So I talked a little bit on Tuesday about how Final Fantasy 7 is an extremely well-balanced game, and how that's a big part of what makes it enjoyable. Balance is an interesting topic, and when it comes to videogames, it's sort of the holy grail. Games that are well-balanced become classics, while those that aren't tend to get relegated to the bargain bin. As evidence I cite Starcraft, so well balanced that it's still played competitively more than ten years after its release.
As for how this applies to writing books, well, let's give it a shot, shall we?
First, I think we need to establish that getting frustrated while reading is a negative thing. I think there are about as many readers who enjoy getting frustrated as there are gamers--which is to say a very small, very masochistic minority who like slogging their way through impossible material because after doing so they can brag about it.
There are many things that can frustrate a reader, but one of them is difficulty. If it's too damn hard to figure out what an author is saying, most people will get frustrated. Witness the legions of books abandoned partway through by high school and college students, let alone the general public.
So step one, people don't like to get frustrated. Step two, things that are too difficult can be frustrating.
Okay, but most people don't like books that are too easy either. The kind of learn-to-read chapter books that fascinated you in early elementary school don't still rivet you with their quality, do they? No?
Okay, so then we've established that people don't like books that are too easy or too hard. The goal, therefore, must be to land somewhere in-between. To achieve balance when it comes to difficulty.
Voila! We have learned something about how to write from the issue of balance in videogames! But there's more. They can even teach us a few things about how to do it. Tune in tomorrow for that bit.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Contracts!
I got to work with contracts today! Muahahaha!
Seriously, the company I work for is putting all of their contract info into an electronic database, and that means that I got to spend today poring over contracts and putting all the important information in them into a spreadsheet.
My co-intern seemed to find the situation mind-numbingly boring, but I was thrilled.
It was very, very, enlightening to get to look at the contracts, at how they're set up, at what the different terms mean, and most importantly---at who gets what terms, what they mean, and why they're important.
For instance, I saw today that advances tend to be pretty meh, and that having a good agent can increase your royalty rate by like 25-50%. I also learned that some people make decisions on subrights I find very interesting---take, for interest, translation rights. A lot of people seem to negotiate these so that the author gets a bigger cut than the publishing house.
This makes sense on the surface, I suppose, but if you dig a little deeper it's pretty illogical. The only reason I can see to cut the publishing house in on the money at all is if they're doing the work of shopping the title in other countries. If you plan to do that yourself (or have your agent do it), then they really don't deserve any of the money, in which case you should reserve all the rights. If you can't reserve those rights, then you'd want to give the publishing company an incentive to do the work by cutting them a higher stake of the profits from the translation. If you plan to have them do the work, giving them a smaller slice of the pie will discourage them from shopping your novel around at all, and that doesn't help anyone.
I also had the fun experience of running into some agency names I'm familiar with and seeing what they got for their authors. Unfortunately, book contracts are confidential, so I can't share (and neither, it seems, can they, or some of them certainly would), but in a perfect world I think I'd want to see example contracts up on every agency's website, as those contracts are a big part of what they do for authors and seeing exactly what each place can offer would be a great help in ranking them.
Seriously, the company I work for is putting all of their contract info into an electronic database, and that means that I got to spend today poring over contracts and putting all the important information in them into a spreadsheet.
My co-intern seemed to find the situation mind-numbingly boring, but I was thrilled.
It was very, very, enlightening to get to look at the contracts, at how they're set up, at what the different terms mean, and most importantly---at who gets what terms, what they mean, and why they're important.
For instance, I saw today that advances tend to be pretty meh, and that having a good agent can increase your royalty rate by like 25-50%. I also learned that some people make decisions on subrights I find very interesting---take, for interest, translation rights. A lot of people seem to negotiate these so that the author gets a bigger cut than the publishing house.
This makes sense on the surface, I suppose, but if you dig a little deeper it's pretty illogical. The only reason I can see to cut the publishing house in on the money at all is if they're doing the work of shopping the title in other countries. If you plan to do that yourself (or have your agent do it), then they really don't deserve any of the money, in which case you should reserve all the rights. If you can't reserve those rights, then you'd want to give the publishing company an incentive to do the work by cutting them a higher stake of the profits from the translation. If you plan to have them do the work, giving them a smaller slice of the pie will discourage them from shopping your novel around at all, and that doesn't help anyone.
