Can Interactive Fiction Evolve Into Serious Literature

[Moreau]

Lots of very intelligent people have already weighed in here, and I’m sure I don’t want to overload you. However, this is an interesting topic and I’d like to share my two cents on it, if nobody minds.

@Pleimis

The real question for me has been can IF be tweaked in such a way to create the story I want to create.

You haven’t actually specified what the story you want to create is, apart from hoping that it is more ‘literary’ and possibly lacking in choices you feel shouldn’t be left to mere readers. Perhaps IF isn’t necessarily your medium if your first thought is how to limit your readers’ agency?

@Pleimis

So one trope I noticed instantly, which may indeed work for the games, but won’t work for serious writing, is the use of Second person narrative, especially when combined with first person choices. This is obviously a gaming trope. (You do this… then you do that… now what. a) I talk back while being sassy. b) I shoot the villain. c) I eat my shoe.) I don’t know how many times I have been reading along, and some writers do have a better sense of story, and then suddenly stumbled on the language of the choices. And part of it is simply the second person. Second person works well if I am giving directions on a city street. The best second person writing of all is in letters. The reason it is so good is that ‘you’ is extremely well defined. A letter is addressed to a very specific person. And therein lies the problem.

This is an interesting point, but perhaps you’re getting a little too wrapped up in the trappings of more ‘traditional’ static literature. Regular stories need a character that is fairly rigidly defined for a whole host of reasons, they can’t shift and change from page to page because they require consistency to separate themselves from the other characters. Their identity isn’t really linked to the reader.

IF stories such as these place the reader in a unique position of responsibility in the narrative, one that leaves them indelibly attached to the main character. In short, they won’t ever have trouble knowing that character intimately.

This is because the events of the story aren’t happening to Bella Starscream: Warrior Priestess of Hath, they’re happening to the reader personally. When you’re making choices that (for roleplay purposes) change people’s lives for better or worse, feeling constricted and blinkered by what the writer wants you to do is disruptive or even destructive. Readers (Players if you’d still prefer to make the distinction) are not meant to be shut out of the crucial decisions of the story.

That’s not the point of interactive fiction. If you want the reader to follow a certain path, don’t put any choices in there at all.

Part of writing good IF is understanding that the world you create doesn’t belong to you once someone reads it. The reader changes and shapes the narrative based on their thoughts and desires, ignoring the interpretation of the world’s creator if they are repulsed by it. This in turn prompts you to think ‘How would my reader react to this situation?’.

Not many mediums compel you to think of your audience as active participants, but IF demands it.

This extends beyond simple choices about what to physically do from page to page, traveling into the territory of emotions and morality. In the best stories, you make a conscious choice to follow a particular moral path, and this knowledge in turn compels you to view the world through the lens of your character’s own moral identity.

This leads me to another point you make:

@Pleimis

In one forum post I read a game maker say that the MC was essentially a black hole and that it was in the secondary character and world creation that the real enjoyment came.

I would categorize this statement as simplistic, the character usually begins the story as a blank slate, but each choice the player makes creates an identity, that grows and changes as the story continues.

@Pleimis

That might work on a postmodern level. But it doesn’t work if your idea is to create quality literature. And I believe that part of the reason for any good story is to identify with someone other than yourself.

Once again, don’t know what you mean by ‘quality literature’ but the point of these stories is not necessarily to identify with someone other than yourself (more on that later). Many of these stories begin by creating a stressful or fantastical situation and implicitly asking how you personally would react to it.

If the situation is dangerous, how would you react to it? It encourages introspection, or at the very least the imagination necessary to create someone you feel would be better suited to deal with these problems.

@Pleimis

And that means I have serious issues with the ‘gender choice’.

You mention in this section the issues you have with choices of gender, pronoun use and even the naming of a character, and I’ll talk about all three for brevity’s sake.

These choices are actually one of the most interesting deviations that IF has produced, and CoG have taken it in more interesting directions than other IF sources I can think of. It goes somewhat to the heart of the community that grew up around the original CoG games, specifically Broadsides and Romance.

Choice of Broadsides (if you haven’t read it) is an 18th Century Naval story about a young captain attached to the Royal Navy of the fictional nation of Albion. This was really a crucial example because the gender choice didn’t just swap out your trousers for a skirt, it fundamentally restructured society to invert the positions of men and women.

