This looks at kinds of fun through a gaming lens, but can you see how these apply to trends we see in fiction, publishing, booktok, etc?

www.skeletoncodemachine.com/p/the-8-kind...

Writing is like being a mad scientist on an orbital laboratory with no rules and no resources.

If your first attempt at building your alien monster robot hybrid did not go as planned, you can take the bits that did work and construct a new experiment.

#amwriting

One of the lesser known items on the Din Tai Fung menu.

My phone just auto corrected "trauma dumping" to "trauma dumpling," so I painted this in case anyone would like a visual of my mental state.

How's everyone else doing?

Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy was a worldwide hit. But to the Swedish author, it was only ever a sideshow to his true life’s work: fighting #fascism, #racism and rightwing #extremism

www.theguardian.com/books/2024/n...
#Books & #Authors via #TheGuardian

World's first wood-panelled satellite launched into space. 🔭 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Wood elves in space.

This spaceship is in for a bumpy ride.

For the amount of content necessary to launch on RoyalRoad, I'm approaching it like a space ranger mission.

We don't get drafts or rewrites in space battles.

We train, we plan, we get all of the necessary pieces together, and then we bang out 2000 word chapters in one go until we've got 60.

I'm playing through Dragon Age: Origins again, which is what go me thinking about the limitations of game design vs novel.

I'd never played it as an elf mage.

As an elf space ranger, I fret at my character's lack of a blaster. But I'm embracing the nostalgia.

A huge advantage of writing LitRPG over designing RPG video games is that the story and gameplay in RPG games is constrained by what's technically possible/cost effective.

There are no constraints like that with a written story.

We can imagine and create at full blast.

Approaching a book more like a game got me thinking about player types.

Are there reader types?

If you're not familiar with player types, this article does a solid explanation:

www.skeletoncodemachine.com/p/bartle-tax...

In Japanese folklore tengu are yokai (supernatural creatures) with bird-like features, often dwelling in forests and mountains. There are two types of tengu, the karasu or crow tengu and the hanadaka or long-nosed tengu. They are said to perch in tall trees, waiting to swoop at unsuspecting...
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In my day job, I write long reports (for the Galactic Insurance Corporation), connect those to stats in spreadsheets, and track progress on staff skills. It's not a huge leap to write a chapter each day tracking the progress of characters.

I'll need to pretend my management robot assigned it to me.

delve too greedily and you will find untold lore

Imagine if all of the characters you create actually get brought into existence in a different universe.

If you abandon the story or don't complete it, the characters are left wandering aimlessly without purpose, disillusioned with their Creator.

I recently found out about #LitRPG and Progression Fantasy genres. I've struggled to find a place for my stories and discovering these communities was like finding a home hidden in an alternate dimension.

I'm so excited to get writing my head is bursting with ideas inside my helmet!