1eyedking The descriptive text in Planescape would be considered bad writing by novelists

[Tom Selleck]

"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure."

This is terrible.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

These people are famous for creating modern YA literature after being inspired by JK Rowlings' financial successes. Another famous author without any formal English education.

And plenty of famous musicians lack any formal musical education and cannot even read musical notation, but that doesn't mean they were just born amazing and immediately started playing thrilling solos and composing symphonies while still in diapers.

 

[MRY]

Safav Hamon While I assume this is a clever trolling account, I'd just note that in your revised sentence, you've substantially changed the meaning of the original text. In the original text, you find Deionarra in a state of rest, with her eyes closed and arms crossed. She then "stirs" and her eyes "flicker" -- she's in the process of blinking awake. You then have an opportunity to react before she's fully awake. But in your revised text, her eyes "flicker" and she "stirs" at the outset (did you mean this to be REM?) even though her eyes are still "closed" and her arms are "crossed" at the end of the sentence indicates. By inverting the order, you've changed the meaning. This causes the options to break because the options presuppose that the text prompt has described someone who was asleep, but is now stirring.

In terms of the larger debate about writing, what I would say is that the avocation to be a writer is something that seems to manifest quite young, in advance of much education in the craft of writing. I don't think that "formal" education in writing is a prerequisite (obviously it's not). But it probably is the case that a good teacher could save his student a lot of work rediscovering old rules on his own. I'd also say that it is very hard to say what is "good" fiction writing because so many things can independently contribute to a story's success -- its timeliness, its prose style, its plotting, its originality, its verisimilitude, its exoticism, etc. A very roughly hewn story written by someone who has had extraordinary life experiences and is drawing up them can hold up to a very beautifully wrought story that is entirely a work of speculation about things one hasn't directly experienced. Sometimes great writers are like clever magpies who have collected enough material from other works and from the world to put together a shining collection. This gift for spotting and collecting is totally different from the gift for turning a single beautiful sentence.

The thing about a fantasy writer's first major undertaking (as PS:T is for Avellone) is that it basically is a distillation of an entire lifetime, including childhood, of curiosities, passions, visions, collections, etc., etc. As the writer produces more work, he becomes a better craftsman, but he's also consciously constructing while before he was largely a slave to the muse of his memories. Personally, I tend to prefer a fantasist's early works -- not necessarily the first one (though often the first one) but almost never the later stuff -- the superego or whatever you want to call it is too intrusive on the id as it goes along, and the quality of the id is diminishing.

(For example, it seems pretty clear to me that Guy Gavriel Kay exhausted his best ideas with Tigana, Gene Wolfe with Book of the New Sun, Dan Simmons with Hyperion. Seems like Chris has avoided this problem by genre-jumping, so that's good.)

A formal English education runs the risk of prematurely hypertrophying the superego, so that whatever comes after is going to be a studied implementation of a calculated scheme, rather than an attempt to vocalize something bubbling up from inside. Anyway, that's my own experience as both a reader and a writer. Primordia basically sprang fully formed instantly into my mind, but the follow-up Cloudscape was like building a machine.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

You all need to stop thinking about writing in games as separate from the gameplay.
A game is not a book, a piece of paper on which the words are written in specific solid form that cannot be changed.

A game is a live experience that is created and that actively changes based on player actions - which then become the story itself. Instead of words solidified on paper the "story" in games is actually written or better said - created, by the players actions and behavior inside of the overarching setup, setting and basic plot.
You all know this but you still argue about "writing" in games as if you dont.

The usual form of written on paper, solid and unchangeable narrative can only be partially applied to specific genre of games in which gameplay is a singular straight narrative without permutations.
Such as shooters or other games where the player actions cannot change the actual overall story or its main plot points.
You enter a location, there is a bunch of enemies you need to kill to advance. Player actions only change the details of how exactly are those enemies dispatched, not the event.