Rather than just making up some series of events whereby a woman finds herself in charge of a ship, it presents a world where all women are out fighting the good fight, keeping their men-folk safely at home to knit doilies and look pretty for when their brave wives come home.

The choice causes you the reader to stop and think about the implicit gender constructs of the time by inverting them. Fundamentally it makes the reader determine whether or not this world is better or worse, prompting them to think about gender identity in a new way.

Choice of Romance was where the idea was furthered. In this story you could not only choose your gender, but you could create a world in which your sexual preference was not just legal or accepted but actively encouraged.

It created a world of total, inescapable equality. In itself a difficult thing to convey, but more than that it had a feedback effect on the readers. If you spend any time at all on the forums here, you will probably note that a great deal of time on every thread is devoted to discussion about gender identity, sexual mores and how to include marginalized groups into stories.

This is taken as pretty serious stuff by most people here, and much of that comes from the games themselves. Interactive Fiction allows people to not just experience themselves, but to actively create someone who is their polar opposite and explore their worldview.

The community has grown up around ideals of total social egalitarianism, which is further refined and reflected in each generation of games released. Where once it was considered pretty risque to have a romance game where you could romance men or women no matter what you looked like, now there are trans characters, disabled characters, even relationship models like polyamory are starting to be included in newer games.

Incrementally, a community of writers and readers collaborate to design better worlds, and the fiction they produce in turn becomes more intricate. People actually devote a lot of mental energy thinking about how a society functions when it is so free, which in turn makes new readers think about how such a world would work for them personally.

As to your notion that these choices don’t seem to affect the story overmuch, try and assess it from a different angle. If someone (let’s say a trans person) plays your game/story and tries to create their own identity.

Do you really think they want to subject themselves to a barrage of abusive behaviour from their neighbours? Or go through a tense work environment where they could suffer disciplinary action or even be fired just for being what they are?

Probably not… Especially if they’re reading a story about flying robots who fight an evil sorceress or whatever…

If you’re specifically writing a story about the trials and tribulations of a particular person or group, IF isn’t really the best medium for it (not that it’s impossible, just difficult).

But once again, you haven’t specified what kind of ‘serious literature’ you’re looking to write, so I can’t possibly comment on that.

Specifically on the notion of names, you mention that you are worried that the reader will choose the ‘wrong’ name, robbing the story of gravitas later on when Mrs McFartBlast storms up and asks the player for a divorce.

To that I can only say… It isn’t your job to force your reader to think as you do. IF isn’t about getting your personal message across through specific actions or thoughts. It’s about creating a world and a crisis that embodies what you think and allowing the reader to agree or disagree with you at their discretion.

Thing of it as Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ cranked up to 11. If you wrote a story about being King of a Castle, you might well think that you know the perfect way to rule justly and fairly.

It is then up to you to purposefully offer choices that allow your reader to do precisely the opposite.

As a writer, you can determine the consequences of these actions, but you can’t make the choice for the reader and you can’t force them to accept your proposal.

To use a game example, think of Call of Duty as a novel (‘serious’ literature, I am sure…) and IF as a game like Breath of the Wild (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Wikipedia in case you were living under a rock somewhere, you never know…)

Call of Duty games are tight, choice-less glass corridors that are all perfectly set up to be moved through in a specific way. All of the movements the characters make, all the set-pieces and buildings and doors and events run on a timer.

You get the distinct impression that the developers think that this scene would be just perfect if it weren’t for all those messy players coming through and ruining it…

A tight, focused experience that conveys a specific set of events, themes and characters as efficiently as possible.

Compare that to an open-world experience like BotW, where the character is silent and the player must construct their character from his actions and the way other characters interact with him. A less focused event, but I don’t think that anyone is saying that CoD is more artistically valid that BotW because it lacks choices…

@Pleimis

And lastly, for now, the use of stats. I must confess I am rarely a gamer. Thus the stats just seem downright absurd to me.

The stats are necessary to make the game work. You can make them invisible if you like. Some people like them, I personally don’t. That’s another thing that might turn out to have higher meaning further down the road as people refine and experiment with the medium, but it isn’t really a sticking point for a lot of writers.

