Jon Samsel

Legendary game designer Chris Crawford asserts that interactivity “breaks interaction down into three steps—listening, thinking, and speaking—each of which must be performed well in order to sustain a good interaction. The first two steps, listening and thinking, are poorly understood and difficult to execute with a computer. The third step, expression, is most similar to existing expository forms of entertainment and has therefore, unsurprisingly, been the most fully developed of the three steps—and it has also been overemphasized.”

One of the interactive writer’s first goals is to make multiple sequences of incidents logically compatible and interesting. To do that, the interactive writer has to put the user in the driver’s seat, providing an arena in which users are required to participate in ways that alter both the text’s content and its presentation. Users cannot be passive in a multimedia text, even if they wanted to. They must make choices. They must intrude on the text.

It is this imperative, this demand that the user make choices affecting the text’s content and presentation, which distinguishes an interactive script from scripts intended for non digital technologies. And it’s the user’s desire to participate that gives interactive writers a space to create, which is different from the place provided by novels or plays or films.

“I think there have been a lot of writers who over the past two generations have been trying to figure out how to break the confines of a book,” claims writer/designer/director Douglas Gayeton. “A book starts on page one and goes to the end. I think if those people were starting now, they would be doing interactive.

Because interactivity is all based upon the principle of nonlinear thought. And that is the way we think. I could talk to you and never finish a sentence—or finish an idea—because our minds are like that. And I think that’s why people have gravitated toward interactivity. Not because it’s a fad, but because it really captures the dimensionality of thought. That thought is not a linear process, it’s a multi-plane, multidimensional process. And a story that allows you to assimilate and capture the essence of how our thinking processes work is a tremendously fascinating and exciting thing.”

The central consideration to keep in mind at all times when writing interactive properties is the user experience. Writers must consider the actions (and inaction) of the audience with the same depth and urgency afforded to the interactive concept being presented. Otherwise, the writer is simply embellishing a linear project with entertaining click-ons, cul-de-sacs, and side games.

The question one must ask next is: How can this best be accomplished?

Interactive writers—whether they are building websites, CD-ROM games, or informational kiosks—must provide a framework for all possible user interactions to take place. Ultimately, the depth of user interactivity is influenced by the following factors:

Immersion

• Is belief suspended enough to draw the user into the world of the application?
• How captivating or believable is the application?

Exploration

• How much freedom does the user have within the application?
• What does the user discover along his or her journey?

Response

• How can the user communicate or interact with characters, objects, and activities within the application?

Satisfaction

• What does the user learn from the application?
• What can the user take away from the experience?
• How pleasurable or satisfying was the experience?
• How likely is the user to repeat the experience?

Roger Schank once said that we may choose what to remember, but we are not free to forget at will. Interactive writers don’t have the luxury of forgetting, or ignoring, those dimensions of multimedia production that are unfamiliar or arduous. Difficult though it may be, creative artists in this arena have to change the way they think. Interactive writers must learn the rules that govern the new form, and then apply that newfound knowledge to their interactive projects. Do that and your future as an interactive writer/designer is virtually unlimited!

What’s the process like, then, this acquisition of left-brain skills? Well, it starts by understanding that interactive writing begins with the transformation of the printed page into an active matrix displayed on the computer screen.

Printed pages have long been “interactive” in the sense that they allow the reader to choose any page at random, sample a few lines of text, jump into the index to search for a particular subject of interest, or close the book when the eye grows weary.

That kind of activity, familiar to all of us, can be interactive. But most of the time it’s not. Most people read books linearly, from page one to the final word, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, verse to verse. In a book, the author has determined every aspect of content and presentation from the plot down to the most minuscule detail of scenery, and most readers are all too happy to be the passive recipients of the writer’s labor.

Interactive texts are different. Michael Joyce says that what makes interactive texts different from books is that the interactive text can “change every time you read it.” The problem with that characterization, as almost any reader will tell you, is that books change with each reading, too. People commonly read the same book over and over and never have the same experience twice.

No two people reading a book come away with the same experience.

