I think its a writing style developed from how people communicate in irc type interfaces. At least it seems familiar to me based on how I communicate ideas to my friends and family on discord/facebook/whatsapp etc
I won't speak to it's merits or problems, but just point out that I didn't find it hard to parse, perhaps because its familliar to me?
I often read texts (blogs, articles, long comments, etc) out of order, skipping whole paragraphs, coming back if I feel like I missed a detail. Just going fast. This post is entirely incompatible with that. Not only that, the combination of thin, serif, monospace font on a white background is distracting, but also like 1/4th of the text is bolded, further messing up how I think what is important. Like it is trying to "force itself" on me - that automatically causes me to "resist" by skipping even more... and there's the bottom of the page. (quoted words are far too strong, but you should get the idea)
I'm sure the author didn't intend that, it's just that how I read things being deeply incompatible with their style.
I do read some things "the normal way", but that requires either the text being densely packed, or a linear story.
How do you know you are not missing a ton of important meaning? I feel like I know people that do this and are clearly missing major points by substituting their on beliefs in.
We do miss out on a ton of important meaning. On the other hand we skip over a ton of unimportant meaning writers bloat their articles with. I need paragraphs and sentence structure as a kind of bounding volume hierarchy though...
My theory - based on nothing - is that a lot of people "think in video" now. They don't read writing, they read subtitles.
So when they write, what they're doing is narrating the images and ideas playing out like a movie in their head. Unfortunately most narration needs pairing with an image to make sense.
I do agree that people think differently these days vs 20 years ago, based on my own personal experience which is not nothing, and I would argue your "based on nothing" is based on your personal experience :-)
I like this articles point that the emotion of the moment is really what matters and the challenge for writers is to identify the emotion that is evoked through the wide smattering of situations a dynamic video game puts its players through.
I think it goes beyond video.
Back to speculating about society and its thinking, we spend a lot of time consuming media packages presented to us on our cell phones or tablets or computers. That's a repetitive process. This sounds like training to me. The mode is a screen or two screens if you've got multiple monitors, some kind of touch or hand-driven browsing device might come out or a touch screen. And yeah, the images can flicker on the screen like a captivating campfire, engorging you in a dazzling array of light and sound which can tickle your funny bone or involve you in a sad moment.
It's like life for all of us media consumers has become predictable, because you can visit and revisit these experiences.
Life of course is not that predictable, it is chaotic and as adults we only learn how to protect against the radically horrible potential outcomes of life through skills and learning from other people's mistakes.
I'm in the opposite boat. This style nicely mimics how I think. I find the types of fragment in the article align with the boundaries of each unit of thought in a manner that quite clearly approximates my internal dialog.
I think your examples does a disservice, as your breaks do not follow such rules.
This style mimics how I think, but my thinking is a disorganized mess. Before giving my thoughts to somebody else, I usually consider them, sort them, and put them into a form that is easier for somebody else to understand. Usually, this includes a reread and editing.
I agree that this writing style mimics thought. I don't want to read disorganized thoughts, though. It's not a huge issue, because the length of this piece is quite short, but if I were to do several minutes of reading this style of writing, I would find it very exhausting, and I probably wouldn't retain most of it, because the lack of organization inhibits my ability to fully internalize it. Most of my disorganized thoughts that I don't really mull over (ie. thinking the same thoughts repeatedly in different orders, and considering many different aspects of them) or organize into a written form, I also don't retain. I lose them forever. If I was sharing them with somebody else, I don't think I'd keep them in the format that's most easily forgotten.
For personal journaling, it's fine enough, but I don't find it really a compelling write-up of the age-old premise "Don't overthink it, just get started. If you overthink it, you might never finish, or might even never really start." It's not really much different from the famous "Shitty First Drafts" paper[0].
> I don't want to read disorganized thoughts, though.
See, this is where I differ (potentially from most, given the responses here). I love reading "disorganized" thoughts because they aren't random, they follow the writers train of thought. This gives insight not just into the content of their mind, but the structure! How fun!
That's not the expectation. The expectation is that everybody's thinking is a stream of thoughts very specific to the person and context. It's not naturally conducive to another person's consumption, or to long-term or comprehensive understanding.
