Yes.

6.How do you get paid?

That’s the questions I often get next because nobody quite believes me when I say I make a living as a ghostwriter (and I do.) Often, I am paid directly by the author/expert (that would be the person whose name appears in big type on the book cover.) Sometimes, I negotiate for a slice of the royalties, but not always. Generally, the bulk of my payment is made before the book even hits the shelves.

Writer-for-hire agreements are common. Somebody pays you X dollars, you write Y words, they own the copyright when you’re done. There’s nothing wrong with it, or with ghostwriting as a concept.

Everything has a dark side, however, and it seems to me that a job that conspires to profit by paid-for silence probably has more than a few dark alleys. I’ll be interested to see if the blog author addresses the inevitable shenanigans, or the broader ethical issues that are of concern to me.

— Mark Barrett

Nobody Knows Anything

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Yesterday, in another context, I referenced the above famous saying by William Goldman. Today, a perfect example:

“I’m dumbfounded,” Mr. Simon, 82, who has won a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards, said in an interview. “After all these years, I still don’t get how Broadway works or what to make of our culture.”

The NYT article then blithely proceeds to explain how Broadway works, what to make of our culture, and why the abrupt closing of the revival of Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs was essentially inevitable. But only after the fact.

Because Nobody Knows Anything.

— Mark Barrett

Valve, Writers and Success

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Long-time readers know I’ve been harping on this subject for at least six years, but it deserves the harp. One of the more successful and forward-looking game developers over the past decade has been a company called Valve. It’s more recognizable titles include Half-life, Half-life 2 and Portal.

As I noted as recently as September, Valve has had a professional writer on staff throughout its admirable run. My own opinion, as a writer, is that these two things — writer-on-staff and success — are actually related. The interactive industry being what it is, however, this tends to be a minority opinion, and the rationale is always the same: there’s no money for a staff writer. To which I reply: maybe if you had a writer on staff, you’d make more money.

In any case, today Gamasutra put up an interview with Mark Laidlaw (the aforementioned writer) and Eric Wolpaw (a second writer hired by Valve — apparently because the first hire turned out so well). It’s worth a read if you’re trying to break out of the game-design box you’re in. Because good writers know how to do that.

— Mark Barrett

Art, Entertainment, Ethics and Exploitation

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I read an article yesterday (via JurieOnGames) about the supposed difference between game development in China and the West. I’ll deal with the nationalism of the speaker who was featured momentarily, but the article itself did a good job of framing the issues anyone confronts when merging art and commerce. This is particularly true in light of attempts to monetize free content, which is being explored in both the interactive (online gaming) and non-interactive (publishing) markets.

As I noted previously, attempts to emphasize money above all else are ultimately pointless. If you’re in business to make money, yes, you should focus on making money. But saying that money comes before everything else is a literal lie if you are in the entertainment business, because everyone knows it’s a horrendously bad way to make money. Mining zinc is better. Building houses is better, even in today’s market. Making cereal is better.

The article in question focuses on “Zhan Ye, president of GameVision,” who was “speaking at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco on Friday.” In the article, Ye states that a new breed of Chinese developers is building games from the ground up that are focused as much (or more) on monetization as they are on art, entertainment or fun. He paints all Western development (including Western-trained Chinese developers) as failed precisely because monetization is not the primary focus during every step of the production process.

It’s tempting to dismiss Ye’s comments as either uninformed or nationalistic hype. But Ye is genuinely talking about a paradigm shift from creating and selling entertainment on the merits to actively exploiting customers.  [ Read more ]