Creativity

Horrible Enough, Done Enough, Enough to Learn

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

We’ve all had a writing or other creative project we want to abandon. Now in some cases, it’s a good idea, but I wish to suggest you may want to finish that awful thing. There’s a value in finishing work because then you can learn from it.

When you finish something, as flawed as it may be, it is a complete product. That gives you enough information to evaluate what you did right, did wrong, and can do better. Yes, it may be terrible, but it’s a terrible that you can search for lessons.

So when you look at that crime against your art, ask how you can get it finished enough to learn from. Think of it as a Minimal Viable Product, just one where the word “Viable” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Minimal Tolerable Product, perhaps.

Now you may find, once you complete this, it’s not as bad as you thought, then that’s great! Maybe it’s good enough to use, perhaps after a heavy edit. But what if it’s not? Well, then it’s filled with lessons to learn.

It’s hard to evaluate something unless you’ve gotten it to a complete-ish state. A completed work – flawed as it is – is at least consistent and coherent enough to tear apart. Within it, you see your mistakes, your choices, and perhaps your virtues in ways unfinished work won’t show. Sure it’s ghastly, but there’s got to be something to salvage.

In fact, by completing that creative atrocity, you might be able to break it down for parts. It can be redrawn, rewritten, or recoded. But once again, you might have to complete it to get it to that state.

So don’t throw out that crime against imagination quite yet. Ask if it’s worth completing, if only to be a warning to yourself. You might be surprised what you get out of it.

Steven Savage

It’s Not the Genre, It’s The Originality

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I encountered this delightful quote from the author of cookie clicker, aka Ortiel42:

indie games: what if you were a little fly. what if a sentient locomotive was after you. what if you tidied up a house. what if you were a bear who runs a B&B

AAA games: what if u had a gun

As a fan of indie games, I felt this tweet.  AAA games of guns and guys run together in my head, few of them distinct or interesting.  Much like the all-too-similar AAA action RPGS, they just seem, well, all alike.

But here’s the thing – I enjoy a good shoot-em-up.  I’ve backed Early Access games like the lovely throwback Prodeus.  I downloaded the wonderfully overdone pixelated FPS Project Warlock after seeing a review.  So I’m not biased against games with guns at all.

So why did this quote resonate with me?  I think because the FPS games I like are indie, with that punkish indie feel I treasure.  I don’t have a problem with “gun games” I have a problem when the games seem all alike, like many AAA titles.

It’s not the genre, it’s the sameness.  That’s why that single Tweet resonated with me so hard.

AAA titles can get away with the sameness.  It’s well-produced sameness, well-marketed, with a lot of cultural cachet.  People are going to buy them because everyone knows them and they know what they’re getting, even when bad. It’s much as Serdar notes – in a time of choice you go with what’s known.

AAA titles are also trapped.  Knowing they have to go broad, knowing they have to appeal to everyone, they “sand the rough edges off.”  They’re not chance-takers in many cases, and even the chance-takers risk becoming Yet Another Repeating Franchise.  Sometimes you have to play it safe.

Any game – or media – genre can be made interesting.  My game library has many a fantasy RPG and I delighted in the fantasy-isekai take of the anime The Faraway Paladin.  But these games and media are things that had an edge, a break, something unique.  Just like the razor-raw edges of punk caught the souls of people, I want something to catch me and you can’t do that with blandness.

Even when it’s a genre I actually like.

Still I agree with the original tweet that I want to see games try a lot more things.  Perhaps a skunkworks as opposed to giant years-to-deliver titles may serve companies well.  That may also serve me well in another column . . .

Steven Savage

Shock The Creator

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

There are two areas of practice where I say, “if something doesn’t shock you, you’re not doing it right.”  One is spiritual practice, and the other is worldbuilding.  Today, I’ll focus on the latter, if only to save you from me discussing psychology and minutae of Taoist breathing exercises.

Every author brings themselves to their worldbuilding because there’s no one else to bring.  Even if authors think they’re expanding on ideas created by someone else (such as the way Richard Florida influenced me), that’s not true.  Writing about someone else’s ideas means you’re writing about your idea of their idea.  The author (you) is inseparable from worldbuilding.

The problem with bringing ourselves into worldbuilding is we may quash our imaginations.  We come with our preconceptions about people, politics, history, and our inspirations.  When our creativity takes us “off script,” it’s too easy to force our way back onto the expected path.

I think we do this because when you worldbuild, you ask questions – I should know, I write worldbuilding books that are just questions.  The problem with asking questions is you’re going to get answers, and you won’t always like them.  Worldbuilding means thinking about big issues that can lead to uncomfortable conclusions about ourselves, our creations, and the real world.

I’d say when that happens, good because worldbuilding should shock you.  When thinking about politics, gods, science, or whatever your mind will go places.  You should be surprised by some of your conclusions because you’re thinking very big picture – in a way the biggest picture.  That shock is a sign you’ve challenged yourself, which might be good.

I’m not saying every disturbing thing that comes to mind is a good idea in your worldbuilding.  Not everything shocking is true, despite what many Internet Reply People think.  But those ideas came from inside of you while you work on a very intimate process – something is going on there you want to explore.  The fact it surprised you may well mean there was real inspiration there.

For myself, I can point right at my Avenoth novels, which are very political in their own way.  This post-post-apocalyptic fantasy series contains some of my politics and feelings about society.  It would take a lot to detail here, but suffice to say the core idea is “any survivable society is scaled, interconnected, and has people consciously keeping it running.”

But there was an unpleasant dark side that shocked me – and that I kept.  This society survived a massive world war that killed three-quarters of the population.  It is a society that also had “warrior lodges” and “monster hunters” that were designed to parody fantasy tropes.  Finally, the great devastating war ended with a massive, murderous military action committed by a loose alliance that was tired of fifty years of death.

This peaceful society came out of bloody history and built peace.  But it had to cope with violence.

Thus violence was recognized and ritualized.  Warrior Lodges became mixtures of mercenaries and sports teams (it’s easy to arrest someone when you’re on a trading card).  Some professions were trained and allowed to use violence and weapons if needed, such as the relic-hunting pair of Marigold and Scintilla.  Government agencies subsumed monster hunting orders, embodied by the warhorse character Briar.  It was a society that didn’t avoid violence so much as channel it.

I found this disturbing at first because my creation normalized violence.  Watching people beat each other up with fancy weapons to place bets?  Weird orders that recruited traumatized people into their ranks is considered normal?  Disturbing, yet these elements rang true, and I kept them – and probably learned more about myself and societies.

These elements were not just good worldbuilding, they added to the story.  Marigold and Scintilla were disgusted with the old orders because someone had tried to recruit them.  Students of the pair sported badges on their robes denoting their favorite Warrior Lodges.  Complex regulations about weapon use came to the fore so Scintilla and Briar could ignore them.

I was shocked.  My worldbuilding was better for it.

So next time you’re busy creating a new world, watch for those moments you surprise yourself unpleasantly.  A bolt from the blue may have struck you, and once you stop reeling, odds are you’ve found something worth keeping.

Steven Savage