This post includes answers from Emily Short, Stephen Granade and Jacqueline A. Lott. Follow the links for their answers to the other interview questions.

More tips for the new IF author

1. How much information do you generally give the reader at the start of the story, and how do you decide how much is appropriate?

   Emily: The introduction needs to be pretty short, because people tend to want to start playing; they don’t want to read pages of text before beginning. So I try to give the most condensed version I can that will tell the player where his character is and what his goal is. In IF, even more than in conventional fiction, you have to communicate the goal immediately, because the player has to have something to work towards. That goal might change over the course of the piece as things happen in the story, but there has to be something clear to start from.

   Then I work a lot of the other background information into the opening scene, so the player will pick up more about his character and setting as he plays.

   Stephen:One of my narrative kinks is having the player start with little information and asking them to piece the story together as it goes. I’ve over-used that trope, in fact, though I can’t say I’ll never use it again.
   Jacqueline: It depends on the experience I want them to have and how long the game will ultimately be. If it’s something short and I need to give the player a bit of background, I’ll do that. But it’s better for the player to experience things as they go, learn as they go, much like we prefer doing in the real world. It’s more natural, and feels more realistic.

2. There are so many items, rooms, and interactions that an author could put in the story and so many descriptions that could go with them. Where do you draw the line?

   Emily: My rule of thumb is: no rooms that don’t have at least two or three interesting things in them; no items that do nothing; no interactions that are irrelevant to gameplay.

   To break that out a little: it’s tempting at first to make a big sprawly map with lots of rooms, but that becomes overwhelming for players. So it’s a good idea to condense the map and combine rooms that might serve related purposes. Get rid of your hallways, staircases, porches, antechambers, vestibules, and so on, unless there’s something actually interesting that’s going to happen there.

   Items are worth implementing if they do something interesting (a key, a letter you can show to another character), if they give important information about the world (a painting of your character’s ancestors), if they set atmosphere (a dying flower in a vase), or if they give the player hints about how to interact (an instruction sheet, say). If the object doesn’t accomplish any of those functions, I tend to leave it out.

   This is an aesthetic choice — some people are much more rigorous about modelling every detail that would be present in real life, down to the towel rods in the bathroom and the handles on the doors. To my mind, those features are distracting to the player, though: he might expect them to do something, and if they don’t, they’re just annoying.

   And “no interactions that are irrelevant to gameplay” means something similar: I don’t implement a detailed weather system or a microwave that you can really cook things in if those don’t matter at all to the story and aren’t part of getting to the ending or solving any puzzles. Otherwise, the player will just wind up tinkering endlessly with something that looks important (why did the author lovingly implement this if it doesn’t matter?).

   So overall, I’d say that I look at this as a process a bit like dressing a set for a play. It’s better to be a little bit impressionistic but provide the player with a few memorable, interesting props that are fun to interact with.

   Stephen: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. famously said that every sentence should do one of two things – reveal character or advance the action. I’m not that extreme, but your items, rooms and interactions should have a definite reason for being there. Don’t feel like you have to implement everything, because you can’t. Instead, implement what matters.
   Jacqueline: Heh. Well, I don’t, which is part of why people both love and hate having me as a tester, and why I don’t have more large-scale works out there (though that will change in the future). My personal belief, which I did fairly well in The Fire Tower, is that you shouldn’t have a noun in a description that doesn’t itself have its own description. This is what garnered me a Xyzzy for Best Setting. Player should be able to explore, and explore freely, and in fact have to work a bit to find something unimplemented. Unimplemented things are jarring, avoid them. Repetitive descriptions for three things in the same room is jarring, avoid doing that. If you don’t want to go to that fine a level, then don’t write yourself nouns you’re not willing to code. Instead of writing, “The leaves of the plant have an intricate system of veins, and there are several small discolorations where insects have had their way,” you should instead write, “The leaves of the plant have been gnawed on by insects.” This latter approach isn’t as pretty, but it also doesn’t force you to then code a description for the “intricate system of veins” or those “small discolorations.”

Broader IF questions

1. What first attracted you to Interactive Fiction?

   Emily: I played Infocom and some Scott Adams games in the 1980s, and enjoyed them hugely. Then I thought they had gone forever, until a friend of mine in college told me about the amateur IF scene.
   Jacqueline: I started on a diet of Choose Your Own Adventure books, and then Zork I, II, and III. It’s how I learned to type, it’s how I learned the word phosphorescent, it’s how I got out into the wilderness when I lived in a city and was too small to venture out alone.

