Best writing in IF
Aaron A. Reed
So I'm looking for quotes that really represent some of the best
writing that modern IF has to offer. There are all kinds of amazing
writers in the IF community, including more professionally published
authors than I can keep track of, not to mention all of the extremely
talented amateurs. What are some of your favorite moments from IF
games in the last 10 years where the writing really shines?
Basically I want answers to the question "Prove to me there is good
writing in interactive fiction."
(If you don't have time to find a specific quote, at least name drop a
game?)
--Aaron
Yoon Ha Lee
One of my absolute favorites in this regard for its economy of prose
and the unusualness of the setting evoked is Dan Schmidt's "For a
Change"'s opening lines:
"The sun is gone. It must be brought. You have a rock."
(I think--that's from memory so I may have the phrasing wrong.)
Other favorites, but I'd have to dig to find the awesomest
quotes. :-)
YHL
Jeff Nyman
"good writing." There's been books I've read, for example, that had
certain lines that really resonated with me but the rest of the book
was actually not all that great. This happens in film as well. In the
movie "Sublime", for example, I felt the writing (of the screenplay)
was horrible -- except one line I liked: "Maybe if you spend your
whole life worrying, then the only way your life will have meaning is
if what you fear becomes real."
I bring this up only because in some of my initial classes we spent a
lot of time going through existing games, from the Infocom days up to
around the present. Individual moments in various games were found to
be effective in some cases (including a few specific quotes), but as
far as being "good writing" -- that was a different caliber of beast
and it really depended upon the full experience. (Sort of just like
movies and books, in fact.) That full experience was the only way I
could work to "prove there is good writing in interactive fiction."
As an example of the full experience, I can tell you one game that
always has resonated well with people that I participated in classes
with was "Babel". Another one was "Trinity." Two others were "Rameses"
and "Little Blue Men."
- Jeff
S. John Ross
Writers who've rocked my monitor include Adam Thornton, Emily Short,
Stephen Bond, Andrew Plotkin and Admiral Jota. If I ever found myself
with the need and resources to hire IF writers, these are the
doorsteps where I'd appear hat-in-hand.
Other writers to be acknowledged for a polished skill-set include Eric
Eve (who has a fine talent for evoking setting, in particular) and Jim
Aikin (Aikin seems determined to save his good writing for Usenet, but
in "Tin" he let his snark out to play a bit, and it's a favorite of
mine).
I don't think that, in any case, I can really demonstrate the quality
of these writers with an out-of-context quote. In IF, even the lines
that zing, zing in context of character action.
Jim Aikin
>
> Other writers to be acknowledged for a polished skill-set include Eric
> Eve (who has a fine talent for evoking setting, in particular) and Jim
> Aikin (Aikin seems determined to save his good writing for Usenet, but
> in "Tin" he let his snark out to play a bit, and it's a favorite of
> mine).
Thanks. Maybe someday I'll go back and turn "Tin" into a complete game.
If only I could figure out how they're going to trick Dorothy into going
home!
I agree with Jeff and S. John that what constitutes good writing depends
to a great extent on the larger context. But if I can be forgiven for
tossing one line of my own into the discussion ... of all the IF I've
written, the only line that remains stuck my head is the description of
the shopping mall in the opening of "Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina":
"...the ill-favored offspring of a fairy castle and a canning factory."
I often indulge in assonance and alliteration, but I've always felt that
the collision of sounds in that line was singularly effective. To say
nothing of the image itself, of which the less said, the better.
--JA
Roger
I would almost say that a work with a handful of notable quotations is
possibly a sign of BAD writing. Why? Because these lines stand out
amid the rest of the work. I think this builds on your point, which I
agree with entirely.
What constitutes "good writing" may also differ from person to person.
Academia certainly has their own opinion, the industry of critique has
theirs, and the large swath of readers all have different opinions. Is
salable prose enough to be "good writing"? Harry Potter is some of the
most successful writing ever. Is it of the same literary caliber as
James Joyce's Ulyssies or, I don't know, . I think of "good" as
subjective term and even more so when discussing or describing any
creative or artistic product.