It’s not correct to suggest, either, that readers of books are simply passive recipients of the author’s intent. Many readers are extremely active, interacting with books in a myriad of ways, whether anticipating the author’s stance in a polemic or guessing the bad guy in a whodunit. Thriller, political treatise, poem—the ways in which printed texts and readers can interact are vast.

However, digitally based texts invite a user’s interaction in ways distinguished both in scale and in kind from older technologies. Many interactive texts, for example, particularly interactive fiction or games, practically beg the user to change the sequence in which information or incident is presented. The options that these texts offer their users are much more varied, and intrusive, than the kind of participation invited by a printed text.

Virtual technologies and printed technologies make different demands on their writers. Suppose, for a moment, that you’d like to write an interactive mystery. You’re going to do a virtual Sam Spade, or Hercule Poirot. The writer of a printed text would go to a great deal of trouble to create a single, integrated sequence of cause and effect that cannot be changed. Readers of these texts will generally follow the novelist’s single path from the body in the bathtub to the heroic declaration that “the butler did it!”

You can’t change the sequence of events established in a printed mystery and expect to have anything make sense. Read an Agatha Christie and see what I mean; change one detail, move one incident from its established niche to another, and very likely you will be unable to discern the logic of Ms. Christie’s work at all. But the same story, placed in the hands of an interactive writer, will be handled much differently.

Interactive writer and producer Greg Roach says that “the underpinnings of successful interactive design” require a “geometric understanding of the spatial possibilities of what the medium represents.” Sounds like a mouthful, doesn’t it? But writer and designer Michael Kaplan paints a similar picture of the interactive writer when he describes interactive writing as an “amalgam of math and storytelling.” Besides math and storytelling skills, I would add that interactive writers also need to have a working knowledge of how digitally constructed texts are designed. That is, they should understand how the logic of programming affects their stories, and should understand how designers use procedural rules to realize at the machine level what the writer puts on the page.

Most writers experience some frustration when moving from books or stage plays or scripts to the interactive screen. This is chiefly because interactive writing demands competency in areas not usually second-nature to writers in the older technologies. For purposes of illustration, let’s imagine writing as a strictly “right-brain” activity; an activity related to a writer’s grasp of oratory, prose, and history. For contrast, we’ll call skills related to math “left-brain” activities.

The interactive writer has to rely heavily on the left and right hemispheres of the brain. And to participate in a text’s design, the interactive writer has to track left- and right-brain activity simultaneously. Interactive writers have a whole set of concerns alien to writers of older media. A text’s logic, the procedural rules that determine its design, the technology that communicates the user’s interaction with the text—all of this stuff has to be taken into account on the printed page of the interactive script. The interactive scripter must therefore be able to nurture and develop creative ideas while constructing abstract systems of order and logic for the digitally based technology through which the text will be presented.

You could sum this up by saying that the interactive writer must be competent in storytelling, mathematics, and design. This probably explains why so few writers follow through with their interactive urges. And among those who do, it’s obvious that failure is more common than success. This is understandable. It’s not the writer’s fault; it’s just that jealous right brain claiming turf! But skills related to mathematics, abstract thinking, logical progression, the ability to see patterns in chaos, and so on are essential for creators of interactive content. “Left-brain thinking,” as Kaplan and Roach acknowledge, is an indispensable tool in the interactive writer’s bag.

“My father’s definition of an expert is somebody who has done something once. And I’ve also heard it described about “experts” that an “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure. I believe that those who fancy that they know it all have peaked. We are in a young industry and I suppose it makes more sense that we behave like youths: having fun, experimenting, doing naughty things, disobeying our elders, learning how to grow up, and seeing a universe of many possibilities.

– Larry Kay

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.”

– Zen saying

The late great Orsen Welles once said, “Everything you need to know about filmmaking can be learned in two to three days.” I don’t know whether to believe that statement or not. I suppose that for a man who rote and directed several of the most critically acclaimed films of all time, this was no overstatement. But I can almost guarantee that if those words were uttered by any other contemporary filmmaker, he or she would have been run out of town faster than you could shout, “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”

It is unlikely that a writer can learn everything he or she needs to know about interactivity in a day or two—let alone, within the pages of a single book. The daily bombardment of new tools, techniques, and technology is daunting—to the point, some even say, of polluting the creative landscape. One wonders if the technological gold rush will ever slow down long enough for our creative souls to catch up. I hope so. There is so much to learn and so much to see and explore.

