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Improvising in a Complicated World

I used the phrase "Writing into the Dark" in yesterday's post. That was a kind of pun. It referred to "writing into" a dark kind of story, but also to improvisation as a writing technique. (To improvise a story without knowing where it's going or what it's going to be when it gets there is sometimes called "writing into the dark.") And that's how I write. Details accumulate and suggest other details; characters do things, which suggest what kind of characters they are, which suggests other things that they'll do; complications breed solutions which breed new complications.

I called improvisation a technique just now. It is that, but for writers who improvise it is more of a helpless reflex. The kind of writer who improvises doesn't write into the dark because he finds that it works. He writes into the dark because he finds it impossible to write in any other way. This kin of writer has a hell of a time outlining, for to outline a story is to conceive it practically in a full state, and for improvisers this is much too big of an exercise of imagination, like creating a full world in one blow. (Even God took six days to finish up Creation.) For an improviser, creation comes by improvising clumps, then joining them together into bigger clumps, and joining those clumps into still bigger clumps ...

The danger, of course, is that at the end you'll just have a clump and not a story.

This makes interactives a terrific form for improvisers to work in, and especially to practice in. The difference between a story and clump is that a story has a shape, and it definitely has a climax and an end. But interactives don't typically have endings, only stopping points, and they can twist around without ever going anyplace in particular. Interactives are made for noodling around in, and improvisers are noodlers.

BoM is no exception. It's a place I like to noodle in.

BoM is an exception in one way, though, and that's its attention to continuity. The details of Will's family and friendships and school don't vary from chapter to chapter or branch to branch, and if something happens in one branch (like the university hosting a Mozart piano concerto on Wednesday, October 1, then it's going to happen (whether mentioned or not) unless Will does something that, directly or indirectly, prevents it from going off.

I like that kind of continuity for its own sake, but it's another way of giving an improviser (like me) a handle for invention. Improvisation yields richer and easier results when there's details at hand to work with—clumps already scattered over the workbench—and a world where the details invented for one branch are available in another is one that is very rich indeed. There have been many times when I've consulted my chart of "things that are happening in the world right now" and found something that I can use to advance the action I'm working on, or which suggests a really great twist or terrific new detail.

But sometimes continuity gets in the way. And not just when some pre-existing event has to be gotten around.

Today—Tuesday afternoon, as I compose this—I am supposed to start writing the storyline that you guys voted for over the weekend, one involving Will, the YouTube crew, and Andrea Varnsworth. I spent some time thinking about it yesterday, and I got an idea I liked. Something in line with what you'd expect from the anticipated storyline, but with a bit of a twist. It got me excited.

But when I started gaming out some of the more distant consequences—not outlining, just playing "what if ... and then what if ... and then what if"—I remembered two other certain characters who are in play. And those two characters wouldn't exactly derail what I had planned, but they would complicate it.

Put it this way: Given characters A and B, then X is bound to happen. It is inevitable, and it will happen almost immediately. And X would badly interfere with Z, the plan I have for Will. It would probably forestall it entirely, and even if it didn't forestall it, any story that juggles X and Z would be ungainly. A challenge to handle, at least.

So this is where I am as I slump thoughtfully over my laptop: What the hell am I going to do about X, when it is Z and its complications that I'm so interested in?