2. Out of your own stories, do you have a favourite, and why (or why not)?

   Emily: Not really. I usually get to a stage of passionately hating whatever I’m working on shortly before I finish it, and then it takes me a little while to forgive it for being such a pain to complete. Likewise, my favorite of the moment is whatever project I’m working on that I’m still feeling enthusiastic about.
   Jacqueline: Well, The Fire Tower is the best of what I’ve publicly written to date, though it’s really showing its age in many respects and responding to your interview has helped me realize that! But I have other favorites that are more personal. I enjoyed the challenge of using only one noun to write Things, or the challenge of having a few objects combine in different ways to represent multiple objects in Within a Wreath of Dewdrops, both of which I wrote with my husband, Sam Kabo Ashwell. I still think The Invisible Argonaut is hilarious, even if you can play it in ten minutes and it’s unwinnable and thus frustrates the hell out of people because they expect there to be something more. I guess we all have our public favorites and our private favorites.

3. What piece of IF have you read that you feel best demonstrates the form’s unique potential (as opposed to traditional fiction)?

   Emily: I couldn’t really point to just one, because the form has potential of quite a few different kinds. There’s a whole chunk of my website about this ( http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/reading-if/ ).
   Jacqueline: Blue Lacuna, hands down.

Jacqueline A Lott

Jacqueline's The Fire Tower goes to great lengths to provide an award winning sense of place

Jacqueline is an interactive fiction author and prolific tester. Her story The Fire Tower, won the 2004 Xyzzy award for best setting. These days she tests interactive fiction more than she writes, so has a great deal of experience in judging what works and what doesn’t. She has also been running IntroComp since 2003. Her official website is allthingsjacq, on which she has an interactive fiction section.

1. How do you decide that a piece of fiction should be interactive, rather than a traditional story?

   Jacqueline: Do I have but one linear plot thread in mind? How interesting is the world in which the story is set? How much do I think others would enjoy exploring the issues, experiences, or thoughts of the protagonist? Is this just a story or event that I feel needs to be told, or would it be better explored? I think interactive fiction lends itself, first and foremost, as an excellent venue for world-building and exploration of cause and effect. Personally speaking, there’s also an element of ‘how difficult would this be to code’ or ‘how fun would this be to code’ in there as well, but I’m finding that these days I’m fixing the first of those by collaborating with coders far stronger than myself.

2. What software do you use to write your IF, and why?

   Jacqueline: I use the Inform 7. I first began writing in Inform 6, and was among the private beta group who got to test Inform 7 when it first came out, so I guess I feel a certain affection for the language. I’m also one of those people who’s closer to the writer end of the spectrum than the coder end. Inform 7 is still a coding language, there’s a distinct order to how you can say things, but I do find it easier to grasp mentally because of the natural language aspect of the code. The other day I took a look at something a friend and I started in I6; we’re thinking about resurrecting it, and we both agree that the first necessary thing will be to port it to I7. Reading I6 makes my vision blur a bit these days.

3. What’s the first thing you do when starting a new piece of IF?

   Jacqueline: Laying out the map, and creating locations and their descriptions. I like having a world I can walk around as I lay out parts of the story, and setting the scene is (for me) the easiest and most enjoyable part of the whole affair. I also get a great deal of joy out of research, probably more than is good for me and my actual productivity.

4. How much time do you spend planning your stories versus writing them?

   Jacqueline: I think I almost always spend more time writing than planning. That said, one of my current works in progress has been much heavier on planning thus far, but I suspect that eventually the writing will overtake that.

5. IF takes the practically unique second person perspective. With the reader essentially playing a character, do you expect your readers to roleplay, or do you prefer to give them as blank a canvas as possible?

   Jacqueline: Honestly, unless I have a super firm idea of who the player character is, I like letting the player pretend that they’re actually in the game. In The Fire Tower, the player character was modeled after myself, so I took the easy route when I was writing and made the player role play (hopefully they enjoyed pretending to be me!). I’m usually fond of making games more accessible, though, by allowing people to more comfortably fit in the player character’s skin, but that, too, is an easy route. While I haven’t done this myself, I do very much value works which force the player to step outside themselves and experience challenges that they wouldn’t otherwise have to face. That’s part of what makes the experience worthwhile.

