9 ways in which playing Dark Souls is like writing a novel

After so many years and watching some YouTube playthroughs, my SO finally convinced me to give Dark Souls a try. Specifically, Dark Souls 3.

Now, this isn’t my usual type of game. I much prefer games with stories that are, er, more out in the open. I’m also not generally a fan of boss fights (I still haven’t technically finished Link’s Awakening for the Gameboy Color as I never bothered with the final fight). Additionally, these games are supposed to be some of the hardest out there. All great reasons to never play it, right?

And yet, I gave it a try anyway. I’m glad I did. It’s taught me a lot about myself and what I’m capable of, and even about writing. Nine things, specifically:

1. Get out of your comfort zone

Writing is all about challenging yourself to try new things, about not giving up and persevering. And if there’s one thing you need to finish a Soulsborne game, it’s perseverance. You will definitely die. A lot. You will definitely hit some walls. In writing, as in Dark Souls (and other challenges), the trick is to keep going.

2. The ‘soggy middle’

My Dark Souls journey was going great. Yes, I’d died, of course, but I had always managed to retrieve my Souls (which you use to level up, buy things, etc. and which you lose after dying again without retrieving them) and it hadn’t taken me too many tries to defeat the big bosses. And then I went to the Catacombs.

Nobody likes the Catacombs. If they say they do, they’re lying. I did not make it out of the Catacombs with all my Souls, but crucially, I did make it. It’s the same feeling of being in the soggy middle of National Novel Writing Month. Getting through it is half the victory. Yes, there will be endings and edits/more bosses and tougher areas ahead. But no matter, you’ve accomplished something. You’ve reached a milestone. Celebrate your freedom!

3. Unexpected victories

So I fought Mr Consumer of Gods (Aldrich to his friends) approximately 1000 times before I defeated him. After that I was warped straight to the next fight. Being the cautious person that I am, I of course ran to the nearest bonfire to deposit my freshly gained Souls. However, I didn’t end up needing it, as I defeated the next boss in one go.

In writing, too, you will find unexpected victories. Sometimes, you are faced with a really hard chapter and it’s easy to get discouraged. Keep pressing on, because your hard fight will pay off, and the next chapter might just be the one where everything clicks into place.

4. Write, die, repeat

Beating a boss in one go (one-shotting it, as gamers call it) is a great feeling. It’s also something that happens after a lot of defeating other enemies, dying, and trying again. In other words, practice makes perfect. Unexpected victories, such as mentioned above, tend to happen more the more you keep practising your craft. This works for every skill, naturally, and therefore also for video games – and writing.

5. Know when to ask for help

Dark Souls comes with the ability to summon a non-playable character (NPC) or (if you’re playing online) fellow human beings to help you through the game at certain points. Whether you’re stuck on a boss fight or a plot point, don’t keep throwing yourself endlessly at that wall. Know when it’s time to ask for help. You will be glad you did.

6. Strangers, friends, help comes from unexpected places

While I never summoned a human stranger in the main game (yes, social anxiety can also apply to videogames, yay for me), I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of Summon Signs I saw outside of a lot of the boss fights. I was also once invaded (when another human player enters your game uninvited to, usually, start a fight) by someone called the Pacifist Invader. They gave me some items, waved and left.

If you’ve ever overheard a snippet of conversation that sparked an idea or complained about your writing only to be asked a really left-field question (for instance: have you tried putting ninjas in it?), you’ll know how valuable unexpected input can be. Of course, barring story ideas, a nice beverage also does wonders.

7. Don’t let the Chads of the world get you down

In contrast to the lovely Pacifist Invader, I have also been invaded by a Chad (literally called Chad-something). This is not about him. It’s about those people in your life who use whatever tricks they have to try and drag you down. Whether it’s hiding behind enemies (invaders are immune to enemies while you’re not) or constantly criticising your work, these energy vampires aren’t happy unless you’re frustrated and annoyed. Don’t let them get to you. Keep playing/writing. Or, do as I did and take a breather (of a few months), then get back to it.

