Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Servant Corps]

In most stories, the Writer is God. What this mean is that, whatever the writer wants to happen in his story, it happens in his story. If the writer wants an asteroid to hit Earth, it will. If the writer wants the main character to sleep with everyone else, he/she will. And so forth.

That's fine...except when you, the reader, read the story the writer wrote. Knowing that "Writer is God" makes the story seems...pointless. You know everything that happened only happened because the writer wanted it to happen. None of the characters deserve or "earned" anything that happened to them; none of the characters is responsible for their actions or their reactions. Everyone and everything serve as merely puppets of the writer. As a result, the story falls flat. Any characterization, any plot, any word is to be trashed out of existence because the writer chosen the characterization, the plot, the word. So nothing is immune from criticism, and nobody can enjoy a plot on its merits because that plot...disappears in a poof of postmodern literary criticism.

Is there a way to limit the omnipotence of writers then? To make it so that the writers is not in control of the story, thereby making the story more compelling to read (since you know the writer isn't responsible for the course of the plot)?  Writer omnipotence could possibly be eliminated if, say, the writer let characters' actions be determined by a variety of other actions unrelated to what the writer "wants" the character to do (example: coin flips, random generation, even just previous characterization guiding future actions)...but is it 1) practical and 2) able to work?

[Max White]

Sure, base the novel on real woorld events. Eashy.

[Darvi]

Go read a "Choose your own adventure" book.

[freeformschooler]

Do what I do. Forum games. The players are at least partially responsible for the plots.

[Capntastic]

I disagree with your premise on a few points, and because I have Holiday obligations I can't currently expand on them to my liking.  Suffice it to say, for now, until I can sink my teeth into this discussion, that a writer who makes 'whatever' happen for 'any reason' is a bad writer, and a good writer that doesn't betray their own craft will be selecting the choices and words that make the most 'sense' and have the most correct, desired 'impact'.

Your premise is along the lines of saying that all paintings are pointless because the painter can decide the subject, the paints they use, the brushstrokes, the lighting, etc.  While one might make the point that all art is 'pointless', this would be denying the truth that there is value in art, and this value is derived from a handful of attributes, both in what the artist instills and what the viewer/reader extracts from it.

If your argument is that 'well it's made up, ergo null', this is wrecked by the fact that a story can have consistent tone, themes, characterization, all of which could be used to convey a point, be entertaining, etc.  Verisimilitude is but one aspect of a piece's value, and a skilful writer can achieve internal logic and consistency even in the most abstract fantasy works (like Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Quartet).

But, to cut away at the 'Writer is god' argument at the Gordian root, yes a writer is free to put whatever they want down.  This does not in of itself make the work good.  It reveals that the writer is, if they make these missteps in their own subject matter, that they are not familiar with what they are creating. And, if it is not good, and they are not able to perceive all factors going into the work, then it is not the work of 'a god'.

[Biag]

Why is the story any less "pointless" if everything is determined by a coin toss? When I read a novel, I know that everything is happening for some reason that the author had because they're trying to make a point. If it were all random, I wouldn't care in the slightest about the story.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Capntastic, and agree with everything he said.

[Willfor]

For the record, I am perfectly okay with the omnipotence of a writer. It doesn't bug me whatsoever.

HOWEVER, for the longest while I've been playing around with actually trying to set up some procedural storytelling methods, and for the past couple of weeks I've been using a personal solo D&D ruleset. The characters have heavy amounts of randomization determining their personality and backstory. The mechanics, while simple, I hold as sacrosanct once used. I don't allow myself to change any rolls for the purpose of the plot. Thus, all that's left for me to do is generate the initial situation, and interpret the result in the form of a story.

I'm getting close to a place where I'm actually getting good stories.

I might start posting them here once they actually get some good results because there's no way I'm going to be able to make a publishable novel using the method I've been doing so far.

[fqllve]

That's pretty interesting, Willfor. I'd definitely read one of those. Now, when you say personal do you mean you've modified it? I could see coming up with a slightly different set of variables for each initial situation, but I wouldn't imagine there was enough nuance in the actual DnD books to carry a story.

My problem with procedural or aleatory storytelling is that the sense of the events is constructed afterwards. Which is fun, and worthwhile to be sure, and it certainly exposes the truth that the reader constructs the story by the act of reading, but it isn't any less artifice than crafted fiction. In fact, it's probably more so, because an author can design the facets of the story to explicitly resemble the real world (as much as that's possible) whereas with procedural or aleatory fiction the verisimilitude of the work is dictated by the interpretive powers of the author.

I say all that as a huge Burroughs fan. :p

[Willfor]

@ fqllve:

Basically, I started with Microlite D20, which is basically an extremely stripped down version of the D20 system. It used to be publicly available for download, but the creator seems to have taken it down for revision and publishing. It reduces all attributes to Strength, Dexterity and Mind, and under basic rules only has a few classes. Anyway, I stripped that down further, reducing every class to "Fighter" with any additional attributes to be specifically added to a character.

