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We sit down for a conversation with Giant Sparrow's Ian Dallas - creative director of the 2017 hit What Remains of Edith Finch and 2014's The Unfinished Swan. This episode of Masters of Unlocking follows a bit of a different structure than our normal episodes - we kick things off with our interview with Ian and, afterwards, Caleb & Scott dive into an in-depth discussion of our thoughts about the interview and the game itself.
WARNING - the interview and following discussion contain SPOILERS about the game.
Tag Archives storytelling
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Author & professor Ian Bogost theorized that video games, as a medium, are poor conduits for storytelling and that games are better without stories. Do Caleb & Scott agree?
A few nights ago, when reading the James M. Cain short story “Pastorale,” I was struck by a scene that seemed very Chuck Palahniuk-ian[1]. A dead man is pulled out of a frozen lake; the man fell through the thin ice atop the lake when trying to retrieve the severed head of a man he helped kill earlier in the story. But unlike a Chuck Palahniuk story, “Pastorale” kept going. The shock was not the climax. I’m not sure why I immediately forced a comparison to Chuck Palahniuk. The writers, and their work, are completely different. I suppose the use of shock, which I consider a very Palahniuk thing, was used in “Pastorale” in a way that I wasn’t ready for. It’s important to state up front that I love Chuck Palahniuk’s writing. I’ll read every novel he writes, even if they continue to be as bad as his last…
I once again grace the liternet over at Slothrop.com with an article whose title might just be more compelling than the content. No, really, you should read it though. Realize that you have to just tell a goddamn story.
Writer’s block is just an excuse for broken storytelling. That’s the name of an article I wrote a while back for a site called Slothrop.com. The article, in so many words, says that the reason a writer gets stuck is not a spontaneous drain of energy or a mysterious lack of motivation. Writer’s block is simply a symptom of denial. Writer’s block is the writer’s intuition declaring that the story sucks and you need to fix it. Share in the comments below: what has been your hardest bout of writer’s block and what did you do to cure it?