In cRPGs the complexity is much greater so the player has greater and deeper influence on creating the story by his actions, including main plot points - in the overall narrative.
And even more complex then that in case of true RPGs because the changes in the events are limited and specified through abilities of a character that player cannot override directly.
Although it may seem counterintuitive at first, it is these very "limits" that actually give us different options in gameplay.
The limits is what literally makes them different and enables different experiences and actions.

So the thief can stealth somewhere while the fighter cannot, a charismatic talker can turn enemies into allies and have completely different events play out.
And its these limits that allow us to choose different dialogue options that result in various different outcomes we cannot then change.
Its the limit of not being able to have an apple and eat it too.

I think it would be best to come up with a new term for writing in games, to stop confusing the previous solid medium form with this kind of live changeable experience that is created by playing.


Writing is a learned skill, but it isnt learned in a school. It is learned partially by reading previous great writers works and then most of all by doing. By writing.
You may call reading and dissecting other great writers works - studying, but its not really studying in the usual sense. Because its a process where you are required to create something new, not just copy and repeat previous works. Reading and experiencing other writing just gives you a starting base point. If it wasnt so we would all be writing great works. But we dont.


As for geniuses, countless numbers of them were and are lost to wars, diseases, famines, natural disasters, poverty and wrong turns in life, alcoholism, drug abuse, murderous idiots of all kinds and much more.
And then many more potential ones that could have been their offspring. Thats why they are rare. The environment created by majority of humanity is literally selecting against them, although fortunately, not completely.
That environment is not solid and its constantly evolving too.

 

[Dexter]

Yes, I'm sure these people are there because of their... supreme writing skills...

This is dumb. They're not handing out nebula nominations for diversity points.

Bro, there was an entire controversy around this a few years ago, people know exactly how the "Nebulas" and "Hugos" work nowadays and how the bread is buttered, and it has absolutely nothing to do with talent.

For instance, this won the "Nebula Award for Best Short Story" in 2013 and got nominated for the Hugos in 2014: https://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/
And this won "Hugo Award for Best Short Story" in 2014: http://www.tor.com/2013/02/20/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere/

These are supposed to be Fantasy/Sci-Fi awards. People aren't stupid, you can only pull the wool over their eyes for so long until they catch on.

 

[Nael]

Who can we hire to voice act this fucking thread?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Of course not. I am not suggesting that everybody is a special snowflakes that will melt into the butterfly of talent.

So what are you suggesting exactly?

Some people are simply born to a great talent

Like who?

 

[MajorMace]

I think the best way to insult a talented person, and pass for a fool, is to think or suggest that they were born that way.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The descriptive text in Planescape would also be considered bad writing by novelists. Opening descriptions of a character shouldn't exceed one brief sentence; one and a half at most. Prefacing the introduction of a character with several successive sentences of description is clunky writing. It's also clunky to use several adjectives successively, I.E "strikingly beautiful ghostly form." Another problem is how the writer describes physical actions after descriptions of physical appearances. The reason why this is uncommon is because authors are trying to create the illusion of a 'moving' world, whereas this approach makes it seem like time is frozen while the protagonist is making his observations.

"She stirs slightly and her eyes flicker, a striking ghostly form with long flowing hair, arms crossed and eyes closed." - That's how a traditional writer would of done it.

Oh great, another faggot who's afraid of being shamed so he makes an alt to post his retardation.

Also:

When an educated English Speaker intends to say "Would HAVE", they instead contract the written form to would've. Less intellectual people (read: Dumbasses) then read this and, unable to grasp the concept of abbreviation, pronounce it as "Would've". This, due to laziness, was then mutated to "Would of," whereupon Bahamut was returned to mortal flesh and mankind entered a new age of darkness, suffering and general illiteracy.

Kill yourself.

 

[Great Deceiver]

1. complains about bad writing in a widely respected game, writes "would of" in the same paragraph. writes "amatuer" a few posts down the line.

2. provides a bad example of how to improve said game's faulty writing, completely changes the meaning of the sentence inadvertently.