6. There can be an overwhelming amount of choice for the reader. What do you do to signpost important objects or interactions for them? When you restrict their choices instead, how do you make sure it is done in a realistic way?

   Jacqueline: Well, I do believe in very exhaustive world-crafting, which often means that there are a lot of objects you can explore. Generally, though, if an object is there merely for setting (the thing that I believe IF does better than anything else), then I find some way to reasonably lock that object down. I give the player a plausible reason, not merely a “Sorry, can’t do that” response. Those responses are like a wet towel tossed over the player’s head. No fun.

7. There is potential for a tangled web of intersecting paths through a story. How do you keep track of everything?

   Jacqueline: Well, you can make things linear, which is fairly boring and frowned on these days. You can make things branch in a somewhat linear way–that is to say, the game itself isn’t linear, but each critical decision puts you on a separate linear path, so what you end up with are a series of individual linear games nested within one larger work. There are ways to make it more complicated, of course. One of the things I’m working on right now allows for lots of exploration and full reign, but each decision you make has a value to it, and the game silently keeps track of your actions, ultimately affecting the outcome; this is accomplished by a value chart that, perhaps unfairly, the player never sees, but the player does know full well whether his/her actions are selfish or not, cruel or not, etc. Whichever route you chose as an author, there’s one common thread for them all: solid testing. You’ll never be able to predict the multitude of ways in which the paths you think you’ve delineated so well will actually cross until you let other human beings navigate those paths for themselves and report back to you about the journeys on which they’ve been.

8. How do you go about testing your work?

   Jacqueline: There’s a lot of self testing before things go out. I’m actually more accomplished in the IF community as a tester than as an author, and that serves me well. Then I open it to a very small group (say, 1-3 people) and work through their suggestions before releasing it to a larger testing pool.

9. What’s the most valuable mistake you have made writing Interactive fiction?

   Jacqueline: Releasing something before it was ready. I love IntroComp. I love it so much that I took on the role of running it, which I’ve done now for eight years, and which I hope I’ll do well into the future. But I look back on the first thing I released (as part of the first IntroComp in 2002) and see that it really wasn’t ready, and really wasn’t thought out well enough. When the full version of that game comes out (which it will, eventually) it will be a very different thing indeed, a much better creation, which it never would have been had I not fallen flat way back then and gotten some of my newbie blunders out of the way. Shame it had to be public, but it probably wouldn’t have been as valuable a lesson otherwise.

10. If there was only one single tip you could give a new IF writer, what would it be?

    Jacqueline: Use beta testers extensively, not just any ol’ people you can find, but people who you respect, and listen to them. It’s hard to get past the fascination of playing your first game, seeing it run, thinking to yourself, “I created this world oh my goodness isn’t this amazing,” but you need to get past it. Fascinating as that world you created may be, it’s imperfect. You do it a disservice by not polishing it where other eyes see smears or streaks.

Sarah Morayati

Sarah has written several pieces of IF, including Broken Legs, which came second in the 2009 IF Comp. She also collaborated on Alabaster, which won the awards for best writing, and best individual NPC at the XYZZY Awards the same year. She has also contributed an extension to Inform 7. Her official website can be found here.

1. What software do you use to write your IF, and why?

   Sarah: I use the Windows IDE for Inform 7. It’s really quite simple — I prefer Inform to TADS, and assembling an Inform 6 game is, well, its own thing. I’m sure the technology has advanced since I last used it (well, advanced in a way other than Inform 7), but here’s my old I6 coding process: load up a Notepad file with my source code, open a DOS window, code a bit, switch windows, type in the compiling command, switch windows, fix the inevitable bugs, switch windows, repeat until there are no more bugs, repeat everything else. It’s kind of retro-cool using DOS these days, and it’s undeniably cool to see the file containing your story spring up, but all that coolness wears off fast.

   Besides, the I7 IDE has a lot of excellent features — color-coded source text, quick options to compile, replay and release, a manual built in, lists of verbs, etc. I should also mention the skein — I don’t use it much personally, but a lot of people really love it.

2. What’s the first thing you do when starting a new piece of IF?

   Sarah: Apologies for the wonkery, but I copy-and-paste some code. I’m not being flip. There are a few sentences (again, I’m talking Inform 7) that you’ll want to at least consider at the start, before you forget:

   - “Use no scoring.” IF is trending toward works that don’t keep score. Personally, I don’t have much use for scoring, and I’d venture to say that a lot of people interested in the literary potential of IF don’t have much use for it either. But if you don’t explicitly turn scoring off, readers can still call up their non-score with >FULL or >SCORE. It’s irrelevant, and it will confuse them. Best to leave it out.

