Alex Livingston

Blog

  • A Quick Bit on Gaiman

    I started reading the Sandman comics after visiting a very clever and mentor-worthy college friend who had gone on to grad school. His new girlfriend, complete with black tank-top and ankh necklace, had shown him the Midsummer one, which he then showed to me. Which I then went completely looney over.

    This was my introduction to urban fantasy, and to the very idea what someone who nerds out about mythology can write something modern and awesome. I went all in, spending any spare change I could find on trade paperbacks. And T-shirts with Vess and Zulli art.

    Years later, I read American Gods. The most important moment in this book for me seems a little small, almost throw-away: the plastic-on-the-windows part, in which the main character is instructed on how to winter-proof a place.

    Just like I do every year.

    This is nothing. This is a quirk of setting.

    But for me, this is evidence that stuff I do in my regular life is foreign, almost exotic, to somebody else. Normal life doesn’t exist, or is at best an illusion (why do sitcom living rooms have staircases, anyway?) and mundane, quotidian acts of simply living can be as fascinating as the most intricate world-building to someone who doesn’t live that way.

    This one detail choice, reflected upon long after I read it, prompted me to take my writing somewhere new: back home. There are people out there who have no idea what is was like to replace the needle on a record player. To write a program in BASIC. To go to a New Hampshire park. To sit at a Ms. Pac-Man table.

    And maybe they’d be interested to know.

  • Props: Mur Lafferty

    I posted some thoughts on audiobooks and authors a while back, and mentioned Mur Lafferty’s Afterlife series. She commented on my post, actually, which was this cool bit of community feeling for me. Wait, I talk about someone’s stuff and they want to have a conversation about it? What a time to be alive.

    Here was this author, podcasting away and distributing her stuff online for free listening. Plugging away, working at it.

    And now her mainstream debut is reviewed on Tor. This makes me happy. Grats Mur!

     

  • Bits on Pattern Recognition

    A few notes on writing stuff I gleaned from reading Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.

    Place, place, place. Gibson’s descriptions of locations are always excellent, but in PR I noticed just how much of that comes from characterization. The settings are described with details that only Cayce Pollard would notice.

    Emails as denouement. Now this was cool. All the loose ends were neatly tied by showing a series of pertinent emails from various characters to the MC. Neat and easy.

    Girl stuff. Really? A makeover scene AND the MC finally becoming happy once she’s found a man? Come on now. This is the sort of thing people mean when they talk about strong female characters. Here’s a great woman, and the last scene is her comfortably in bed with a man. Because god forbid she be happy on her own. Boo.

  • Incorporating Game User Identity into the Novel: Yea or Nay?

    Here’s an odd one for ya.

    I’m in the revision phase of my latest project, an urban fantasy novel. I recently wrote some interactive fiction set in the same world via storynexus. It started as a world-building exercise, and quickly got legs of its own as I played around and built story after story. I now get to see analytics on number of players, number who played all the way through, number who bought additional content, number who hit Like on a bit, etc.

    Rad, right? Instant, tasty feedback.

    The reports provide one particular type of info which is giving me some extra food for thought-munching — character names. People put in names for their characters and ran around in my little world. The world of the novel I am currently writing.

    So, can I use those?

    Wouldn’t that be cool? You check out some IF. You dig it, like it, buy some more, etc. A book comes out, set in the very same universe as that game you liked. And the main character refers to your character as a coworker. Your character shows up on a list of known operatives. A hit list. An email CC. Bathroom graffiti.

    There are a number of questions, of course. Is that even legal? Are user names copyrighted? By whom? Would I have to ask the user? Would I want to, or wouldn’t it be more fun to just let people stumble on it?

    This all assumes I get this thing published, of course. But still. The level of engagement with people who have an interest in the content would be a blast for a transmedia nerd like myself.

  • To Edit, or to Finish?

    That cursor just keeps on blinkin’.

    I’m at about 3/4 of completion of the first draft of my latest novel, and I just can’t seem to get those words down. Everything to this point has led up to the previous scene, in which all secrets are revealed. Nothing left but to go and do the thing.

    So, why am I struggling?

    This is the first time I watched the book change as I write it, the first time character motivations and world-building issues have morphed as part of the process. So how can I finish without going back and making sure everything lines up? How can I finish an arc which is still slipping around?

    I think I’ve gotta bring this thing to conclusion. Why go back and fix if I’m not done building?

    Wish me luck.