3. unwittingly proves that the problem in torment's case is lack of careful and judicious editing - no easy task, and a problem that is included in the birthing pains of a nascent industry (although it needs to be said, not much progress has been made in that regard, see PoE's insufferable flowery prose that could have used 4 or 5 ruthless editing passes)

4. ???

5. profit in triggering the codex

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

(For example, it seems pretty clear to me that Guy Gavriel Kay exhausted his best ideas with Tigana, Gene Wolfe with Book of the New Sun, Dan Simmons with Hyperion. Seems like Chris has avoided this problem by genre-jumping, so that's good.)

To further derail the derailment, I don't think Kay fully supports your thesis here. He definitely hit a lull after the early stuff (although I'd say Lions of Al-Rassan is on par with Tigana), but some of his recent books are better than anything that came before. The two novels set in pseudo-China are excellent and in my opinion Under Heaven is his best work. Of course, going from a western inspired setting to an eastern inspired setting may have replenished his creative juices or just given him some new material to work with, which would be in-line with what you're saying.

It's possible I prefer Under Heaven and River of Stars because I'm much less familiar with the history he's borrowing from, which gives it an element of novelty that his European inspired stories lack. Still, that's probably true for large swathes of Kay's audience. I feel like I say this very often.

***

Bro, there was an entire controversy around this a few years ago, people know exactly how the "Nebulas" and "Hugos" work nowadays and how the bread is buttered, and it has absolutely nothing to do with talent.

For instance, this won the "Nebula Award for Best Short Story" in 2013 and got nominated for the Hugos in 2014: https://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/
And this won "Hugo Award for Best Short Story" in 2014: http://www.tor.com/2013/02/20/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere/

These are supposed to be Fantasy/Sci-Fi awards. People aren't stupid, you can only pull the wool over their eyes for so long until they catch on.

But the Nebula and Hugo processes are totally different. Hugos are nominated and awarded by the fans, which is how the Sad Puppies could hijack all the nominations in 2015 by voting in a bloc (and how everyone else could choose to give no awards in those categories because while Larry Correia can be a fun author, he does not deserve a Hugo). The Nebulas are nominated and awarded by SF/F authors.

There are always going to be stories you don't like that win awards. I wouldn't have given "if you were a dinosaur" a Nebula either, but I don't think that proves anything--maybe there was a paucity of good short stories in 2013. I'm sure there are lots of ways the process is biased as the SF/F community has leaned pretty progressive for decades. That said, they're not going to nominate shitty work just because it fits their politics.

When someone like N.K. Jemisin keeps winning Nebulas, the safe assumption is simply that she's very popular among science fiction and fantasy authors. You may think their judgment is being clouded by politics, but did you ever wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, other authors like her work because it's good?

If you're only going to like writers who are on the same page as you ideologically, you should get ready for a severe lack of entertainment options.

 

[MajorMace]

Yes, let's tell them they were born stupid. A real great compliment.

I know someone who might have been.

They're talented because they work hard, there's no luck in that you goddamn spastic.

 

[Bladeract]

Safav Hamon While I assume this is a clever trolling account, I'd just note that in your revised sentence, you've substantially changed the meaning of the original text. In the original text, you find Deionarra in a state of rest, with her eyes closed and arms crossed. She then "stirs" and her eyes "flicker" -- she's in the process of blinking awake. You then have an opportunity to react before she's fully awake. But in your revised text, her eyes "flicker" and she "stirs" at the outset (did you mean this to be REM?) even though her eyes are still "closed" and her arms are "crossed" at the end of the sentence indicates. By inverting the order, you've changed the meaning. This causes the options to break because the options presuppose that the text prompt has described someone who was asleep, but is now stirring.

In terms of the larger debate about writing, what I would say is that the avocation to be a writer is something that seems to manifest quite young, in advance of much education in the craft of writing. I don't think that "formal" education in writing is a prerequisite (obviously it's not). But it probably is the case that a good teacher could save his student a lot of work rediscovering old rules on his own. I'd also say that it is very hard to say what is "good" fiction writing because so many things can independently contribute to a story's success -- its timeliness, its prose style, its plotting, its originality, its verisimilitude, its exoticism, etc. A very roughly hewn story written by someone who has had extraordinary life experiences and is drawing up them can hold up to a very beautifully wrought story that is entirely a work of speculation about things one hasn't directly experienced. Sometimes great writers are like clever magpies who have collected enough material from other works and from the world to put together a shining collection. This gift for spotting and collecting is totally different from the gift for turning a single beautiful sentence.