@Pleimis

So then what I see as possibilities are these for turning IF into real IF

Very gracious of you.

@Pleimis

First person seems to be what would work best.

You’d think so, but it’s a bugger to write in for this medium.

@Pleimis

Main character creation that allows the reader (not player) to empathize with the actions and choices of a specific individual, not yourself.

Not sure entirely what you’re looking for with this, as by definition if you’re giving someone a choice, you’re allowing them the agency to make choices in line with their own designs and desires. I suppose you could artificially ham-string your readers by only allowing them to make choices an 'orrible bastard would make, but then why bother with the choices? May as well just write some traditional fiction about an 'orrible bastard and use regular writing techniques to get the reader to empathize with them.

@Pleimis

An emphasis on real choices that have emotional effects.

I don’t really know that this is an issue with the medium, as many choices in these games are weighted to produce emotional responses. In Choice of Robots your choices determine who lives or dies, and even whether the player character chooses to possibly kill themselves via a total memory engram transfer.

Those are weighty choices that are given their weight by the smaller interpersonal choices that led you to this point (what should I spend my time focusing on? Should I work on my research or spend time with the person who clearly carries a torch for me?)

If every page ends with a climactic choice, then after the 2nd or 3rd one I’m not going to care whether my character tosses the newly-orphaned kitten into a mincer or pays for it to go to college with a full scholarship. Small choices exist to give meaning to larger ones. Not every page can end with you hanging off the side of a cliff.

[Havenstone]

@Pleimis

Can I turn this medium into something that would be more literary

A better opening question, for someone just starting to explore the medium, would have been “Is anyone already doing literary things with IF?” (by your definition of literary). There’s plenty of first-person-perspective IFs out there, though not published by CoG. HG has at least one terrific third-person-perspective game ([i]Divided We Fall[/i]) and a game whose final-act-twist hinges on a shift from second to first person (spoiler).

Creatures Such As We is stat-free, as mentioned above. Telltale Games like Walking Dead and Twine games like Bee are stats-free IF that have you making choices for a defined character whose history, gender, etc. you explore rather than controlling. And there’s lots, lots more out there.

So yes, whatever your vision of “literary,” it’s worth starting with the assumption that someone somewhere is already working on it… that you’re joining a movement in progress, rather than starting some radical new thing that will get everyone all hot and bothered.

@Pleimis

If the reason you play IF is primarily for the game aspects do continue to enjoy it!

There’s a vocabulary that might be more precise for some of what you’re saying than “literary/non-literary”: diegetic and non-diegetic. Diegesis is the old Greek word for narrative. When I’m telling a story, in whatever medium, the diegetic elements are part of the story-world, while the non-diegetic elements are part of the storytelling or the medium, but not part of the story-world.

We tend to “see through” non-diegetic elements when we’re used to them. In written literature, we don’t poke too hard on the oddness of an omniscient third-person narrator (unless we’re being postmodern) or whether a first-person narrator would really talk or write the way they do in this novel. (Who are they supposed to be telling the story to, again?) And of course there’s the physical medium, the page numbers and table of contents and typeface that could at any point remind us this is just a text and expel us from the story.

Other story-centric artforms (plays, musicals, films, TV shows, RPG modules) have even more pronounced non-diegetic elements, like music that viewers hear but the characters onscreen don’t. For some people, those elements can be immersion-breaking (notably, people who dislike musicals often find “everybody suddenly bursts into song” to be annoyingly unreal) but for the most part, we’re familiar enough with those media that we find the non-diegetic elements to be story-enriching rather than distracting. Very few people question their status as art, or the literary skills of writers from Shakespeare to Sondheim to Sorkin whose work is written specifically to interact with the non-diegetic aspects of their medium.

Video games are (as @Gower pointed out) a young enough medium that people can still talk as if they’re not “literary,” or even “artistic.” Bioshock should have put the nail in that particular coffin a decade plus ago–a game with all the trappings of a first-person shooter, but also an aesthetically, literarily, and philosophically ambitious story. But as with musicals, some people find the non-diegetic elements so distracting that they miss the artistic and literary value.

