The State of the Art

I recently addressed creative stagnation in genre novels. That post led to speculation on where to find cutting edge science fiction and fantasy. Several interested parties identified video games as the new medium for visionary storytelling. I agree that games have inherited a large swath of the cultural real estate once dominated by novels. But is this a positive development?

One fact that tends to be overlooked in a given "video games are the new novels" discussion is that the medium a story is told through matters. That's why artists use different media to tell their stories. One of the most common mistakes made by first time novelists is to write like they're dictating the action of a movie. Similarly, a film shot at the relentless pace of a novel would be an exhausting visual jackhammer.

As is rightly said, film is primarily a visual medium. Directors can include pages of expository dialogue and whole reels of establishing scenes because the visuals keep the audience entertained. A novelist who writes two consecutive paragraphs of description or whose characters spout exposition for more than half a page will quickly find his book set aside. Words are all writers have, so each one needs to be important.

Video games are something of a chimera. They too rely mostly on images. However, it's not uncommon to find blocks of text, audio snippets, and non-interactive video in the mix. Your mileage will vary by genre, but the one feature that all games must have in order to be games at all is challenge.

It's been said that interactivity is what makes games special and that books and films are passive media. As I point out here, that's an oversimplification. Whether you're immersed in a game or staring at a sculpture, all art is interactive. No artist can force engagement with his work. The audience's personal perspective is always vital to shaping the experience.

Games aren't the only interactive art medium. They are the most prominent art form that calls attention to audience participation. Video game interactivity is so overt that players feel cheated if a game is too linear or arbitrarily limits their choices. That is as it should be since the most fundamental level of engagement with a game comes from meeting and overcoming challenges.

The fundamentally different approaches to narrative in novels and games are why I doubt that video games can truly replace books. They're built for different jobs. Conflict is essential to novels, but only as a narrative device. In contrast, conflict is the whole point of a game. Hence the rising criticism of a certain game that shall remain nameless.

Balancing complex character, engaging narrative, striking scenery, and challenging conflict in a game is a herculean task. Overemphasizing character may impede the player's vicarious experience. Excessive focus on narrative can make players impatient. Visuals that are too lush can be distracting, and we all know how frustrating imbalanced difficulty is.

Novels are far more straightforward. All a writer has to worry about is setting up strong internal and external conflict and arranging the story so that the stakes progressively rise. None of that is simple, but it's far easier without the added burdens of game development.

In short, the natural focus of games is on the overall immersive experience. Novels are entirely about the story.

Patience Obtains All Things

Since I started taking my professional novelist ambitions seriously many well-meaning folks have asked when my books will be out. I'm grateful that people have shown interest in my work. I also advise those people to stoke their enthusiasm for the next several years.

Taking an idea from draft to finished manuscript to publication usually takes a long time. Published author's I've consulted say that the average is about five years. This means that some authors get published in a year. For every first year prodigy, someone else waits ten years.

It takes me about six months to write a novel draft. I go through a minimum of three drafts before I start to think that my work might be fit for public consumption. Each draft goes out to beta readers from whom I get as much feedback as possible before re-drafting.

When editing devolves into aimlessly pushing words around the page, I've done all that my petty skills allow. It's then time for agent queries and possibly a few direct publisher submissions. I don't approach many publishers directly because:

1. Few publishers even accept unagented submissions these days.

2. Those few publishers who do allow open submissions still give top priority to projects from agents they've done business with before.

3. The stigma that writers making unagented submissions weren't good enough to land agents.

4. Publishers are far less likely to buy a manuscript rejected from their slush pile (which it almost certainly will be) even if an agent represents it later.

5. It is extremely poor form to submit the same MS to multiple publishers at once. It can be career-ending to get caught.

I'm focusing most of my efforts on querying agents. It's generally okay to query more than one at a time if you promptly inform the others when one accepts you. Agents who say they're taking on new clients will only add one or two at most, but those odds are still better than in the slush pile.

The good news is that I've been hard at work querying agents. Most have replied via form letter, which is neutral. The few personalized rejections have only been encouraging. To my surprise, no one in the industry has yet labeled me an illiterate hack.

Once again I ask your kind patience. Delayed gratification is the best gratification.

Defeating Writer's Block: Part 1

A question I'd probably be asked if I ever left my desk is, "How do you deal with writer's block?" That question is deceptively complex because people who don't practice writing as a discipline often have a different idea of the creative process than those who systematically make stuff up. I know because I labored under these misguided notions until quite recently.

In order to field this question we'll have to nail down the semantics. I've found that many laymen imagine the writing process to be the act of transcribing fully formed stories dictated by some mysterious idea vending machine. That's only partially true.

Creative people aren't Pythian mediums or hosts for the loa. Anyone with the capacity for language can tell stories. The fact is that of the 200 million aspiring novelists in this country, only a small minority realize that writing stories well is an acquired skill. Even fewer take the time to hone that skill.

So, what most people mean when they ask how to beat writer's block is, "How do you write when you're not inspired?" Or worse, "How do you make inspiration happen?" The answer to the first question is, "You write." The answer to the second question is, "You don't need to."

Writing isn't a mystical charism. It's a technical artistic discipline that takes thousands of hours to perfect. It makes no more sense to ask a writer how he can produce fiction while uninspired than it does to ask an IT technician how he can install a network while uninspired.

Many people mistake coming up with a great idea and executing it well for inspiration, which is actually quite rare. The reason that 60 percent of the population aspires to authorship is that everyone has lots of ideas all the time. They assume that coming up with a story premise is the hard part.

Ideas are cheap. Professional execution is a grueling ordeal. Writing isn't a shortcut to an easy living. It's a lifelong commitment to a craft.

That's my experience. What's yours?

Nomen Omen

"The name is an omen."
     -ancient Roman proverb

I've been giving serious thought to choosing a pen name for my fiction writing efforts. It's been pointed out that distinguishing my novels from my nonfiction commentary would help to narrow and target interest in each area. Sounds reasonable.

Any thoughts on whether adopting a pen name is a good idea? If so, I'm taking suggestions on potential names. Diego T. Iglesias is my current favorite (major points to anyone who guesses why).

Besides, compared to Jason Pargin I don't think it's too much of a stretch. I'm not of Latin-American descent, but I do have a fondness for Latin.

What do you think?