8. You are in control

You might be intrigued to know that you don’t have to fight every single boss in a Soulsborne game. In fact, you don’t have to fight any at all if you just choose to not play. In my game, while I was eventually persuaded to do the DLC, I ‘let’ two optional bosses live. One boss I never even said hello to. They were just minding their own business, so why make their life (and mine) harder?

The point is, you decide where you want to go and what you do. If you’re getting bored by where your story is going, you can change at any time! Sure, some people say that their characters run the story and that may be true for some writers, but you can still choose what you throw at them. You’re in charge.

9. Sweet, sweet victory

Finally, there is nothing like writing that final line of a book. While it’s probably completely different from the adrenaline you feel fighting a really tough boss (your mileage may vary, please do let me know if there are writers out there whose hearts are going a mile a minute after writing ‘The End’), I hope you do feel a great sense of accomplishment when you finish your story, however long it is. In the end, that’s what writing/gaming is all about.

That’s it. Nine ways in which writing a book is a lot like playing Dark Souls (3). So, if you’re a writer stuck for what to write, why not pick up Elden Ring? Alternatively, if you’re a gamer who’s always wanted to write, you’ll be pleased to know you already have a lot of the tools you need to get started.

Happy writing and/or gaming!

---

Disclaimer: I started writing this blog post about a year ago and finished Dark Souls 3 a few months ago, but only finished writing this now because procrastination knows no bounds when the only deadline is in your own head. Also a friend helped me finish the DLC because eff that Slave Knight Gael.

Don’t give the people what (you think) they want

It’s Election Day in the USA and even though I’m far away (hah, rhymes) I not only have people I love who are going to be directly affected by the outcome, pretty much the entire world is going to be affected if the US slides further down the poop-filled slide towards fascism, so I’m channelling my anxiety by actually writing a blogpost again (hello!).

Deep breath. Alright, with that out of the way, time for some insight. From Twitter. Yes, I said it. One of the big reasons why Trump even got elected (aside from the Electoral College and two-party systems just always being a bad idea) is due to the media coverage he received versus Clinton. There’s a lot of misogyny that went into it as well, but that’s not relevant this time and yet the mainstream media is still falling into the same traps they have been for the past four-plus years.

I’m on Twitter a lot more than is good for me. On there, I follow some very insightful women, who give better analysis, reporting and news updates than any of the main US newspapers or TV channels. The problem with these media that individual analysts don’t have to reckon with is monetary interests. The dial for large media corporations has shifted over the years from providing news to providing entertainment. And what they assume entertains is wall-to-wall coverage of this dumb thing Trump has said and the (not terrorists cause they’re white) actions of his followers, etc. “both sides” etc.

There’s a newspaper in the UK (where Rupert Murdoch also has a lot of influence on the media, weirdly…) that switched editors a year or so ago. The one leaving was very much about negative news, specifically negative stories about foreigners, claiming that’s what people wanted to read. The next editor took a more balanced approach (though still right-wing) and lo and behold, the readers were not offended they didn’t hear about foreigners and the many reasons to be afraid and hate them all the time any more. In fact, it’s an older story so I’m not entirely sure but I do believe reader figures actually went up.

Just because one side says we want to hear about things to hate, doesn’t mean that’s true. Just because some corporate person insists that people will only keep watching by playing into their negative emotions, that’s not who we have to be as people. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Take Hollywood. Films pasted together by executives’ notes are never as good as films with a clear vision. And these executives tend to be quite a bit more conservative than the average movie-goer. “They’ll never go for a film with a female protagonist,” they say, pointing to that one Catwoman film. Then Wonder Woman happens, and Moonlight, and Black Panther. Do you think these executives become more liberal as a result? Of course not. We have to keep pushing them, proving to them that these are the stories we want to see. Better yet would be to push them out completely, of course, but that’s the problem with living in an autocracy – power likes to stick around.

What’s my point with all of this, other than anxiously ranting? Tell the story you want to tell. Report facts, if you’re writing non-fiction. Write from your heart, if you’re writing fiction. Don’t try to write to the market, because the market doesn’t know what it wants until it gets it. Be the creative person the world needs, not the one it deserves. Certainly never be the one the executives tell you to be, because they know even less about what’s going on than the rest of us.