Some of your comments seem to assume that people who enjoy the more game-y elements of a CoG aren’t primarily here for the story. I’d suggest that’s a misunderstanding, based on the fact that you apparently find some of the typical non-diegetic elements of a CoG immersion-breaking. Many of us come primarily as writers and readers, no less than you do. Personally, I didn’t come to “invent a game that gives players a degree of autonomy,” but to write a story that people can immerse themselves in and explore.

I just don’t share your reaction to (all) the non-diegetic elements of games; I find many of them enriching. On an analogous note, I’m a big fan of tabletop role-playing as the best interactive storytelling medium we’ve yet come up with. The act of rolling dice is potentially immersion-breaking, but as a stand-in for all the elements of the story-world that are not under either player or narratorial control, I find the dice ultimately enhance immersion–once a player has got used to them enough to “see through” them. I find the role of stats in a CoG similar, even though I’m also one of those readers who almost never looks at them. They ground the world of the story a bit more, give it a shape that lasts from choice to choice.

As for second-person narration, it’s not just a game trope. It’s a rare but respectable option for serious novels. Hugo-winning sci-fi novels. Postmodern literary novels. Modern American classics. Stylistically rich thrillers. It goes against the norm, but that’s one thing that can make it literarily attractive… just as you’re attracted to the idea of writing something that goes against the genre norm for IF.

@Moreau has offered good reasons why a blank-slate IF MC can be a respectable choice from a literary standpoint, and why gender choice in particular can be creatively enriching. (I’d add that writing a character who has to make sense and feel compelling regardless of sex can be a helpful spur for writers to avoid writing gendered cliches.) But of course those aren’t the only options; it’s also perfectly respectable to write an IF that puts you in the shoes of a defined or largely-defined character.

Whatever you write, first-person statless or otherwise, it will still probably feel very much like a game rather than a novel, based on other non-diegetic aspects; the mere fact that you’re able to choose a path through it will get people putting it in that category. Don’t be surprised when other people with a chip on their shoulder dismiss it just as briskly as you’ve dismissed the literary and artistic merit of the existing CoGs you’ve played.

My own definition of “literary” would include things like the characters driving plot rather than vice versa, the author clearly putting thought into their style and use of language, the creative building-upon (rather than just copying) of the sources that inspired the author to write, any attempt to do something new and distinctive. There’s plenty to say on those grounds about literary quality in CoGs–what we already have and what we can aspire to. But this is a long enough ramble already, so I’ll save it for another day.

[Pleimis]

Well I’ve had to do a lot of thinking before I respond. And there have been so many, and lengthy, comments that I won’t be able to deal with them all individually.

First of all I’d like to thank all of you who took the time to reply. And thanks for letting me know that I could indeed do much of what I would want to do in my possible game. I have been taking the game seriously enough to have played with coding to see what I could do. And the reason I haven’t presented it as a WIP is twofold. First I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the lengthy amount of time it would take to learn the process and I was trying to make a decision on that score. And second given the nature of the game I didn’t think I wanted to spoil it at all since even a description of it would reveal features of the game best left hidden to all. Also in presenting it there is an aspect of writing by committee (group approval), which is something I have often dreaded in film. I prefer one author with a vision, except in some rare cases. So to present the idea before it was more or less finished is anathema to me. I can say this though it was (and will be) a weaving of two or three stories (or more) that read one way was a comedy and read another was a tragedy. So yes I think with patience I could make it work. But better than a book with choices? Probably not. But I do indeed appreciate the encouragement.

Now the most common thing I seemed to hear among the many folks who replied was a questioning of my use of the concept of ‘serious’ and related issues. I fully expected this, though the amount of times I heard it was fascinating. My issue with the basic ‘who can say what’s serious’ line of response is this. If you are saying that all notions of what is and isn’t serious writing (notice I didn’t say novels) are essentially in the eye of the beholder, or that they don’t exist, or who am I to say what is and isn’t serious, or it’s only serious if is what academia vets, then I would say this: If seriousness as such has no substance how can I take any of these criticisms seriously. And I’ll just leave it at that. If a person feels there’s no real distinction between Shakespeare and a comic book from the 1940s or a Mary Sue blog today then there simply is no discussion to be had. I won’t be able to convince anyone that there is a hierarchy of values.

