Story brilliance

As I lay down yet another sleepless night among many, not in the bad sense, no - not at all. It's silent, only weak white noises and the vibrance of thought passing through my head, mixing into an urban like soundscape.

I sit up, trying to process the plethora of thoughts. They are not heavy, actually my mind rarely feels so empty, so silent.

Then I abruptly disturb the pleasureable soundscape by rapidly tapping out my mind onto the laptop keyboard. It seems the only road tonight is to put my mind to rest through the dance of my fingers.

In harmony the soundscape and the dance blend into what can only be the very essence of my sleeplessness. An idea.

I have told many stories, on paper, by mouth either structured or improvised. And last but not least by action.

And I have been told innumerable stories through my life. Everything from the first children's books read to me as a goodnight saga to Disney on TV or much darker, the lies of grown ups. Some stories have been brilliant, others have served their purpose and some were downright awful.

But we rarely stop and think what components actually make a good story. There's classical ways to write a decent story, but it doesn't teach you how to go beyond and reach your potential and to break the barrier between conventional writing and finding your own style.

So let's do that, let's stop for a brief moment and think.

Conventions such as great characters, a compelling narrative, no huge clichés, sounds very promising don't you think?

While most of those points are valid in most forms of writing. Your way of writing should never have to conform to those, only conform if it is by free will.

One of my most profound pieces is the story of Hexagonica. With Hexagonica I crafted a world to play with freely in which no convention or boundary was needed. I was sleep deprived, probably hadn't eaten correctly in days and been really deep into philosophy and had a decent mixture of odd influences from games and movies when I started to type the first words of the story.

But what is Hexagonica? It is the beginning of a universe. A story meant to portray a certain kind of advent chaos that we really could never begin to understand unless we extracted a chunk of it and present it in chosen pieces. Reading the true "Hexagonica" story would be the equivalent of trying to see a hypercube.

And as you may or may not know, we can only project a hypercube into three dimensional space to approximate it. The same goes with Hexagonica.

Hexagonica doesn't have compelling characters, and the story arch and ending is a mess. It has a few clichés. It's actually trash, from a conventional point of view.

Having read it several times and having it spark numerous philosophical debates I've come to realize that the nature of the story that is Hexagonica transcends that of the paper it's written on. There is almost always somebody pointing out a new reference or a new philosophical point I never intended and as such those people shape the story as they read.

See when I wrote it there were no rules I just wrote whatever came to my mind. In the end it didn't need interesting characters. It was "deep" enough on it's own.

Let's leave Hexagonica and explore more on how to archive "Story brilliance". One of my favorite game companies, Bioware just recently explained in a video how they made the story of Mass Effect.

Anyone who has ever tried making multiple branching storylines where they try to anticipate the choices the player(s) want to make knows it's incredibly difficult. What Bioware did was to create a baseline of characters. At the time the characters were inserted into the world, especially the "team members" they were basically assets.

Whenever they created a "mission" for Mass Effect they created the mission first with it's bare bone basics and then they could at any time call upon the assets if they were avaliable. If not, then another event might transpire or it might not happen at all.

This is a superb way to design an overarching story to a game. The actual lore would be separate of course.

For instance I think it would be interesting to explore this type of writing for books or pen and paper roleplaying scenarios.

But even Mass Effect have clichés which brings me to my next point. Elves and Dwarves are cliché races in fantasy writing. They are so normal now that I'm personally choking everytime I hear about it. But there are settings and ways to give even such an old and over used cliché a small spark of ingenuinity. I'm going to be honest, get off your lazy ass riding the LoTR wave and find your own goldmine.

Elves and Dwarves sure, hey LoTR was not first I know that. But what makes them unique and what are their properties right now that fulfill a part in your story and setting? Unless there's a compelling reason for them to be of a specific "race" then why include them at all?

The answer is simply that people can relate to them. And honestly you are simply looking down upon your readers and your ability to make justice to an entire race of your own making while you should be excited about the fact you can play "god" and shape your creation any way you like

Last but not least. I find sometimes I need to get into a certain mindset to write certain things. These are things you can trigger and control, play with your mindset, write in different situations in life, you might surprise yourself when you see what comes out.

Time to let the tapping fade into the distant unheard echo of the night as I slip into my dreamworld.

Signed, Mireneye

Crafty little lock

Crafty little lock

Encased with treasure

A broken golden clock

Within devils claw

Time lay dormant for a time

until the call

A crackled rash across the wall

Light seeping through

Smashed to smithereens

Crafty little lock

A tick

- A tock

#01 My talented friends!

I've had the great honor to meet a lot of talent and a lot of great and goofy and crazily driven people.

These posts will be dedicated to some of them, in no particular order.

This spot goes to Kari Berg.

I met Kari the first time, I think when I was at Kretsen. I strongly recall our brief talk about picking mushroom in the forest. This was way before I knew she was a model, singer and totally kick-ass!

I'm personally looking forward to a little something she mentioned to me a while back. More on that in a later post.

Her current occupation is singing in CAS. She is also the editor for the news paper QLTR that covers fashion, culture and such in and around Umeå. If you happen to have facebook (like any modern person do!) you can like and share to support her on this link:
http://www.facebook.com/KariBergOfficial

And her webpage is:
http://www.kariberg.com/

Where you can find lots of pictures and links to interviews etc. While I'm at it, I totally recommend checking out the band CAS if you like dark electronic music that will give you some nice eargasms! I mean, who doesn't like eargasms?