We live in a society where the technology tail waves the creative dog, we will continue to be inundated with new information at a dehumanizing pace. I am reminded of a commencement address given by John Nathan, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, to the graduating class of the School of the Arts and Humanities. Nathan said, “New technology’s voracious appetite for data has spawned a new profession. This profession is called content creation. It is up to us, the humanists and the artists, to restore some balance and perspective to the Information Age.”

That speech made a significant impact on my approach to living in a digital world. Nathan’s words have given me the courage to ask the storyteller, Where? and the technologist, Why? My journey has taken me on an exhaustive quest to answer a deeply profound, two-part question: What is this thing called interactivity and what exactly is the writer’s role in it?

We live in an exciting age where the story and the teller are merging in a garden of forking paths. The audience is no longer a passive but an active participant in all that interactivity has to offer. New methods of communication and expression must be forged. And more and more it is the writer—the electric scribe of the Information Age—who leads the charge.

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Legendary actor (now an icon) Humphrey Bogart once remarked that “the world is forty laughs behind.” Since laughter and humor are part and parcel of what makes life worth living, you should give some thought to the idea of this type book.

The Nothing Book was a mind-boggling success with more than a million copies sold. There was in fact nothing in the book between the covers but blank pages. The Official Preppy Handbook was a big selling book, and the same is true for comedian books of this era including the works of Dave Barry, Drew Carey, P. J. O’Rourke, Jeff Foxworthy, Chelsea Handler, the late Erma Bombeck, and other funny people who transfer their talent to book pages.

Life would be terribly grim without humor, and there lies the reason for the success of this type book. To be able to laugh at yourself, at and with others, and to appreciate the humor in many of life’s situations is to live more fully and intelligently.

Humor is many things. It’s the wit and artful comedy often seen on the stage and screen. Humor is sarcasm, satire, the effective use of exaggeration, perhaps a play on words, a situation real or imagined that brings laughter, and much more.

There is dry humor, slapstick, the witty kind of humor, a biting, sometimes painful or sharp humor, and even sick humor. There is country humor, political humor, business, military service humor, prison humor, wedding day humor, joke humor, single punch line humor, movie and television humor, car decal humor, and so on down the line.

So what about it? Is there a humor book in you as an author? If you have a talent for making people laugh, you should certainly consider this type of book. Perhaps you are good with jokes or humorous stories, or whatever; you might be able to transfer this ability to the page and finish a book in this category.

Humor book authors seem to either have it or not. Comedy writing is not easy. Otherwise, why would so many comedians use a lot of writers? You may be great as a stand-up comic, but can you get this on the written page?

Do some serious thinking about what lies behind humor before trying this type of book. Why do some laugh so easily and others far less? Do certain kinds of humor fare better and, if so, then why?

It will help you to stay alert to all humor in your daily life. It’s wonderful to bring a laugh or smile to readers in a humor book, and such a book might well make the day for them. Think about the bits of humor you might steer into the lives of your neighbors, friends, associates, your spouse, family members, relatives, and others. Then try to actually do it. Share that humor with them.

Simplicity is often a key factor in the art of humor. English comic writer Thomas Hood summed up the value of humor well: “The sense of humor is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the price of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence.”

