The novel itself is free as a demo for this format, and is readable on any device with a decent web browser. It utilises multiple screens and threads through a large new world.

Getting and Running “Descending Road”, the Novel

I first came across Descending Road from within Second Life, the virtual world which I’m currently exploring. The author has a shop on Second Life’s Book Island, and from there a notecard leads you to his website for downloading the entire book.

Although Second Life itself does have an internal web browser system, you would be best in downloading and reading the novel externally, and with more room to spread out. The author provides the full book from within his website also, and you work through this scene by scene from the website. This is dependent on the speed of your connection, naturally.

Or to have the novel available immediately when you want it, it can be downloaded as a 15mb zipped package. Once you extract it, you will find a folder full of html files, image files, and several PDF files explaining the background behind the project.

You will need to find the “demo.html” file and run this, opening into your web browser to start. Once there, click on the large cover image to open the novel itself – your browser will open two other windows depending on the size of your device. One window will be opened for smaller devices. The author suggests he has successfully run Descending Road on portable Playstations before, presumably on the one window.

Your browser must be setup with javascript capabilities, and optioned to allow the browser to open multiple windows. Behind the scenes, Dana Paxson has developed technology to create the novel in this format, and suggests a patent is pending on this technology. He offers for anyone interested in publishing like this to contact him.

Descending Road Format

Scenes and Threads

What makes ELM fiction so powerful is the ability to hyperlink scenes to multiple other scenes. In this way, a reader can follow a threaded story for one character and arrive at the scene, then deviate onto another character’s viewpoint and follow that character through their own story, to arrive at the scene again (possibly) and see it in a totally different perspective than when first read.

Multiple Windows

Once into the novel, you will find three windows. The central one holds the novel narrative, told scene by scene, for one character point of view. You move onto the next scene with a simple next or previous link. This window also has an option to choose a different character point of view and story thread which leads to this scene, and two vertical bars on either side of the text. These bars will bring the left or right windows on top. Normally the central narrative window will be on top, calling the others when supplementary information is required.

The right-hand window holds glossaries, character appearance indexes, and scene title lists.

The left-hand window holds reference links to several subjects for further reading. Within the story, this left-hand side contains the Tarnus Encyclopedia (Tarnus is the world the stories are set in) and calendars, organisation, language, culture and technology reference notes for the world you are about to read about.

All windows are interlinked. For instance, the narrative text of the stories contain key terms which are linked to open up the glossary in the correct place.

What is an ELM (Apart from a Tree)?

ELM stands for Electronic Literary Macramé, according to Dana Paxson. It appears to be a term coined by this author for the format he has developed. Electronic novels are not, as we know, totally new to the world. Only recently this blog covered another format in the Wovel (web novel) – a serial format published electronically onto a website, and before that, a format called a Visual Novel, which is a graphical novel including text and graphics, and a partially interactive nature as it has a few threads to choose from.

I’m personally not sure if the “ELM” term will ever catch on, but perhaps novels in an html and scripted format such as Descending Road do have a real future, especially given the additional tools and resources such novels can provide for the storyline itself.

Using html and javascripting, the ELM novel allows for numerous text linking, the inclusion of side glossaries, and images, aside background text, reference links, footnotes and endnotes, and in the case of Descending Road, multiple story threads, led by different characters found in the Descending Road world. For large fictional bodies of work such as an entire new fantastic world, the format could be one solution to providing on-the-hand information when you need it without losing emphasis on the story being read.

Descending Road’s ELM environment is visually quite stark – although you could use such a format to make graphically intensive works – good for educational resources and text books perhaps – the novel in this format is confined to only a couple of colours and this makes the textual centre window a much more immersive environment. You are drawn into reading the narrative text and discovering the plight and fortunes of the characters in this format.

As a format, the ELM Fictional work sits between the linear confined electronic structure of a normal e-book, the threaded graphical visual novel – both of which don’t provide supporting mateiral;  and on the other end -the broad spectrum uncontrolled references found in something like an online encyclopedia. Think of it as something like a combination of all seven Harry Potter books, and the Harry Potter lexicon website, all wound up into the same document. It makes for a rich and huge narrative work.