Also, diversify your news sources and think critically about what you’re consuming. Don’t take any one voice as gospel. And stay vigilant, as there are many people all over the world who would happily watch it burn just so they can hold on to their sliver of (imagined) power. It’s up to the rest of us to stop them. Women in Poland are doing it. People in Nigeria and Belarus are doing it. Hopefully the US can do it to, and keep doing it.

Fingers crossed! It’s going to be a long few weeks/months/years before we know the real outcome.

My first day at Worldcon, or: How to experience a whole new type of imposter syndrome

So today (Thursday) was my first day ever at a Worldcon, and my second day ever of being in Dublin. For those who don’t know, Worldcon is the world science fiction (and fantasy) convention, which is in its 77th (!) year and takes place in a different location each time. Also for those who don’t know, Dublin is definitely not in the UK (the only boo of the convention so far was for an American author who used the phrase “here in the UK…”).

I won’t go into detail on all the talks I went to, except to say that for anyone interested in South Asian SFF, there’s a handy link here from one presenter with the latest and I presume greatest. I do want to talk about the Opening Ceremony.

Opening Worldcon (after a full day of programming…)

Now, having been to a number of academic conferences, I have certain expectations about opening ceremonies. There’s usually a keynote speaker who talks about their amazing, career-spanning work, and you usually walk away with exciting new knowledge. Plus there’s usually a weird, supposedly native, performance (some are more authentic than others).

While the Worldcon opening ceremony certainly had some interesting performances, there’s not much I learned about it except that it’s very old. As part of the ceremony, they not only held the Retro Hugos (retroactively celebrating the SFF that came out in 1944, a worthy goal except for the fact that most everyone of the recipients is dead and most surrogates had absolutely nothing to do with the winner…), but also gave out fan awards to those who have gone above and beyond as part of the First Fandom, the oldest generation of fans.

It’s only natural that these people are celebrated, as they are the main organisers and proponents of the whole thing, and Worldcon would not have survived this long, being the volunteer-run event that it is, without them. However, I personally couldn’t help but feel like an imposter. This is my first Worldcon, and while I vaguely know a few people who are here, the event is so big that there’s a good chance I will never even run into them. Overall, I feel like I’m too much of a slacker to be here. I have heard Dutch spoken all around the con, and yet I don’t know of a single Dutch SFF community.

There are so many nationalities, that no matter where you are from, dear reader, I can guarantee that at least a few of your countrymen and -women are here. As such, I vow here to endeavour to find out where these SFF Dutchies are hiding so that when Worldcon comes to the Netherlands (hopefully) sometime in the 2030s I will know my own community at least a little better!

My kingdom for a time-turner

Aside from feeling like a complete outsider and a fake fan (an accusation all too often thrown at female fans of any subculture, but I digress), I am mainly feeling overwhelmed. There are so many great talks by so many authors and editors I admire that I can’t possibly see all of them. I really hope I’m making the right choices. It doesn’t help that some of the talks take place in an entirely different venue that is a 15-minute walk away, which means you either have to risk it and miss even more or just give up on those talks altogether. First world problems, I know I know.

So here I am, sitting in my hotel room, thinking about all the things I might be missing out on and the people I could be talking to (I’ve seen Seanan McGuire, one of my favourite authors who really deserves to win the Best Series Hugo for her October Daye books, several times, but we’re always going in opposite directions and I don’t want to disturb her anyway…). Who knows what tomorrow brings.

Valuable resource

It may seem like I’m just complaining and feeling down, but that doesn’t mean I think aspiring (genre) authors should miss out on this amazing opportunity. Every day, there are opportunities to talk in a small group with all sorts of authors and editors (you just have to sign up in advance for these events). If you’re shy like me, you can still sit in panels and take in the wisdom and wicked sense of humour of a lot of talented, hard-working people.

