‘Moment by moment, you are in a determinist universe’ – The Hyena’s Daughter by Jupiter Jones is a novella (published last month) about Fanny Imlay, elder daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, half-sister to Mary Shelley. Fanny had an overlooked life, determined by the fates and needs of others. Most of the writing is in third person present tense but occasionally it switches to other tenses and viewpoints including second person present, particularly in the final chapter. I won’t give a spoiler. The whole book is beautifully written.
Thanks for this tip. Jupiter Jones was the winner of the first Philip Hoare Prize for Non-Fiction, which we started at the University of Southampton last year. So I know she's a wonderful writer. I will look out for her novella.
A good chunk of my writing career to date has involved working on interactive fiction, the 'Choose Your Own Adventure'-type stories that were incredibly popular before video games started getting interesting. They're still around, and the vast majority are written in the second person singular present. And they tend not to seem imprisoning or controlling as they literally allow the reader (player?) to choose how the story progresses.
Can I plug an example, by way of illustration? The first few chapters of my interactive novel MetaHuman Inc. are available to read online, for free, here: https://www.choiceofgames.com/metahuman-inc/
(The name predates the similarly-named software used to create photorealistic animated people; I should really get around to suing Epic for that...)
Hello. Thank you. Feel free to plug. I think what you say helps clarify - because the Choose Your Own Adventure provides very frequent release from that feeling of imprisonment within the POV. The reader knows they can choose their own future course - that there is an either/or moment every page. Also, where they currently are is dependent on their previous choices. What I'm discussing is a whole novel that's entirely in this compulsive voice, without a single break for the reader. I'll have to add something to make this clear in the next draft of the guide, so thank you for the suggestion. I'm currently playing Disco Elysium (on the recommendation of a student). It's very much a text based Choose Your Own Adventure, with hungover trudging around a lovingly rendered cityscape.
To my mind, the writing in Disco Elysium is very probably the best you’ll find in a video game. From the concept of speaking with elements of your own personality (who may or may not be reliable), to the depth of the worldbuilding, to the sheer breadth of possibilities available to you, it’s outstanding. And very much a visual novel.
Another strong contender would be Planescape: Torment. Without giving away too many spoilers, you play as an immortal who loses his memory (almost) every time he dies. So much of the story involves backtracking through your previous incarnations, as it were, trying to piece together what various versions of ‘you’ did in your various lives, and why. It’s wrapped up in the Dungeons and Dragons setting/engine, so there is a little bit of monster-hacking – and it’s from 1999, so the graphics and gameplay are a little janky – but, again, it’s just exceptional storytelling.
‘Moment by moment, you are in a determinist universe’ – The Hyena’s Daughter by Jupiter Jones is a novella (published last month) about Fanny Imlay, elder daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, half-sister to Mary Shelley. Fanny had an overlooked life, determined by the fates and needs of others. Most of the writing is in third person present tense but occasionally it switches to other tenses and viewpoints including second person present, particularly in the final chapter. I won’t give a spoiler. The whole book is beautifully written.
Thanks for this tip. Jupiter Jones was the winner of the first Philip Hoare Prize for Non-Fiction, which we started at the University of Southampton last year. So I know she's a wonderful writer. I will look out for her novella.
A good chunk of my writing career to date has involved working on interactive fiction, the 'Choose Your Own Adventure'-type stories that were incredibly popular before video games started getting interesting. They're still around, and the vast majority are written in the second person singular present. And they tend not to seem imprisoning or controlling as they literally allow the reader (player?) to choose how the story progresses.
Can I plug an example, by way of illustration? The first few chapters of my interactive novel MetaHuman Inc. are available to read online, for free, here: https://www.choiceofgames.com/metahuman-inc/
(The name predates the similarly-named software used to create photorealistic animated people; I should really get around to suing Epic for that...)
Hello. Thank you. Feel free to plug. I think what you say helps clarify - because the Choose Your Own Adventure provides very frequent release from that feeling of imprisonment within the POV. The reader knows they can choose their own future course - that there is an either/or moment every page. Also, where they currently are is dependent on their previous choices. What I'm discussing is a whole novel that's entirely in this compulsive voice, without a single break for the reader. I'll have to add something to make this clear in the next draft of the guide, so thank you for the suggestion. I'm currently playing Disco Elysium (on the recommendation of a student). It's very much a text based Choose Your Own Adventure, with hungover trudging around a lovingly rendered cityscape.
To my mind, the writing in Disco Elysium is very probably the best you’ll find in a video game. From the concept of speaking with elements of your own personality (who may or may not be reliable), to the depth of the worldbuilding, to the sheer breadth of possibilities available to you, it’s outstanding. And very much a visual novel.
Another strong contender would be Planescape: Torment. Without giving away too many spoilers, you play as an immortal who loses his memory (almost) every time he dies. So much of the story involves backtracking through your previous incarnations, as it were, trying to piece together what various versions of ‘you’ did in your various lives, and why. It’s wrapped up in the Dungeons and Dragons setting/engine, so there is a little bit of monster-hacking – and it’s from 1999, so the graphics and gameplay are a little janky – but, again, it’s just exceptional storytelling.