My thinking is a disorganized mess because that's the nature of thought in the first place. Your thoughts are everything you are experiencing or considering as you experience or consider them. The vast majority of them are gone within moments after you've thought them, to never be remembered again.
The thoughts that stay are the ones that you consider, run over in your head a few times, and have taken the opportunity to organize in your head a bit more. True stream of consciousness is not usually enjoyable to read (and I'll note that this article is not true stream of consciousness, but rather minimally organized thoughts).
Ahhh, I see where you are coming from. That you have less shame than I thought for yourself when you say "mess". Thanks for clarifying my perception. It looks like instead it's more appropriate to talk about synchronizing with the intention of the author?
To back up for a second and provide context, I was keyed up after reading and really focusing in on the parent commenters criticality, mocking and shaming. I perceived it as a judgmental characterization of the author of this piece of story writing guidance. So when I came across your comment I thought you might be beating up on yourself to echo the emotional sentiment of, and to try and build a bridge between the parent commenter and the article writer. I wanted to provide a counterpoint and some support to you.
Now I guess that my reaction to the article is different, less about a jarring sensation of discordance where I'm expecting you know organized bulletized conventional grammar explaining some subjects, and recognizing instead a person who's trying to help fiction writers to access their feelings. I see the author chose to do this through a tongue in cheek way of writing whimsical prose using little punctuation and lots of white space.
Yes. I also find the article's prose difficult, but I really am not the target audience.
I appreciate your consideration and thoughtfulness. You're not far off in your assessment. I was trying to bridge a gap between the top-level comment and the negative reaction to it by using my own perspective as an example of why the presentation might be difficult for some people. I also don't appreciate the tone of the original criticism, but I did share the same disconnect with the content due to the presentation.
Personally, I feel that people should be able to express themselves however works for them. The article's prose isn't for me, but it really doesn't have to be. On the other hand, I do also feel that there's nothing wrong with others sharing their critiques of written works. I don't like the common sentiment of negative reactions to any and all criticism of anything. We are not our creations, and a criticism of a written work shouldn't be treated as hostile. Again, the mocking tone of the original criticism was distasteful, but not enough so to disregard it entirely (unlike another "crackhead" comment that crosses the line).
Writing down "How you think" is not good general-audience presentation of information. That's probably Journalling.
"Writing" is probably supposed to be general-audience presentation of information. By avoiding all rules of presentation, you invalidate everyone's ability to quickly digest the information. I tried to scan this as I usually do, and was forced to read each excruciating, disjointed, malformed line one by one to get to the point.
Do you think they're doing this for a purpose? Why would you think that they chose to write like that?
From what I gather reading the footer of the web page they are a trained writer. Like they have potentially a degree in the English language from a school.
What are you getting at with your pile on criticism? Tell us what you really think...
About what is acceptable,
about what your expectations are,
about effectiveness of eliciting and guiding emotional expression.
Cute and to reinforce my point I think the intention of the author was not to provide a technical treatise but instead to use whimsy to help story writers access their emotions, by invoking and emotional response in them.
It is telling to be that this thread of commenters is focused on criticizing the style, here. That's kind of fascinating to me.
The style is getting in the way of the message. Did I finish the blog post? I did not. Will I read more from this author? Chances are very low.
Sometimes style is the message. I don't think this is a good example of that, as the author is trying communicate unrelated concepts. A better way to do that is, "clearly".
What the writing reminds me of is myself, when I was nineteen, in art school. That is not an association you want to have made, as I thought I knew everything when in fact I didn't even know who I was myself. Clever just gets you so far.
Show me that you are confident in your writing, rather than hiding behind a messy style that you so desperately want me to be impressed with.
I agree that for you style is getting in the way of the message.
I don't agree that it's clear from the writing that the author is desperate, or wants to impress you.
Instead I speculate that the author does not care what > you < think: I believe that the author is not writing for "you", at least not the you that is in your current state of mind. I speculate that they are writing for somebody who's in a more freeform kind of word poetry state of mind.
I mean that's the only kind of conclusion I can come up with reading the article because it is clearly non-strunk & white english. So that leads me to think okay this is probably poetry or prose of some kind of whimsical or rhyming form.
And then I reread it and I see the words are closer to a stream of consciousness, as is talked about in other comments here. They're a little bit more structured than a stream of consciousness, in my view because the words appear to evoke feelings like notes in music, to a degree.
