GETRUNTAH

Never Say Never Again and Again

As a freelance Illustrator still scraping my fingernails to get noticed by the industry, I’ve created a site that includes multiple styles. I had been told all through art school this was a big No-No to feature multiple styles under the same name. I find this rather frustrating, as I’m sure Editors can appreciate diverse styles to fit story needs… right? Is it better to have one solidified style to ‘brand’ one’s self in the memory of Editors? Or do you appreciate an artist with multiple approaches to solving a children’s text?

I like multiple styles. The designers I know like multiple styles. I dont know what theyre teaching people in art school.

I hear people talk all the time about revising manuscripts based on what rejection letters say. If I have received 50 form rejection letters that have no specific connection to my writing, does that mean my work is not worth commenting on, editors are over-worked, or something else entirely?

I would say thats a bad sign. Whether it means youve been submitting something unremarkable or submitting to people who dont take the sort of thing youre submitting, I dont know.

About a year ago I sent out a manuscript to three slush piles of three prominent houses and a couple of other places which shall not be named. Today I was walking through Target and saw MY BOOK WITH ANOTHER PERSONS name on it. Obviously, it was her book, containing my idea, and a little suspicious that it is out a little less than one year after submitting it. Is this just how the business works? Does my book even have a chance? Should I hope that it is a best-seller so that another publisher wants to pick up my book? Should I get a lawyer? Okay, so not the last, but it is tough seeing a water-down version of my fabulous story on the shelves. Yes, it may be like the Twilight phenomena and we just had the same idea at the same time, but it doesnt make me feel better. The one saving grace is that I like the illustrations and I know that another version is worth publishing. Though the reason I like the illustrations of the womans book so much is because they are very similar to the illustration that I sent in on my cover letter. I know these things happen, but I feel I need a "pat on the back" and "carry on young grasshopper". I promise I wont be pathetic tomorrow.

First of all, its unlikely that a publisher could find your idea in the submissions pile and crank out an imitation in less than a year. The book you saw in Target has most likely been underway for a couple years. Likewise, if you sell your manuscript, it will be another couple of years before it comes out. So unless its a very unusual topic and your approach isnt meaningfully different, theres hope for your book yet.

I write literary fiction, mostly, as well as young adult. But thats beside the point. My question is what does one do with a 15,000 word story--not long enough to be a novel, but not short enough (I understand) to be a short story. Is there any way to sell stories around that length?

Probably not. I mean, Seedfolks is around 11,000 words, but chances are youre not Paul Fleischman. And I cant think of anything that short in YA. I never say never, but that sounds like a bit of a long shot.

Available link for download

Never Say Never Again

My extreme dislove of baseball–both the sport and the act of going to see it played–is something I wrote about at length the last time I was persuaded to trot along with other knitters to see the White Sox to do their thang.

I wont sing that song again. I will take a moment to reiterate that while the American public insists it is my duty as a male citizen to love baseball, I insist it is my right as an adult citizen to not give a flying fig about it. Im fully on board with the flag, motherhood, and apple pie; but even Ken Burns couldnt get me to regard our soi-disant national pastime with anything other than a jaundiced eye.

And yet.

And yet when I got a call from the owner of our own, dear Loopy Yarns to please put together a promotional table on the day of Chicagos Stitch n Pitch event, how could I say no? Baseball has not been good to me, but knitting has. There would be 150 knitters at the park–but also a few thousand people who might be among the lapsed or the latent. How often do you get a platform like that upon which to evangelize?

Would I do it? Sure I would. For knitting, I would do it.

Happily I had an accomplice and companion for the day–my friend Abigail. I first met her when she lured me up to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, to address the towns annual fiber gathering. You dont spend a wild weekend with somebody in LaCrosse and not form a bond.

Abigail is the sort of person who will drive you to the South Side, roll your dress form across five acres of parking and up a ramp while people cat-call, and never complain even though all she gets out of the deal is free nachos and beer. She will even push the dress form down the ramp and back across the parking lot, drive you home, and continue speaking to you.

Abigail is, to borrow a slangy bit of praise from P.G. Wodehouse, a complete brick.

So we set up a table and talked to people. I brought samples of my stuff and posted a directory of Chicagoland yarn shops and guilds, as well as information about the upcoming Big Deal Yarn Events (Stitches Midwest, Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair, Yarn Con, Vogue Knitting Live! Chicago) of which we have an abundance.