Descending Road, The Novel

One of the PDF files which comes in the zipped package for Descending Road explains in some part why the ELM format was created. The novel is set in a large fantastic world called Tarnus, a human world displaced in time and space from Earth by an interstellar coldsleep migration and millennia of cyclic history. The story itself centres around several main characters, with the main thread held by Andrew. It contains many adult-themed elements, and browsing through, can still make for some hefty reading.

There are a lot of stories in this 200,000 word novel – some are short, some much longer. Some connect with each other, others do not.

Written as a large multi-threaded novel with all kinds of elements (enough to populate an entire world), the original manuscript was rejected by many publishers and reviewers, as the author suggests -

“In the original novel there were simply too many ideas and people presented to the bewildered reader from the outset; even the most caring, able, and sympathetic of reviewers of the manuscript couldn’t figure out what the hell to do with the thing.”

Over time, the novel was re-written into independent threads of stories, to “strip away some of the complexity” and then developed into the ELM format.

If you enjoy exploring a new speculative world, and many stories set within it, or you are intrigued by this new format, take a look at Dana Paxson’s website (link below) and download Descending Road.

LinkMes:

• Dana Paxson Studios – download Descending Road, and read the website for further explanations.
• Defining : The Wovel (Web Series Novel)
• Visual and Interactive Novels

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

January 2009 saw the world’s media and columns discussing the “Wovel”. This Wovel should not be confused with the top google search – where the Wovel is apparently ‘the world’s safest snow shovel.’

Victoria Blake, founder of Underland Press which coined the term, defines Wovels as -

“A wovel is a web novel. There’s an installment every Monday. At the end of every installment, there’s a binary plot branch point with a vote button at the end.”

Underland Press started off with a Wovel published last year entitled ‘The Living’ and expects to continue to publish wovels all through this year – with one currently available (see below).

Others define Wovels as simply a format reminiscent of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books of old.

Choose Your Own Adventure was a series of children’s gamebooks first published by Bantum Books from 1979-1998 and currently being re-published by Chooseco. Each story is written in a second-person point of view. The reader assumes the role of the protagonist and makes choices that determine the main character’s actions in response to the plot and its outcome. From Wikipedia.

As with those Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, the web serial novel has each chapter installment or serialisation published and leaves the readers to decide the path the story should continue on. It is this interactiveness which brings the Wovel or Serial Novel into the realms of the web masses, particularly when considering the smaller reading time we all have in this modern world. We can read a chapter in between work or other tasks, vote, and return to a new installment in a week’s time.

Serial Novels are not a new concept in themselves. Charles Dickens’ works were often published as serial chapters. As were Arthur Conan Doyles. And choosing your own path through a story is, again, not new -  if you consider the interactive nature explained of some Visual and Interactive Novels, which I posted about in October last year.

Perhaps this year they are coming of age more than ever before, given the web’s ability to serialise and publish allowing the reader votes or comments to completely or partially drive the story-arcs of a novel in progress.

The example of Jemiah Jefferson’s wovel, FirstWorld which is currently being published at Underland Press gives the readers only two options to vote on (or two branches as Victoria Blake’s definition suggests. This may be intentional, in that the format is for only one person to do the writing, and the public readers are given controlled choices after each chapter’s cliffhanger ending (similarly to that of the Visual Interactive Novels detailed above).

Previous attempts towards a truly serial and less controlled collaborative online novel appear to have been less than workable. At the now defunct collaborative novel website, Noveltwists, a one page opinion hints at this -

Collaborative internet novel writing does not work.
People never stick to the established facts of the story.
People are not interested in writing the story once it has been established.
It might be possible if you had 50 talented authors in one room working together on a collaborative novel.
But open it up to the ‘public’, and it is doomed.
This is fact, learned by experience.

So, currently we have the two-branched reader options of the serialised novels published at Underland Press offered as Wovels, although several other authors promote their own serial novels published on blogs and othe websites. The true key here is obviously the interactivity of offering cliffhanger endings and storyarcs reliant on a reader choice.