The overall point of the article, as it appears to be overtly stated in the footer, to help writers to be effective at writing for video games. And this post specifically is about pulling emotions from the writer into the video game that are appropriate to the meandering experience of a player.
So I liken the presentation here to be less conventional technical structured writing and more a song or a tune. And that's how I find this article useful.
I don't believe the author is writing for himself, or why would they put it on a blog, then ask people to subscribe to a newsletter?
Making an outline is great. But I'm not going to make someone read my notes on something I want to actually write, nor publish my shitty first draft and then have all of us treat it like some exceptional creative product.
This whole, "I'm beyond all that" is kinda navel gazing, narcissistic. If that's what you mean by "writing for oneself" than I guess I agree. I'm not actually convinced this person knows the fundamentals of clear communication or writing.
If what you want to do is teach, teach. If what you want to do is perform, perform.
Really? I find that it makes it so much more pleasant and easy to read. I read it much faster than I would have without bold. The author is telling you which parts of the sentence are most important, so your brain frees up that processing part where you have to figure that out.
why not start with a linear narrative?
use all the techniques we already know and feel them in video game form?
have you heard of walking simulators? They're just that, with one or two
twists. Yet...
I'm not saying you should show it to anyone if you're not ready.
This sounds like ... rambling. There's no connection between any of the lines. If you're brainstorming, brainstorm. I suspect that's what this is.
Is this a backhanded compliment? Do you think they're being particularly effective because they're trying to evoke crackheads?
I don't think that piece of writing is intended to be a technical treatise on creative writing. Instead, it to me reads as a tool to help technical writers for games to elicit effective story content that has an impact on the player. So I do think their prosaic poetical style intentionally evokes wandering, in order to encourage the reader to mentally wander as a part of their own creative exploration process when writing story content for video games.
Totally true. I downregulated the feedback to be a little more kind.
My experience living in LA may have colored my response.
To address the meat of your response
> it to me reads as a tool to help ...
I don't see why this even qualifies as tool. There's no summary, not flow of logic, no conclusion really, just some thing a former mentor used to call a "walk through the garden of thought".
Sure, the thoughts look pretty to you, but you need to cultivate it for your audience, which usually means getting to the point and providing evidence or information clearly. If you cannot do that, at least be engaging, so that the reader sticks with you until you reach your point.
This writing style just doesn't do either of those things. It's confusing to jump from line to line and have to fill in a lot of gaps, it's not easily scanned for relevant points (every line is bolded and separated from text), it just ignores everything we know about presenting information.
Thank you for the frank sharing of where you are coming from and clarifying so richly your thinking, it's really valuable to me. It shows me again how we all are different and soothes me to a degree, reducing my expectations of myself around strangers.
I agree with you, given that context. This article is not an effective brief nugget on emotional introspection for videogame writers.
I see it intended to be something different in style. And the fact that I choose to see it differently is the fascinating part to me, than this whole thread here on hacker news. It's like everyone else on this thread is upset and throwing their systematized note cards up in the air due to the article being unoptimized for Google's search engine. It's frankly odd to me, this mob of judgment jumping down the throat of the author.
> throwing their systematized note cards up in the air due to the article being unoptimized for Google's search engine
In my opinion, it's more criticism of the article for not communicating clearly to the reader. I don't care about Google SEO, but I do care about being able to understand the purpose of what I'm reading.
> this mob of judgment jumping down the throat of the author.
I do take issue with this. We are not our work. If we create something that has flaws, it should not be rude or uncouth to address those, nor should it be considered a personal attack on the author. Otherwise, why wouldn't the same apply to the critique itself? Wouldn't it be similarly wrong to jump down the throat of somebody who criticizes the work, as much of this thread boils down to?
Writing is not sacred, and we are not what we write. If we take critique personally, then we are setting ourselves up for defensiveness and an inability to grow or develop.
That said, it's clear that many people like the presentation. The fact that this article isn't for everybody is not a bad thing. Not everything needs to be for everybody, and somebody who points out why it doesn't work for them can be right, while at the same time, those aspects aren't a problem for other readers.
When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
What is being said here? And was it said? And was it said with 100 words when 10 would do? Were the other 90 words evidence or engaging content or ... a garden of thoughts?
