It is easy to force a reader or viewer to interact. The trick is in making them want to interact, and in letting the story unfold hand-in-hand with that.

Dave Morris

Categorized in : Story Want Easy Force

Storytelling isn't an Escher staircase.

staircase storytelling

You don't get 'The Unfinished Swan' or 'Shadow of the Colossus' or even Telltale's 'Walking Dead' until you've sat through the long, linear infodumps of something like 'Metal Gear Solid'.

you shadow walking long

A new medium always has a period when it is struggling inside the confining box of an earlier medium. Creators have to unlearn what they knew before they can see the fresh, uncharted vistas stretching before them.

inside new see always

When I mention that I'm a game designer as well as a writer, someone will nod and say, 'Ah, that's what we like about your script. The videogame feel.'

will feel someone game

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

your everything you work

Back in the early 1970s, what got me and another 400,000 kids out of bed without needing to be called twice was the latest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

amazing back me bed

When a medium like games or comic books whips up such a rapture of enthusiasm, naturally we look for lessons we should be learning.

like look learning enthusiasm

Granted, a long book can be as daunting as a hard one. I nearly reached for 'Game of Thrones' until I saw the bookshelf sagging under the burden of those other volumes.

game hard long book

Readers prefer a world they can relate to.

readers prefer relate world

If your agent or publisher is jumping up and down at the thought of your novel, it's because they're picturing the movie poster on the side of the bus.

your down thought bus

There is a great insatiable hunger for good stories throughout the media.

great good hunger media

Publishers were ever eager for authors to do their own publicity because nobody else was willing to do it for nothing. But then it became clear that if you want somebody to champion the story, there's nobody better than the person who made it all up.

nobody better you champion

Standing out as a writer today requires more than a bright idea and limpid prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well.

need more standing today

My first memory of the public library is of lugging home a volume of Norse myths as heavy as a thunder-god's hammer.

first memory library home

As we get older, we demand stories that go somewhere. Things must change.

somewhere things go change

'Breaking Bad' and 'The Shield' were planned right from the start so that their narrative trajectory would come down in a blaze of fireworks.

right down bad start

Have confidence in your strengths, dear writer, or give it all up now and create apps instead.

your create now confidence

One of the gamebook series I created, 'Fabled Lands', is also the name of my company, and the reason we named the company after it is that it was pretty revolutionary for its time.

name company reason time

People nowadays think of gamebooks as rather old hat - and, after all, it was twenty years ago. In their heyday, though, they were a phenomenon, selling upwards of a hundred thousand units per title. And it's not as old hat as you might think: the same design skills I used in those days apply equally when I'm creating modern videogames.

hat you design people

I could put a sudoku at the end of every chapter and you'd have to solve it to progress through the story, but that doesn't address what would make people want to interact.

end you progress people