Solving strictly for having fun produces texts that don’t always look like proper stories but are fun to write and read. I’m fine with that. I think when I go get the confidence to post more publicly a lot of it will be kinda not stories at all.
Conversation
Like this thing, one of the few I posted, is more a sort of backstory than a story, but I had fun with it
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Or this thing, which is more like World building background vignette than a story. But I liked it.
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The 2 things I posted this year with actual formal story structure (Harmon story circle) were both comic format. This one I let the visuals do almost all the heavy lifting do I could use 1/10th the words. Pictures are *very* efficient if used right.
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And this one I’m particularly proud of the extreme efficiency due to strategic visuals and visual context.
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As an extremely verbal person but a really mediocre artist, I actually found my storytelling was stronger if I let visuals serve as the load-bearing part. My writing experience was getting in the way of story.
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In general I’ve decided: if the choice is between having fun vs checking off items on a checklist about what counts as a real story, I’m going with fun. Ie just don’t do the non-fun part unless the thing unravels into incoherence without it. Yada yada past it.
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If the result is a coherent not-quite-story, that’s good enough for me. I’m not looking to win nobels or movie deals here. I doubt any fiction I write will be as successful as my nonfiction. So do what’s fun, worry about what it is later.
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Feels like all forms of story are Industrial Age anyway. Maybe stuff I manage to write will be narrative fragment nfts to put into metaverses.
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Maybe I can call these things — the 4 examples I linked are the 2021 crop so far — something else. Storycules? Like molecules. Set expectations low enough that I can produce more. Targeting 8-10 storycules for 2022. Maybe 1 more this year 😎
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I guess I’ve learned what I don’t like: languid, luxuriant prose, richly textured descriptions, subtle details… photorealistic stuff. I think I like stick-figure storytelling. Get as close to a 3-panel comic strip as possible. Say what needs saying or is fun to say. Cut the rest