Defining the Wovel or Web Serial Novel

The term ‘wovel’ has been coined by Underland Press for a web released or online serial novel of an interactive nature. Such online novels are written by one person who publishes chapters or installments serially (possibly weekly), and each installment ends in a cliffhanger with readers being given the controlled option to choose the path of the further story.

‘Wovel’ as a term has its fair share of derision amongst the web community but perhaps it will ‘stick’. Or perhaps a simple Serial Online Interactive Novel or similar will eventually take over as the term for such interactive serialised publications.

Of importance is the format and its potential to freshen up reading formats and bring in new readers already used to serialisation of their stories in other media such as television, and readers who can be entertained by having their own wishes and votes empower the outcome of the stories.

LinkMes:

• Visual and Interactive Novels (Explained on the Juiced on Writing blog)
• NPR online article – “The Wovel : Literary Alternative to Browsing Blogs“
• Jemiah Jefferson is currently publishing a slipstream adventure, FirstWorld via the Underland Press website.
• Noveltwists – a colloborative novel website which didn’t work.
• Choose Your Own Adventure Gamebooks explained at Wikipedia.
• The real Wovel – a snow shovel.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’ve admired graphic novels for a long time, but Alex’s post showed me something different. He calls them Visual Novels, but they are more than that – they are also interactive.

The best way to explain them is to show you them. Alex links to two of his novels, brought about by NaNoRenO (National Novel Ren’ai Game Writing Month) and it is through Ren’ai Games that the novels can be downloaded from.

The Ren’Ai archive defines a Visual Novel as “multi-path games that use text and pictures to present a story.” The archive also has Kinetic Novels – “single-path games that use text and pictures to present a story” which are similar to a graphic novel.

Other definitions of the genre are available from the web. There appears an association with the gaming world, and also anime-style art which you will see in the Ren’Ai examples. In fact, many of the Ren’Ai novels held in archive also include other forms and icons from the anime-art world.

There are several downloadable Visual Novels in the Ren’Ai archives, and although I was not successful at running Alex’s example, I downloaded several which I was able to watch. The archives contain differently formatted novels, so watch out for those which fit your platform. Most are provided in zip format. Once downloaded extract all the files to your desktop or similar, then play the exe.

One of the Visual Novels I downloaded and watched had a couple of tracks of background music, but no interactive slant. It was more a graphic novel with audio – including a character voice at one point, and some animation of the graphics.  I also watched two other short novels, both of which had interactivity in giving me options to choose from, taking me along different storylines.

There are several examples, some run at 10 minutes long, others up to one hour, all dependent on which options you take when given a question in the text. Multiple-path storylines (or story arcs) are an interesting format, as is the graphic nature of these novels, particularly if you come from a designer or graphical background. And although primarily sitting within the gaming and anime-art worlds, the format is an interesting one for other genres and art styles also.

More web research took me to Blade Engine, software which allows you to create these visual novels. Ren’Ai Games also has it’s own engine called Ren’Py. There is also a Visual Novel database website, listing over 1000 VNs.

Now all you need is the story, and the graphics (although Blade Engine provides some packs of these in anime-style, or you can find others via stock photography sites or websites such as Deviant Art). Visual Novels are certainly a genre which will give your muse a great outing.

Definition :

Visual Novels – A digital novel which consists of text accompanied by mostly static images, but can include animation and audio components also. Visual Novels can also provide reader interaction via choices which determine the story path and outcome of the novel. Such novels can be found in the gaming and anime-art worlds.

Links:

• Ren’Ai Visual Novel Archives
• Ren’Py Engine
• Blade Engine
• Visual Novel Database

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

On a personal basis – I do timed writing also – on a 5 out of 7 day basis (although if I am writing a novel in a month, you might find that 7 days a week), and for 20 minutes each time. I often simply use the time as a journal item – dissolving myself from the last day’s worries (it’s incredible how much worry will pass if you simply write it down and allow it out). When I’m on a large writing project I tend to go into Q&A interview sessions with my main characters, and let them resolve a few niggly problems by themselves. It makes my Muse believe he’s in control, and allowed to play – and for that time period, he is.

