The Writing on the Wall

Yesterday, I was trying to bring this blog, and you my readers, up to speed. I have managed something along those lines, but now I have to continue the thoughtstream, so what am I to talk about? Well, yesterday I was talking about some of the things I want to do in this blog and now I want to continue on that concept to talk about things like hypertext narrative and other kinds of strange literature.
See, I like a challenge, I like to make my mind-gears whir overtime, and overclock my cortex to a point where I feel like it doesn't fit in my skull. I like thinking BIG, so even when I tackle something potentially 'simple' I like to see if I can complicate it. For example: Writing.
Writing itself isn't easy to do, but it's such a straight-forward task putting words to paper. It's not that it's boring - It's awesomely fun! But I like writing that pushes the boundaries and asks for a little more. It's a little hard to explain, but would you believe that there's a word for this kind of writing? The Word of the Day is: 'ERGODIC'.

Ergodic /er'godik/ adj. 1. Mathematics Of or relating to certain systems that, given enough time, will eventually return to previously experienced state. 2. Statistics Of or relating to a process in which every sequence or sample of sufficient size is equally representative of the whole. 3. Literature Of or relating to a text requiring non-trivial, or extranoematic, effort on the part of the reader to allow for coherent reading.

This phrase is a new one, so it's not all that prevalent, but I love Ergodic Literature. Wikipedia has a page about it, but it's not required reading for this post. Basically, Ergodic comes from the Latin Word erg- meaning 'work' and hodos meaning 'path'. This is because with this kind of literature the reader is required to work a little harder to find their path through the text.

So a hypertext narrative and certain iterations of interactive fiction (especially text adventures) are Ergodic Literature, because it requires the reader to literally choose the path of the text.
There's also concrete poetry, visual poetry and calligrams, all forms of poetry where the shape of the text and the orientation of words can form a picture which aids or alters the meaning of the poem, but it also requires the reader to read through the strange patterns of the imagery.
If we go far enough, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is another kind of Ergodic literature, as it's written in gibberish which the reader must decipher. Though, if I'm to be honest, I think that is asking too much of readers.

I see it as a kind of literature that pushes against the boundaries of what we see as 'normal'. It asks: What if the words weren't written left-to-right? What if you didn't just turn one page at a time? What if reading wasn't just a passive activity, but rather an aggressive one that required readers to go on their own adventure, along with the characters in the story?

I am quite a lateral thinker, I enjoy testing what we consider 'normal'. One idea that I've had for a while is that of 'exhibition literature'. When I lived in the city, I used to love walking along the river. There was this long boardwalk type construction, which creaked and groaned beautifully, and it had a smooth handrail all along the side.
I always thought it would be interesting if someone wrote a short story along the handrail. It was at least 20 centimetres thick and maybe half a kilometre long. What if someone wrote a story, about walking along the river, and then painted it along the banister? Hell, you could write a different story on each banister, so that you had a different story whether you were coming or going. That way, if you've walked that walk before, you can either read the story or watch the river. That could be a fun idea.

I also wondered about taking it a step further, and creating a two-storey house where words were written on the walls, on the steps and on the doors. [I guess that would make it a one-story, two-storey house]. The idea is that by reading the words, you'd walk through the house and read it's story.
Of course, this would be expensive, so you'd have to either do it with an old property or create your own building at a theme park or something (then you'd also have to worry about vandals), but I think it's an interesting idea, if a very expensive one.

I am also interested in the idea of 'self-guided tours'. I mentioned during Parody Week, in my Hyperbole and a Half parody, that Brisbane is the second most haunted city in the world. Well, what if there was a guided tour around the haunted sections of the Brisbane CBD, which gave you directions, but also told you the ghost stories as you walked from place to place?
I must admit though, while I know that I can walk and read a book at the same time, not everyone can, so this may not be the best idea . . .

Okay, some of these ideas are stupid (although I stand by my Exhibition Literature idea!) but you get the idea.

The reason I'm talking about this, is that it's something that I also like to implement in this blog. I like to blog here as usual, belching opinion and ideas, but I also like to stretch the boundaries of what I can do with a blog.
I've been learning bits and pieces of html in the hopes that I can further play with this new medium. a blog isn't a piece of paper or a book, so why treat it like one? That's why I hyperlink to related ideas and draw a picture for every post.
But more than that, I am learning html so that I can write different kinds of stories. I am here to write not only better, but different.

