Category: Writing

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Mechanical White Noise

I recently discovered that typing on a mechanical keyboard does an excellent job of maintaining my desire to write.

Typically I use a Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard when I’m working at my desktop. I bought one only a few months after moving to San Diego to use at work. Once my hands got used to it, going back to a standard keyboard at home didn’t feel quite right. So, I now have two of these split ergonomic keyboards.1

Despite how lovely my arms and wrists feel when typing on them, the keys have little travel and are awfully quiet. That is great for an office environment, and physically beneficial since work takes up most of my computer term. However, this is not nearly as fun in casual use. So, I’ve broken out one of my several mechanical keyboards for use after-hours.

In addition to being more amusing, I’ve found it to be mentally helpful as well. The clicking and clacking of the mechanical switches creates a white noise to my brain, allowing me to focus in on what I’m writing. While I’m sure having the separation of tools between work and hobbies is part of the effect, I know I respond well to white noise. Having it self-generated is more desirable and satisfying than relying on my phone, for example. I’m sure once I move in with my fiance it won’t be a sustainable choice, but we shall see.

FOOTNOTES

  1. Working from home has made this duplicate purchase situation less great. ↩
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New Writing Workflow

Over four years ago I wrote a post about my off-the-cuff writing style. It was a flash-bang approach with only minor edits along the way. However, since writing stories for NaNoWriMo last year I’ve been rethinking my broader aims for this blog, and what processes can help me achieve them. Writing a post each week is a fine goal, but if they aren’t each in service of something larger it’s hard for them be anything but a pleasant chore. Subconsciously, that far-away target was establishing a writing routine with the hope it would improve my abilities. I think it has, but it took a concerted effort in editing a short story (and a few other projects before) for me to recognize that growth. It’s time for a change in approach and a new target.

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Perfect Shot (NaNoWriMo 2020 Story 1)

Although I’m not doing a complete take of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, I still wanted to put in some concerted effort writing some pieces that weren’t blog posts or text adventures. So, I’ve committed to writing at least 2 short stories this month, a medium I find beautiful and incredibly tricky to nail down.

This first one is particularly short, only about 3 pages if printed, and the idea comes from a post on /r/WritingPrompts.

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Text Adventures Part 3: The Mechanics

Text adventures are, almost by necessity, designed to railroad the player into doing something without it being obvious or annoying. Any mechanics introduced should be a natural extension to the world the player discovers, provide sufficient freedom so they don’t feel like a funnel, yet guide the player in the correct direction. In the text adventures I’ve listen to played on the Cortex/Upgrade crossover episodes, I’ve noticed that mechanics often act as hints. They are like bumpers on a wall (which may kill you, but you can make a different decision the next time.)

All these realizations have come after thinking carefully through the mechanics and puzzles I wrote which were clearly bad (and the few which were actually good), and trying to figure out what precisely caused them to have the effect on the players they did. It’s often me not paying attention to my good sense and the feedback of testers. More frequently it’s me trying to subdue the text adventure genre until it allows me to try and tell a story, rather than building a story that works within a framework.

Directly, most of my text adventure failures have come from a single mechanic undermining any positive decisions I made.

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Text Adventures Part 2: The Idea

I want each text adventure I write to have a unique flavor. Mechanics aside, the story behind it should be fresh, typically built from a single idea, and the more I write the more my mind recognizes these singular bits of inspiration. One thought or phrase is typically enough for me to build a world from: sitting down with a thought, then branching out from the initial point in whatever way my mind flows. I’m going to discuss how this process worked for each of the four text adventures I’ve written and released so far, and try to dissect what I learned in the process. In the next post, I’ll focus more on the thought process (or lack thereof) that went into developing some of the game mechanics around these ideas.

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Text Adventures Part 1: Why I Write Them

I’ve written several in-person text adventures modeled after Parsely games over the past couple of years. Through persistent effort, I’ve managed to improve them and recently began to notice a particular style develop. Since I’m finally pleased with where they are headed, I figured I would document my journey in writing them: Why I write them, how I find ideas, how I develop those ideas, and the actual mechanisms of making a document as reference. This whole set of posts will probably be four parts over the next month. So we start off at the beginning: Why did I start writing these, and why am I still writing these?

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Tommyball Princess

I really enjoy the Unmade Podcast with Brady Haran and Tim Hein. They generate some wonderful ideas, and the fact that it’s two old friends hanging out reminds me of the conversations (and podcasts) I have with my own friends.

One particular bit that has been ongoing in special episodes is Tommyball. It’s a fictional sport with no clear rules (it’s essentially Calvinball), and in these special episodes it’s Brady interviewing Tim, who plays the role of a conceited former player, and current commentator, of Tommyball. The most recent episode has Tim reading the audiobook of his recently released autobiography.

Tickled by this general idea, I decided I would write my own few chapters of a biography for Tim. It was a fun evening making it, and I figured it would be good to post here. You can download the PDF below.

TommyballPrincessDownload