Some have said that 'Frankenstein' is a story of a bad parenting giving rise to a troubled child.
People nowadays think of gamebooks as rather old hat - and, after all, it was twenty years ago. In their heyday, though, they were a phenomenon, selling upwards of a hundred thousand units per title. And it's not as old hat as you might think: the same design skills I used in those days apply equally when I'm creating modern videogames.
Storytelling isn't an Escher staircase.
A new medium always has a period when it is struggling inside the confining box of an earlier medium. Creators have to unlearn what they knew before they can see the fresh, uncharted vistas stretching before them.
My first memory of the public library is of lugging home a volume of Norse myths as heavy as a thunder-god's hammer.
A well-written novel, the most immersive of all forms of storytelling, should command your full attention and belief.
'Breaking Bad' and 'The Shield' were planned right from the start so that their narrative trajectory would come down in a blaze of fireworks.
Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show.
Have confidence in your strengths, dear writer, or give it all up now and create apps instead.
I could put a sudoku at the end of every chapter and you'd have to solve it to progress through the story, but that doesn't address what would make people want to interact.
There is a great insatiable hunger for good stories throughout the media.
Six years old, and I already knew that my natural home was the world inside the head.
Interactive storytelling emphasizes a personal connection with the characters. It is a powerful tool that can draw you so deeply into the world of a story that you lose sight of it as a story. You think you are there - at least, if it is done right.
In good writing, the contemplative and the exciting happen at the same time.
Standing out as a writer today requires more than a bright idea and limpid prose. Authors need to become businesspeople as well.
When I mention that I'm a game designer as well as a writer, someone will nod and say, 'Ah, that's what we like about your script. The videogame feel.'
When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.
Back in the early 1970s, what got me and another 400,000 kids out of bed without needing to be called twice was the latest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.
When a medium like games or comic books whips up such a rapture of enthusiasm, naturally we look for lessons we should be learning.
Granted, a long book can be as daunting as a hard one. I nearly reached for 'Game of Thrones' until I saw the bookshelf sagging under the burden of those other volumes.