However, an example of "good writing" - to me - and particularly in IF
is one that truly draws the player into the world and keeps him there
with a context that reinforces itself throughout and a suspension of
disbelief that remains unbroken throughout. Additionally, it needs to
be a context that interests and engages the player. Also, it helps if
the player can somehow relate to the characters and (possibly) the
situation. Even the purest fictions are rooted in some amount of
reality - usually the "human condition".
I'm not sure Spider and Web is quotable in any specific way except for
that one thing I won't spoil. The dialogue is sparse and vague. The
locale descriptions are necessarily vague. But everything fits
perfectly. To me, Spider and Web is a great example of "good writing"
as applied to IF, because of the full experience it offers the player.
And I think it is pretty interesting that the most notable aspect -
the most quotable part of the game - is an action the PLAYER types in,
rather than what the narrator/parser offers you.
Vespers maintains the appropriate context and tone throughout the
entire game, and the tone is interesting. Again, I cannot recall any
specific quotes at this time, but I did really enjoy the writing.
Shade. Shade is what inspired me to try writing IF in the first place.
It's not perfect, but it does keep the player tense and induces a
sense of claustrophobia that impresses me, for a very short piece of
Interactive Fiction.
Violet has some very, very amusing flavor and maintains a panicky OCD-/
ADD-like context throughout the game that I immediately related to and
fell in love with. Of all the IF I've played, I have to rate the
experience Violet offers very highly. It was fun to play and it was
fun to read.
I've left a lot of other good examples off the list, but there are
many. Shrapnel and Phototopia are both quite interesting. I enjoyed
the writing in Slouching Toward Bedlam. Jigsaw is...strange, and I
like it. And so on. Too many to list. The above are just some of my
absolute favorite examples.
kylee
your childhood:
She listens intently, expressing no reaction -- no judgement, no
amusement, no boredom or distraction -- and you find yourself straying
into more personal territory. Not dark secrets, but incidents that
have no bearing on anyone but you. Standing on the porch of a
friend's house while the Santa Anna winds stripped branches off the
palm trees and made the telephone poles bend and sway, restless with
the electricity in the air. The sort of thing that would make little
impression now, but which at the time seemed wonderful and strange.
Your first visual memory is different each time, and it's always
something startlingly evocative. I like asking about the artist's
memories, too.
Ron Newcomb
I agree with others that most of 'em I remember have little to do with
the content of the line itself, and more with what they portend. (Or
promise.) I liked Renee Choba's line "Dino! It's Dino!" from
SnackTime, just because it characterized me/Hardy so well and so
enthusiastically. I liked Progue's "Welcome to my lacuna!" because it
marked the beginning of the game in earnest. A line from the same
cutscene of Bronze's (oh boy) moment late in the game I liked because
most everything in the whole game suddenly clicked into place. But
none of these are really interesting in and of themselves.
I agree with Yoon's suggestion of _For a Change_'s opener, and I
remember it with the same wording. Mind, I've never played the game.
The opener also seems to scream 'get ready for puzzlefest!' to me.
I read somewhere that someone liked a quote from late in Floatpoint
involving a queen, and that the poster had mentioned she(?) had put it
up on her wall because she liked it so much, but I don't know who nor
remember the line. (Helpful, that's what I am, I know.)
I'm not much of a setting whore, but a few descriptions worked really
well for me. Anchorhead's overcast town, Rume's house in Blue Lacuna,
the opening wandering around in Maryam Gousheh-Forgeot's Varkana, and
bits of Suzanne's Worlds Apart. _Violet_ is strong throughout, but
again, no particular line comes to me, just the "voice" of the game.
Are you really looking for Pynchon-like wordplay in a sentence?
Jacek Pudlo
> Hey everyone,
>
> So I'm looking for quotes that really represent some of the best
> writing that modern IF has to offer. There are all kinds of amazing
> writers in the IF community, including more professionally published
> authors than I can keep track of, not to mention all of the extremely
> talented amateurs. What are some of your favorite moments from IF
> games in the last 10 years where the writing really shines?
