Inspiration and Imagination

[Snarky]

Here's an essay from The Atlantic that I enjoyed and that I think could be relevant also to stories and writing in adventure games.

The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination. To vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer.
...
A well-imagined story is not generic. It has not been lifted off the shelf at your local literary Wal-Mart. A well-imagined story is not predictable, or at least not wholly predictable. A well-imagined story is not melodramatic; it does not rely on purely villainous villains and purely heroic heroes; it does not use formulas in place of inventiveness; it does not substitute cliché for fresh vision. A well-imagined story does not rely on coincidence or happenstance for its dramatic effectsâ€"a character named Lance, let’s say, just happens to be walking by at the very instant another character named Brandy, the unrequited love of Lance’s life, emerges from the doctor’s office with her spanking-new diaphragm. A well-imagined story does not rev up bland, everyday events with lurid, purply, overwrought language that seeks to elevate such events beyond their due. For example, a well-imagined story would not, in my view, include a sentence such as this one: “With an explosive, rocket-like thrust of his legs, Lance jumped for joy at the heartwarming vision of Brandy’s snow-white diaphragm.”

More positively, and maybe more helpfully, I can try to suggest what a well-imagined story does mean to me...

[LRH]

Very good from just the sample given here, I'll have to read the rest.

[cat]

Thanks for sharing!

[Dualnames]

Snarky you posted this in the nick-of-time! It really helped me!!