Reading Between the Lines.

(This turned out to be quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be. And it's mildly self-indulgent. I do apologize. But I wanted to still post it just in case there are other world-builder types like me trying to figure their lives out...)

I just read a lovely article thanks to a friend and several things came crashing together in my brain. Said article was called "How to Steal Like an Artist" and, essentially, was a giant, "Here's some stuff I've learned about creating art."

It's no big secret that I have, at times, fancied myself an artist, so it was good to read an article that spoke directly to that part of my identity that has not been getting fed like it should have been.

His last point, however, stuck with me.

10. Creativity is subtraction.

It’s often what an artist chooses to leave out that makes the art interesting. What isn’t shown vs. what is.

In this age of information overload and abundance, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out...

It's something I've heard, for sure. That creativity is choosing what to not show or tell as much as it is choosing what to show or tell. But, all of a

sudden, a bunch of things started mashing together in my brain.

I've recently become slightly obsessed with Echo Bazaar. For those of you who are unfamiliar (which, I'm sure, is most of you), it is an online game that uses the intervalled actions of social games and mixes it with cleverly written narrative set in Fallen London. Here is the text from the About page:

1889.

Three decades ago, London was stolen by bats. Dragged deep into the earth by the Echo Bazaar. The sun is gone. All

we have is the gas-light of Mr Fires.

But Londoners can get used to anything. And it's quiet down here with the devils and the darkness and the mushroom wine. Peaceful.

But then YOU arrived.

Welcome. Delicious

friend.

You learn almost nothing from that block of text. That doesn't tell you that the game is based around 40 actions a day that regenerate at one a minute. It doesn't tell you that new narrative threads are opened up by how it tracks various stats. And it certainly doesn't tell you anything about the world. At least, not on the surface.

You see, the brilliance of Echo Bazaar is that it tells you nothing. It treats you like a citizen of Fallen London and expects you to keep up. Stolen b

y bats? Literally? No. It couldn't be. Or could it? And what exactly do you mean by "delicious friend" and why do I imagine the eyes of the speaker looking sort of hungry?

I have been absolutely driven to play this game. I want to solve every little mystery. I take little cues from seeming insignificant details. What was just said about Mr Wines? And I wonder if that's related to the Fourth City in some way... And if that's the case, then the Starveling Cat must be...!

The restraint that the designers and writers showcase is exactly the thing that allows me to string together these mysteries and have fun. They know who the Masters are. They know where each of the Bazaar's former cities are. They knew that Hell is, in fact, connected to Fallen London far before I ever figured out that it wasn't just a metaphor.

There is, to me, something primordially attractive to this model of storytelling. As I think about it, this is the model most of my favorite properties have used.

As a child, I was obsessed with Zelda games. Like, seriously. I wrote fan fiction and everything. Back in the late 90s as Ocarina of Time was getting ready to come out, I remember Miyamoto (the series' creator) stating that it would be, chronologically, the first in the series.

"WHAT???" said little Kemp (and about half the game wo

rld with him). "They're not just a bunch of games with similar gameplay, titles, and themes? They have a metanarrative??" And so we went to work.

Analyzing each of the games, trying to figure out what the correct order was using evidence from inside the games themselves. When Miyamoto came back a year later and, in an interview, gave his "official timeline," most of the Zelda fansites I frequented had already disproved it months before. He was wrong about his own games! Is that even possible? Did it even matter? And why the heck did I care?

The genius in the Zelda games is in the story that isn't told. I was (and still am, honestly) attracted to the series precisely because there was all t

his depth to it that was unexplored. I could put the pieces together myself. And I did. A lot.

I read this article by Leigh Alexander a few days ago and she says it this way:

When games were more abstract-simple designs and massive worlds with yawning gaps in between each fragile plot point-they engaged us more, because they became worlds we could own. When all of the work of creation is done for us, when every element of lore is written in, when every object in the game world is explicable and available for interaction, there's nothing for our hearts and minds to do except ride along. And that's beautiful and well, but it's just not very engaging.

She goes on to say:

But if a game wants me to care-if it wants to grab my heart in its fist the way I used to feel-it needs to engage my imagination. Present the skeletal threads of a backstory without feeling the need to fill it all in, to connect all the dots for me; give me characters I'll only get to really know in my wildest dreams. Give me a world that's richly realized, but don't feel responsible for making it all interactive.

I have never been able to put the pieces together quite like that. Why is it that, despite my love for world-building and environmental storytelling, I've never been able to get into Fallout 3? Maybe because of these reasons. There's just too much detail. Too much to play with. Not enough just to accept.

It's like the difference between Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series. Tolkien wrote volumes of history and an entire language to support his world. Lewis just wrote what was and left it at that. And I've always been more attracted to Lew

is' world than Tolkien's...