  • My Nefarious Plan to Get Movie-loving Teenagers to Read Endymion

    I am not a teacher. But if I were…

    Twilight, right? Vampires. You ever read Dracula? You know, the book about the good girl and the dangerous new bad-boy in town? She’s all set to get married to this boring clerk dude who’s always away on business and then this guy shows up in town and starts bothering her rich best friend and then they like… well, no spoilers.

    Another book like that? Frankenstein. Totally. Like, the monster. Remember Anakin at the end of Episode 3? Stolen from an old movie version of this. It’s about this lonely guy who nobody likes ’cause he looks weird, but actually he’s really strong and smart and just has some parent problems. You should read it. Or, you know what? Download the app. You can choose what happens!

    Frankenstein was written by a girl, BTW. When she was like 18. She was on European vacation with her boyfriend (who her older sister was totally in love with), this handsome Italian dude (who also wrote a story about a vampire), and this way hot lord who was always getting into trouble for his sexy lifestyle when he wasn’t fighting in revolutions. But the weather sucked, so it was just her and the boys stuck in a big old house with nothing to do.

    You know who else she and her boyfriend were friends with? That John Keats guy. Wait, you don’t know about Keats? Didn’t you see Bright Star? It’s, like, the saddest story ever. Q from Skyfall is in it, and Sweet Pea from Sucker Punch. He’s buried in Rome, right by that pyramid in Assassin’s Creed where you get into those catacombs.

    You should check out Endymion. It’s about this country boy who dreams about this girl and then goes on this adventure to find her and then it turns out she’s… well, no spoilers.

    Yes, I know teenagers aren’t idiots. Yes, I know there are many very clever, highly-literate, and remarkably well-read kids in school as we speak. But still. Sucker Punch.

     

  • Frankenstein, the Interactive Novel

    Finally had a chance to pick up the recent Frankenstein thing. I say “thing” because it’s not a book and not a game — nor is it really a combination of both. It’s something new. [Please pretend I inserted a fitting MW Shelley quote here. I mean, there must be one. Heck, I’ll take a Percy if it’ll serve.]

    From the singularly glowing reviews I had read, I expected something literate and well-made. What I did not expect was to be utterly gripped after the first few choices.

    How? How did this happen? The best I can tell is that it had something to do with point of view. It wasn’t “what do you do next”. It was “shall I tell you about…” and “oh lord, what should I do?”. Sure Mary can take much of the credit, but I just couldn’t stop reading. There  was none of the “but I want to climb to the top of the guillotine and sing When Father Painted the Parlour! Isn’t this a choice game?!?!” feeling. Just enough choice to let me decide what I wanted to read. I could skip backstory or go off on scientific tangents. A fun way to read, I’ll tell you that.

  • The Annwn Simulation 1985 — Announcement and Development Notes

    My latest interactive fiction effort, The Annwn Simulation 1985, is playable and — I think — complete. It was a blast to work on, and the Failbetter people/community have been awesome.

    The post below is in two parts: the tale of the development process, and then some collected notes.

    The Making

    There I was, two-thirds of the way through draft one of a novel. And then I get the email that Failbetter had opened their dev tools. How could I resist?  I figured I’d cobble something together and use it to flesh out the world-building. Just a fun exercise to attack the universe of the novel in a different way.

    Fast-forward many hours. Far more hours than I had planned on. But once the process began, I couldn’t simply end it. What was meant to be a diversion had developed into a stand-alone piece with its own structure.

    October 15th — The tools are released.

    November 14th — My game is ready for playtesting.

    One of the cool things about a Storynexus game is that you build a world, and then put stories in it. (As opposed to, say, the Choice of Games stuff I’ve done. One is not better than the other, of course; they are two very different ways to tell interactive stories.) In the Annwn game, I knew I would be adding some more content as it came to me. I had built out a few main storylines, but still wanted to give people who were interested in the Bard option some more to do. But that would come later.

    Well, the two friends who gave me feedback both said they played bards. Oops.

    So, back to development. It was at this point that I took a closer look at the content design patterns listed in the Failbetter wiki. And the freakout began. All of my storylines followed the Venture model, the simplest content design format. People said they were having fun with the whole grind-a-stat-and-come-back thing, but the wiki had several examples of other ways to make a story interactive. Sure, I had worked in a few moral forks, but the actual gameplay was pretty repetitive and grindy.

    December 4th, 12:30AM — A reworked main storyline. New questlines. Revised questlines to add variety of play. Polishing.