Which then brings me to my deepest concern. It is true that I could indeed make my IF. But I don’t think this is my audience. I literally wandered onto this site because the concept IF fiction involving choices has always interested me ever since I found some CYOA books a while back. They were abysmally written, but the idea imbedded within them struck me as worthy of experimentation.

Now one thing that struck me only later was that Choices of Games was a company with a specific slant on things. I noticed a little touch of something when my original post was summarily moved to another ‘gender choice’ related topic when ultimately the question above was where my post was headed. I did indeed go through various games: Divided We Fall, Heroes Arise, Choice of Robots, etc. many more. At least scanning for the language and style used. Nothing I’ve read has changed my initial posting comments above. Obviously I could learn more and play more. But so far nothing has really clicked for me. And it isn’t that they don’t follow the rules of novels. It’s that purely as writing no one is holding the bar very high and there is far too much praise for anything that might be of interest. That’s my perspective anyway.

Because my original post got shunted off into the ‘gender choice’ forum I immediately also realized another factor which Moreau has detailed so generously for me. There is indeed an ideological underpinning at CoG to the issues of identity. As someone who is not ideological in the least I find that trying to swim up stream here while possible would probably in the end be fruitless. I’m not saying that everyone here holds to these philosophical or political ideals. I’m absolutely sure that there are those who don’t really get behind these issues, people who just like characters and games. Yet it seems that most people here do. But it’s clear to me even in the naming of things like ‘gender choice’ versus ‘gender locked’. Choice? Who wouldn’t want that? And being locked? Sounds like prison. Thus even in the coding there is an implicit bias against, say, the cultural containment of that Eurocentric Anglophilic classic tradition. As someone nurtured on that tradition I feel a bit like a DEA agent at a biker rally: You don’t really want to know that I’m here. And I’m not at a loss for how to disseminate my work.

So as Bob Dylan once sang it’s time for ‘my boot heels to be wandering’. Thanks for your patience with me. I’m not going to simply delete my account. I’ll leave it up for a while to pick up stray responses. But I’ll fade into the background.

Thanks to Elwynn for explaining how things work. And to Havenstone for not taking a scolding tone and being open to discussion. Thanks to those who also liked this post. And also to those I’ve interacted with here and there who are quite unique folk. May your writing and lives ring true! Seriously.

[Gower]

@Pleimis

If a person feels there’s no real distinction between Shakespeare and a comic book from the 1940s or a Mary Sue blog today then there simply is no discussion to be had. I won’t be able to convince anyone that there is a hierarchy of values.

I don’t see where anyone said that. But since you mention it, lots of Renaissance dramatic texts, including a bunch of Shakespeare’s, were, at one time, treated as such ephemera that the physical texts were printed cheaply and carelessly, and in some cases, not preserved. I think if you told Robert Greene or George Peele that their work was serious literature, they’d have laughed.

I don’t think anyone is arguing “all things are equally serious” but that it is difficult to put things in “serious literature” and “non-serious literature” boxes and be really confident about whether they will stay in those boxes in time to come. Many, many genres have jumped into the serious literature box over the past century, as I am sure you know.

I do think that “serious,” though, often happens from outside in. The word to me implies a seal of approval that is given by those in power (academics, notably but not solely). Milton knew that he was writing seriously, but I would guess that’s because he was writing in an Serious genre about Serious topics. I think that if we just switch the terms of the debate to “high quality” and “artfully written with excellent prose” and “emotionally resonant” and so forth rather than “serious” you’d get vigorous agreement.

[kgold]

Let me tell another brief story.

In 2002, I had saved up enough money from my job to take a year off to write a novel. I took a year and worked 9 to 5 on this thing, and near the end of that year, I used a chapter from it as the basis to get into the Odyssey writing program for fantasy and science fiction.

This was both good and bad. At this workshop, it was generally agreed that this novel was clever, but also that it had problems. The characters weren’t sympathetic enough. Suspense was lacking. It made allusions to things, but did not explain those allusions. People felt like this book was telling a joke they weren’t intended to understand. In short, they didn’t think it was accessible and enjoyable.

It was clear that if I rewrote according to all these criticisms, I’d have a different book entirely. So I just hoped they were wrong, and submitted to a bunch of publishing houses. But, the editors who bothered to write any long response said the same thing. Main problem: inaccessibility.

