Voices Readers, Please Weigh In

It's been over a month -- nearly two! -- since I launched Voices, and I wanted to take a moment to step back and look at what I'm doing and where I'm going. I'd also like to ask a few questions of those of you who are reading and taking part -- and those of you who aren't.

When I first planned Voices, I'd hoped to be able to update every day. (Hah!) Then I delayed updating, both because I'm chronically overscheduled, but also because I wanted to give more people a longer window to participate. I've generally fallen into an update schedule of once or twice a week.

So... how is that working for people? Is it enough to maintain momentum? Is more better? How would anyone feel if I went to a regular schedule of, oh, call it once a week on Wednesdays? Would such a small trickle of story be insufficient to maintain your interest? Or is my paltry volume already keeping you from keeping up?

If you haven't been keeping up so far, or have been reading but not talking, is anything in particular keeping you away? I adore and admire the participants I have already, but some of the fun things I have in my bag if tricks won't really work without a somewhat higher threshold for participation.

And while we're all here, are there any questions you have about the project and what I'm trying to do? If you want to tell me the whole thing blows and I'm full of myself, hey, now's your chance!

Comments

[John Evans]

The one thing that I think is tripping me up is...What sort of thing IS it? A story, or a game? If we approach it as a game, there are two major problems (and perhaps one minor). First, we're not sure how to make progress or even if it's possible to make progress (or what the goal is, that's the minor problem since it's not immediately important). The other problem is that since there's no manual, we don't know what actions are legal. Therefore we're all confining ourselves to the most basic interactions.

I think part of the reason I see it as a game and not a story is because we interact with it by playing, that is, portraying, ourselves.

I'm curious as to whether you think it's turning out well, or if we "players" have just been flailing blindly and otherwise acting stupidly? ;) Or maybe that set of terminology isn't even appropriate for this project!

[Scott]

Every day might be a little lofty by any standard. Once or maybe twice a week is almost certainly a great pace. I mean, you can always do more, naturally. But I wouldn't say you are doing too little.

And since you asked about our thoughts.....Possibly the best idea yet was letting daphne talk to us. We knew she could hear us somewhat, but now she (you) can push us to think about things that interest her (you) directly. Because, if left to our own devices, we are just as likely to start talking about tretretretres or something.

It's pretty interesting in that we don't really know what kind of story this is even going to be -- gothic horror, murder mystery, sci-fi thriller, fFantasy journey of the hero, light chick-lit .... the plot can go literally anywhere. This is both a blessing and a curse. Knowing your style, and given what we've seen, it's not likely to become a romance, fFor example, and I imagine it will shape up to be more hero's journey.

Also, it may be useful to have some way-points as we go, to get a fFeel fFor where we should be guiding Daphne. Oblique sorts of "save the cheerleader, save the world" kinds of things. A passing thought, that.

[Andrea A. Phillips]

This is the sort of thing where I've been reluctant to talk about it for fear of setting up expectations, and because I personally hate spoilers. I really am interested in Voices as an experiment to see-what-happens, and so I didn't provide more guidance because I wasn't sure what readers would try and didn't want to stifle anybody's creativity.

Still, it seems like there's interest in having something like guidance, so be forewarned, Voices readers: Here there be spoilers.

First, I was considering Voices as something akin to a text adventure, in which the readers might ask questions about the current situation (How hot is it where you are?) or issue commands (Try screaming your head off.) The layer of complication here, of course, is that Daphne has her own volition, so she's not going to just do things like an automaton, she's going to react to these ideas and use her own judgement. There's even some limited opportunity to engage in conversation 'in her head,' so to speak, in the Talk pages, but I've never quite found the right opening for that.

I'd also expected a bit more dissent in terms of direction, or rampant speculation in the talk pages. In the event of a really great conflict at any given point, I'd hoped to diverge threads and go in a different direction. n fact, at any point, if people continue to comment on an older page and make a good point, I still intend to do just that. :) Time is fluid here, and we can go back and forth as much as we like to any point in the story that pleases us. Just because it's written doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

There's also something I've talked about on panels, which I should write up as a blog post -- revisionism. When I tell my daughter a story, she'll tell me "No, it's not the mean witch that appears, it's the pirate." I think it'd be fun to have the readers dispute a fact in the story and maybe see it changed.

But from a personal point of view, the biggest thing I'm doing here is writing without a net. I'm putting up seeds with no idea what will sprout, and still don't much know where the story is going, though it does seem full of mystery, doesn't it?

So. An experiment! No idea what I'm doing! But here, at least, you can see some of the things I've been thinking about. I hope it doesn't ruin the fun for anybody. ^_^

[John Evans]

Hence, like I said in the first comment, "We don't know what actions are legal so we're confining ourselves to the most basic ones".

Hm, I just noticed that apparently "normal" users can't edit story pages. I was not aware of that. How interesting. ;)