    It wasn’t as bad as I had originally feared, once I took a closer look. A few of the existing questlines lent themselves to different design formats very readily. I just needed to have a better understanding of what structures have been proven to work.

    And now I’ve taken it as far as I plan to. For now. <ominous lightning>

     

    Notes. WARNING – SPOILERS

    Why am I putting my notes here, you ask? Well, this blog is for me too, right?

    The Main questline (Jackyl) is a Grandfather Clock. Hour hand is a simple chain (ending in a flavor choice). Minute hand varies.

    The first two hours take place mainly in Arrell, and are meant to introduce the world and let people play around with the various options/skills/character types.

    Hour 1: The Loremaster quest. A simple chain.

    Tick 1: First contact from the enemy. This kicks off the main mystery of the game — why does this complete stranger want me to stay out of Annwn?

    Hour 2: Fully-Armed quest. This is sort of a Midnight Staircase, in that the player must choose from various grind options to get the cash needed to outfit herself.

    Tick 2: Second contact from the enemy.

    Midpoint. Player character starts to pursue the enemy. Action mode.

    Hour 3: The Curl and Lock quest. A Beggar’s Banquet (pyramid form), where in many cases the toll can be avoided if the player has played some of the other content, as in the Road With Many Faces. See Other Quests below.

    Tick 3: How to get to Jackyl revealed.

    Hour 4: Getting fairy gold. In order to purchase the key item, the PC must raise some funds. There are many ways to do this, and no single best way. See Fairy Gold Quests below.

    Tick 4: Key item (magic girdle) acquired.

    Final hour: Confrontation, mystery solved, and decision made. This is a single card.

    Tick 5: End Game.

     

    Fairy Gold Quests.

    Juicer and Keeper Questlines. These are the primary ventures. A decision is made early on as to which career to pursue. After the Becoming quests in Arrell, the Annwn quests end in moral forks which return various amounts of fairy gold.

     Gladsome Beast. A Hydra.

    The Concert Season: A Carousel, in which one of the options for the final tier gives fairy gold.

    Other Quests:

    The Arcade. A venture which can make becoming a juicer easier.

    Zaxxon. Venture. Adds options to later quests.

    The Cottingwoods: Inverted pyramid — as your research advances, the more options there are to pursue. Adds options to other quests.

    Cartogromancy: Venture. Adds options to other quests.

    The Private Concert. A Midnight Staircase with a possible End Game.

    Stats:

    12 questlines, plus one main quest.

    122 functional storylets

    74 qualities

     

  • Winterstrike

    You may remember me talking about Yoon Ha Lee‘s rad ‘The Book of Locked Doors‘. Imagine my delight when I saw today’s announcement from Failbetter Games:

    Yoon Ha Lee is great. She writes like the unacknowledged offspring of Elizabeth Hand and William Faulkner, and I’ve liked her work since I read The Black Abacus, a short story about love and death and ethics and an unfought war in space. I found out recently that she wrote interactive fiction too. So I asked her to write something for StoryNexus.

    She did, and we’re launching it today. It’s called Winterstrike, and it’s rich and strange and very cold. And big. Play it, and learn about the the Ocular Guard and the insectines and the Woman with Tiger Guns… and the ironbird.

    Holy moley! Very excited to try this, but afraid I’ll be terribly jealous when comparing it with the one I’m developing. I’m sure it’s worth the risk!

     

  • NPR: What We Say About Our Religion, And What We Do

    Oh, Shankar Vedantam. I’m not sure specifically what it is about this guy, but I love his stories on NPR.

    Yesterday’s topic was a study which found a disparity between the number of Americans who say they go to church (79%) and the number who actually do (24%).

    PHILIP BRENNER: … The respondent hears the question how often do you attend and interprets the question to be: Are you the sort of person who attends?

     

    INSKEEP: What you’re really finding out here is I think I’m the sort of person who should attend church and I don’t want to admit otherwise, so I might tell you I go, whether I do or not.

     

    VEDANTAM: Exactly. So the question is about your behavior. What is it you’re doing? The answer might be about people’s identity. Am I the kind of person who attends church?

     

    The story does not try to encompass much of the why, which is wise. The question of why Americans feel they need to state they go to church regularly requires a great deal of analysis.

    The Waking Cassandra content addresses this issue in part through its various forms. Why do American’s say they go to church? Because we have a long history of abusing people who don’t, or who attend the wrong ones.