unforum

[Walt Dixie]

Literary collaboration - long term project

[Dionysus]

hmmm.. you may want to put a thread in the PM section of the baords since you seem to need PMs. I don't go in there. I'd feel like I was treading on holy ground. Perheaps someday....

But anyway, I think thats where you go if you wanna recruit PMs...

Anyway, I look forward to being a Player!

[CreativeEmbassy]

I'm very excited to see new people come into our little corner of the internet, with big plans and aspirations. I like what you've thought of, and would love to discuss this with you further. There are a few minor issues that arise, however:

1) Writer Experience. Any artist, writer, or musician who has made an important statement about the current trends in their field always has prior experience working within the the same trends. So I'm looking for past experience you have as a writer. How many books have you written? Novels? Writing for magazine, or newspaper? What about other forms, like plays or movies?

2) How much do you actually know about ARGs? Have you played one before? Have you been Behind The Curtain ^TM on an ARG yet? The more you know about what to expect from an ARG, the better you'll be able to raise the bar for this kind of thing.

Those are my only thoughts for now. I repeat, I would LOVE to talk to you more on this, as I firmly believe ARGs (or "in-game" elements in an "out-of-game" setting) are the future of entertainment.

- clinton

PS. Yes PMs, pleeease move this to the PM thread.

[imbri]

While I love the idea of books utilizing ARGs and have corresponded with a couple authors on doing just that, I think that the meta premise is a bit much. Not that it couldn't work or that it couldn't be a part of a compelling story, but meta ARGs are a pretty tough sell to the ARG community and I can't see them being a much easier sell to a non-ARG audience. Also, having started & dropped several meta ARGs (for a tutorial of sorts), I find that they can be difficult to write effectively think that would only be compounded by the addition of a novel. Again, nothing is impossible, but sometimes the best statements are those that aren't so blatant.

I would certainly talk to you about some of my experiences, both as a player (somewhat limited) and designer (fairly experienced).

Also, I moved the thread to the appropriate forum.

[Walt Dixie]

Well,

as I said it was a long term project :

1) Full honesty here: I haven't published yet. I've written a monologue play that's taken up by a director to play next year, I've written another play which I tried to direct myself this year, but that didn't work out well (no budget, my actors were volunteers, they didn't get along so well, one of 'em bailed out). A couple of short stories, some poetry, some novels I never finished, philosophical essays, literary essays, a short film script for a friend... but all very tentative.
In other words - I'm about as indie as they come.

Which is exactly why I don't want to galop into some overeager scheme without a decent time of preparation.
As for knowing ARGs, I just know the concept, and I've checked the pages about The Beast. I haven't played an ARG yet, I'm waiting for a new game to start from the beginning, so I can capture the experience of it in its full expanse.

Basically, what this thread is about is networking. I wanted to throw a bone in the kennel and see if anyone actually bites and likes the flavour. Looking for some ARG mentors whom I know also have some interest in the project I'm proposing. Who I can turn to whilst I'm learning about the workings of the ARG biz. Like Clinton says: I need experience in the field.

So, don't pay that much attention to me yet. Just know that I'm around, that I'm trying to learn about what is your doing, and that I'm interested to do something with it.
(And all the help you have to offer = welcome, all the attention I'll hand you = free of charge.)


Oh:

a last thing I'll have to add, that might be an obstacle:
I'm Belgian. My lingua franca is Dutch. I can speak English fluently, but I can imagine that in certain cases -for instance, the use of the right propositions, of typical expressions and proverbs- my language seems pretty out of place. But that's probably something you'll have to judge for yourself.

[Ehsan]

[Walt Dixie]

Thanks for the tip... checking it out next weekend.


as for the parallel story thing... hmm what I'm worried about is that you'd lose the reality effect... the thing I find so interesting about mixing a novel with an ARG ( in fact, what I find so interesting about ARGs themselves) is that it's not so obvious what's the border between reality and fiction.

Rather than parallel stories, maybe conflicting stories would be more interesting... maybe what the PMs want the game to appear to be, is not what the game actually is.

[MageSteff]

[GuyP]

I think the idea of an ARG-meets-novel is fantastic, but I have a few reservations about your particular strategy. Featuring an ARG in the novel itself strikes me as a little too self-referential, almost smug - it seems to be beating the reader around the head with the cleverness of it all. I'm not saying it's unworkable, and indeed it presents some intriguing opportunities for circular meta-ness, but I think you'd need to tread carefully. As I understand it, there's essentially three layers to the work:

The characters and their lives,
The ARG they've made,
and the ARG (made by you) that tells the whole story.