Thus far, I haven't found a way to write upside-down, but I can still change the style. I can write in a way you weren't expecting. I'll write until you can't read anymore.

It may be strange, or hard to read but I want to do things differently . . . 

Because this isn't about changing the way that you read
stories. this is about changing the way
that you think about

reading.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd. Writing Different. Reading Different. Thinking Different.

The Subtle Style of Sentences

Something that bugs me, (just a little bit), is when people compare books to movies. It's the same as comparing lemons and bananas. Sure, they're both fruit, but one of them will turn your milkshake into a sour porridge. So sure, books and movies are both good for storytelling, but they do so in very different ways so it's silly to compare them.
What's been bugging me (a little bit) lately is the idea that stories are not a visual medium. Now, I'm sure some of you might be thinking "The Word Nerd's lost it", as unless we're talking about picture books, then written stories don't have much to look at; but hear me out.
Of course, compared to movies, writing doesn't look like a visual medium because it doesn't wiggle pictures in your face or (for the most part) use colour at all. It's just words on a page. However, I'm going to talk about the ways in which writing is a visual medium, and how knowing this can improve your writing. The Word of the Day is: 'ITALIC'

Italic /uytalik/ adj. 1. Relating to a style of printing types in which the letters usually slope to the right (thus, italic), used for emphasis, to separate different kinds of information, etc. ♦n. 2. (often pl.) Italic type. 3. (cap.) Of or pertaining to Italy, especially ancient Italy or its tribes. 4. (cap.) A branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

In an earlier post, I've talked about ergodic literature, which is a style of writing that requires more effort from the reader because the writing is written all over the place. If

the words shift about the place or change colour for some reason,

then of course it could be considered a form of visual expression. But, I'm not talking about ergodic literature, rather how those principles apply to all forms of writing.

No matter what we write, the way it is written affects the way we read it. Changing the colour or orientation is a very blunt way of doing that, but what about italics?
We've been trained, through time, that when something is written in italics it has some kind of emphasis. Words that are italicized means something different to the same words when they're not. Because of that, when I read italics, I read them emphatically.
The same can be said of emboldened words. I see those words as either more serious, more important or more dramatic.

But I figure, at this point, I'm just preaching to the choir. Writers know about italics and bold. I use them so often on this blog, to make these words read as though I were speaking them, that it's a given at this point. But those are NOT the only way in which words are a visual medium. In fact, they're one of the minor examples of visual expression. The most important visual tool in the writer's shed is:

Space.

Paragraphs, white-space, page breaks. People actually read white-space, not in the same way that you read words, but they do interpret whitespace.
  "It's the reason why new dialogue is written on a new line with a gap beside the margin."
It's the reason why most chapters of a book start on a new page. It's the reason why the title of a book (so often) has its own page.

When there's a lot of space, people read words differently, and this is actually one of the things that really bugs me about online writing.

When writing fiction, either fanfiction or stuff in blogs, a lot of people put a space after nearly every sentence (thus illustrated).

It annoys me for two reasons. One, LOOK at all this wasted space! If I ever wanted to print this out, I would be wasting half of every page!

Second, it makes me feel like the writer has a stutter. Like they need to stop and take a breath every time they say something.

It depicts a lack of clarity of thought, in my opinion. When you write in full paragraphs each time, it shows the reader that you have a flowing train of thought (even when you didn't). A new paragraph means something new. In fiction, it can mean there's a new scene that's being played out; it can mean there's a new concept to be explored; a new thought process. So when writers do this online, it looks amateur (seriously, check out some fanfiction.net, most of them do this space-per-sentence thing). This style looks like the writer had to stop and think before every line. Don't get me wrong, you're allowed to stop and think about every time, it's not like I sit down and splurt out entire blog posts in one fell-swoop; but just as puppetry is better when the audience doesn't see the strings, writing is better when the audience doesn't see your stop-and-start thought-patterns.
Also, symmetry is often related to beauty, and in this case I find it very true. When a page continually hugs the left margin, it looks ugly to me. So it's a good idea to write in full paragraphs all the time - even if you're not worried about wasting paper - so that the words are spaced across the entire page. That way the words look clean and more cohesive.