Humor Book Examples:

• Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months With Tools You Probably Have Around the Home
• The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
• Byte Me!: Computing for the Terminally Frustrated!
• I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts About Being a Woman
• Everything I Need to Know About Succeeding in Hollywood I Learned from my Pit-Bull
• The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig
• Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
• Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-Bye
• Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
• Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter
• Shopgirl : A Novella
• Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

Margot Maley Hutchison has been an agent with Waterside Productions since 1992. She has sold over 1,000 books and generated more than $10 million dollars in revenue for her authors. Here is how Margot describes a typical day as an agent:

There is no typical day in the life of a literary agent. But if I had to describe one, it would go something like this:

I get to work about 8:45 and immediately get a large vat of coffee. I download my e-mail and check my messages and try to start answering e-mail before the phone starts ringing. Some days I’m on the phone non-stop from the moment I sit down until the time I leave. I could be negotiating deals or spending a good part of my day rescuing a book that’s in trouble. Between phone calls I try to answer my e-mail. Unless I have a lunch meeting, I grab lunch somewhere quickly and bring it back to my desk. I try in the afternoons to send out my submissions and if I have time review the proposals and query letters that come in. I usually leave about 5:30 or 6:00 (unless I’m swamped), then I go to the gym, go home, and fall into bed.

Author James Halperin published his first book without the benefit of an agent. His speculative novel, The Truth Machine, was forwarded to executives at Ballentine Books by another author. Amazingly, the book was rushed to press eight weeks after its discovery and became Ballantine’s lead fall title.

Noted author Judith Guest published her first novel without the services of an agent. Ordinary People went on to enjoy enormous success.

Frankly, it puzzles me why people are often amazed when an author sells a book without an agent. It happens every day.

Agents are not gods with magic wands. They are not experts beyond reproach. In fact, I’ve heard it described about experts that an “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure!

The truth of the matter is that a book project worthy of being published can be placed by yourself with some persistence and confidence. If it’s not up to par, no one––not you or a top-notch agent will be able to sell it.

Publishers Weekly once reported on an author who tried three different agents. Not one of them got her a book contract or even a magazine article sale. One agent lost some of her articles and demanded a 10-percent royalty on a book the author sold herself.

Her reaction to this unhappy experience is worth remembering: “You shouldn’t try to get an agent. There isn’t a 10-percent difference between what you can get and what an agent can get for you.”

Many writers, however, would disagree with this assessment.

Some writers with little confidence in agents have handled the contract and rights details for their books themselves and have done well at it. Others, no doubt, have come out on the short end of the stick.

However, many authors have profited considerably from the services of a reliable and competent agent. The right one can be a real help to you, but the wrong one can actually hurt your chances for success.

When you reach the point in your writing that you feel the need for an agent, you should weigh both sides of the question before arriving at a decision.

There is no textbook example of how to secure professional representation for your literary works. Lending an agent is part careful planning, part luck and part tenacity. Generally, novice authors are told to start seeking agent representation no later than after signing your second book contract, as it’s nearly impossible to garner the attention of a skilled agent as an unpublished author. . Many pros in publishing feel that a writer should seek an agent without delay after the very first sale.

There’s no guarantee that you will get a good agent after three or even five book sales. Some of the leading agents already have more clients than they can properly handle. Some won’t even reply to letters from new authors, or will direct their staff to send form rejection replies.

Get one bestseller on your credit list, however, and most agents worth their salt will come after you like bears that spotting honey. A “hot” author naturally has a wider choice of agents.

Most authors simply write the agent (or agents) of their choice and explain how long they’ve been writing, list any published credits, book sales, if any, and other background information. They write about their work in progress and offer to send a synopsis, or outline, along with several chapters. In the case of a novel, they may have to send half or more of the manuscript. If the agent at the top of their list turns them down, they write to another one. And so on.

After trying the better agents for years without success, many writers give up and simply continue to represent themselves. Many of them do well on their own and later wonder why they spent so much time and effort seeking an agent. Others feel throughout their writing careers that they would have done much better if only they had been represented by a heavyweight (one with clout) New York agent.

The three best ways to land an agent in your corner are:

1. As discussed above, write or email directly to the agent and ask if he or she will consider reading your work and eventually representing you.
2. Meet with as many agents as possible face to face. Secure an appointment and go to meet with them.
3. Pick up the telephone and call the agent’s office. Tell whoever answers the phone your name, where you are calling from, and why. Some lucky authors have gotten very good agents this way. They either called at the right time, or the agent simply happened to be accepting new clients at the time.