The novel was never published. But, as luck would have it, I uncovered those reams of criticisms just last month, and when I did, I told myself I’d take the opportunity to see if I still had any problems that were like what those workshop people said.

I decided I did have some of those problems in Choice of Magics. So I rewrote chapter 3 to give my characters better motivations, inserted a scene in chapter 5 to try to keep suspense up better, and made a few other changes. And it was kind of nice to feel like I was able to grow as an author of one of these things, even as I know my strengths in the creation process lie elsewhere.

There’s really a lot to pay attention to in these things. And I’d say as someone who’s taught a class on games at a college (Wellesley) and taught academic papers about them, I’ve got to say that the academy’s recognition almost seems unfair sometimes. Because a lot of academically successful works aren’t necessarily paying attention to suspense or character or what have you. They often just have one quirky unique idea. And that’s even true of the academically successful IF games, insofar as they have been academically successful (I remember assigning a paper about Shade, for example). Of course, some works like that are also beautiful - I love Adam Cadre’s Photopia and think it succeeds on every level.

You mention above that Choice of Robots doesn’t live up to your standards. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re trying. We’re all trying.

[LordOfLA]

Dude has some ludicrous standards if Choice of Robots doesn’t meet them…

[catorrina]

@Pleimis

If a person feels there’s no real distinction between Shakespeare and a comic book from the 1940s or a Mary Sue blog today then there simply is no discussion to be had. I won’t be able to convince anyone that there is a hierarchy of values.

If you told me Shakespeare was trying to write “Serious literature” with his Greatest Works, then I won’t believe you. He wrote to entertain. Hamlet has an entire scene involving genitalia puns for cripes sake, and a running joke about a long-winded character. He might have taken his craft seriously, but it’s academia that puts it on its pedestal.

So, yes, there is a distinction today, but that’s based on time and the idea of what lasts. Shakespeare’s plays worked because they held a mix of tragedy and comedy that generated a strong emotional reaction, and because they held humor and themes that were relevant to his audience at the time. And so, since they worked, people looked at them, took elements (and words) from them that worked and included them in the next plays they wrote and on and on, and scholars today look back and study Shakespeare because he was the one who popularized the methods they started on.

So no, if the comic book written to entertain the majority of buyers succeeds in entertaining the majority, and thus works its way into the collective consciousness of that genre, and supplies enough elements of to influence the genre yet to come, then I don’t think it’s a “less serious” piece of work in the way that you describe.

The “Mary Sue blog” you dismiss is likely not going to reach that level, because usually Mary Sue implies that the writer is inexperienced in what makes a piece entertaining to the public. And so it’s not going to stick around, except perhaps a reminder to a budding author of “what not to do in the future” if they’re serious enough.

@Pleimis

it isn’t that they don’t follow the rules of novels. It’s that purely as writing no one is holding the bar very high and there is far too much praise for anything that might be of interest

I heartily disagree with your “low bar” on the writing alone with some of these stories. And also to the idea that we’ll jump at anything interesting: pay attention to the medium as well as the art, because there you find the challenges people are surpassing to achieve that modicum of interest.

The stories written are often the length of three novels, interwoven for a narrative that flows ten different ways, for protagonists with infinite personality types and outlooks, that brings a definitive end regardless of which path you walk. And all the while the authors must juggle variables and coding and balancing a game so that it’s both fun and challenging (in a script that’s not too accommodating at times). The best ones are doing their damndest to solve Chaos Theory.

When you “researched” the other works here, I almost suspect you were trying to be disappointed. I don’t know if it’s because you hold all written works to the high bar of “will they be like the classics?” (without making allowances for evolution of language and priorities of the reader when seeking entertainment) or if you’re just wandering the fantasy section of the library wondering why so few of them contain a good murder mystery.

@Pleimis

I’m absolutely sure that there are those who don’t really get behind these issues, people who just like characters and games.

Yes. They get the rest of the gaming industry and a large portion of the published works. For the record, I usually play a straight cisgendered female character, so aside from the female part (which is becoming less of an issue but is still welcome), I don’t really take advantage of most of the options. I just think it’s a damn good thing they’re included and vote with my wallet like a good Capitalist.

You’ve already read Moreau’s piece on why people want these choices.