Here’s my own definition of Timed Writing, and the various other interrelated writing methods which I see spoken about or which I personally use from time to time.

Timed Writing

Timed Writing is the simple practice of sitting down at a page with pencil (or keyboard) and writing – for a certain time period. Many writing tutors and recognised experts in the field recommend 20 minutes as being a set time to aim for, often on a daily basis. Others recommend ten. If pushed, most would even suggest if you can only find five minutes each day, then spending those five minutes in timed writing exercises will still undoubtedly improve your own writing.

Set the timer, and write. That’s basically it, in a five word nutshell.

Timed Writing methods can be used for longer time periods – some authors suggest you can write a novel, for instance, by doing this in a series of timed writing exercises – perhaps for an hour each period, with a small break in-between. However, timed writing is often accredited as being particularly helpful as a technique when writing in an unstructured, free-form or stream-of-conciousness form, for a smaller piece of time.

Writers who use timed writing exercises in their writing approach report several benefits including -

1. A short time (5 – 20 minutes) makes writing easier, and less intensive. Most writers can find five – ten minutes to schedule regularly into a writing day, no matter how busy.
2. The time creates both a small structure around an otherwise creative free-form experiment, and a small tension which will result in some inspired work.
3. There’s no time to think and ponder with such a timed structure – you simply need to get on and write.
4. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the writing – it’s fine to just bin it, and start again at another time. There is no stress, guilt or expectations over these pieces of writing.
5. Continuous practice in timed writing exercises has consistently been found to improve a writer’s writing.
6. The time is not arbitrary – if the writer finds themselves onto a good thing (and they often will), then they can simply continue past the alarm time.

The technique of timed writing is so popular with writers, that many writing software packages come now with a timer function to time the writing exercise. (If you want a free timer, you will find a link to one at the bottom of this article).

Authors who are currently writing a novel or larger body of work, will use timed writing for say, twenty-minutes, to release their muse when they feel constrained, to perhaps come up with solutions to problems within their writing, to strategise, to ask questions of their novel, or characters (ie. to interview them) or to simply get away from the actual problem and have fun with writing something else.

Whilst some writers simply use this daily technique to start their flow of writing – and never return to the writing passages which have resulted from this; others use the timed writing pieces within their other work.

Some writers use writing prompts or selected topics to write about in their timed writing sessions (there are many websites, blogs, newsletters and books setup to provide these daily prompts). Whilst other writers use the daily or regularly-scheduled timed sessions as a journal, to simply relieve themselves of daily events or worries – leaving these behind on the page.

This later approach may often be associated with the concept of “Morning Pages” found in the Creativity instruction book, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron – although Julia suggests such writing should be handwritten, and instead of timed, 3 pages of writing done. Decades before The Artist’s Way coined the morning pages concept, Dorothea Brande (in her Becoming a Writer book published in the 1930s) had already spoken of doing “daily pages”. Most probably before Dorothea, other writers had used such a timed or repetitive writing technique to draw out their own creativity, as they have done ever since.

Although normally associated with creative writing, the timed writing technique is just as useful for the non-fiction writer, and often recommended for students in creative writing, or as an approach for completing essays in exams.

You can see from these many examples above just how diverse and individual the timed writing approach can be if asking any writer. Three elements which do remain true of most of the these, and associated concepts (whether they be within a timed approach, or a certain amount or pages), are the following -

1. Timed Writing (and associated writing practices) provide a quick and easy way to inspire the creativity or muse within us as writers. Timed Writing is a technique to bring out your muse.
2. The writing is allowed to be as messy and freeform (unstructured) as possible – don’t bother with spell-checks or grammar. Timed writing is simply about getting the words onto paper, normally as fast as possible, and seeing what happens.
3. No censorship is allowed. You can write or say what you want, and never be scared of judgement from yourself or others. Timed Writing is for you, and only you.