Keep on rocking Kari!
I'm proud of you for doing what you love, putting so much energy into it. Every day, even while making funny faces at the table in the pub, hahah.

And thanks!

Signed, Mireneye

The old the habits and the new

The old:
I've come to understand one important thing about my behaviour when me and my old flame's path separated into two as we did. When we broke up I never really processed the emotion fully. I was sad but not devestated, believing fully and foolishly that if I put some effort into it, things would turn in my favor.

But I was completely blind to the fact, where I had always been a part of the solution.. I was now the problem.

It might seem like the easiest thing to understand, not for me, which brings me to my second red herring.

The habit:
I'm most definietly the kind of person who feels good helping somebody, not the greatest listener (I did that all my young life), but I try to juggle the balance of the two. After all, sometimes the great talker is exactly what is neccesary to get somebody in the right mood.

In the habit of always being a positive force, doing positive things for friends. Having that habit turn on me was more or less a mind numbing shock.

And now, many moons later I've come to a new conclusion.

The new:
The new me has dark memories of things I'd rather never had been a part of, but they are overwhelmed by the adventure that was the relationship. In such a way I've grown more mature and more secure in who I am. Those are some of the good things.

There were sacrifices, facing such real situations I never had to work with made me a colder person. I used to spread smiles, I have that inside of me. But for now it lies dormant awaiting something or someone to ignite the spark.

In search of that spark I've learned to become a better planner, a man of more responsibility. I've started to walk the path that I've always felt inferior to archive.

That is a victory!

The most severe sacrifice was the smile of my soul. But I believe it to be waiting for me somewhere on my journey.

Will you come and smile with me?

Sooo many things...

My schedule is tighter then ever and here I am, not having slept at all today because of some midnight inspiration spawned two or three pages of text.

Some may argue that saving money is not a "project" per se, but a result of a project. But I'm going to add it to the list none the less.

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Circus and poi related:
*Finalize travelling plans and budget for the trip to USA.
*Finalize poi design plans for C.E.D (Circus EDucations).
*Teach Poi at Carlshem's middleclass school.
*Sparkle poi photoshoot with Fredrik.
*Film a promo.

Gaming related:
*Finalize TVSpelsjam 2 tournament schedule (29/2)
*Finalize cosplay.
*get charger for Camcoder.
*Look up live streaming capabileties.
*Establish "Let's play, Northern edition".
*Finish FFXIII 2.
*Finish Need for Speed: The Run.
*Finish Kingdoms of Amalur.
*Begin Mass Effect 3.

Other:
*Umeå: Förr och nu (3/3, at 12 o clock).
*Keep working on Dynasthir.
*Keep working on the Skyrim Mage College of Winterhold total gothic remake with AOF.

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The freaky thing is I'm pretty certain I have some other things right around the corner.

LETS GET IT ROLLIN'!

The girl of my dreams

I've had an occuring theme in my dreams, they range from surreal to realistic and I can have them on short naps during daytimes or during my extended sleep perioids.

The theme is an alternative, healthy yet slim girl with a happy mood and easy going attitude, all perfectly matched to pitch black hair.

And we are having such great and simple fun together. It all began very simple, kind of like looking through a mirror at my former self, when I was almost to shy to even talk to girls.

Like back then I knew that I had to try. So I ran up to her in my dream, while walking off a buss and said "Hi". For the longest time she didn't answer, just continued her usual light on her feet walk then turned around revealing a flawless smile on her face, her lips shaped the syllable "Hi" as she grabbed my hand and she invited me to her home.

This is where it began. Since then I've had numerous adventures with the same girl. We have ventured through surreal dreamscapes, we've made love to each other both realistically and fantastically. The last thing I have a clear memory of is a discussion about her moving in.

There's been other times when I've been compelled to live in my dreams, to stay home and sleep. I wish I could show you a picture of her, she's so lovely, I hope that I keep dreaming of her. I just don't know how healthy it is.

Luckily I have so many things happening in my life at the moment that I can't let everything just go like the last time I began living in my own little dream world.

As lovely as I know dreams to be, they only effect real life slightly and they have to remain what they are. Dream for the sake of dreaming but don't let it replace life.

I know it might sound a bit crazy, believe me It's not always easy having a mind like mine that works in mysterious ways.

But oh that lovely girl.
I will return to you again, in time.

Tellihoo

This song and video remind me of many things. It reminds me of who I am, what I used to be. But also what I have made and continue to make people feel around me.

One of my top prioreties have been to make people happy, and I'm not joking if I tell you 2011 was the first year I realized just how hard that can be.

I think for a while I caved in to the difficulty level and I haven't quite been all that supportive and loving as I think I could have been.

2012 is gonna be all about new adventures! And I'm so excited that I get to share it with such beutiful people. With all the projects and ideas and crazy things happening in my life at the moment everything is just gonna unfold into hundreds of oppertuneties to walk on new ground. An exciting new chapter.

Let's have an beyond awesome year my friends!

Cheers!
Signed, Mireneye