Of course, if you are shy (or simply lacking in funds) then a place like Nine Worlds (which I’m hopeful will come back one day), or your own equivalent smaller fan convention near wherever you are, might be more suitable. It won’t have as many star authors, but it should still have enough. More importantly, it’s a lot smaller, which means less queuing, more chance of actually getting into all the panels you want, plus when I went to Nine Worlds I kept seeing the same people around which makes it a lot easier to get social if you’re not someone who is naturally inclined to go and talk to people.

Anyway, those are my first impressions of the insanity that is 6,000-odd people coming from all over the world to get geeky together. Time for bed.

As an addendum, I met up with an Irish friend yesterday (not at the con) who I hadn’t seen in 10 years, which reminded me that I’m the best at picking friends, so if you are at Worldcon this week and see someone in a NaNoWrimo shirt do say hi and see if you can be one of the best people that are my friends. (I hope that sounded like the compliment to my friends it was meant as rather than as an arrogant statement. Internetting is hard.)

Want to read some intimidatingly good fiction? Go to WorldCon!

For those in the UK: Happy National Writing Day! You should really be writing instead of reading on… For the rest of you:

As you can tell by the dearth of posts over the last few months, my non-work-related writing mojo has been lacking of late. To try and get it back – and because it sounds like fun – I signed on to attend the 77th World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon for short) in Dublin this August. For those of you who don’t know, an important part of WorldCon for established writers and editors is the Hugo ceremony, where awards are handed out to (hopefully) worthy winners in a variety of sci-fi related categories.

Who votes for these awards? Attendees! This means that, in order to sway voters, many publishers/nominees provide electronic versions of the novel/novelette/short story/series to eligible voters for free! It’s like the Oscars voting process but less elitist, classist and morally corrupt, hurrah! Also a lot cheaper for everyone involved probably, double hurrah!

So this happened before the Hugos were announced in Japan and if that’s not enough reason to want to be nominated for one, I don’t know what is

Reading time

I’ve started my ‘judging’, naturally, with the best novel category. Since voting closes near the end of July and there’s a lot of categories to get through – plus the books were just mostly cool to read – I read four out of the six books in the space of a week. One of the other ones, I own, but when it came to the last book in the category, I simply got stuck.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book and worthy of its nomination. It’s not the book, it’s partly the format (PDF and eReader does not mix) but mostly it’s me. Two of the four other books, I instantly want to read the sequel of. That’s a lot of investment in a lot of different characters, and I guess you could say it burnt me out.

However, there’s a silver lining to this. Because the whole mush of wonderful words unlocked a new story idea in my brain! It’s tough going for me, writing words when the rest of my life is extremely uncertain and I’m dealing with a lot of work-based rejection (otherwise known as looming unemployment), but it’s new and I’m trying not to think of how bad it is. So thank you, Hugos! Now I just have to read the works in all your other categories and also finish this one more book and, and, and…

Worthy winners of the past

I’m by no means an expert in science fiction, but here are some past Hugo winners whose work I really dig:

• N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (yes, she won three years in a row!). I’ll be doing a ‘Reading inspiration’ post about this one at some point, but just trust me it’s good. Very, extremely, amazingly, terrifyingly good.
• The Ditch Diggers! I’ve talked about this podcast before, but they definitely deserved to finally win it last year and also how cool is it that there’s a podcast category?!
• Seanan McGuire. Her books are always enjoyable and I really hope she wins this year for the highly addictive October Daye series. Every Heart a Doorway, for which she won in the past, is a YA book/novella that talks about what happens after the magic quest, after Alice has been to wonderland and she’s back home unable to readjust. Except it’s not Alice, but a whole new character with a whole new story among other kids with stories of their own. Also there’s murder.
• Any of the nominated zines, as those precious babies deserve lots of love and attention (plus you might be able to submit your work to them!).

I’ll leave you with these suggestions, even though there are many other worthy winners to mention. Feel free to tell me which past Hugo winner/nominee really rocks your world in the comments. You’ll hopefully hear from me again in less than four months this time as at the very least I’ll write a blog post about my trip to WorldCon. Adios again for now, and maybe I’ll meet some of you in Dublin!