The style doesn't work for me, but if you have an audience that likes the style, I'd encourage you to either stick with it or at least (somehow) ask that existing audience what they think about any change.
Even the subject of your post is narrative-driven games, which already also aren't for everybody.
When you're making something special specifically for the people who like that special kind of thing, deviating from that to be more accessible, or achieve a greater audience, or even to be more "effective" can be a path to diluting what you're doing, and spoiling what is special about it.
The criticism and feedback are correct; they are things that kept the words from really working for that reader. They also prevented the post from really working for me. I don't believe, however, that I need to be the audience. If you are doing something different from everybody else, in a unique style, it feels to me that it would be a little sad for that uniqueness to go away, even if I'm not a part of it. Like a species of a bird that I have never seen and never will see going extinct is still a sad thing.
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this. I guess I'm just saying that criticism can be right, correct, and valid, and the right thing to do can still sometimes be to not take the advice, even when it's factually correct.
TL;DR this complex reaction of annoyance shared here is perhaps the most valuable piece of information in this article to you, and is potentially beneficial insight to you.
> ... you’re going to ignore the rules
Why share a nearly entirely unconstructive critical, mocking, and shaming discussion point in a public forum? To be clear, it's okay by me to do so .. it's just odd to me. It stands out as unhelpful, unexpected, and confusing and so to dig into what's interesting about it, it makes me wonder what's going on for you personally, and so I'm asking about it.
About the article: everybody is different. How people express themselves differs widely. What they are saying however approaches reasonablely concrete shared meaning based on context. In this case there is a writer who is talking about conveying emotion in the challenging medium of video games / interactive entertainment software, overtly for the purpose of being helpful supporting scriptwriters engaged in that field. Through the blog in question, they effectively express a meandering open-minded approach to eliciting one's own thoughts and feelings, as a writer, in whatever genre the game itself ends up being in order to appropriately honor the characters of the game. Their use of white space and lack of punctuation suggests this openness, to me.
You, here, implicitly state that you know or have decided what 'the rules' are for other people who are writing their own missives.
Some provocative thoughts for discussion: Is this criticality really neuroticism? Are your comments reflecting society's recently hot-topic flirtations with authoritarianism? Are your habits influencing this criticality: what are your personal habits towards socialization trending towards, in-person to see people's faces or are you primarily using communication techniques that don't offer you the opportunity today to experience other people's emotions?
There seems to be a lot of similarities between the few criticisms (especially self-indulgence) that this hacker news comment lodges against the author and your own comment. That makes this a fascinating piece of art.
That reduction in process is ineffective when participating in introspection.
This is a blog about marrying creativity and technicality, guiding writers who are creating story content for video games.
In this case the author appears to be attempting to help encourage the reader to be introspective and uncover their own feelings as their play testing in progress video games, as part of the development of story content, in order to facilitate expressing human emotions.
Human emotions are notoriously tricky to express. People can go their whole lives without developing emotional intelligence. I would imagine that effective storytelling about people involves a certain amount of emotional intelligence. This article to me is instruction on training one's own emotional intelligence.
Yeah it is strange. I've been thinking about that too, while writing them. I believe that I'm using this opportunity to understand rejecting criticality, as it relates to intention.
To go deeper, I think I frankly am lonely, and also feel pain about the dissonance between the commentary .. talking on this thread about the style of the author and missing the point of the author. That touches me in a sensitive place, related to the loneliness, where in my personal life I sometimes don't feel like I'm being heard in spite of my best efforts. Also some abandonment history. :P
Recently I took a 16personalities.com test and it gave me infp, And you know those tests are just like a slice of inside into you, not the whole picture. But it gave me an opportunity to think about some of the difficulties that I've had throughout my life socializing and how I have adapted to them. Largely around where I have some visionary optimistic idea and the responses a bunch of "poo poo's" from those around me, if you know what I mean? Resulting in me feeling rejection, and throughout my life trying to make sense of why. So it's top of mind.
It makes sense why you are feeling that reaction to the reactions to your comments and how that relates to people's mixed reactions to the author's gamedev advice... what I can't understand is the phrase "rejecting criticality, as it relates to intention."
that really annoys me
and detracts from the message.
if you’re going to ignore the rules
the payoff needs to be worth it
otherwise you’re just being…
self-indulgent?