The knitters and crocheters were all lovely, and so were most of the shop owners. (Note to the sole exception: I was advertising your shop. Free. Happily. With great spirit. On my first and only day off in weeks. And I spent my own money doing it. If you want top billing, design input, and no nasty hairy dark ethnic men mucking up your lily white womens event, you go ahead and run the table next year. Really. Its all yours, honey.)

Mostly, because they were the majority, Abigail and I talked to people who were not knitters, or crocheters, or needleworkers of any stripe. About thirty minutes into the game we realized we kept hearing the same things over and over. So to beguile the time and stave off madness, I drew up a bingo card. (If you click it, itll get bigger.)



By the top of the fifth inning, the drunks were starting to lurch perilously close to the lace and we decided to break camp. We had achieved bingo forty-seven times.

But I think we got a few more people into the tent.

It was worth it.

Available link for download

Never Write a Wacky Surprise Ending Again

I am Jacks incredibly tired writing trick.

One of the sad things about the video game industry is that it has very little institutional memory. People go into it young, get burned out on infinite crunch hours for minimal pay, realize they want to raise a family/live their lives, leave, and never go back.

As a result, you dont get enough skilled crafters who put in the decades it takes to get really good at it. (Not to mention the obvious effects of having an entire art form almost exclusively written and designed by young people, still mostly men.) This is especially clear when it comes to the storytelling.

Good storytelling requires a very fine understanding of humanity. How it acts. How it develops. How people react to success and failure. And, sorry, this sort of fine awareness is only helped by living, experiencing things, and thoroughly absorbing what others have learned and experienced.

(ProTip: If you want to write game stories or anything else, you should be a voracious reader and watcher of things. Cast a broad net. If you take any sort of visual storytelling seriously and havent seen, say, The Godfather, or Casablanca, or just about anything by Orson Welles, youre doing it wrong. Money on the street, and youre just walking by.)

The surprise ending, it turns out, is that Bruce Willis is actually an Uruk-hai.

So, in the absence of a lot of writing experience, young writers tend to grab what they know. Whats cool and shiny. What did they grow up watching? The wild, unexpected twist ending. The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, Saw, every Shyamalan movie and every other film that, while they might have been good, should perhaps not be taken as a template for all storytelling forever.

(And yes, a lot of these movies are good. One of my favorite films is The Crying Game, and everyone got so overheated about its crazy twist that they often failed to notice its a fantastic film about how complex and unpredictable love can be.)

Surprise wacky twists were good for a while. Now theyre in half the games I play, and we need to take a break. They are the enemy of good storytelling.

Yeah, You Read That Right.

Good storytelling is, in the end, about humanity. About the choices they make, the results they have, and how those results affect us.

You know something? Those results are almost never surprising. Thats the point. Its part of being human: The things we bring upon ourselves, good or bad, are often entirely predictable. You saw them coming a mile away (or you were deliberately not paying attention).

The patterns in the lives of others are frequently obvious, but the patterns in our own lives are often almost impossible to see. We can only recognize them when they are shown to us, so we can go: Oh. Yeah. Thats me. Or thats not me, and I know why.

That is how great storytelling works. THAT IS WHY WE HAVE ART.

(Which is why its so horribly depressing that our schools have been systematically purged of arts education in lieu of eternal test prep. A cynical person might think that were removing anything that creates fully rounded humans and citizens of a Republic so that we can instead mass-manufacturer mindless work drones ranked and measured according to meaningless test scores. Happily, nobody has ever accused me of being cynical.)

Pictured: Art.

A Caveat

I am not trying to eliminate all surprises in drama. You can have big reveals. What I am specifically calling out are wacky twists, defined as those that require withholding key information from the viewer, out and out lying to the viewer, or using other storytelling tricks to obscure a key fact that would otherwise be instantly obvious.

Why Surprise Twist Endings Are Stupid

Here are some reasons.

1. They lie to the reader/viewer, or they withdraw key information. When youre telling a story and trying to make an emotional connection, youre doing something difficult. Dont waste your time. Focus on creating your characters. Thats a tough enough job! Say the most relevant, interesting things about them. If you do your job right and make them compelling, you don’t need secrets in the first place.

2. They degrade the viewers trust in future works of art. When I played Spec Ops: The Line, I was constantly distracted from immersion in the story by the suspicion that I was being lied to and some crazy twist was coming at the end. Of course, it was.