Just recently, something else was brought to my attention that needs addressing.   I only heard about it in a recent xkcd comic.   It seems as though there is a portion of the Internet, and society at large, that thinks you need to put two spaces after each sentence while writing online.   I imagine that these people are aping the style of handwriting whereby sentences have a "finger" of space between them, something I have never understood.   But no matter what you believe about writing, let me explain something to you.   I don't care what the rules say, because that's not the issue.   The fact remains, when I read writing with more than one "space" after each full stop, it looks to me like your writing is full of holes.   Literally.

Another thing that bugs me, when it comes to writing, is something I call the sentence-hook.
These are caused when sentences are written just long enough for the final words to sit one line down.
I'm trying to illustrate it within the blog, but it's difficult as the pages are wider than I expected.

See, within the writing, I consider these sentence-hooks like little hiccups. The eye reads words from left to write (in English), trailing along. So when a word sits on the left side, it forces your eye to stop a second on the left margin. It stops the way the words flow. So often, these are easy to fix. I've found myself adding extra words, removing page breaks or rewriting sentences altogether to avoid it, because I find it annoying when I come across it while reading so I try to avoid it for my readers when I write (although not always).

Now, I could spend this entire post whining about poor writing practices, and visually unpleasant writing, but I won't. Instead, I want to direct this towards something more positive.
To all you NaNoWriters, and my fellow writers in general, I'm not pointing out these little issues just to whinge. I'm pointing these out so that you can identify them and utilize them. Paragraphing, spacing, sentences, italics, bold & underlines all affect the way that your writing looks and reads.
Once you recognize that, you can use these to make your writing look better.

  Or use it for effect.

Once you start to master these, you can move onto some of the more advanced typography like kerning; tracking; recto/verso; leading; raising; lowering & all kinds of tricks that you can try with your word processors at home.
Because writing is a visual medium, and it can even be a great one; if only more writers would put the effort in to make their words beautiful.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'll be writing some more beautiful words.

Drabble Rouser

I must admit, I'm a bit old-fashioned when it comes to the evolution of language. I'm not against it, per se, but I've found that most new language that enters the zeitgeist tends to be crap. The one that always comes to mind is "bouncebackability", which is the measure of one's ability to bounce back after going through some kind of difficulty or setback, particularly in sport. The fact of the matter is, we don't need this word, because it's a foolish word, and we already have the word "resilience", which is the same word, only more appropriate and less redundant. Or words like "pansexual", which is the same word as "bisexual" only structured so as to misgender transgendered people & further ignore bisexuality.
The same redundancy and ill-necessity can be observed in many new words, such as with the certification of nonce words; colloquial misspellings and a huge number of portmanteau neologisms (noob, vajazzle, frenemy, etc).
To me these words are little more than a joke, and the punchline is that you all have the vocabulary of a stoat, and if you spent less time trying to make up new words, you'd know that most of our old words suit perfectly fine for the task of communicating your thoughts, notions or intent.
On the other hand, I'm not a Frenchman, so I don't think we should refuse all linguistic change and retain an archaic, stagnant language. Rather, I like it when language evolves. But I prefer it when language grows outward rather than inward. Words like those mentioned above are just an etymological cul-de-sac, we already have words for these meanings, and they just leave language festering in its own ignorance to repeat the definitions of the past.

But when language grows, it gives us meanings that allow us to express concepts we otherwise couldn't. Words like "cisgender", which is relatively new, and now allows transgendered people a way of expressing their difference from the majority, without othering themselves. Also words like "gription", which allows people to distinguish between surface friction and surface traction caused by friction. Or, hell, even "jeggings", which are leggings which have a denim jeans texture printed on them, because leggings which have a denim jeans texture printed on them takes eleven more syllables to say.

Sometimes, language evolves to make it easier for people to express themselves, or allows intellectual headroom for more ideas. And in that sense, today's W.o.t.D. is one of my favourite, new words (or at least, new usages of a word) because it relates directly to my second favourite thing ever--stories. The Word of the Day is: 'DRABBLE'

Drabble /drabəl/ v.t. 1. To wet or dirty, especially by dragging through mud; draggle. ♦v.i. 2. To fish with a long line and rod: To drabble for barbels. ♦n. 3. A fictional story (typically fanfiction) that is exactly one hundred (100) words long. 4. A fictional story only a few hundred words long.

Of course, since I think fishing is about as boring as golf and getting muddy wouldn't make for a good blog post without pictures to illustrate, I'm more concerned with the definitions of drabble as a noun. I like the word for a few reasons, firstly because it's not too pretentious. If I named such a thing, I would use a word like centifiction or hectofable or something else that advertises my knowledge of Greek prefixes and Latin suffixes, but there's no need for such pomposity. Drabbles are meant to be fun, so the word itself is fun with only two syllables, easy to remember and with a meaning that's lots of fun.