Other Associated (or Interchangeable) Terms :

• Timed Writing
• Morning Pages
• Daily Pages
• Freeform Writing
• Free Writing
• Freestyle Writing
• Stream of Consciousness Writing
• Unstructured Writing

Links :

• Julia Cameron – The Artist’s Way
• Dorothea Brande – Becoming a Writer (still available in print today from many book-sellers, or as an ebook also).
• A Free Timer (Webpage file) – drop this file into your browser, and set the countdown time in minutes and seconds, and the alarm sound.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In the meantime, I’ll give you a simple definition of what world-building is, because this was a term I struck as I entered the writing world, and puzzled me for some time. Without realising it, I was doing it, but it helps if you know what it is.

World Building

More easily defined in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, where whole alter-worlds need to be built, world-building is actually necessary for all genres – from modern, crime, mysteries, young adult or urban genres to historical romances and even true-to-life memoirs. No story exists without some world-building.

In world building, a writer must create a setting (place, geography, terrain, ecology, architecture…), time-zone, inhabitants (main and subsidiary characters, animals, plants, other?…) means of life for those inhabitants (what do they eat, how do they propagate, what’s their life expectancy, how do they evolve, what’s their cycle of life?…), a history (historical events, celebrations, relationships between inhabitants…) relationships (group, communal, family, couples…); modes of transport, neighbouring civilisations, society and customs, language (spoken, written, other…) and culture (education, who looks after children, clothing, accessories, how are the elderly acknowledged, how is time or time units counted?, religion, music, art, crafts, entertainment…); economics (monetary systems, trade and marketing systems, business systems), rules and governance (ruling systems, legal systems, punishment), technology, science and magic to set the background for the story.

For a fantasy novel the above may be hugely detailed and whole worlds or planets may need to be built, but for an urban crime novel, the world built may only include a town, city or village and the people in it. The rest – transport, human culture etc, may never need to be dealt with because your readers already fully understand this (unless it’s a paranormal crime novel, that is). For an historical novel, a world may need to be built based on as much fact as possible, but filling in the missing knowledge we’ve lost to time – to make it believable for the reader. Even a novel set in the 1950′s or 1980′s needs some world-building to guide the reader through to understanding and accepting this background to the story events.

Some writers construct detailed maps, and vast detailed worlds on paper or perhaps electronically,  whilst others spend less time on world building. Much of the background information may not be used specifically in the story, but forms enough knowledge to allow the writer to tell his or her story, and importantly, for the reader to understand that world and how it has impacted and created the story set within it.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

From Mini Sagas:
“A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words—not 49 or 51 but in exactly 50 words.

Benefit #1: Writing a mini saga expands your creativity. Constraints typically expand creativity or induce flight. When you have to put everything in 50 words, you have to ‘leave behind’ a lot. That’s where the creative juices start flowing.

Benefit #2: Writing a mini saga stretches your thinking. What will you write about? You have to think about topics that will fit in 50 words or squeeze them to fit in 50 words. That puts thinking on overdrive mode.

Benefit #3: Writing a mini saga enhances your discipline. Deciding what to write about, deciding what to leave behind and putting it in 50 words requires discipline throughout.”

Putting words to photographs is a technique used for my own crafting hobby, that of scrapbooking – where family photographs are enhanced with journaling to tell the whole story for future generations. In that, I tend to keep my own journaling to a minimum – as few words as possible, and normally sticking to the journalistic Who, What, Where, How, Why and Which.

However, here, with Setty’s Mini Sagas, he defines a word limit and uses it for creative inspiration. Let’s take that out further, and define it as a writing prompt and ideas to induce your own muse.

Writing Prompt:

1. Randomly choose a photograph out of a glossy magazine lying around in your home. (You can use all sorts of methods to ensure randomness, such as selecting a page number and going to that page). OR -
2. If you’re on the net, go to the interesting posts sections of a photopost service such as Flickr (Flickr has a page for interesting posts in the last seven days), or to websites such as news sites like the BBC – and choose the third image you see.
3. Print / Cut out the photograph and stick it into your writing notebook.
4. Write a Mini Saga about the photograph – 50 words describing the story, no less, no more.
5. Repeat regularly (daily?) – you may come up with some workable ideas for your fiction.

Link: Mini Sagas manifesto (Change This)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

An e-book (for electronic book: also ebook: also ecobook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices.

An e-book is a specialized type of e-text.

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.