   - “Use full-length room descriptions.” This requires some explanation. There are three “story modes” in Inform: verbose, which always prints a full description for every room; brief, which prints a full description the first time and only the room name on subsequent visits; and superbrief, which only prints a full description if you explicitly type >LOOK. I prefer verbose mode. Descriptions help me get my bearings, and more importantly, a well-written description evokes all sorts of moods and images that a room name alone cannot. Room descriptions can also change, producing an effect far more striking if you’re familiar with the original text. This piece of code sets the story mode to verbose by default, and I never leave it out.

   - “Rule for deciding whether all includes scenery: it does not.” and “Rule for deciding whether all includes people: it does not.” This is to make >GET ALL less jarring. Normally, this command will try to take literally everything in the room, including anything you’ve defined as scenery (read: lots of unimportant things), not to mention your NPCs. Some people disable GET ALL entirely, but I don’t think you need to go quite that far. These statements are good enough.

   - “The describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is not listed in any rulebook.” This one can be a lifesaver. If you have a supporter (an object that can hold something, such as a shelf or a chair) described as scenery, the story will write another paragraph to say what’s on that object — a paragraph that’s almost always useless from a writing standpoint. You don’t need it. Even the Inform 7 documentation suggests that you add this code. They know.

3. How do you decide that a piece of fiction should be interactive, rather than a traditional story?

   Sarah: A couple things, mostly skill. Some things are just difficult to code. Conversations, for instance, or complex simulations (the classic examples are ropes, fire and water.) Many of these, mind you, are highly rewarding once you crack the code, and readers find them very impressive. But some just aren’t worth the effort and are better treated in static fiction. The key question to ask is: does writing this as IF add anything to the story? If not, it doesn’t mean you can’t try it, but it likely means you should find a way to make writing your story as IF worthwhile.

   I’d be remiss, too, not to mention audience. Right now, a work of IF is primarily going to reach a niche audience, likely one with a less traditionally literary background. This is changing, and it’s changing fast, but it’s still true right now. I don’t say this as a warning; it’s just something to keep in mind.

4. IF takes the practically unique second person perspective. With the reader essentially playing a character, do you expect your readers to roleplay, or do you prefer to give them as blank a canvas as possible?

   Sarah: I never much liked “blank canvas” stories. If we assume the PC is a character, would you make any other character a blank slate? Not if you want the reader to care.

   There’s a lot of discussion on this subject, but the stance I take is that IF makes you a tourist in someone else’s mind. Any text you read will be from that character, whether directly or through free indirect discourse. Done right, this can be fantastic — see Stephen Bond’s Rameses, for instance. Second-person is a barrier, yes, but it isn’t insurmountable. It isn’t even insurmountable in static fiction — the canonical example is Bright Lights, Big City by Jay Mcinerney, but there are others. And true, some of these novels and stories and IF works are utter failures. Some aren’t. Yours could be the latter.

   You don’t even have to use second person anyway. It’s a convention, not a rule. There are ways to change tense, and they’re all much easier than slogging through a story written the way you don’t want it.

5. There are so many items, rooms, and interactions that an author could put in the story and so many descriptions that could go with them. Where do you draw the line?

   Sarah: In general, over-implementation — what some call making stories “juicy,” is better than under-implementation. The surest sign of an amateur isn’t too much writing, it’s too little — important scenery objects going unimplemented, or items getting one lousy sentence of non-description. Don’t despair, though — this usually doesn’t happen when the author’s trying. It happens when the author isn’t.

   There is a line, though, and it’s sometimes hard to spot at first. A piece of advice floating around from Adam Cadre that should help shed some light on this: any text your story displays is essentially a reward for the player typing in a command, so every piece of text has to be worth reading. Your responses can be funny, they could give clues, they could further characterization. What they cannot do is be cursory. When you get to the point, then, where you’re just writing stuff down because you have to, rewrite or rethink. If you’re bored by your writing, everyone else will be bored too.