@Pleimis

But it’s clear to me even in the naming of things like ‘gender choice’ versus ‘gender locked’. Choice? Who wouldn’t want that? And being locked? Sounds like prison. Thus even in the coding there is an implicit bias against, say, the cultural containment of that Eurocentric Anglophilic classic tradition. As someone nurtured on that tradition I feel a bit like a DEA agent at a biker rally: You don’t really want to know that I’m here. And I’m not at a loss for how to disseminate my work.

You make it sound like the company is trying to wreck people’s ability to write here. The fact is that gender, when writing for sci-fi or fantasy settings, doesn’t need to matter, or can be changed to parallel what-ifs (See: Choice of Broadsides swapping the patriarchy for the matriarchy for female characters). There are a few good reasons to “gender-lock”. Guinevere, for instance, is a fantastic WIP on this site that keeps you in the role of a woman, as to make the world feel “real,” the social stigmas surrounding gender roles needed to be in place.

Choice by Gaslight similarly forces you into a male “Watson” character, which comes into play with gender roles and social stigma.

You just need to have a reason for it, beyond “This role is written for a male character because men do X better” or “This role is written for a female character because she reacts emotionally to Y”.

You’re not forced to make gender choice (unless you’re aiming to publish under CoG’s main line, which you probably wouldn’t manage with an experimental first shot anyway), but it does encourage most to think “Does this character have to be male? Does anything change if I leave it up to the player?”
__

In any case, good luck with your work in whatever form you present it.

[Havenstone]

@Pleimis

I noticed a little touch of something when my original post was summarily moved to another ‘gender choice’ related topic

I’m sorry that stung you. The touch of something in that case was our penchant for tidiness, trying to keep duplicate topics from taking off; it happens a couple of times a week, entirely independently of CoG’s ideological commitments. Your original post was titled “Gender Choice vs Good Fiction.” We already have a good dozen threads on the topic of gender choice–on pretty much all of which people have made the exact same points about the literary virtues of “experiencing a life other than your own” rather than shaping a character to one’s own gender etc.

When you then lamented that you’d actually just wanted to use gender choice as an entrypoint into the broader issue of Good Fiction, we encouraged you to make this thread.

@Pleimis

It’s that purely as writing no one is holding the bar very high and there is far too much praise for anything that might be of interest.

That’s a fair perspective. The forum culture prioritizes encouraging people to write, and keeping them from giving up. It’s a comfortable place to try things and put your best efforts out there without fearing that they’ll be torn to pieces. Authors who want brutal honesty and strongly prescriptive feedback from their reviewers can find it here, but they’ll probably need to hunt for it, e.g. chasing the folks on their WiP thread who’ve given the most helpful criticisms and asking for more. What you’re more likely to find here is a friendly editor who will help you shape your work into something rather better, and lots of constructive suggestions.

The market for IF, like the market for non-interactive novels, rewards “good enough” (Dan Brown potboilers, 50 Shades) more than it rewards greatness. Authors have to decide for themselves how ambitious they want to be–what level of greatness they think they’ve got in them, and whether they’ve got the drive and time to make their work as good as they possibly can. Personally, I’m satisfied with where I stopped with Choice of Rebels, even though another year’s polishing could plainly have improved it. In my own mental ranking of serious fantasy novels, it’s a long ways from the top, but it’s farther from the bottom. As a creative side project, that’s good enough for me.

But to answer the thread’s title question, I’m sure there’s nothing in the medium keeping IF authors from writing the kind of good solid middlebrow stuff you point to, with a strong sense of literary style: Cormac McCarthy instead of Louis L’Amour, or (switching genres) Kazuo Ishiguro rather than Terry Brooks, David Mitchell rather than Isaac Asimov.

That’s easy for me to say, of course…because I don’t share your distaste for second-person narration, stats, a customizable protagonist, or the idea of readers as co-creators (something I think is present in any fiction, btw, although it can be resisted to a degree by authors keen to remove ambiguity and assert their exclusive control of the text). I’m sympathetic with the conventions of the medium, and don’t consider them unliterary.

But I also think good IF can be written that ticks the boxes of first-person, stats-free, fixed-protagonist, etc. So all the best to you if you do decide to write it somewhere else.