Please stop writing for free

Oh the irony of writing a (very much) unpaid blog post asking people not to do unpaid writing work. However, nobody else is making any money off of this either (not even WordPress — or at least not much — since I’m using the free version). This is in contrast to a job I was offered not too long ago to write for this really cool website. While it would’ve been amazing and I have plenty of ideas for what I’d write, they couldn’t pay me for the first month, with only the possibility of profit sharing after that.

You may ask, why not? If nothing else, it would get my (pen) name some useful exposure and give me something exciting to add to my portfolio and CV. And yet, would you think it reasonable for a plumber to do some work for free first just so they could get their name out, or a doctor, or any other profession? Probably not.

Writing for exposure has become a long-running joke in the writing world at this point, so if you have any interest in becoming a professional writer you probably already know all about the ridiculousness of it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating.

“I’ve got a great offer on some exposure for you, don’t miss out!” Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com

When I started out transitioning from being a fulltime researcher to editorial and copywriting work, I found a company that would give me odd writing jobs. Cool, right? Except they didn’t pay very much, didn’t treat me as an important asset (not when they have so many other chumps happy to write for peanuts) and just didn’t understand that for me to do my job I needed some basic questions answered sometimes.

At that time, I was just happy to be paid to write. I was still stuck in the mindset that most people have, which is that writing is easy so it’s a privilege to be able to do it for a (very small) living. Now that I’m further along in my career, I know exactly how dangerous that thinking is.

Yes, it’s easy, for me, because I’m a writer. Having worked on other people’s writing now, though, I fully understand it’s actually something not everyone can do. That means that not only should I get paid for my time and effort, I should get paid a reasonable amount.

Funnily enough, the expectation of writing for free also haunted my previous life in academia. While you get paid to do research and teach, etc., nobody specifically pays researchers to write up and publish their findings. In most cases, recent PhD graduates will have to find time in their off hours to publish the work from their thesis while they’ve already moved on to a new job. It’s very rare for a grant to give PhD students the time not just to complete their research but also complete the write-up. What’s more, universities in many ways pay to publish, as they require subscriptions to access the same journals that they’re doing all this free writing work for. And don’t get me started on the peer-review process…

But I digress.

The thing to keep in mind is that by working for free, you are making life that much harder for everyone else. Sure, you may be able to cover your costs with a day job or your parents’ money, but what about the rest of us? There’s a reason that most journalists nowadays are still overwhelmingly white, male and coming from rich families (same goes for the publishing world in general). It’s because they could afford to cover the cost of doing a free internship in a major city.

Don’t be like those entitled jerks. Think about the rest of us, and only accept work that pays, either in money or something else (advertising for something that will make you money, or good karma points for a charity you believe in). Sure, this is sometimes hard to define, especially when it comes to wanting to advertise your books for instance. Maybe the best way to go about it is to go into meetings with the expectation of getting paid, so that the other party has to convince you that what they have to offer is just as good. If they’re paying designers to make pretty pictures around your work and IT support to keep their website running, they can sure as heck pay you too.

Would you encourage a friend to spend hours working for free while other people make money off their efforts? Of course not!

If you were an employer and you can get writing work for free, would you consider paying someone? You should, as you’d get much better quality from someone who knows their worth, but if you’re like a few employers I’ve met who think anyone can write, you probably wouldn’t.

Why would you set lower standards for yourself than for a friend? Why would you sabotage your own career by creating the expectation that you’ll happily work without pay? Nobody needs to starve to be an artist, and nobody should have to go without their fair due. Everybody deserves a living wage, including writers.

Who did it best? Comparing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Mario Odyssey and The Odyssey

Epic stories involving arduous journeys have long since been referred to as odysseys, thanks to Homer’s compelling tale of Odysseus’ journey home following the Trojan war. In recent years, there have been two such epic tales released with the name of Odyssey – both games, and both very different. Here, I will attempt to compare them all, and hopefully learn something about what it takes to write an epic story along the way.

