The Ballad of a Failed Storyteller

So before I give you my life story I’d like to get some things out of the way. I like video games (hey, who doesn’t?). I am greatly interested in the unique behaviors that can be inspired through playing games as well as their potential as a storytelling format. Finally, my ultimate goal would be to produce my very own game(s) that incorporates some original ideas I’ve been playing around with. So it would be VERY awkward if, after I’ve decided to base the theme of the blog on musings on the particularities of storytelling in games, I get assigned to a project completely unrelated to game design. Given my choices that’s not very likely, but with my luck you never know.

But I suppose I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Stories need to start at the beginning and although I don’t want to bore anyone with my life story, it still feels quite appropriate to talk a bit about myself and what stories mean to me before delving into any musings I might have on the subject. Hence I will start by telling you the story of a failed storyteller. As to why he’s failed, well I guess you’ll have to wait till the end to find out.

I was born in a small city in Russia and… well, actually that’s not even really important. Ever notice how many stories start by telling you about where the character is born even if it doesn’t always bear much significance the story itself? No? Just me? Ahem, well the important part is that I was at grade-school age my parents got a job that made them travel to different countries and live there for long periods of time and I’d frequently go with them.

Now your immediate thoughts might be: “Oh wow, that sounds exciting. It must have been really cool being exposed to different cultures at such a young age.” And, to a certain degree, you’d be right, I’ve had a few special memories of those times that I wouldn’t have had with a different lifestyle. Yet, it is important to remember that when kids are young they need to spend a certain amount of time interacting out with their peers, so that they can develop the necessary social skills that you’ll need later in life. And that is a little hard to do when you can’t speak the local language. Being naturally introverted doesn’t help either. Oh and no knowledge of the language means I can’t attend school and since my parents were busy with work I had to educate myself. Soooo for a solid chunk of my childhood I was more-or-less a homeschooled shut-in who watched American cartoons and read books all day. While that certainly sounds quite bad, I also think that’s where my interest in storytelling began.

I won’t claim that watching Tom & Jerry or Scooby Doo every morning is the reason I feel inspired to seek out a career in writing and game design, but surprisingly it isn’t unrelated. Constantly experiencing larger than life characters get into wacky shenanigans has a certain way of endearing you to them that you won’t always find in real life. They have a propensity of turning mundane situations into exciting adventures full of character arcs, plot hooks, betrayal and a climax to tie everything together before the next episode resets everything. Watching all those shows gave me an early appreciation towards the power of fiction to attract our attention and get us invested in these fake but oh so real worlds. And don’t get me started on epic adventure narratives that propel the protagonists on adventures across the land to save someone close to them or stop some great evil. I distinctly remember staying up all night to read a 300-page epic (I think it was one of the Chronicles of Narnia) that I’ve already read before! I really loved all those different stories. My mother once told me that apparently I became fluid in English just by watching so many American cartoons. I don’t know how true that is, but if it is, it would be quite impressive.

Eventually we would settle permanently here in the US around my middle school to high school years. It was a this point that I switched my media consumption from cartoons and books to video games and Japanese anime and manga. This was the time when the use of internet was really ramping up and you could easily have access to all of these for free, easily. I was especially enraptured by the format of manga and I spent many a sleepless night reading series from beginning to end. In a way I was binging before it was cool, not that I’m saying that’s a good thing. These stories had a certain maturity I had not encountered before and they combined uniquely imaginative worlds and settings with an almost introspective view of the human condition. To me the characters in such stories often seemed more real than real people because they embodied some innate trait that intrinsic to everybody and cranked that trait to eleven. It didn’t make these characters realistic, but they were undeniably human. And these are the types of characters and stories I like and would like to tell myself.

So while this would seem like where story would approach its climax and I would transition to talking about getting into video game design or my struggles as a writer, this story will ultimately have to be disappointment. Because, to be completely honest, I haven’t written anything. Or designed any games. I did have the option to go to a tech university after finishing high school, which would likely propel me towards that career path, but I didn’t have the confidence in myself to make anything of my own. Ultimately chose a research-heavy major that left me unsatisfied and without many options to advance without going to grad school for a topic I already felt sick of. I got whatever job I could find and have spent the last few years demoralized from grinding away at my 9-5 that I’ve been neglecting doing anything creative in my spare time. So, to circle back to the issue of why I am a failed storyteller, it’s because of this, because I haven’t even really tried. Perhaps one might argue that I can’t have failed if I’ve never tried, but I’d say that I’ve failed by default.

Yikes, it feels like I’m going to end this story on a sour note. And that would make it quite the crappy story indeed. But what if instead I say that we haven’t reached the story’s climax, but rather its midpoint? In traditional storytelling the midpoint is the point in the story where something grand happens and the story switches gears, so to speak. It is the point where the flow of the narrative changes and the protagonist can go from being on the backfoot to forging ahead.

I’d like to think that my story is at it’s midpoint. That while I’ve neglected working on my writing for the longest time, I can use the push from finishing up this degree to finally put down the numerous ideas I’ve developed the last few years to paper, or I suppose to text document. I’ve written a few trial excerpts and had my friends review them. The results were… mixed, but there were some positives so there’s a path forward if I refine my ideas. I’m soon going to DM a D&D session for the first to put a few of my narrative ideas to test and finally I feel like I’m approaching a critical mass for a full epic tale I’ve been brainstorming for the last two years or so. Of course there’s no guarantee that this story will have a happy ending, but I guess I need to continue writing it to find out.

So in the end I’d like to try and use this blog to help align my thoughts and motivations on writing, writing interactive stories and video games as a story medium. And in the process perhaps I can finally start working on what I hope to be a never before seen adventure. Thank you for keeping up so far and stay tuned to what happens next!