6. There is potential for a tangled web of intersecting paths through a story. How do you keep track of everything?

   Sarah: This is what people call the ““combinatorial explosion” problem: the more things you’ve got bouncing around at once, the more likely it is that they’ll crash into each other and explode. So corral them if you can. For Broken Legs, I cheated a bit. (Mild spoilers ahead, but nothing catastrophic.) Every turning-point in the story is binary. Alexandra either fails or passes her audition, so at each juncture, there are only two possibilities. Well, OK, that’s not entirely true — at a certain point in the late game, there are about three — but two and three are still very different numbers than 20 and 30. Perhaps real auditions are more nuanced and actually do require 20 to 30 factors, but I wasn’t about to simulate all of that in a year. I cheated in other ways: the puzzles are sequential, so you shouldn’t run into a situation where Alexandra passed but Rosanna failed, and more importantly, I wouldn’t need to write and code that scenario.

   I’ve called this cheating, but I’d like to call it strategy too. Simpler is usually better. In general, simplify as much as you can while still achieving the effect you want. As long as there’s a plausible story-related reason for your simplification — characterization, perhaps, or plot — and you’re not just chopping off paths arbitrarily, you’ll be fine. After all, you don’t have to release your source code, and even if you do, vanishingly few people — few readers, at least, will judge you on it. What readers judge you on is the story you write. Simplicity is still impressive.

7. How do you go about testing your work?

   Sarah: Thankfully, there are no shortage of testers in the IF community. As you write and test more stories, you’ll build up a group of testers you can trust. Before that, though, you can get started by posting on intfiction.org or gametesting.org. If that doesn’t give you enough responses, you can try asking (politely!) people you know in the community. The more testers, the better; you’ll find that some people agree to test your story but quickly vanish from the face of the earth.

   Don’t think, either, that one round of testing is enough. For Broken Legs, I did about four, and other stories have had even more. Even the best testers won’t catch everything the first time around, and more pertinently, sometimes what you thought fixed things in fact completely broke them. One of my intermediate releases was unwinnable (that is, literally unwinnable, not “this is too hard” unwinnable) because of something I changed. Again, keep deadlines in mind, but the more the better.

8. What’s the most valuable mistake you have made writing Interactive fiction?

   Sarah: Writing a horrible first story. There’s no better way to learn a language, whether it’s Inform, TADS or anything else, than by diving in, but you’re going to end up wasting a few weeks or months on something terrible and unreleasable. Mine was a museum crawl that turned into a cave crawl and then back into a museum crawl somehow, with a bloodless conspiracy backstory thrown in because I thought it would add depth. It never saw the light of day. But that’s all right. The effort I poured into learning the code is effort I could then put toward crafting a better story. As cliched as it sounds, it was a learning experience.

   Now that I’ve said all that, forget it all. Delve into code the first time thinking you’re going to turn out something great. You won’t learn if you don’t think, at least at first, that your concept is the greatest story ever. And who knows? Maybe it will be.

9. If there was only one single tip you could give a new IF writer, what would it be?

   Sarah: Read. Read everything. This goes for interactive fiction as well as traditional fiction, nonfiction, etc. And don’t just stop at reading. Watch good movies, listen to good music, fill your brain with ideas and let them bounce and clatter against each other. You’ll be a better writer for it, not to mention a better person.

Aaron Reed

Aaron Reed is the author of Whom the Telling Changed, and Blue Lacuna, a full length Interactive Fiction novel. His work has won him Spring Thing awards, and numerous XYZZY Awards. Back in 2006, he was interviewed for the documentary Get Lamp, which was recently released. His book Creating Interactive Fiction With Inform 7 has just been published. In it he guides the reader, chapter by chapter, through the making of the example work Sand Dancer.

1. How do you decide that a piece of fiction should be interactive, rather than a traditional story?

   Aaron: This is definitely an important question to be asked, although finding the correct answer is trickier. One thematic element which works well in an interactive story is moments of revelation– where a character realizes something profound about herself, her world, or the people around her. In IF you can make this character the player, and let them come to that realization on their own, which has the potential to be more moving and memorable than a static character coming to that moment before or after the reader does.

   IF is also at its best with stories about exploration and investigation, with settings that curious interactors can delve into as deeply as they like (and the author was prepared for). Emily Short’s Floatpoint is a great example of cultural sci-fi where you can learn the ways of a strange people by actually walking around their city and watching their interactions, rather than having to get this information in a block of exposition– it makes you feel more like an anthropologist than a historian, which is kind of wonderful.

2. What software do you use to write your IF, and why?

   Aaron: I use Inform 7, because I believe it’s the most expressive language for creating interactive stories around these days. I7 was created specifically for writers, not programmers, and while this rubs a lot of programmers the wrong way, I find that its idiosyncrasies mesh well with my own. (Full disclosure: I just published a book called Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7, so my opinion may be just a little biased.)