>
> Basically I want answers to the question "Prove to me there is good
> writing in interactive fiction."
_All Roads_ is an example of good IF writing. _Varicella_ is another, and so
is _Sting of the Wasp_. But emulating good writing is much harder than
avoiding bad. So from a purely didactic point of view, it's more interesting
to ask what the worst writing IF has to offer is.
Worst Writing In IF Ever
1) _Blue Lacuna_ You know how when you're in a bookstore trying to decide if
this is the book you want, and you read the opening paragraph? Authors
anticipate this and try hard to shine in their opening sentences, to set the
tone for the rest of the novel. How fitting then that _Blue Lacuna_ should
open with a paragraph of meaningless pretentious drivel.
"Dreams move beneath you, blind colossi revolving through unknowable
patterns, but they do not break the surface, not yet or any more. You float
in void outside them, cold, memoryless."
Here's *the* worst sex scene in the history of interactive fiction, which
also contains *the* worst metaphor.
"You roll together, riding peaks and troughs of infinite blue, gasps and
vague
portents and hot insights suffused in the power of the moment, in the hot
breath in your ear, in the dandelion touches on delicate nerves."
The rolling is just about the only thing that makes sense here, and even
that makes me think of two drunken cowboys rolling down a slope in
Technicolor rather than two lovers having a tussle in bed.
2) _The Dreamhold_
What these games have in common is a prose that is vague, stilted and
portentous.
Aaron A. Reed
"Prove" was definitely the wrong word to use. Even bad games can have
individual moments that shine-- those are perfectly fine. :)
--Aaron
Emily Boegheim
> One of my absolute favorites in this regard for its economy of prose
> and the unusualness of the setting evoked is Dan Schmidt's "For a
> Change"'s opening lines:
>
> "The sun is gone. It must be brought. You have a rock."
>
> (I think--that's from memory so I may have the phrasing wrong.)
Ron Newcomb wrote:
> I agree with Yoon's suggestion of _For a Change_'s opener, and I
> remember it with the same wording.
The funny thing is, I always remembered with exactly that wording too.
But it's not quite right: the game actually says, "The sun *has* gone."
I checked the wording for an essay last year and was shocked to realise
I'd remembered it wrong for so many years! (I think that "The sun *is*
gone" works better, so it was a bit of a disappointment, too...)
On topic, I agree that this line is great, whether the sun "has" or "is"
gone!
Emily
Aaron A. Reed
> _All Roads_ is an example of good IF writing. _Varicella_ is another, and so
> is _Sting of the Wasp_.
I'd been revisiting All Roads, but the other two are both great
examples I'd forgotten about-- many thanks!
--Aaron
Aaron A. Reed
> Are you really looking for Pynchon-like wordplay in a sentence?
Nope... just a collection of quotes I can show to people and make them
say "There's IF with writing like *that*? I thought it was all trolls
and error messages."
You know, the sorts of sentences a reviewer would quote when enticing
people to read the book.
--Aaron
Adam Thornton
Ron Newcomb <psc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Are you really looking for Pynchon-like wordplay in a sentence?
"A coming screams across the sky."
Nick Montfort, _Book and Volume_.
Adam
Benjamin Caplan
> The funny thing is, I always remembered with exactly that wording too.
> But it's not quite right: the game actually says, "The sun *has* gone."
> I checked the wording for an essay last year and was shocked to realise
> I'd remembered it wrong for so many years! (I think that "The sun *is*
> gone" works better, so it was a bit of a disappointment, too...)
I disagree. "The sun is gone" sounds like a sentence that a normal
person would construct; the idiom "such-and-such is gone" is a common
and straightforward one in English.
Saying "The sun has gone" attributes agency to the sun, as if it were an
actor with its own will: it's not that the sun set or was obscured by
clouds or whatever, but that it got up and walked away.