The thing about a fantasy writer's first major undertaking (as PS:T is for Avellone) is that it basically is a distillation of an entire lifetime, including childhood, of curiosities, passions, visions, collections, etc., etc. As the writer produces more work, he becomes a better craftsman, but he's also consciously constructing while before he was largely a slave to the muse of his memories. Personally, I tend to prefer a fantasist's early works -- not necessarily the first one (though often the first one) but almost never the later stuff -- the superego or whatever you want to call it is too intrusive on the id as it goes along, and the quality of the id is diminishing.

(For example, it seems pretty clear to me that Guy Gavriel Kay exhausted his best ideas with Tigana, Gene Wolfe with Book of the New Sun, Dan Simmons with Hyperion. Seems like Chris has avoided this problem by genre-jumping, so that's good.)

A formal English education runs the risk of prematurely hypertrophying the superego, so that whatever comes after is going to be a studied implementation of a calculated scheme, rather than an attempt to vocalize something bubbling up from inside. Anyway, that's my own experience as both a reader and a writer. Primordia basically sprang fully formed instantly into my mind, but the follow-up Cloudscape was like building a machine.

Don't listen to this Saliere. Too many adjectives is the new too many notes.

As if keeping writing formulaic and 'approachable' like they teach in school today makes for good writing.

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Given my druthers, I would take this

Spoiler

over this

Spoiler

any day.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I've read plenty of actual novels that had worse writing than Torment. And whenever i replay the game, and then play something else, i tend to sink into a deep depression. The difference is usually quite large, games are generally very poorly written, especially this days.

And i have absolutely no idea what kind of stupid faggotry the OP is trying to peddle. Torment badly written? Based on what standard? That of serious literature? You'd have to dismiss 90% of fantasy or sci-fi writing if that's the case, including Tolkien. I barely even remember the last time i was impressed by the prose of a science fiction or fantasy writer. Jack Vance maybe. There are a few lines here and there in Torment that i would consider a bit awkward, but in the main everything hold ups pretty well and the amount of times the text had me roll my eyes or sneer are extremely rare. As far as video games go, that's already a miracle.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yes, let's tell them they were born stupid. A real great compliment.

I know someone who might have been.

They're talented because they work hard, there's no luck in that you goddamn spastic.

False modesty.

You are born with talent, you don't get it with hard work. Which is not to say talented people don't have to work hard. You are operating on a false dichotomy here. Mozart was a workaholic, and to accomplish what he did he had to pour his entire being and soul to his art. But he was still born a genius and neither you nor I or anybody else could have done what he did, even by working twice or three times as hard.

Another misconception is that if you are born with talent you don't have to learn anything. Again, the example of Mozart is pertinent, since he needed to expose himself to the works of great masters such as Haydn, Handel or Bach before he was able to reach full maturity (his first true works of genius being the six quartets dedicated to Haydn, the fruits of his studies of the aforementioned composers). But even so, the signs of his greatness were already present in many of his juvenile works. This is a common refrain with great artists. The sign of their future genius is already present from the beginning, before their training is ever even complete:



15 years old and you can still tell this is Beethoven a mile away.

The refusal to admit that some people are simply superior in their gifts is just another symptom of a society which is obsessed with the human ego and "feelings" over reality.

 

[MRY]

Lyric Suite Your standards are probably higher than mine, but among the scifi and fantasy authors whose prose I enjoyed on a style level would be: Tolkien, Wolfe, Vance, LeGuin, Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia McKillip, Peter Beagle, Barry Hughart, M. John Harrison, Dan Simmons, China Mieville, Susasan Clarke, and, in a pulpier way, Fritz Leiber and Joe Abercrombie. I'm sure if I really thought about it more more than a minute, I could come up with more.