Corporate social responsibility

Don’t worry, I’m not about to change the direction of my blog and become a corporate motivational speaker using only buzzwords (what Matt Berry skit was that from again?), I promise this will tie back in with the business of writing.

But first: corporate social responsibility, to my mind, just sounds like a business trying to feel better about not changing anything about the way they work. A company I worked for talked about community work, while at the same time using whole forests of (largely not recycled!) paper on unnecessary printouts and not allowing their employees to work from home (despite it being cheaper for everyone involved, as all the systems were in place, not to mention better for the environment).

Most people, at least in the Western world, have gotten used to some kind of environmental work by now. Whether it’s separating out the recyclables, choosing public transport or simply taking shorter showers, most of us are trying to do something. And yet, even the companies that aren’t pretending climate change isn’t real or isn’t man-made are still making environmentally unsound decisions and using wasteful processes simply because that’s what they’re used to.

For there to be actual change and for us to stand even the slightest chance of slowing down climate change before it kills a vast number of life forms, including likely us, it’s not enough for each and every one of us to do our little bit. Corporations and governments need to change. Unfortunately, most seem to be too focused on profit to do more than pay lip-service to the environmental researchers and activists begging them to please stop and rethink.

Political social responsibility

The way I see it, in an ideal world we’d be able to think about the short-term only and live our lives because we have politicians and the government to think about the long term and make all the hard decisions that will ensure our survival – and the survival of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Unfortunately, there are too many politicians these days that solely think about the next four or five years, or however long their term is, leaving the rest of us to worry about the future, without having much power to change things.

(I mean, we do actually hold a lot of power, collectively, but that would require enough people to get together and say enough is enough, which is hard to accomplish in any except the tiniest of countries. It works, but it requires effort, and our leaders are very good at influencing the education system and media to make us just afraid enough to vote for them but at the same time apathetic enough not to protest when our rights are compromised to line their pockets).

The writerly bit

Now, you may think that I’m going to wag my finger at those writers who feel it is necessary to print out drafts of their manuscript to edit things, and yes you may want to rethink that strategy if you’re just doing it out of habit or because it’s worked well for someone else, but what I want to talk about is the publishing industry.

As writers, we’re told to not write for free, to not work with Amazon because it’s evil, to make all the right choices when it comes to picking a publisher, while at the same time, companies seem to be largely getting a pass. If Amazon’s publishing arm pays you better than a traditional publishing house and you enjoy working with the team of whatever imprint is offering you a deal, why turn it down just because the big boss is trying to deprive his employees of basic human rights? Surely it should be the task of other publishing houses to innovate enough so they can keep competing with the big scary giant… (also please everyone form unions).

While I would encourage everyone to not shop through Amazon if there’s an alternative available, for whatever you’re looking to buy, it’s understandable that sometimes you don’t have the budget to afford to go buy something somewhere else or even to spend the time to try and find it elsewhere. This does not make you a bad person. It’s still, quite clearly, the big corporations (by no means just Amazon, they’re just an easy and ubiquitous example) that are being bad people (at least in the US, where corporations appear to be treated as people, but with more rights than actual human beings).

So, as a beginning writer, don’t make your career impossibly harder by dismissing legitimate paths to publication out of hand; if someone wants to pay you (never pay a publisher!!) and you’re allowed to tell your story without compromising its heart (e.g. as long as a publisher doesn’t tell you to remove anything that’s not white, straight, etc.) and you work well with the team responsible for publication, why not say yes? Once you’ve got success and some more power, then you can start making the uncompromising choices and demand change from other people.

Don’t get me wrong, I highly applaud someone like Roxanne Gay stepping away from her publisher because they were planning to publish a Nazi. But if you’re not at her level yet, that kind of decision won’t make the news and therefore won’t make a difference (again, unless you get every other writer to agree to do the same thing). Wait until the right time to make your stand, or simply demand better from the people you work with. While it often seems like the writer is the one with the least power in the entire publishing industry, if you have a high enough profile or enough other writers to side with you, change can happen – eventually. Until it does, don’t blame yourself for the problems of the industry.

