Writing: Adam Cadre's Narrative Patterns · 8:06pm Dec 30th, 2014
After Infocom went bust in 1985 (not because text adventures were unprofitable, but because the founders decided to invest their profits into building a database called Cornerstone), no one else dared try to sell text adventures.
So a group of amateurs on rec.arts.int-fiction developed their own tools for writing interactive fiction, and created what I'll call the "golden age" of interactive fiction. I'm sure the Infocom die-hards will argue with me, but Infocom made games, though at points they aspired to be literature (when Floyd dies; the ending to Infidel). Adam Cadre, Andrew Plotkin, and the other amateurs very deliberately made interactive literature. Academia was looking the other way, because it was convinced that anything as mod and hypertextual as interactive fiction must be post-modernist and surreal, so few people noticed the quiet, not-for-profit creation of a new art form.
Andrew Plotkin went on to produce "Petz" and other interactive games. It turns out Adam Cadre also is alive and well, working as a scriptwriter, and writing about writing. His blog is good, though I won't be reading it, since you can't leave comments on it. But I very much like his list of
evaluation patterns for narrative art.
Hat tip to pterrorgrine.
Interesting, I do find many of them match my thoughts, though I don't always agree with him and a lot of what he says is very subjective and personal and therefore not useful on a larger scale (Britain is a foreign country... well, yes, tautologically so. For you. Not, obviously, for the British).
And frankly, I'd argue he doesn't understand the meaning of suspense.
Well, that's because that's not real suspense. Real suspense is created by keeping the audience, not the characters, in the dark.
Anyone interested in this idea may want to see my comment that introduced Bad Horse to it.
Cadre doesn't mention it on the patterns page, but the narrative patterns meme is extrapolated from the 1977 hippie architecture manifesto A Pattern Language, which uses a similar idea to approach the built environment. (It's fascinating reading.)
Bad Horse, Cadre doesn't host comments on his site, but the links on the base of the page give you opportunities to comment via Tumblr and sometimes Livejournal, Twitter, etc. If, like me, you don't have an account at any of those places, he is also receptive and responsive to emails (I actually owe him an email on the similarity of Reset Harder to Primer and Death Note). Obviously that prevents a single thread of discussion from forming, but if you just want to be able to leave feedback, it is certainly possible.
2688924 As far as the British thing goes, it may help to realize that this is in a context of an American culture that often presumes British culture is our predecessor or even our better. It may also help to realize that Cadre is non-white and was born, raised, and currently resides in California, a former Spanish colony and Mexican state. So yes, it's personal and tautological, but it's a statement that exists in a context that makes it more meaningful. (I obviously agree with him quite strongly re: Americans are no more British than we are Chinese.)
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I'd say Americans are more British than Chinese but only the way you're more cat than bumblebee.
But the fact I'm neither doesn't mean I can't enjoy stories from either.
I find this one is particularly resonant. Indeed, it may be said that it is the raison d'être of this site.
This, however
Strikes me as unnecessarily restrictive. I thought one of the points in favor of being an atheist is that you can read whatever you like and appreciate it as much or as little as you like? Especially if you are enmeshed in Western culture which has Abrahamic motifs in its very DNA. I mean, if you won't read anything that flirts with Christian themes how can you read Paradise Lost? The Waste Land?
I am apparently trying very hard at #11 in combination with #12 (but aren't we all, here in Ponydom, trying #12?) #26 is also very on point. #29 and #31? Right on! Amen to #33.
So yeah, interesting list. Thanks!
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I got as far as:
The first line of #1: "The first of three patterns on the importance of surfaces."
This isn't a sentence for one thing, and while I think I know what all the individual words mean, I cannot for the life of me figure out what information this arrangement of words is trying to convey. So I came back here to read some Pony stories instead.
Mike
2689792 If the internet has taught me anything, it's the patience to mentally edit everything I read. Inserting the missing word, "are" into that sentence was way less difficult than most of the things I have to read on a daily basis, up to and including "professional" emails and other communication for work. Granted, it is the first sentence in a list of things ordered by rank, which has ostensibly been online for years now, but still... Typos: If I gave up after just one, I'd have to give up on humanity at this point.
Oh my, yes. I don't have to agree with everything this fellow says, but I love the way he thinks things out.
2689468 Christian themes can be seen in just about anything, even if they don't exist. Someday maybe I should try to deconstruct MLP from a Christian perspective, with Twilight as the Savior, leading her Disciples to spread The Word... Or maybe Luna would work best in that role, having been thought dead and returned, with Twilight being Peter at that point. Hm. It would certainly get the AU tag
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If you look at the scene where Twilight becomes an alicorn, Celestia says, "It's time for you to fulfill your destiny," and then Twilight is raised into the air, forelegs outstretched, just as if she's being crucified. I really wish I had the video-editing skills to make that happen.
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Relax, you guys. Check out http://fantasticworlds-jordan179.blogspot.com/2013/10/audio-review-mlp-fim-fansongs-moon.html and the connection to christian creation mythos. Particularly the parallel to Lucifer.
(Also, you should listen to more ponyphonic.)