That said, in the ordinary video game prose style is not high on the list of important elements, and in some instances overwrought style makes the game way more fun -- Soul Reaver's dialogue probably wouldn't pass any serious style assessment, but it does exactly what it should to make the game great.

 

[Bladeract]

False modesty.

You are born with talent, you don't get it with hard work. Which is not to say talented people don't have to work hard. You are operating on a false dichotomy here. Mozart was a workaholic, and to accomplish what he did he had to pour his entire being and soul to his art. But he was still born a genius and neither you nor I or anybody else could have done what he did, even by working twice or three times as hard.

Another misconception is that if you are born with talent you don't have to learn anything. Again, the example of Mozart is pertinent, since he needed to expose himself to the works of great masters such as Haydn, Handel or Bach before he was able to reach full maturity (his first true works of genius being the six quartets dedicated to Haydn, the fruits of his studies of the aforementioned composers). But even so, the signs of his greatness were already present in many of his juvenile works. This is a common refrain with great artists. The sign of their future genius is already present from the beginning, before their training is ever even complete:



The refusal to admit that some people are simply superior in their gifts is just another symptom of a society which is obsessed with the human ego and "feelings" over reality.

Exactly. There's just two reasons why they spew this pap, even knowing it's a lie. First is that it is what people want to hear, second is that it attacks the main pillar of liberalism that everyone is exactly the same on the inside. It's kind of hilarious coming from Twain for example who is obviously one of the biggest cynics and misanthropes.

 

[Life of the Party]

Tolkien, Wolfe, Vance, LeGuin, Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia McKillip, Peter Beagle, Barry Hughart, M. John Harrison, Dan Simmons, China Mieville, Susasan Clarke, and, in a pulpier way, Fritz Leiber and Joe Abercrombie.

In Umbri, City of the Delta, the lights blazed with a garish brilliance after the setting of that sun which was now a coal-red decadent star, grown old beyond chronicle, beyond legend. Most brilliant, most garish of all were the lights that illumed the house of the ageing poet Famurza, whose Anacreontic songs had brought him the riches that he disbursed in orgies for his friends and sycophants. Here, in porticoes, halls and chambers the cressets were thick as stars in a cloudless fault. It seemed that Famurza wished to dissipate all shadows, except those in arrased alcoves set apart for the fitful amours of his guests.

For the kindling of such amours there were wines, cordials, aphrodisiacs. There were meats and fruits that swelled the flaccid pulses. There were strange exotic drugs that amused and prolonged pleasure. There were curious statuettes in half-veiled niches; and wall panels painted with bestial loves, or loves human or superhuman. There were hired singers of all sexes, who sang ditties diversely erotic; and dancers whose contortions were calculated to restore the outworn sense when all else had failed.

But to all such incitants Valzain, pupil of Famurza, and renowned both as poet and voluptuary, was insensible.

With indifference turning toward disgust, a half-emptied cup in his hand, he watched from a corner the gala throng that eddied past him, and averted his eyes involuntarily from certain couples who were too shameless or drunken to seek the shadows of privacy for their dalliance. A sudden satiety had claimed him. He felt himself strangely withdrawn from the morass of wine and flesh into which, not long before, he had still plunged with delight. He seemed as one who stands on an alien shore, beyond waters of deepening separation.

"What ails you, Valzain? Has a vampire sucked your blood?" It was Famurza, flushed. gray-haired, slightly corpulent, who stood at his elbow. Laying an affectionate hand on Valzain's shoulder, he hoisted aloft with the other that fescenninely graven quart goblet from which he was wont to drink onIy wine, eschewing the drugged and violent liquors often preferred by the sybarites of Umbri

"Is it billiousness? Or unrequited love? We have cures here for both. You have only to name your medicine"

"There is no medicine for what ails me," countered Valzain. "As for love, I have ceased to care whether it be requited or unrequited. I can taste only the dregs in every cup. And tedium lurks at the middle of all kisses"

"Truly, yours is a melancholy case." There was concern in Famurza's voice. "I have been reading some of your late verses. You write only of tombs and yew trees, of maggots and phantoms and disembodied love. Such stuff gives me the colic, I need at least a half-gallon of honest vine juice after each poem."