I also had the fun experience of running into some agency names I'm familiar with and seeing what they got for their authors. Unfortunately, book contracts are confidential, so I can't share (and neither, it seems, can they, or some of them certainly would), but in a perfect world I think I'd want to see example contracts up on every agency's website, as those contracts are a big part of what they do for authors and seeing exactly what each place can offer would be a great help in ranking them.
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Pacing
So I've really been knuckling down on my research these past couple days, as I've realized I'm quite far behind where I need to be, and if I don't start working a bit harder I'm gonna have some crazy days waiting for me at the end of the summer---which is NOT where I want to be.
In consequence, today I've spent about 7 hours playing through Final Fantasy VII. Right now I'm taking a brief break, and then it's back to the grind.
What has surprised me through the experience is that the only thing forcing me to take breaks is quite literally my body (sitting for too long makes my legs stiff and my eyes get tired from staring at the screen for so long...oh for the days of my youth when I could spend 12 hours at once playing videogames and not even realize they'd passed!). I haven't gotten sick of the game, at all---even when one particular part (Anybody remember the Wutai side-quest, when Yuffie steals all your materia?...yeah.) frustrated the hell out of me. As I sit and ruminate over why this is, I think it's a consequence of two things.
The first is unique to videogames, and that is simply that the game is pretty much perfectly balanced. Your characters progress at a very gratifying rate, and enemies get harder at the same rate you get stronger so that you never feel frustrated or annoyed, but are constantly impressed with what your characters can do and the new, badder enemies they're killing. So kudos to the designers on that one---I'll post more about what I think you can learn as an author from videogame balancing in the future, because despite the obvious differences in medium, I think there's definitely a helpful lesson there.
But the second is what I want to focus on today, and that's that the story is expertly paced. Despite the many, disparate plot threads (Cloud's romantic interests, his past, his status as a Sephiroth clone, his identity, Tifa's past, her memories, Aeris's past and connection with Zach, Zach's identity, Aeris as an Ancient, the Ancients in general, Shinra, the Turks and their role both past and present, Rufus and his machinations...I could literally go on just about forever here), the game deals with each in its turn, never letting any one drop for long enough that you forget about it, never staying on one so long that you tire of it, and weaving them together in just enough ways you do and don't expect to always keep you guessing.
Once my research is done I may be able to post something about exactly how it does that---that's one of the things I'm hoping to glean from the work, but in the meantime I'll just suggest the game to anyone looking to learn a thing or two about pacing, as it's really a masterwork in the subject.
In consequence, today I've spent about 7 hours playing through Final Fantasy VII. Right now I'm taking a brief break, and then it's back to the grind.
What has surprised me through the experience is that the only thing forcing me to take breaks is quite literally my body (sitting for too long makes my legs stiff and my eyes get tired from staring at the screen for so long...oh for the days of my youth when I could spend 12 hours at once playing videogames and not even realize they'd passed!). I haven't gotten sick of the game, at all---even when one particular part (Anybody remember the Wutai side-quest, when Yuffie steals all your materia?...yeah.) frustrated the hell out of me. As I sit and ruminate over why this is, I think it's a consequence of two things.
The first is unique to videogames, and that is simply that the game is pretty much perfectly balanced. Your characters progress at a very gratifying rate, and enemies get harder at the same rate you get stronger so that you never feel frustrated or annoyed, but are constantly impressed with what your characters can do and the new, badder enemies they're killing. So kudos to the designers on that one---I'll post more about what I think you can learn as an author from videogame balancing in the future, because despite the obvious differences in medium, I think there's definitely a helpful lesson there.
But the second is what I want to focus on today, and that's that the story is expertly paced. Despite the many, disparate plot threads (Cloud's romantic interests, his past, his status as a Sephiroth clone, his identity, Tifa's past, her memories, Aeris's past and connection with Zach, Zach's identity, Aeris as an Ancient, the Ancients in general, Shinra, the Turks and their role both past and present, Rufus and his machinations...I could literally go on just about forever here), the game deals with each in its turn, never letting any one drop for long enough that you forget about it, never staying on one so long that you tire of it, and weaving them together in just enough ways you do and don't expect to always keep you guessing.
Once my research is done I may be able to post something about exactly how it does that---that's one of the things I'm hoping to glean from the work, but in the meantime I'll just suggest the game to anyone looking to learn a thing or two about pacing, as it's really a masterwork in the subject.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Apologies
I want to apologize for not posting much last week. The long and short of the reason why is that I was just exhausted from work. They've got me reading novels and writing press releases for them, which is great in some ways and pretty rough in others.