3. Youre risking all for an uncertain payoff. The movie The Sixth Sense worked because the insane twist at the end was pretty cool. Its also a very fragile thing. If your ending isnt really that clever, or if someone spoils it, your movie better be able to stand on its own. Which is usually cant. And if your movie could stand on its own, why did you need the twist in the first place?

4. Theres just a better way. There is nothing in the world, not spaceships blowing up, not a guy turning into a big green guy, nothing more interesting than human beings, the dumb ways they act, and why. Real stories, stories that LAST, are always about this. (And if you arent trying to do this, why arent you? Life is short.) If your wacky twist doesnt make your story be more about real people, youre just wanking. Throw it away.

And, finally, one key point specific to video games.

5. Most people dont finish video games, even short ones. If you put the crazy detail that makes your story make sense at the end of your game? Then, for most people who play your game, the story will never make sense at all! Its a big waste.

You may want to find out how the game ends before you get too comfortable ogling those.

A Real Life Example

I enjoyed Bioshock: Infinite a fair amount, but I really didnt get into it the way most people seemed to. It seemed to feel obligated to have the trademark, crazy "Bioshock twist," which resulted in a story with far less punch than it could have had.

(Spoilers ahead for Bioshock: Infinite, of course. Stay calm.)

So heres the story. You play this guy named Booker who is hired to rescue a woman named Elizabeth from this floating racist city in the sky. When you find her, shes missing the tip of one of her fingers. As you run around and shoot racists, you explore the mystery of where she came from and why you are there.

You learn, at the end, that Booker is Elizabeths father. He sold her to pay off a gambling debt, and, when he tried to get her back, the tip of her finger was cut off.

Holy crap!

What a fantastic set-up for a story. A tormented father, guilty of a horrible crime, given a chance to redeem himself. A confused young woman who learns who her rescuer is and has to come to terms with what he did to her and the violent creature he has become. (Because its a video game, so hes still spending a lot of time decapitating racists with his robot hand.) Theres potential for a lot of cool, meaty drama and dialogue here.

Of course, none of that happens. Because Bookers relationship with his daughter (and that she is his daughter) has to stay secret until the very end of the game, for no reason.

It means that the whole, long game is spent with none of the characters ever talking about what they should be talking about. Elizabeth constantly goes on about her Disney princess "Oh, I wonder what life is like on the land?" issues, and expressing ambivalence about Bookers psychotic violence that doesnt come to anything, and constantly bugging you about the five dollars she found, instead of getting into any of the cool stuff that the story should have been about in the first place.

(If you want to see the superior drama that comes from letting a violent old guy and his young female ward talk about what they should be talking about, I plan to write about The Last of Us soon.)

And, again, a huge number of people dont finish games, unless they read the Wikipedia page. On Steam, as of this writing, only 58.2% of people who got the game achieved the Tin Soldier achievement, which means finishing the game at all. Thats actually a really big percentage.

It still means over 40% of the people who bought Bioshock: Infinite on Steam never learned one thing about Booker and Elizabeth and the finger and what was going on. I honestly feel that if all the crazy bananas stuff was openly presented in the beginning, it would make people more engaged in what was going on then just another generic Mystery Box.

Like I said, fun game. I did enjoy it, and there were a lot of good things about that story. And yet, I am allowed to be bothered by wasted potential.

Thats right. I said something critical about Bioshock: Infinite. Nows your chance to jump ahead to the Comments and fix me.

But Jeff, Ive Played Your Games. Your Stories Suck!

Thats right, kid. Get it out of your system. Nothing easier than a big, categorical cheap shot. Still the Internet, after all.

The writing in my early games was, frankly, lousy. Its a side effect of having to spend the 10000 hours it takes to gain proficiency in public.

I have tried, over the last two decades, to write games with good stories. My resources are limited, and I have to write a game at the same time as the plot and dialogue. This is not to excuse my many failures, but to explain them.

I do believe Ive written some cool stories, and I think theyre getting better. I have some story ideas for a new game series, which I might be able to write someday, that I think are fantastic.

But if you think my stories suck, hey, cool man. Some people like them. De gustibus non est disputandum. 

Its Just a Fad

Im not really worried about it. Wacky twist storytelling is a cul de sac. Theres really only so much you can do with it, compared with the infinite potential variety of simple stories about actual people doing actual things. As video games evolve as an art form, there will be a lot of dead ends.

And look at the bright side, if a writer is taking the time and effort to construct a twist, it at least means they care. Theyre trying! That is such a step up from game storytelling in the past.

The fact that this conversation could happen at all means weve come a long, long way.

Available link for download