"Though I did not know it till lately," admitted Valzain, "there is in me a curiosity toward the unseen, a longing for things beyond the material world."

Famurza shook his head commiserately. "Though I have attained to more than twice your years, I am still content with what I see and hear and touch. Good juicy meat, women, wine, the songs of full-throated singers, are enough for me."

"In the drums of slumber," mused Valzain. "I have clasped succubi who were more than flesh, have known delights too keen for the waking body to sustain. Do such dreams have any source, outside the earthborn brain itself? I would give much to find that source, if it exists. In the meanwhile there is nothing for me but despair."

"So young — and yet so exhausted! Well, if you're tired of women, and want phantoms instead, I might venture a suggestion. Do you know the old necropolis, lying midway between Umbri and Psiom — a matter of perhaps three miles from here? The goatherds say that a lamia haunts it — the spirit of the princess Morthylla, who died several centuries ago and was interred in a mausoleum that still stands, overtowering the lesser tombs. Why not go forth tonight and visit the necropolis? It should suit your mood better than my house. And perhaps Morthylla will appear to you. But don't blame me if you don't return at all. After all those years the lamia is still avid for human lovers; and she might well take a fancy to you."

"Of course, I know the place," said Valzain... "But I think you are jesting."

Famurza shrugged his shoulders and moved on amid the revelers. A laughing dancer, blonde-limbed and lissom, came up to Valzain and threw a noose of plaited flowers about his neck, claiming him as her captive. He broke the noose gently, and gave the girl a tepid kiss that caused her to make wry faces. Unobtrusively but quickly, before others of the merrymakers could try to entice him, he left the house of Famurza.

Without impulses, other than that of an urgent desire for solitude, he turned his steps toward the suburbs, avoiding the neighborhood of taverns and lupanars, where the populace thronged. Music, laughter, snatches of songs, followed him from lighted mansions where symposia were held nightly by the city's richer denizens. But he met few roisters on the streets: it was too late for the gathering, too early for the dispersal, of guests at such symposia.

Now the lights thinned out, with ever-widening intervals between, and the streets grew shadowy with that ancient night which pressed about Umbri, and would wholly quench its defiant galaxies of lamp-bright window with the darkening of Zothique's senescent sun. Of such things, and of death's encircling mystery, were the musings of Valzain as he plunged into the outer darkness that he found grateful to his glare-wearied eyes.

Grateful too was the silence of the field-bordered road that he pursued for awhile without realizing its direction. Then, at some landmark familiar despite the gloom, it came to him that the road was the one which ran from Umbri to Psiom, that sister city of the Delta; the road beside whose middle meanderings was situated the long-disused necropolis to which Famurza had ironically directed him.

Truly, he thought, the earthly-minded Famurza had somehow plumbed the need that lay at the bottom of his disenchantment with all sensory pleasures. It would be good to visit, to sojourn for an hour or so, in that city whose people had long passed beyond the lusts of mortality, beyond satiety and disillusion...

 

[MajorMace]

I realized I posted something retarded after re-reading it.
I hoped it would slip by unnoticed.
Like all the other retarded shit I usually post.
ffs lycra suite

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lyric Suite Your standards are probably higher than mine, but among the scifi and fantasy authors whose prose I enjoyed on a style level would be: Tolkien, Wolfe, Vance, LeGuin, Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia McKillip, Peter Beagle, Barry Hughart, M. John Harrison, Dan Simmons, China Mieville, Susasan Clarke, and, in a pulpier way, Fritz Leiber and Joe Abercrombie. I'm sure if I really thought about it more more than a minute, I could come up with more.