First, the good: It's great for understanding how the marketing side of publishing works, which is key to figuring out how to pitch my work. I'm going to get better and better and isolating what a book is really about and how it works as the summer goes on, and that experience will translate directly into being able to pitch my book in a way that catches an editor's attention. It's also not bad resume fodder.
Second, the bad: They've been handing me thrillers and horror. Now, I love a good book as much as the next guy, but my imagination has a tendency to get a bit overactive. I didn't get a solid night's sleep once last week, which is why I just couldn't find the energy to post when I got home from work...all I wanted to do was crash on the couch and hope I could sleep later that night.
But I've finished the horror novel they gave me, and maybe I'll get a romance next. Never thought I'd be hoping for that. ;-p
First, the good: It's great for understanding how the marketing side of publishing works, which is key to figuring out how to pitch my work. I'm going to get better and better and isolating what a book is really about and how it works as the summer goes on, and that experience will translate directly into being able to pitch my book in a way that catches an editor's attention. It's also not bad resume fodder.
Second, the bad: They've been handing me thrillers and horror. Now, I love a good book as much as the next guy, but my imagination has a tendency to get a bit overactive. I didn't get a solid night's sleep once last week, which is why I just couldn't find the energy to post when I got home from work...all I wanted to do was crash on the couch and hope I could sleep later that night.
But I've finished the horror novel they gave me, and maybe I'll get a romance next. Never thought I'd be hoping for that. ;-p
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
My Research
Just thought I'd take a minute to let people know what I'm up to with my research this summer.
I'm comparing narrative techniques and character development in Final Fantasy VII, Gundam Wing, and the three original Dragonlance Chronicles books. Aside from the fact that by doing this project I can basically get paid to do things I love, there are a few other reasons why I'm embarking on it.
The first is that I hope through buckling down and really looking at some of my favorite stories with a critical eye I will pick up some tricks to use in my own writing. Like I posted yesterday, I've already discovered one, and I expect to come across a few more as I continue the research.
The second is that it will provide me with something interesting to put in the "about me" section of my query letters and my resume. "I've been a fan of fantasy all my life" doesn't make for a good attention-getter. "I wrote a thesis-length paper comparing storytelling techniques in Anime, fantasy literature, and RPG videogames and have put the things I learned there to use in my own writing" is a bit more interesting. And if I can get it published somewhere (have yet to broach this topic with my advisor, but we'll see...) then so much the better.
The distant third is that I hope, in some small way, to begin to justify fantasy in the eyes of academia. It's not that I hold the opinion of academia in the greatest esteem--but credit should be given where it's due, and one thing I've learned in studying "English Literature" is that only those books which are sanctioned by the highbrow, academic elite will be widely taught in high schools and middle schools (and I'm not talking book reports or independent projects here, but those books actively taught by teachers). As I'm sure everyone remembers, the current fare on offer in those venues isn't always mouth-watering, and the nation as a whole can only benefit by the opening up of more interesting texts.
I'm comparing narrative techniques and character development in Final Fantasy VII, Gundam Wing, and the three original Dragonlance Chronicles books. Aside from the fact that by doing this project I can basically get paid to do things I love, there are a few other reasons why I'm embarking on it.
The first is that I hope through buckling down and really looking at some of my favorite stories with a critical eye I will pick up some tricks to use in my own writing. Like I posted yesterday, I've already discovered one, and I expect to come across a few more as I continue the research.
The second is that it will provide me with something interesting to put in the "about me" section of my query letters and my resume. "I've been a fan of fantasy all my life" doesn't make for a good attention-getter. "I wrote a thesis-length paper comparing storytelling techniques in Anime, fantasy literature, and RPG videogames and have put the things I learned there to use in my own writing" is a bit more interesting. And if I can get it published somewhere (have yet to broach this topic with my advisor, but we'll see...) then so much the better.
The distant third is that I hope, in some small way, to begin to justify fantasy in the eyes of academia. It's not that I hold the opinion of academia in the greatest esteem--but credit should be given where it's due, and one thing I've learned in studying "English Literature" is that only those books which are sanctioned by the highbrow, academic elite will be widely taught in high schools and middle schools (and I'm not talking book reports or independent projects here, but those books actively taught by teachers). As I'm sure everyone remembers, the current fare on offer in those venues isn't always mouth-watering, and the nation as a whole can only benefit by the opening up of more interesting texts.
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