One of the best things about a drabble is that if I were talking about feature length films or epic poetry of best-selling novels, then I couldn't just show them off, because it would outlast my self-imposed word limit. But since drabbles are so small, I can actually pop a few into my blog post here to show them off to their full potential.
But first, a little run down. See, a drabble is exactly 100 words, but there are a few more details. For one, although the rules can vary, as I was told them hyphenated words count as a single word, so ticket-seller is one word, as is upside-down and tête-à-tête, to make things a little easier for writers.
Another rule is that the title doesn't count in the 100-word count, but as a consequence it also should be no more than seven words, so that writers don't cheat and put more of the story in the title (although some people are more lenient on this rule).
And the final rule is that it has to be a story, and that is the hardest part. It has to tell someone's story, but only in 100 words. Let me give you an example. Here's one I wrote a little while ago, a funny little drabble I wrote in an online discussion using story prompts. The prompt for this had a picture of a cute, little hamster:

HAMSTER

Alarm bells ringing. Dogs barking, cats screeching. The sound of chaos, echoing hallways. A rodent listened quietly, from his prison. Suddenly a man bursts into the office; runs to the phone and hits speed-dial. The hamster licks his paws and cleans his whiskers as the man paces.

“This is Hartford, it’s an emergency . . . it’s the animals, they’re escaping! Someone broke all the locks! . . . I don’t know, it’s impossi- . . .”

Then he sees the cage. Defiantly, the hamster glares back at him, nose twitching.

I am a hamster, and my name is Justice.

Love it or hate it, that is a complete story. It's comedy and it's a story about a hamster that considers itself a superhero, called Justice. In a mere hundred words, you know the story, even though it's just one scene, because the rest of the story is implied. It's never mentioned that the hamster was the one that actually freed the other animals, but it's implied, and it's that implication which tells the story. I guess you could almost say that drabbles are like ergodic literature in that sense, because the reader is actually writing part of the story by extrapolating key plot elements in their mind to make the story bigger, but maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Sure, drabbles usually aren't a very big story, but it couldn't really be much bigger, I could adapt this drabble into a short story or novella about a heroic hamster, but that wouldn't help it. Brevity is the soul of wit, after all, and this is comedy. Here's another one I wrote, not for a challenge or anything, it's just an idea I had, and so I wrote it and trimmed it down to one hundred words:

WHEN PIGS FLY

It was a curious moment when the research team found the flying pig. For the creature was both perfectly formed for flight, and yet perfect for sausages and bacon. It was astounding.
However, the professor of the group didn't realize the creature was a manifestation of belief, when he foolishly said: “I don't believe it.”
In actual fact he did believe it, due to empirical data, but the flying pig heard him and couldn't believe he could say something like that. This then caused the pig to lose confidence and stop believing in itself, causing it to disappear into non-existence.

I have a habit of writing comedy with my drabbles, but they don't have to be. I'm not a hilarious comedian, but I tend towards comedy because comedy is easier when you're given such a small canvas. Because all you have to do is imply that something is a little unusual and it can be funny. something like:
  "If masturbating in public is so wrong, surely I would have been caught by now."
See, something short and silly and simple. It doesn't take long to be funny. But other genres and other emotions, they often take longer to evoke because you often need tone, atmosphere and language cues to portray them. But they're not impossible.

One of the shortest stories ever told was written as a sad story, and it's only six words in length.

For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

It's not remembered who wrote it, but from that an entire tale is surmised, one of loss, grief and melancholy distribution of that which memorializes that loss.
But again, the story is all implied. You don't see the story, but we understand it through those six words alone, because our mind takes over where the words left off.
Another instance of a story being told in very few words is an article written by Benjamin "Yahtzee" Croshaw, analyzing the first piece of spoken dialogue in the horror game Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, which consists of only five words:

"Daddy, please, don't kill me"

I'll leave the analysis up to Mr Croshaw, he  covers pretty much everything in his article.
Although, these aren't drabbles, they are instances of flash fiction (stories written in as few words of possible [less than ten]), but all of this is important when it comes to writing stories. Because even if you're writing a novel, you should know the tricks that are employed in this kind of fiction. Because they come in very handy. Often the first line of a story needs to be pregnant with the potential of your entire story, and the first paragraph can be the decider of whether or not your book gets placed back on the shelf, or instead taken to the front counter to be purchased.
If you already know how to write a story in one paragraph, it guarantees that you have the skills to catch a person's interest in your longer forms of story writing. Not to mention, there's no time to sit back and explain your story to people. So, generally, with drabbles you have to adhere to the "Show, Don't Tell" rule, because there's no time to tell, you just have to show it as you go along.