When it really came home for me was how I connected it to my own creative process. Since I was small, I've been trying to build worlds. Back in high school, I worked on ideas that provoked me to make up languages, societies, religions, magic systems... Anything to help justify and give meaning and rules to a world - a place for real cha

racters to exist.

It's the exact same thing I used to do with Zelda. You see, in my head, there are these almost self-existent ideas. If you write or create anything, you know what I'm talking about. Half the time, my job is simply to find those and record them accurately. But the challenge and the fun comes from connecting those. From taking those points that feel like they've already been authored and figuring out how they go together.

On my wall right above me right now is a long string of post-it notes.

Each of those is a little story beat for a thing I've been working on for a long time. See the blank spots? That's the challenge. The actual notes are story nodes that, in my mind, are as true as the tsunami in Japan or the 2008 election. What I find joy in is completing the story. Finding or creating the ties. Explaining the characters' choices after the fact.

The question is... is that something that I should be doing for a career? I love constructing these elaborate worlds and mythologies and metanarratives. But, when it comes down to it, I just don't like those games that much. The games and stories that truly draw me in are the stories where those things just aren't explained. They're there, surely, but they are never explained clearly.

Any good fantasy/sci-fi property has a series bible - that document that spells out all the secrets and shows the creators how the characters are in their internal selves. But you know what? The audience never gets to see that. I can't think of a single world bible that has made it out into the public. And that's okay. It shows itself by natural character interactions and subtextual dialog.

But still. Who hires people just to flesh out backstory and build worlds? And does it matter that I probably won't like the games that I make nearly as much as the games like Zelda or Echo Bazaar? (You know, the ones that really engage my imagination...) Will I be okay making games that don't engage me as much just because the process of making them engages me? Or should I learn how better to craft the games that I enjoy the most?

I dunno. Things to think about.

Discovery.

I started writing this in my journal, but I thought "hey, why not share it?" So I am.

This weekend was Thanksgiving. On the drive to Ann Arbor, I pushed my mind to consider Dust to Dust, a story I've been working on for some time. I made discoveries.

There are many similarities between making stuff up for stories and discovering things. Both result in being able to push the story forward Both result in new characters, events, and locations. Both feel good to do for the writer.

But discovery is completely different. It truly feels like the idea exists somewhere out there, floating in space, and all I am doing is plumbing its depths, trying to find more of what exists.

The birth of a story I came to call Legion was like this. I was sitting in 11th grade Humanities class, bored out of my skull and writing, and all of a sudden, there's this guy named Travis. And he's in a battle. And he's sort of killed, but winds up in this glowy whiteness with a sword on a pedestal in the middle. He acknowledges the place and says, "I guess this is the Atrium."

I remember being confused. I, as the writer, had no idea what my character was talking about. I asked all my friends that day, in dumbfoundedness, "What's the Atrium? Why is it capitalized? Why is there a sword there?" None of them could answer me...

Every time I added to that story, it felt that way. I was merely an observer chronicling events that were - somehow - happening.

(Speaking of, did you ever have the idea that all imagined things actually do exist? That the imaginer merely has some kind of psychic tether to some alternate timeline/universe/plane? I did...)

But then I had to finish the story.

All of a sudden, all of these individual scenes had to be tied together. All of the strange dream sequences that involved a small theophany had to be put into the sense of the story. Enemies that were mere shadows needed motivation. And there had to be an ending.

I felt so uncomfortable forcing that story to a conclusion. It lacked all of the reality that the rest of it held in my mind. I tied scenes together that, intuitively, I knew did not belong together. I jumped to thematic conclusions that source material received with coldness.

Since turning that project in, I have not even looked at the final product. It felt dirty, polluted. Like I had sewn together a Frankenstein's monster. There was no way to pull out the good pieces from the bad without ruining them.

But this weekend was different. As I explored a character, I found myself exploring a place. And with that place came events. Backstory. Presuppositions that I knew were there all along were explained simply and elegantly. It was... amazing.

No.

Perhaps divine. It is easy to see why, for so long, the creative spark was regarded as some kind of god.

Perhaps these moments are gifts that God gives to us creatives. We spend so much mental energy trying to tell meaningful stories, but so often, we grasp at straws trying to make sense of a world whose purpose has been so veiled. But God, in his grace, awakens that intuitive grasp that we have of the hidden structures of reality and we truly discover something that has never existed.

New Years.

I know I'm quite a bit late on the New Years' bandwagon, but I really wanted to do one of these posts (like everyone else in the world [that I read, at least]).