That said, if you have the choice between bicycling to work or taking your car, either metaphorically or literally, do consider going by bike. While it’s important to put pressure on corporations to change for the better, every little helps.

To read the comments or not to read the comments, is that even a question?

So, I’ve just had another article published in the Mary Sue (read it here), and due to its subject matter (gun control and toxic masculinity) it’s understandably caused people to have opinions. This has me thinking about writers and reading reviews, and how it’s almost always a bad thing.

Most published writers will tell you never to look at your own reviews, and certainly not to comment on any criticism. Indeed, there are plenty of examples of authors who’ve started fights with commentators and unless the criticism is purely from a racist/sexist/general discriminatory perspective, the author always loses. They may think they’ve won, but other people will see them making an ass of themselves and stop buying their books.

Writing’s a long game. You don’t want to piss people off now, or they won’t help you or buy your books later. That includes editors who might not be interested in your current project, but may be helpful in future. Never write an angry message in reply to a rejection, because you never know who else the person knows. Publishing is a smaller world than many may think, so basically, don’t be a prick.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve also heard of published authors who refuse to look at comments and especially fan suggestions because if they ever unknowingly put the suggestion in a book, there might be legal trouble. This is more of a problem with fan-fiction, but there have probably been some flimsy legal cases based on fan comments, which cost money and cause unwanted stress. You can never be too careful as an author.

Finally, reading reviews or even comments can be bad for your mental health. Writers tend to have low-selfesteem and/or imposter syndrome, making the mental slap in the face even worse, but most humans would get upset if they saw people react negatively to their work, especially if the criticism isn’t based on anything concrete. Getting negative feedback on your work is one thing, but getting random insults that are useless to your personal growth, that’s something else entirely.

Studies have shown that people have to hear nine good things before they disbelieve one bad thing. So, if you’re a writer who’s recently published something, be nice to yourself and avoid the comments/reviews. Focus on writing the next thing instead, and trust your editor or a colleague/fellow author to tell you if there’s really something you should be working on improving.

Of course, I will read any comments on this post, ironically, because I like to get other writers’ opinions. So, please feel free to disagree in a constructive manner, I’m all eyes (because ears doen’t make sense in this context).

It shouldn’t be easier to identify with fictional ‘others’

It’s hard to focus on writing while every day there are more stories of children being kept in cages, separated from their parents, and there’s every indication that one country with nuclear weapons is being tricked by another country with nuclear weapons to tear itself apart. It’s even harder when you think about all the great novels and films out there that have tried their best to teach us how to empathise with others. How come it’s easier to identify with a depressed robot than a real-life child for some people? Why aren’t more people out there, protesting, concerned, fighting fascism?

 

Are you in or are you out?

As a psychologist, I’m well aware of the in-group versus out-group phenomenon. Since people are only able to keep a limited number of concepts in their brains, they form a subconscious barrier between the people they treat as individuals – people like them – and the people they treat as ‘others’. And unfortunately, the shortcuts they take in labelling those other groups usually lead to horribly stereotyped, often negative depictions in their head.

If you’ve never met a muslim, and all you hear from your incredibly biased news sources is how horrible they are, how will you ever learn they are just humans like you, with flaws and dreams and no control over what the extreme few do? I mean, do you have control over the hateful things people from your ‘group’ say or do? Or even your own family members?

Yet there are many books out there who try to teach us that everyone is flawed, A Song of Ice and Fire being probably the most well-known at the moment. How can some people feel for Jamie, who literally tried to murder a child at the start because he didn’t want people to know he was sleeping with his sister, but not for the people that live just a few blocks away from them and are struggling? I’d like to say it’s all the nuanced writing, the depth of character, and the fact that we don’t have such a close relationship with real-life others, but I know it could just as easily simply be because the guy’s white.

 

Celebrating the good

Rather than just stating the negatives of our current reality, I wanted to point out a good example of a novel that manages to make us question our stance on things and how we view humanity, without clobbering us over the head with the message. Because as much as some people might just never get it, the rest of us surely appreciate and celebrate fiction that acknowledges and celebrates diversity.

