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A Refocus, a Mission Statement, and added functionality
16 years ago
General
I've purposefully paused for the past couple days to reflect on what I've done so far, and how I've done it. And I've thought a bit.
I want to continue down this garden path, but I want to smell the roses as I go. In what I've written so far, I've thought of transformations and then thought of stories that justify them. Overall, I feel unhappy about that.
I've watched the entire run of 'Whose Line is it Anyway,' and I was watching one of the U.S. shows a week ago. In WLIIA, the U.S. version, Drew Carey explains how much the show's points don't matter, by equating it to a real life example. In this one, he said, "WLIIA, where points don't matter, that's right, they're like the plot of a porn movie."
That statement has been rolling around my head the past couple days, and it's reverse. I'm not saying my writing is porn, but I've realized something about my work: I'm writing a choose your own ADVENTURE, with transformation as a focus. But what I've written so far, I see in reflection, is that these are transformations strung together by wisps of fiction.
I'm not out to write stand-alone TFs. I could do those in my sleep. I could label them "Starting shape -> Finishing shape" and call it a day. I don't want that.
I want TFs to be a function of the story as much as the story to be a function of the TF. I want people to care what happens next, and to see the world with fresh eyes.
What does this mean for you, though? You're here to read the story, not to hear about my inner dialogues. It means that not every choice is going to have a direct result in a TF. It means that the choices you make might personalize the story. TFs will still be everywhere. But they will now make sense in terms of the story.
While I'm on a rant about purposes, I want to add this in here: this is not a pornography. I can be cheeky. I can reflect the main character's sexual thoughts. It's a part of human nature - but I'm not going to write in detail about a bunch of people getting their freak on. There are plenty of people on FA that do that already, and have it as a focus. I feel it would be a distraction from the rest of my writing. Sexual activities may occur in the plot - but IF they do, they will always be 'off camera' - between scene changes and such.
As for pure FA, I'm getting smarter with functionality. Before this week, I never even looked at my profile. I had to figure out thumbnails and images and what goes where and how to do things. As I become more knowledgeable, reading and interacting with the story will get a lot easier for people. One of the things I was stupid about was thinking I wouldn't use the journal. I had put the How-To in the first journal and never expected to replace it.
I then realized that to start reading the CYOA I was redirecting people to two different locations before starting. I was also thinking of making 'placebo' submissions just for a place to discuss the CYOA with readers. That's when I smacked myself up the head. Feel free to discuss things in the journal.
That all said, with this renewed focus on stories, I have a bunch of ideas on what to do, and what to write. I have stories to tell. I hope to share them with you.
I want to continue down this garden path, but I want to smell the roses as I go. In what I've written so far, I've thought of transformations and then thought of stories that justify them. Overall, I feel unhappy about that.
I've watched the entire run of 'Whose Line is it Anyway,' and I was watching one of the U.S. shows a week ago. In WLIIA, the U.S. version, Drew Carey explains how much the show's points don't matter, by equating it to a real life example. In this one, he said, "WLIIA, where points don't matter, that's right, they're like the plot of a porn movie."
That statement has been rolling around my head the past couple days, and it's reverse. I'm not saying my writing is porn, but I've realized something about my work: I'm writing a choose your own ADVENTURE, with transformation as a focus. But what I've written so far, I see in reflection, is that these are transformations strung together by wisps of fiction.
I'm not out to write stand-alone TFs. I could do those in my sleep. I could label them "Starting shape -> Finishing shape" and call it a day. I don't want that.
I want TFs to be a function of the story as much as the story to be a function of the TF. I want people to care what happens next, and to see the world with fresh eyes.
What does this mean for you, though? You're here to read the story, not to hear about my inner dialogues. It means that not every choice is going to have a direct result in a TF. It means that the choices you make might personalize the story. TFs will still be everywhere. But they will now make sense in terms of the story.
While I'm on a rant about purposes, I want to add this in here: this is not a pornography. I can be cheeky. I can reflect the main character's sexual thoughts. It's a part of human nature - but I'm not going to write in detail about a bunch of people getting their freak on. There are plenty of people on FA that do that already, and have it as a focus. I feel it would be a distraction from the rest of my writing. Sexual activities may occur in the plot - but IF they do, they will always be 'off camera' - between scene changes and such.
As for pure FA, I'm getting smarter with functionality. Before this week, I never even looked at my profile. I had to figure out thumbnails and images and what goes where and how to do things. As I become more knowledgeable, reading and interacting with the story will get a lot easier for people. One of the things I was stupid about was thinking I wouldn't use the journal. I had put the How-To in the first journal and never expected to replace it.
I then realized that to start reading the CYOA I was redirecting people to two different locations before starting. I was also thinking of making 'placebo' submissions just for a place to discuss the CYOA with readers. That's when I smacked myself up the head. Feel free to discuss things in the journal.
That all said, with this renewed focus on stories, I have a bunch of ideas on what to do, and what to write. I have stories to tell. I hope to share them with you.
Sounds like a good idea, since it seemed like any sort of story would be hard to really get going with the sort of stream of consciousness/scene by scene TFs you began with. It seemed like a dreamscape (which is probably exactly what it is, while the protagonist is in the brain therapy machine) and things just sort of happened whenever and however the world saw fit. But! That's not a bad thing, I liked the randomness of it and the unpredictability. Anyone can write a normal story in a normal world, after all.
I'm not sure if you're planning on restarting or what, but I hope you keep what you have and possibly use them as interesting little starting points for the protagonist's introduction into the world before the story begins properly in each path.. or something like that. You probably know exactly what you'll be doing already.
I'm curious though, will you make some definite dead-end paths, as they always used to? That was always the big difference between the old CYOA books and the websites around now, which allow every path to go on endlessly. With the finite nature of the books, they had to limit it all somehow, and while it seemed like the endings were a bit too numerous sometimes, ending every other choice, one would think that a web-based CYOA should have at least some dead ends.
In any case, I wish you good luck with your new refocusing/ideas/stories. :}===<
Don't get me wrong. The story can stiill be really WTF. But as WTF as our dreams are, most of them tell stories to one degree or another.
I suppose to clarify I should say that I don't want the CYOA to be the WTF train, where the protagonist never, ever comprehends what is going on, really. Take some of the more famous escapist stories: Alice in Wonderland. Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz itself is found out to be a crazy dream (oops... spoiler alert). While I'm not trying to emulate these, they do have a lesson to teach. The background is as important as the foreground.
The story WILL be a stream of consciousness. But humans have always been able to give an answer to every 'why,' even if it doesn't make sense. This is not a normal world, but I want some semblance of cohesion.
Remember that the whole point of the doctors' brain therapy is to improve the patient's cognitive abilities. That's kind of hard when they aren't able to stop and think, though. Think of TFs as new parts of the brain firing up. Think of the story as the rest of the brain reacting to its new uses.
I think you'll see what I'm getting at as I write some of the new stuff.
As for DEAD ENDS, there will be endings. The story will not end because of 'bad choices', though. This isn't The Matrix, and you can't die from a dream. But there will be endings. I'm not going to leave story threads just 'hanging' in dead air. I want to point out that the longest 'full story' in ANY book form CYOA was 26 pages, with 17 choices. And those things had huge font with a small page. Even my short pages equal them in length. To answer your question, though, my stories won't just 'stop dead' and go "knyuck knyuck, restart."