Marie Brennan gives her thoughts on the writer at play, talking about how her experiences with role-playing games, of the dice-rolling variety, have helped her improve as a writer. She says this is because those games force her to think on her feet, adapt to quick changes in a situation, and constantly try to find solutions to an immediate problem for whatever character she is role-playing.
Now I’ve never had much experience with the dice side of games, but I have had quite a bit of involvement with various computer role-playing games. Some might argue for a wide gulf between these two, but I believe that, in at least a small way, playing a wide range of games, even on the computer, has clued me in to a few important elements I can translate to my writing.
Mainly, I’ve come to recognize that the most satisfying games are the ones where my emotions get involved. Where I am forced to choose between sacrificing characters that I have come to enjoy, who have true personality and don’t just come from the usual warrior/wizard/thief cut-outs. If it has a depth of story to it is going to far out-match any other game that is solely based on whiz-bang graphics. Finding that same emotional attachment in a novel or short story is just as critical.
Also, a story is often more satisfying when it goes in directions not dictated by the clever plot, but the characters. Their personal choices are more important than the “coolness” of the world around them, or the snazziness of the magic they might wield. The gaming community has come to recognize this as they have been offering more and more games with branching choices and logic, letting the player determine what path they’ll take to get to the end, and even providing numerous endings based on the player’s choices.
It reminds me of the choose-your-own-adventure books, and I wonder if those will ever return in an adult format that might give the reader some unique control over how the plot plays out. Who knows? With the continuing growth in popularity of the eBook, it isn’t illogical to think that someday an author might write a virtual novel that has different paths and endings the reader can choose as they flip through the pages.
Would you want that much control over a story you hadn’t written? Could you see that becoming a popular form of future entertainment?
I see that smile.
Interesting post! I agree that there’s some great storytelling in games.
Those choose-your-own-adventure books never appealed to me because every time you get to a choice, you have to jump out of the narrative and find the right page. I found that annoying, plus, while you’re reading, you have no choices, so it seems jarring to abruptly be able to make a decision about what’s going to happen next.
I think in a game, where you’re making choices all along without leaving the narrative, it’s much more natural and enjoyable to have multiple endings.
You might be correct, however, that in an eBook format, a choose-your-own-adventure style might work better. The choice would be much less jarring simply because the reader wouldn’t have to stop to find the right page. They could just make the choice and the eReader would do the rest.
And then, of course, there were those little dead ends where your character either died or made some other dumb decision that ended the book on chapter two. With computer games, there’s always the built-in extra lives or reloading the saved game. I wonder how they’d add that kind of dynamic to a book. Though, it could make it like having several novels in one, with two or three branching storylines, some with bad endings as well as the good ones.