Category Archives: concerning storytelling

Published: June 23, 2009

Things I Like: MS Paint Adventures

Looking for something to entertain yourself with while you’re waiting for a new blog?

Why not take a look at MS Paint adventures?

I stumbled onto it a few months ago and have been enthralled ever since.

The basic premise is the cartoonist draws a little scenario similar to one of those little solve-the-puzzle flash games. Then the readers make suggestions as to how best to interact with the environment/solve the puzzle/get out of the room/win the game. Then the cartoonist draws the next panel.

It doesn’t sound like much when I describe it that way, but when you reduce anything to a summary all the flavor gets lost.

I might as well say, “The Name of the Wind is a bunch of words that when you read them you learn a story about a guy who does some stuff.”

Yeah. It’s not exactly thrilling when you boil something down to its simplest elements. So you’ll have to trust me that Ms Paint Adventures is interactive storytelling at its finest.

Let’s try again: Ms Paint Adventures is one part webcomic, one part game, two parts parody, three parts role playing with a sadistic GM, four parts clever, three parts sarcastic, one part barb wire, one part sweet, sweet methadone. Plus awesome. Plus double awesome.

The author/artist is Andrew Hussie, and as one storyteller to another, my hat’s off to him. He’s doing something strange and wonderful over there.

You can read the current story which is in-progress. Or you can read the one that’s already finished.

Be warned, the finished story (Problem Sleuth) is over 1500 pages, and it will consume a large portion of your life if it gets it gets its hooks into you.

More blog soon,

pat

P.S. By this point I know I’ve spelled the “Reccomendations” tag wrong. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that. I’m going to keep on spelling it wrong until I have time to go back and change them all. If I just change half of them, the link won’t work properly.

So take a deep breath and start thinking of ways to deal with it. I’m sure you can…

Also posted in Things I Like, cool things, recommendations
|posted by Pat 28 Comments
Published: March 24, 2009

On the importance of treat-bringing

So a few days ago, it was St. Patrick’s day. This gave me thoughts. The thoughts led to feelings, and thence to musings. So I wrote about the musings and then planned to post that writing up here. Because that’s what I do…

But then, in the time between writing it up and finding a picture, I discovered I’d had similar thoughts before, a year ago, and I’d already written about them.

I considered not posting this newer blog because of that. But now I think I will. For one, I’m guessing many of you weren’t reading here a year ago. And for another, the blogs are remarkably different, despite the fact that they share the same seed.

There’s something to be learned about stories here, but I don’t know if I can articulate it.

Either way, here it is, if you care to read it.

*****

When I was a kid going to school, you were allowed to bring in a treat to share with the rest of the class on your birthday.

I don’t know if kids can still do this these days. Homeland Security probably has some sort of homebaked cookie alert system that never falls below orange. Maybe schools are only allowed to distribute snacks that are OSHA approved.

But when I was a kid, going to school in a place called, I kid you not, Pumpkin Hollow, you could bring treats.

This was a pretty big deal. Because if you brought treats for the rest of the class, you were cool, at least for the day.

But my birthday falls in the summer, outside the school year. That means I couldn’t bring in treats on my birthday, and was in real danger of being denied the one day of being cool every kid was entitled to.

This might not have been a big deal for other kids who got to be cool all the time. But I wasn’t cool, and it was a big deal for me.

Now I can hear some of you already beginning to think/type/say comforting things like, “Oh Pat, I’m sure you were plenty cool back then. You just didn’t know it…” Etc. etc.


(Click to embiggen. But beware, lest my young geekery blind you.)

So here is exhibit A. I was just looking for a picture of me as a kid, I didn’t expect to find one that so perfectly shouted my not-cool from the rooftops.

Okay, fine. The bullwhip was pretty cool. But other than that, you can tell this guy isn’t going to know the loving touch of a woman until… well… maybe ever.

What as I talking about again?

Oh yeah. The importance of treat-bringing in kid society.

When you’re a kid, these little things loom so large in our minds. After we grow up, we look and wonder how we could have ever gotten so worked up about being a leaf in the school play instead of a chicken. Missing a field trip was the end of the world.

And not being able to have a day when you brought in a treat in for the other kids to share… it was huge.

It’s important to remember that this doesn’t mean we were dumb back then and we’re clever now. That’s dangerous thinking, and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. What it means is that when we were young, we knew the truth of things. And now that we’re older, we know different true things. We were right when we were kids and thought it was really important, and we are right now that we’re adults and realize it’s a little silly.

As with so many of my childhood problems, my mom stepped in to save me. She pointed out that my name was Patrick, and so I could bring in cookies on St. Patrick’s day.

Problem solved. So we made shamrock-shaped sugar cookies, and frosted them green, and I took them to school. And, for a day, I was cool. Well… cooler. Cool-ish.

I always think of that this time of year. Yesterday I realized everyone was wearing green and thought to myself, “Is it St. Patrick’s day?” I was amazed it had snuck up on me. It used to be such an important day for me. I always felt like it was my day, really. My mom gave that to me.

I never celebrate it now, though I always feel like I should. But I’m not Irish, and I don’t drink. So my options are rather limited. Still, I like the thought that on my surrogate birthday, everyone is out whooping it up.

To all of you out there who are the summer children. The kids that weren’t cool, or who weren’t cool very often. Know that I am one of you, and that you are my favorite sort of people.

Fondly,

pat

Also posted in mom, pumpkin hollow
|posted by Pat 63 Comments
Published: December 7, 2008

On Hollywood, Narnia, and the Nature of Stories

So the other night, I rented Prince Caspian.

