Adventure Gaming My Next Novel

I spent the 90’s developing a skill set I’m finally putting to use

I once got in a long complex argument with a hard determinist. I personally lean towards soft determinism because it feels like it makes much more sense. If I were to look at our conversation through his point of view, then I — with my nature, upbringing and experiences — could not have reached any other conclusion but to disagree with him and I as a person would have no say in this matter. As opposed to my point of view where I was choosing to disagree with him, based on my nature, upbringing and experiences. In the end we agreed we would never really know, because either philosophy would yield the same result.

I am thinking of this argument, because this time it would be funny if he were right. That there was no other course of action for me to take, except for writing this story in the way this story is going to be written. That the stage was set for this story back in the early 90’s, simply by doing something I very much enjoyed doing; playing adventure games.

If you’ve never played a adventure game, here’s how it works. An adventure game is a story, set in a certain world, populated with non-player characters and a player character. For instance; The Secret Of Monkey Island is set in a fictional part of the Caribbean and you play with Guybrush Threepwood, a lovable loser who wants to become a pirate. The world is also filled with objects and you have to use those objects to move the story along.

The objects in an adventure game are important. Without them, the story breaks and you can’t move on. But the story is never about the objects. They simply are the tools of the telling. I have decided I am going to approach my next novel in that same way.

In a couple of weeks, The Weekly Knob will celebrate its one year anniversary. For a year now, I’ve written a story every two weeks that focuses on an object. I really think this has helped my writing skills improve tremendously. For the next year I will write one single story. A chapter every two weeks. It will move along with the objects S Lynn Knight prompts me with. I will treat the prompts as tools of the telling, just like all those adventure games taught me to do.

I’ve already started, chapter one was not written with this idea in mind. But I had so much fun with the characters, I wrote a second part. And then a third. The story is far from told. By this time next year I hope to have written a first Weekly Knob novel. I have no idea where it will end up, could be the death of one of both of the characters, could be a renewal of vows.

I’m inviting you not just to read along, but to keep me accountable. If it starts to feel like I’m trying to make the prompts fit the story instead of thinking up the story to fit the prompts, if my characters are starting to act out of character, I’d like to be called out on it. I’m not going to give myself any shortcuts on this one.