The novel, or rather series of novels, I’ve chosen is Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers Series, the third instalment of which is due to be released soon. The first book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, sees a human with an (at the start) undefined past join a crew of aliens on a mission that, for once, has nothing to do with blowing anyone up or fighting with other races. It’s delightfully slow-paced, giving us all the time in the world to get to know the various alien races and fall in love even with the grumpiest of crew members. It discusses sexuality, how others have different concepts of private space, gender and sex, and how to embrace new and exciting ways of being.

The second novel, A Closed and Common Orbit, discusses identity and what it means to be a sentient being. I don’t want to say much more for fear of spoiling these excellent books – seriously, go buy them or borrow them from your local library – other than to say that they have taught me that: a) you can write an excellent sci-fi book without having earth-shattering, widespread stakes (take out the planetary travel and races and Becky Chambers could have easily won a highbrow literary fiction award), and b) identity is a lot more complex than we pretend it is.

Back to the main point, this is just one series among the many that naturally compels us to empathises with alien races who are vastly different from our own. It makes me think, how hard could it be to make the parallels with people in our own world, and to just be kinder all around? Surely everyone who reads these books will have a more compassionate view of the world, right?

Then again, the recent controversy surrounding Star Wars should have taught me that even a film with all the right messages can have fans who don’t understand that the rebellion is supposed to be more appealing than the dark side – like the minority of Star Trek fans who are somehow also racist and sexist. Maybe I just need to accept that other people may have a very limited empathy-bubble and start preparing for the inevitable apocalypse. In the meantime, I tip my hat to all the writers out there who are managing to keep writing their stories. Well done, and good luck.

Video game writing is hard, yo

A few weeks ago, I got this great idea for a text adventure game a la Zork. So, I downloaded a text adventure creator and gave it a go. Not only was it really hard to find free software that does what I want it to do and isn’t super hard to master (still looking for something better), but I also started thinking about the differences between novel and game writing.

This is what Zork looks like, in case you were wondering.

One of the oft-repeated bits of advice for fiction writers is to write not for everyone, but have just one perfect reader in mind (note: you write the first draft for yourself, but the one that’s suitable for public viewing for this perfect reader). For Stephen King, this is supposedly his wife. Other writers use their agent, or simply imagine who they’d like to have read their book. Just one person.

They say that if you try to write for everyone, you end up writing for no-one, as it’s impossible to please every single person. Writing isn’t about hedging your bets, it’s about bleeding on the page, about making something special and unique.

When it comes to video games, any kind of video game, you can’t just think of one person. Instead, you have to think about the many strange ways in which gamers can interact with your game. This isn’t just relevant for the designers and coders, but also for game writers, as they have to think about in what order a player might come across their narratives. The last thing you want is to confuse the player.

As an example, I’ve been playing Ni No Kuni 2, and sometimes when you talk to an NPC, you’ll find you’re reading the second bit of conversation before the first. A small thing, and certainly not anything that dampens my enthusiasm for the game, but something to keep in mind from both a gameplay and immersion perspective.

When it comes to a text adventure, where it’s basically all text, a writer may want to think about someone who just puts “fart” into the text box over and over again. Then again, this might not be a player you’d mind losing, depending on how difficult the game is.

So, what do you write into the game, and what do you use a standard “does not compute” response for? While it’s still impossible to write for everyone and think of every single thing people might write/click, the audience has to be wider than just your partner or agent.

That said, any type of writing requires passion. Ticking boxes for the things you think people will want to see (moody, silent protagonist, check, annoying supporting character dialogue, check, repeated instructions… you get the gist) will generally not make people want to keep playing, let alone play your game over and over again to find all the little things they’ve missed.

In summary, video game writing is an under-appreciated art form that is super hard to master and I take my hat off to all that do it for a living. I’m having a hard enough time trying to please my one perfect reader (the first, of course, being myself), let alone weave an intricate story into an action-packed frenzy that can handle players making all the most non-obvious choices.