The Chronicles of Narnia were my first chapter books when I was a kid. I can actually remember when my mom bought them for me. I was outside the Waldenbooks at East Town Mall. She came out of the store and she handed them to me. It was a big deal. I seem to remember her saying, “I think you’re ready for these.” But I don’t know if that is a true memory or not.

I do know that my mom was desperate to get me into reading chapter books. I just wasn’t interested. I liked picture books. When we went to the library, I would check out as many as they would let me, then I would take them home and read them all inside a day. Then I would pester her to make another trip to the library….

My mom chose well. I loved the Narnia books. It’s safe to say that they have a special place in my heart. It’s also safe to say that I might be overly sensitive when it comes to changes made in the story in the process of turning it into a movie.

That said, I liked the movie version of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Sure, I had some quibbles, and a few things irritated me. But as a whole, I enjoyed it.

But Prince Caspian? Sucked. Sucked to a degree that made me angry. Sucked to the degree that I actually stopped watching the movie.

This never happens. I’m a narratovore. Once I start a story, I finish it. I can count the number of books I’ve stopped halfway through on one hand. And I can only think of one other movie that I actually stopped watching partway through.

I gave it a fair shake. I watched 40 minutes. Then, exasperated, I pushed the button on the DVD remote that tells me how much more time is left in the movie. The readout said that I had another hour and a half to go. Too much. I was done.

Now I’m well aware that you can’t just take a book and use it as a screenplay for a movie. The change in medium necessitates changes in the way the story is told. You can do things in print that you can’t do on the screen, and visa versa.

But here’s the thing. The rules of storytelling don’t change between mediums. Story is story. It doesn’t matter if you’re singing it around a fire or painting it on a cave wall.

That means that no matter how you’re telling it, you need your story to possess certain qualities. You need tension. You need conflict. You need your audience to be emotionally involved. You need good characters and good interaction between those characters. You need verisimilitude, drama, humor….

Okay, you don’t need ALL of those. But you should have most of them. And some are absolutely essential.

You know what isn’t essential? Scenery. Pretty actors. CGI.

Don’t get me wrong. Those things can be great additions to a movie. But they are not the story itself. Nor are they a functional story-substitute. They are the fancy icing roses on the corners of the cake. They only work because the cake is there, underneath. You can’t sit down and eat a whole plateful of frosting roses. Well, you can if you’re four years old or mentally deficient. But twenty minutes and a pound of frosting later you’re vomiting pink foam all over the couch.

Why? Because story is story, and icing is icing. Why doesn’t Hollywood realize this?

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand how hard it is to tell a good story. There are a thousand things that can go wrong. I learned most of them firsthand by screwing up my own book for years and years until I finally got it right. I imagine it’s even harder to do when you’re part of a team. Editors, writers, directors, and producers all have their fingers in the pie. I imagine it’s a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen.

But when you’re making a movie that costs a hundred million dollars, you think they would take care to get the story right despite all that. The story is the foundation of the movie. It’s the cornerstone. It’s the key.

Hold on. Two hundred million? They spent TWO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS on that?

I know where the money went, too. Icing. CGI. Scenery. They shot the movie in New Zealand, Slovenia, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

And the scenery was beautiful. The CGI was flawless. Fine. I understand wanting to have those things. But why isn’t story given the same attention to detail?

Let’s say they needed a centaur for the movie, and the CGI people worked for a couple of weeks and then came back with something that looked like it was made from binder twine, turds, and paper mache.

Would everyone just shrug and move on with the movie? No. Someone would say, “This sucks. You fail at your job. Go back and bring me a real-looking centaur.”

And so the CGI is great. The scenery is gorgeous. The actors are pretty. And the story is a mess. How does story so consistently slip through the cracks? How can they not understand how important it is?

It’s not like they were making it from whole cloth, either. They had the book as a roadmap. A story that worked well. A story with good tension, character interaction, and a layered series of smoothly functioning story arcs. Why did they make a point of changing things that worked?

Feh.

What really drove all of this home for me was what happened the very next night.

Sarah said, “I’ve got a movie that I want you to watch.”

Me: What is it?

Sarah: Harvey.

Me: [Sigh] The one where the guy has the imaginary friend that’s a rabbit? All sorts of people have tried to get me to watch that. It sounds dumb.

Sarah: It’s really good.

Obviously I’m not interested, but I can see that Sarah is excited. And she’s cute when she’s excited. er. Cuter. When she’s like that, saying no to her is like kicking a fluffy puppy.

Besides, as a whole, she has good taste in movies. She’s the one that got me to watch Fight Club and American Beauty.

So I watch it. This movie is more than fifty years old. Black and white. Probably shot on a sound stage. The sum total of their special effects probably amounted to a piece of string tied to a doorknob. On top of all that, it was fullscreen. Which I hate. HAAAATE.

And you know what? It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I laughed. I cried. I want to watch it again. The best movie that I’ve seen in… in a long while.

If they made that movie nowadays, they would get ILM to make a ten million dollar CGI rabbit. Keanu Reaves would play Elwood P. Dowd. There would be a car chase. It would be filmed on location in Vancouver, Prague, and Akron. And it would suck suck suck. It would suck to the tune of two hundred million dollars because none of those things is in service to the story.

That’s all. Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend. And the next time you’re looking for a movie, you should check out Harvey.

Yes you, Hollywood. I’m talking to you.

pat

Also posted in recommendations, screed
|posted by Pat 69 Comments