Then I went over to my C# IDE, and made myself a randomizer. It hits up the Yafnag word generator to make a random name for the character. It hits a single list of words that a character Dreams of and are Destined for -- They come from the same list, but they have two different functions 1) The Dream is what the character desires out of life and 2) The Destiny is what the character will be pulled toward via bonuses to any action moving them closer to it -- It goes through the same process to pick out three defining words that will the principle character traits for the person. It then picks race, gender, political ideal, randomizes an appearance, and rolls for HP.

The advantages: Low bookkeeping so I can have plenty of characters in a wordpad file, and keep track of everything that's going on without getting an information overload and yet still accurately represent what's going on. A gritty OD&D feel as healing magic is usually at a premium, and damage is common. It's extremely easy to know what to do next because of the simulation style.

The disadvantages: Jumping in and out of so many perspectives at once makes it hard to get into my usual writing mindset of heavy dialogue, and due to the very nature of the game I'm playing with myself, I have to force myself to break out of a certain mindset to do dialogue. I really need to do a lot more work with backstory generation if I want to not have to do that part myself, because backstory -- the lack thereof -- is making a lot of my characters feel flat because I can't get into their history as much. It takes a lot of time to get anything done because I'm used to being able to skip over the boring parts, and now I have to simulate them from several perspectives to keep the simulation from breaking down at any given point. Expanding the simulation beyond two or three points of light is a nightmare of untold proportions.

So yeah, I've still got some bugs to work out, but it's the same as any other creative endeavor. You get good out of it if you put a lot of good effort into it.

[Supermikhail]

I'd just like to mention that Philip Dick wrote a novel using I Ching to decide characters' actions. It's called the Man in the High Castle and it won a Hugo Award. So it can definitely work. Not that I'd say it makes much of a difference for me. I think I read Philip Dick for his personal voice, images and views. I guess it's my way of coping with the loss of suspension of disbelief which I think I experienced a few years ago. Well, maybe not complete loss. In any case, I remember it being a bit of a crisis. I don't think random generation would have done it for me then. I mean, the story didn't happen in reality, anyway, and that was my main grudge.

I definitely support procedurally-aided story generation. Maybe you could create a new literary movement or something.

[Capntastic]

On the flip-side of proceduralized fiction is ergodic literature. 

Examples of Milorad Pavic's works in that area follow:

    Dictionary of the Khazars takes the form of three cross-referenced encyclopaedias of the Khazar people. The book was published in a "male" and "female" version, which differ in only a brief, critical passage.
    Landscape Painted With Tea mixes the forms of novel and crossword puzzle.
    Inner Side of the Wind – which tells the story of Hero and Leander – can be read back to front, each section telling one character's version of the story.
    Last Love in Constantinople has chapters numbered after tarot cards; the reader is invited to use a tarot deck to determine the order in which the chapters can be read.
    Unique Item has one hundred different endings and the reader can choose one.

The important thing to note is that the difference between it simply being a gimmick and being an important method of traversing the text is the level of comprehension the author has with regard to the work in a non-linear perspective.  Of course, Pavic is an astoundingly gifted writer all on his own.

[LordBucket]

Is there a way to limit the omnipotence of writers then?

Give control to characters.

Classic example

[Grakelin]

If you get into "the zone", it won't feel like you're God, either.

Also, if you're looking for a random story aid, I suggest Mythic. I've had great success combining it with the random adjective-noun generator for RPGs.

[Max White]

Give control to characters.

Classic example

Wow, I don''t know what the artist was trying to portray, but in the end it looked like he was just bagging atheism.

[JoshuaFH]

On the flip-side of proceduralized fiction is ergodic literature. 

Examples of Milorad Pavic's works in that area follow:

    Dictionary of the Khazars takes the form of three cross-referenced encyclopaedias of the Khazar people. The book was published in a "male" and "female" version, which differ in only a brief, critical passage.
    Landscape Painted With Tea mixes the forms of novel and crossword puzzle.
    Inner Side of the Wind – which tells the story of Hero and Leander – can be read back to front, each section telling one character's version of the story.
    Last Love in Constantinople has chapters numbered after tarot cards; the reader is invited to use a tarot deck to determine the order in which the chapters can be read.
    Unique Item has one hundred different endings and the reader can choose one.

The important thing to note is that the difference between it simply being a gimmick and being an important method of traversing the text is the level of comprehension the author has with regard to the work in a non-linear perspective.  Of course, Pavic is an astoundingly gifted writer all on his own.

What is ergodic Literature supposed to be again? I simply can't make heads or tails of the wikipedia article.