3. How much time do you spend planning your stories versus writing them?

   Aaron: With both interactive and non-interactive stories, my writing process tends to be very similar: nearly all writing, very little planning. I am definitely not one of those people who plans a whole story out and then simply fills in the words: I seem to have to write iteratively, going through multiple drafts that don’t work at all, conceptually or otherwise, before finally honing in on the final product. This is, unfortunately, a rather time-consuming way of going about things, but it seems to be the only one I can deal with.

4. IF takes the practically unique second person perspective. With the reader essentially playing a character, do you expect your readers to roleplay, or do you prefer to give them as blank a canvas as possible?

   Aaron: I think it’s nearly impossible not to roleplay while directing the actions of a fictional being in minute detail. If that fictional being is very generic and easy to slip into, on the one hand, you’re essentially playing yourself, or a version of yourself who happens to be in an extraordinary situation. Some IF paints the player-character much more specifically (Stephen Bond’s Rameses is a classic example) and creates characterization out of the tension between what you yourself would do in a situation versus what the character is willing to do. Sometimes, this can be a lot like playing a role in a stage play: the joy comes from performing your character like a virtuoso. My stories have experimented with both ends of this spectrum, but I think leaving the player-character at least somewhat nebulous makes it easier for readers to slip into and have fun with.

5. There are so many items, rooms, and interactions that an author could put in the story and so many descriptions that could go with them. Where do you draw the line?

   Aaron: This makes me think of the difference between a great film director and an only so-so one. The Kubricks and Hitchcocks of cinema stand above their imitators because of their meticulous attention to detail in setting up their scenes. Every shot in their films is crafted to help tell the story: in its composition, in the elements carefully selected to be in frame, in the details on the soundtrack and in the actors’ blocking. Everything is there for a reason.

   Likewise, in a good IF every object and room should be there for a reason. You should never make a new item in your story without a clear sense of what purpose it serves in advancing your narrative or further immersing the reader in your story world. Likewise, possible actions should be carefully curated from the vast possibility space of all the things a character might conceivably do, selecting instead only the most dramatically interesting or character building possibilities. Andrew Plotkin’s Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home is a recent IF story that does a superb job at building an epic story using a very restrained and carefully selected set of actions, items, and locations: nothing is there that isn’t relevant.

6. If there was only one single tip you could give a new IF writer, what would it be?

   Aaron: Read IF. As with every medium maturing out of infancy, the field is awash with hundreds of experiments, failures, and moments of genius. Getting familiar with the best of what’s come before will not only prevent you remaking a lot of the same mistakes, but will also put you at the forefront of the conversation, where you’re best able to contribute novel ideas. One of the magical things about the IF movement is that it’s an art form still very much in flux and amidst the process of being defined, and it’s exciting to be a part of that process.

   Okay, two tips: use extensions. There are a slew of user-written extensions to Inform 7 and other major IF languages that can save you a lot of time, and give your stories much slicker presentation, functionality, and accessibility. Stand on the shoulders of those who’ve done the grunt work!

Automatic Writing

I must confess, I don’t always (read rarely), stick to my writing routine, but when I do I feel energised, and ready to write! Once I have had a good run of writing days, the next time I sit down to write is so much easier. At the best moments, it is near to automatic. Apparently, a similar effect may be possible through object-based habits.

Jack Cheng recently wrote an article about activity/object association. In it he describes a phenomenon that he calls “habit fields”. These fields are created by constantly reinforced association between an object, and an activity. You can shape the nature of the field, and in return, it can affect your actions.

Memorable Benefits

Neuron image courtesy of Patrick Hoesly

Now, when people start invoking energy fields and the like, a concept starts sounding a little “woo”. But don’t worry, it’s just a metaphor! What he’s actually talking about is the way memories are constructed. Specifically, there are two features of memory creation that are particularly important here: repetition and association.

It’s obvious to anyone who’s learnt a script that repetition is a vital tool to lock down a memory. Behaviour can also be learned through repetition. Video games are especially good at teaching actions, for example. Combo attacks in games require a complicated series of button presses that bewilder at first. But, through repetition, a player soon learns to react to different situations with a variety of combination moves, without thinking about it at all. This is an example of “muscle memory”. Now extend this to less specific behaviours – to a state of mind; relaxed behaviour, productive behaviour, writing behaviour; all can be learned.