This off-kilter kind of thinking, especially attributing agency to
inanimate things, is exactly characteristic of _For a Change_. "Has" is
much better.
Sarah
sentence. Just try saying it out loud. Notice how it doesn't flow?
When you have short conversational sentences like that, they *have* to
flow. They can't clunk or sputter or trip themselves up.
But as written, the sentence is masterful. It flows, and what's more,
all the sentences have the same meter, so it sounds balanced, vaguely
portentous, and just *right.* That's why it's so great.
On Nov 19, 9:07 pm, Benjamin Caplan
Sarah
"Has" isn't so bad, at any rate. There's still that rhythm.
Benjamin Caplan
> Huh. It appears I: A) cannot read, and B) was wrong.
>
> "Has" isn't so bad, at any rate. There's still that rhythm.
Also, the writing in _For a Change_ is supposed to sound slightly off.
Roger
I would say "the sun is gone" is grammatically incorrect. "Gone" makes
for a very odd adjective/descriptor. It can make sense and artistic
license is what it is, but "has gone" is the appropriate form of the
tense implied by that sentence. "The sun is gone" is like saying "the
ball is blue" but like I said "gone" is not exactly an adjctive.
Personally, I agree with the comment about agency and suggest that
"the sun has gone" has more impact anyway.
Jacek Pudlo
"but like I said "gone" is not exactly an adjctive."
It's a participle, which is a borderland between verb and adjective.
I have to say I'm impressed by this thread. This year's comp was dismal, but
this thread shows there are still enclaves of intelligence within this
community. I'm especially impressed by Jeff Nyman's insightful distinction
between epigrammatic and syncopated prose. Kudos to Jeff. Kudos too to
Benjamin Caplan for his accurate analysis of "the sun has gone."
The very fact that we're discussing English grammar and prose style is an
improvement over what used to pass for intelligent discourse when Cadre and
"Short" were around.
Ron Newcomb
> I'd been revisiting All Roads, but the other two are both great
> examples I'd forgotten about-- many thanks!
Jon's writing is always solid, but I think the lack of interactivity
in his works (excepting Make It Good) made me not like the writing
anyway. My frustration bleeds over.
On Nov 19, 5:15 pm, a...@fileserver.fsf.net (Adam Thornton) wrote:
> "A coming screams across the sky."
> Nick Montfort, _Book and Volume_.
Wasn't Book & Volume the one featured in the Iowa Review?
On Nov 20, 9:53 am, "Jacek Pudlo" <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
> I have to say I'm impressed by this thread.
I'm impressed you complimented Plotkin's work for being portentous.
On Nov 20, 7:26 am, Roger <roger.helge...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I agree with the comment about agency and suggest that
> "the sun has gone" has more impact anyway.
Well, I agree with the comment about agency but disagree that "has"
has more impact because of it. The sun is gone. It didn't just set
at the end of its long workday, my friends. That there sun was
*murdered*. It is *gone*.
-R
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Adam Thornton wrote:
> "A coming screams across the sky."
>
> Nick Montfort, _Book and Volume_.
That is brilliant.
Regards,
Victr
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Conrad
> You know, the sorts of sentences a reviewer would quote when enticing
> people to read the book.
I thought the intro to _Alabaster_ was pretty good.
Conrad.
Autymn D. C.
> What constitutes "good writing" may also differ from person to person.
> Academia certainly has their own opinion, the industry of critique has
1 = 2?
> theirs, and the large swath of readers all have different opinions. Is
large = broad; largus < argentum?
Autymn D. C.
>
> 1) _Blue Lacuna_ You know how when you're in a bookstore trying to decide if
> this is the book you want, and you read the opening paragraph? Authors
> anticipate this and try hard to shine in their opening sentences, to set the
> tone for the rest of the novel. How fitting then that _Blue Lacuna_ should
> open with a paragraph of meaningless pretentious drivel.
>
> "Dreams move beneath you, blind colossi revolving through unknowable
> patterns, but they do not break the surface, not yet or any more. You float
> in void outside them, cold, memoryless."
Is this a rip from So Far?