I have a tumblog, and something I would love is if I could get people to send me "questions" that are just drabbles. The "ask" submission page has a 500 character limit, so it can be done (and please feel free, if you want to), but my tumblr isn't that popular, so I figured I'd stick to this blog for a moment.
So, to all you writers out there - or those that like a challenge - I have a challenge for you: Write me a drabble in the comments section.
I know it's hard to write without inspiration, so here's your Story Prompt.
Three Words: Kitchen, Reflection, Murder.
I know that people hate Audience Participation, so I'll make you a deal. First of all, if no one responds with a drabble-comment, that just means that I win (that's how challenges work, right?) so I don't feel like a jackass for getting no responses.
Secondly, I'll give you a couple of tips on how to write a drabble.

Okay, so, what's the trick to a drabble? Well, for one, be aware of your word count. 100 words is actually quite a lot. Most sentences have, on average, ten words in them, so that's about ten sentences if you're writing regular prose. But you can split it in other ways.
Ten sentences is good for one scene. But if I wanted to have two scenes, I'd split it 50/50. Literally, 50 words each scene. It can vary, if you want to do a scene with an introduction thing but want to spend more effort on the second scene, then split it 30/70 or 20/80 if you want to. One time, I wrote a drabble for a contest, and I wanted it to cover five days, so I split the word count by five giving me 20 words to cover each of the five parts of the story - you'll know best what parts of your story need the most words to be written, so use them wisely.
100 words is a lot, so long as you know what you're writing about, just don't waste them.

That's the second thing, know what you're writing about. For instance, there's no time to mess about with character backstory, history of the setting or the details of a magic system - none of that. I mean, unless the story is one of those elements, but even then, this is about separating the wheat from the chaff. You should only keep what you need for the story and drop everything else.
It's a good idea to start in medias res. You needn't, it's not compulsory, but it tends to make it easier. So just keep in mind, what's the core of your story?
Like, for my Flying Pig story, I spent no time describing the setting, because the story isn't about the setting, it's about the pig. In that superhero hamster story, I never explained who Hartford was calling, because it doesn't matter. The story isn't about them.
So, find your core. And remember, some stories are too big for a drabble. If you come up with an idea but you're struggling to fit it into a story, it might be a good idea to abandon that drabble. Or, just do what my Beloved does, write a small part of that story as a drabble, then write it again as a longer story when you're ready.

Thirdly, proofreading is a precise surgery. Do you think that I write stories and they're magically one hundred words? Of course not. I wrote a little scene, and I either cut words out or put more in. But it's more than just writing a scene 117 words long and cutting off the last seventeen. This is why it's important to know what you're writing about, so you can only cut the fat when you slim the story down. Adverbs are a sometimes treat, use them sparingly (tee-hee); don't use two adjectives when one will do, this is where your vocabulary come in handy (e.g. why say morbid and melancholy when you could instead just say lugubrious?) & ask yourself for every sentence "Does this sentence help to tell this story?", if not, remove it.

Anyway, those are my tips. Now for a final send-off, I've written one last drabble. I wanted to write one just for you and also to test myself and see if I could write a drabble that wasn't a comedy. So here's a drabble that's a little bit sad, I hope you enjoy it.

RUNNING LATE

I shoved aside the other commuters as I ran onto the train. I was late for the end-of-financial-year meeting at work. The doors closed behind me, and I turned to see three faces.
The old woman just stared. She would miss her plane, and couldn't afford another ticket. She missed her daughter's wedding.
The young boy was distraught. He got home after sundown, and his father beat him for coming home late.
The man in the suit looked sad. He caught the next train to the hospital. His wife died at ten past five, and he arrived at five-fifteen.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I'm sorry for the delay, but my internet died on me; meanwhile, if you want to try out drabbling for yourself, you could try out writing for Alban Lake, they sometimes hold drabble contests, so you could get the chance to see your writing in print.
Until next time, I'm going to write a few more of these little drabbles, poems and stories, and if they're good enough, I'll share them with you here.