Association is even more fundamental. Memories are essentially a series of associations. These can also be learned, of course. You have probably had the experience of a particular smell reminding you of a person or place, even if you have not seen that person or been to that place in years.

Making the connection

Cheng’s idea is that “habit fields” (states of mind or behaviour) can be built around objects through repetition. Stay consistent with the objects you use for certain tasks and the association takes care of itself. Just like the gamer whose fingers perform instinctive button ballets when he sits in front of his console, you can slip into focussed productivity when you settle down in your designated work place to use your designated work tools.

In practice, this process is going on all the time, for better or worse, so you are using it anyway. Being aware of it will help you avoid the obvious pitfalls, and develop good habits. Don’t check Twitter on your writing laptop, or it will gradually become your Twitter laptop!

Think about it for a bit, and you’ll probably see areas in your own life where this already applies. For example, I used to try writing at weekends at my big desktop computer. I was often distracted, and found myself much more comfortable at the dining room table, using the laptop I also use for work.

Given a quick think, this is not surprising. I bought that desktop primarily for gaming, and that’s what I had been using it for previously. The laptop on the other hand is what I use all day for work, and because it’s convenient, I use it to write on the train. The habit field of my laptop then, us one of productive work, including writing. Well, mostly.

Jack of all Trades…

It’s a problem, as Cheng points out, that becomes more pervasive the more capable our tools become. These days every electronic device is a Swiss army knife of possibilities, and the problem becomes one of narrowing those down or restricting those options in order to focus.

Having a dedicated area to write, and restricting your writing to to just that purpose, could take you a long way. Read Cheng’s full article for some other ideas on how to do that, and pop back to getmewriting.com next week, when I’ll have a list of tools to help you focus on your writing. In the mean time, I’d like to know if you have noticed habit fields around the the objects you use.

Now, this is not to take anything away from the other authors and their advice, but the original list by Elmore Leonard really is a cracker, so if you only read one, then read that one (the article opens with it). Some of the other authors gave a few quick answers, and some answers are more lighthearted. That’s not to say you shouldn’t read them, of course; I really recommend you do. And don’t forget part two, either.

I’ve read the lot and there are some really insightful comments in there, plus a few that crop up more than once. I’ve decided to pick out my favourites and create a top ten for myself. I haven’t credited each author, simply to avoid cluttering the list, and again I must stress that you should read the whole article in full.

Top ten tips and rules for writers by published authors

1. Write. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s true; just get the hell on with it.
2. Editing is everything. Cut, cut, cut. And if it sounds like writing, rewrite it; style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.
3. Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue, or are in mid-flow, even mid-sentence. That way you can jump right in the next day.
4. Read. Widely.
5. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue, and never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”. If the reader can’t tell how something was said, rewrite your dialogue instead.
6. Read it aloud to yourself – especially dialogue. Rhythm is important, and if it’s difficult to read out loud, it might be difficult to read full-stop.
7. Give it to someone else to read. These should be a trusted few, as also advised by Stephen King.
8. Do it every day. Don’t wait for inspiration, write anyway. By the way, although this sounds like the best idea ever, I don’t do it. But at the very least you should establish a routine.
9. Put “finished” drafts aside for a while.
10. Be without fear. Or know that you are afraid, but barge through it to the other side.

These are my favourites, you may feel differently. Let me know your favourites from the article, plus any other tips you’ve heard authors give, in the comments below. You can also give your own tips if you like.

The following links have come from my bookmarks and Google Reader subscriptions. I can’t promise that these are “The Best Writing Sites You’ll Ever Find!”, or even that they’re ones I visit much. The truth is, I don’t browse the web for this sort of thing nearly as much as I should. What I can promise about the following links is that at some point, someone, or some site that I respected recommended these sites. I can also promise that I have given them at least a cursory once over to determine that they have some useful content (otherwise I would not have added them to my list o’ stuff).

Anyway, here they are! Please enjoy and share, and add your favourite links to the comments.

General writing sites

• WriteMindset
• Daily Writing Tips
• Writing Forward

Sites on grammar and writing technique

• The Economist style guide
• Grammar girl
• Wikihow – How to use English Punctuation Correctly
• Sparknotes Grammar Guide
• Nathan Bransford – literary agent

Site on self-publishing

• The Creative Penn
• myebook
• smashwords
• Authonomy
• eHow – How to self-publish a book