I'm still not finished processing through preparing for the year, but I wanted to chronicle what I've got (sort of like how Mr. Ransom did it; I'll do a follow up with some more specifics [mostly for myself and my records]) Here are some of my thoughts so far:

It's my senior year. That has so many ridiculous ramifications that it's... ridiculous. It is literally impossible to predict what my life will be like past June. Lord willing, I'll be in California doing a sweet internship. Or I could be in Grand Rapids, living with Buddy and Kyle for a bit doing... something. Or I could be in Albuquerque, living with someone and doing... something. Or I could be in Florida... You get the picture.

I have really gotten a lot of inspiration from the various blogs I've been reading and the movies I've been watching. God is really trying to tell me something. I think the credits song of Yes Man says it best: "It's time to man up." Of all my priorities and goals, it's time to actually start doing. Anything.

I want to establish my lifestyle this year. This has a lot to do with my reading on The Simple Dollar and The Art of Manliness, in addition to my convictions about how Jesus would have us live. There are so many dreams I have for the future, but they almost all involve how I live.

One of the things that I don't think I can commit to this year (but want to as soon as possible) is to spend one hour a day learning one thing for one year. (Again, I refer to the Simple Dollar link above.) There are so many skills and knowledge I want to have. For example:

• Learn French well enough to be conversational. Enough to watch a movie, for instance.
• Read music and play piano.
• Perform basic car repair.
• Draw locations and characters (for concept art).
• Program in C++ or C#
• Write. From blog-style to articles to screenplays to prose to...
• Photography.
• Cooking.
• Physics. I love physics and wish I could learn more.

I think I'll end this rambling and unfocused post with a question: If you could spend one hour a day practicing one thing (knowledge or skill) for one year, what would it be?

Warm nights.

It is 62 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now. Before I went to work, I saw the sun. After work, I put all the windows down and opened the sun roof. This is, like, the best day ever.

There's something about 60 degree weather at night that rejuvenates my soul. Perhaps it is the Florida blood. Maybe it's something else. But right now, I could go for just about anything.

Specifically, sitting on the back porch of a house on a patio that I helped build and decorate with some nice icicle lights and Japanese lanterns. With a small fire. And something warm to drink. And someone to enjoy it with.

I hope the future comes soon.

Dreams.

It's 3:00 am. I can't sleep. But I can't stop dreaming.

One thing that I haven't (but at the same time, have) been doing a lot of is dreaming. I've spent the past few years dreaming of who I want to become, but not much dreaming about what I want to do - specific things that I want to accomplish at some point in my life.

As I'm laying here, trying every way I know how to get to sleep, ideas of "doings" have come into my brainplaces and I might as well write them down. Some of these are definites, some are maybes, some are "it'd be kinda cool if's," but they're all dreams of things I want to do in my life.

• Live of off 60% of my income. That would leave 10% to church, 10% to short term, emergency fund type savings, 10% to long term type savings (retirement, kids college, etc.), and 10% just to give away at some point (in small or large doses, depending on God).
• Lead a small group of middle school or high school boys.
  
• Be a part of a professional video game - enough to get me on the credits.
• To be credited as a writer on some sort of art, be it film, TV, novel, video game, etc...
• At some point, to work with my wife in the sense of a job.
• To own my own small company for side projects (works well with the previous idea).
  
• Write a book (about what, I haven't the foggiest, but it'd be cool).
  
• Live the somewhat urban life.
• Live a somewhat rural life.
• Have a spiritual retreat weekend.
• Get married to the love of my life.
• Sing a solo in a musical. Maybe not a lead part, but that one character who shows up in Act 2 as being really important who gets a song or two to themselves.
  
• Institute some non-cheesy rites of passage for my son.
• Write a story that gets adapted to multiple media.
• Have best friends and hang out with them frequently as I have a family and as my children grow up.
• Assemble a team of some of the best people I know to accomplish something. (In other words, to have an excuse to bring together the talented people I've known over the years (and will continue to meet) for one (or two, or three) awesome project.)
• Build a dream house someday on some property with a good deal of woods.
• Own two dogs. At the same time.
  
• Have a Japanese themed kitchen, complete with tea set, bamboo placemats, chop sticks, and plates.
• Give away a car.
• Speak at a camp. (Like church camp.)
  
• Speak at a conference. (Like GDC.)
• Take a homeless man out to dinner.
• Write a certain number of words per day. (Starting small...)
  
• Meet with someone further behind me in their journey once a week. Buy them coffee.
• Meet with someone further ahead of me in their journey once a week. Let them buy me coffee sometimes.
• Be an above average dancer. Especially with my wife.
  
• Be an okay swordsman (i.e. learn to fence; not the creepy-foam-swords-in-a-park-on-Thursdays kind of swordsman.)
• 
  

I might edit this in the next few minutes as I get more ideas, but I'm gonna go ahead and post now anyway.

Man, I wish I could sleep.