Blurring the boundaries between the three could produce some interesting results, but there might be other ways you could acheive the same effect. Characters could be involved in some other kind of online fiction - think frauds, pranks and other deceptions of varying harmfulness. It would look "real", but readers of the novel would know it was merely created by the characters, it adds an additional layer of narrative and allows you to play with issues of identity (how our digital selves reflect our 'real' selves, how the characters are influenced by their online personas, etc). Also, depending on the scale and motivation of the "deception" created by the characters, it affords greater possibilities (IMHO) for drama in their lives.

Being a PM is exciting, I'm told, but I don't think any of 'em have killed each other. Yet.

The most exciting aspect is your determination fully integrate the novel and ARG into one, cohesive work, as opposed to seperate/complementary pieces. The most obvious approach is to make the ARG a necessary element in "decoding" the novel, and vice versa. In fact, a static ARG might be best suited for this. Say the novel was set two years ago: all the online elements would already be online from when the events took place, and so upon purchasing the novel the reader could act as a "digital archaeologist" to shed more light on the events within. (i.e: as opposed to a dynamic, updating game in the style of The Beast.) It would certainly be easier to produce, and also remain relevant over time.

Upon re-reading, it seems like your plan is to run the ARG first (as if by the characters) and then use the novel to go "behind the scenes" and reveal a larger story. That sounds cool too, but I wonder if it would unnecessarily limit your audience to the original ARG participants, though.

Anyway, there's a striking amount of neat stuff to be done with this. The "people pretending to be pretending to people that are pretending to pretend" angle leaves a lot of room for baiting and switching. If the novel was ostensibly a factual account of events by one of the characters, there's obviously even more room for misdirection and confusion, and a better rationale for the account to be incorrect or incomplete.

[imbri]

[MageSteff]

[Slyfox]

[Walt Dixie]

Guy,

'featuring an ARG in the novel' : it wouldn't be that explicit. The PMs would simply be novel characters talking about having everything set up, monitoring activity of users, trying to make the best of their project - what project this is, is never explicitly stated. It would be stupid to make an ARG explicit, probably. It's better to keep in the dark what these guys are doing, so you can even 'blur' the line for people who thinks it's an ARG - is it really like that? Does it obey the same rules? Maybe some rules are crossed?

Also, the line between characters in the ARG, and characters in the novel, can be blurred. I could write about a certain character delving him/herself into the ARG, and having some special personality traits, and some other internet activity -- then, this internet activity (maybe the character has his own political forum) can have hints needed for the ARG.

So yes, I am certainly playing with online activity of my characters - and identity, representation, etc. are all core themes for the novel and the characters I was planning to describe.

Practically, my guess is the best way to handle this is :

1. You have a novel, in paper version, which might be read independently, yet without the ARG, there's these shadow events (the ARG online activity) which are never fully explained,- this is most explicit in the passages about the ARG PMs, who are always talking about their project, but the project itself is OON (out of novel ). Of course, there will be links to the NET and all, so that at any time, an intrigued novel reader can step into the ARG as well.
The trick here is how to write in such a manner that the story is consistent and enjoyable, even when you don't know what the ARG is about. Which is why the ARG and the novel should be interlaced, but should also be able to stand alone.

2. You have the ARG, which is based on whatever plot the ARG itself has, and is also partially based on the internet activity of the characters in the novel. This internet activity is 'real', in the sense that's not only in the novel, but also on the net. The way to link the ARG bizz back to the novel, can be as simple as having an 'ARG player' mention something like : 'I hear someone has written a book that mentions this guy' (ie. one of the novel characters that's linked to the ARG).

3. Or, what is also possible, is that certain passages of the novel are 'cited' on the net... (by me? by a pseudo me? by a ARG player?)



It might indeed be hard to make this project novel enough to stay interesting for readers, and ARG enough to be interesting for ARGers. But I'm not too worried about that - it simply means we have to create an audience that's some kind of hybrid --an audience that likes stories to keep on going, but also likes to solve the mystery -- which probably means the ARG mystery has to be such a pool, that you can keep on throwing your bucket in the well...

The added value of the novel would then be to highlight certain side stories for the ARG plot, side stories that are in themselves captivating... something like what the Whalestoe Letters are for House of Leaves by Danielewski (quite frankly, I loved the Letters more than HoL).
The added value of the ARG would be the mystery. It's indeed the plan to have the novel go behind the scenes, talk more about characters that are in game, but this doesn't have to limit the ARG to these characters: there can be more people in the ARG than in the novel -- as long as the novel is set up in such a way that it doesn't offer a full explanation of the mystery, as long as the novel reader is kept in the dark about what the exact point is of the PMs, and as long as the other characters of the novel are kept in the dark as well - I don't really see a problem.







(If possible collaborators think this discussion is too revealing - I think you worry too much. By the time the project is sufficiently concrete, most will have forgotten what is said here, and no concrete information of the plots are revealed. )

[MageSteff]

[iworkhere]

neat idea