[bobsmyuncle]

@Pleimis

If a person feels there’s no real distinction between Shakespeare and a comic book from the 1940s or a Mary Sue blog today then there simply is no discussion to be had. I won’t be able to convince anyone that there is a hierarchy of values.

As an English major this makes me laugh. Shakespeare is full of dirty jokes and audience pandering. At the time, plays were considered low art, not “serious.” Hundreds of years later, we still read him and watch his plays, whether in theater or film adaptation. Why? I’d argue that it’s because they were good quality, thought provoking, funny, and insightful. Not because he was trying to be “taken seriously” by some artistic gatekeepers but because he was running a business, trying to get people to buy tickets to his shows.

Comics can also be art. There are comics like Judgment Day which are artistic works worth studying. Give us another 100 years, who knows what people will look back on and consider worth preserving because it moved us.

Someone’s Mary Sue fanfic may not be good quality, but it’s an artistic exercise that will teach them skills if they ever want to apply them elsewhere. It’s a form of imaginative play that, while not interesting to a wider audience, is not deserving of scorn in my opinion.

Maybe someday someone will teach classes on all these Marvel blockbusters and the comic storylines that inspired them. Or maybe it’s all folly. I think rather than trying to write something “for the ages” it’s best to write what you’re passionate about and that you dearly want to express to your fellow humans. Off the top of my head, Choice of Robots and The Sea Eternal made me spend some time thinking about my values and choices, which is something I always appreciate about art.

@Havenstone

(something I think is present in any fiction, btw, although it can be resisted to a degree by authors keen to remove ambiguity and assert their exclusive control of the text)

I firmly believe in the death of the author and that’s why I keep a sharp knife at hand when I read

[Carlos.R]

@kgold

You mention above that Choice of Robots doesn’t live up to your standards. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re trying. We’re all trying.

Well, don’t say that unless those standards the person mentioned are clearly defined.
It’s like saying… Your blue story isn’t purple enough for my purple standards.
Without knowing what “the goal” is, you may end up creating a story with richer blues, but not the purples being sought out.

At that, what if the consumer wanted green instead? Or orange? Yellow? Silver?
Let the consumer give concrete examples of what kind of stories they want to read by pointing to existing books, so we call can have a clear understanding of just what kind of “standards” we’re supposed to measure up to.

Choice of Robots was written in a wondrous titanium sheen. Don’t apologize for that.

[LordOfLA]

To add a sarcastic tone to the thread: consider the Tate modern art gallery in London. If some of the exhibits there can be classified as art (that aftermath of a party exhibit springs to mind), then interactive fiction certainly can be

[Scribblesome]

I have the sneaking suspicion that those trying to explain/debate what counts as serious literature are missing the point, as OP is talking not about serious, as in addressing complex or important issues, nor literature as in well-crafted emotive fiction, but Serious Literature, as defined solely by people who think they’re very clever with the intent of making themselves look good. /s

[Mary_Duffy]

@Pleimis

It’s that purely as writing no one is holding the bar very high and there is far too much praise for anything that might be of interest. That’s my perspective anyway.

Good prose is very hard to come by. Our standards for Choice of Games have gotten higher and higher as time has gone by, but include authors who are otherwise published novelists. I think your beef seems to be far more with genre vs literary fiction, a debate I find boring but ymmv. You also question the second person, which, sure, but there’s a lot of literary fiction in the second person, too.

[LordOfLA]

I think I found an excuse to use this again

[Scribblesome]

Ah, clearly the washing machine is an Important Metaphor for the futility of life in this modern society

[Theguyfive_Jbra]

Genius, but then what does than man represent?

#CantWait4JAN31

[Scribblesome]

Hmm… spins the Art Symbolism wheel God? Capitalism? Your mom?

[The_Lady_Luck]

This thread is giving me a headache for two reasons:

• It reminds me of the literary vs. genre fiction “debate”, which means I’m biased by feeling annoyed and defensive from the start.

• I feel like we are discussing something that has only been defined by negatives, what it isn’t, and framed in a way that suggests that these things are somehow bad.

I would find it really helpful, @Pleimis, if you could try describing this “serious literature” in possitives. What it is, instead of isn’t.

[Theguyfive_Jbra]

Art thou sureth of what thou defile foreth be your mother that is, not thee.

[LordOfLA]

Output of a dictionary in a blender