That said, in the ordinary video game prose style is not high on the list of important elements, and in some instances overwrought style makes the game way more fun -- Soul Reaver's dialogue probably wouldn't pass any serious style assessment, but it does exactly what it should to make the game great.

I'm more into music, so my exposure to literature is not as extensive as yours probably, and i'm not going to say there aren't a large number of fantasy or sci-fi authors with decent prose, just saying i haven't encountered many. But for the record, i have no problem with fiction being what it is, and i don't expect a work of literary genius every time i pick up a fantasy novel. You have to judge things for what their level is, there's no point pretending a video game writer, even someone as talented as Chris, should stand up to the standards of great literature. If such a thing were to be possible you'd be asking why a writer of such an high caliber would waist their time writing for video games, it is just an absurd expectation.

For me, Torment is a classic in the same sense a Blade Runner is a classic. It stands as the pinnacle of a particular medium, which is no small feat, for any genuine creative act is an achievement no matter how you look at it, but that doesn't mean it can be compared to more serious works. I mean take something like Predator, which i personally consider to be a near perfect action film, unmatched to this day. Now, Predator is no work of art, and is full of cheesy and silly crap, but for some reason it just can't be replicated, because genuine creativity and inspiration are still a rare occurrence, even when the standards are so low. To inject another musical anecdote, since i just can't refrain from dragging things to my own turf, Brahms once praised Strauss (the waltz guy, not the opera composer) and admitted he couldn't have written something like the Blue Danube waltz. Here we have an artist of an higher caliber deferring to the creative talents of a "lesser" or less serious composer simply because creativity is a special thing, even when the standards aren't the highest.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

The descriptive text in Planescape would also be considered bad writing by novelists. Opening descriptions of a character shouldn't exceed one brief sentence; one and a half at most. Prefacing the introduction of a character with several successive sentences of description is clunky writing. It's also clunky to use several adjectives successively, I.E "strikingly beautiful ghostly form." Another problem is how the writer describes physical actions after descriptions of physical appearances. The reason why this is uncommon is because authors are trying to create the illusion of a 'moving' world, whereas this approach makes it seem like time is frozen while the protagonist is making his observations.

"She stirs slightly and her eyes flicker, a striking ghostly form with long flowing hair, arms crossed and eyes closed." - That's how a traditional writer would of done it.

MRW

 

[Glaucon]

'Purple prose' isn't ipso facto bad writing and the style of 20th century american writers isn't the peak of literary sensibility.

 

[laclongquan]

The descriptive text in Planescape would also be considered bad writing by novelists. Opening descriptions of a character shouldn't exceed one brief sentence; one and a half at most. Prefacing the introduction of a character with several successive sentences of description is clunky writing. It's also clunky to use several adjectives successively, I.E "strikingly beautiful ghostly form." Another problem is how the writer describes physical actions after descriptions of physical appearances. The reason why this is uncommon is because authors are trying to create the illusion of a 'moving' world, whereas this approach makes it seem like time is frozen while the protagonist is making his observations.

"She stirs slightly and her eyes flicker, a striking ghostly form with long flowing hair, arms crossed and eyes closed." - That's how a traditional writer would of done it.

Motherfu... Are we talking about bullet list of "what's considered good writing" workshop?

Point 1: what's considered good writing is only opinions of SOME people in a very diversified field which is novel. In this field, a most famous author of one genre can be a total unknown to the readers of the next genre. For example, I know 50 Shades series is most famous in that subgenre but for the life of me I can not remember who is that author. So the way " a traditional writer would of done it" mean exactly ZERO.

Point 2: PST writings can only be considered in concert with the game. It can not be judged outside of it. That's the nature of game's writings. And in that consideration, PST writings are top notch.

Point 3: game writers are NOT novel writers in the usual considerations in related to professional term. Novel writers must publish and get paid for their novels before they are considered pro. Game writers probabbly dont need their game published because there're several factors decide whether a game can be released, all of which is totally out of game writers control.

 

[laclongquan]

In a separate note: if you want to choose good novels, try sorting by number of sales. The ratio of failed hits would be better than choosing by awards.