Ira Glass on Storytelling - Part 2

Abandoning ideas is one of the most difficult things a creative person can do. It is also one of the most important. I struggle to give up on ideas, since they are like my children. Zen teaches us to avoid clinging to our desires. It's like being fired, you can't move on to greater success or another project unless you leave the present one behind. Getting fired can be the best thing that happens. Killing the lesser idea, killing the lesser job, allows you to move on to the greater one.

I rarely throw away an idea. That is one habit creative writers exhibit, especially songwriters, they keep every scrap of an idea they write down and use them years later in other works. An abandoned idea is not always abandoned, just sleeping or waiting to find the right fit with another idea. Songwriters usually keep notebooks filled with scraps from overheard conversations or ideas that come late at night, at breakfast, in the shower, on the train.

Hitchcock, who said "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." would have agreed with Ira. In television or any form of moving pictures it is important to remain engaged with the viewer. The boring bits need to be left out.

I doubt the same thing is true of games that take place in three dimensional environments. It is not uncommon for a player in a first person shooter to experience a lull in the fighting against the aliens or whatever, or moving from one area to another. There is a lot of choice when, where and how to engage the enemy, and thus create action. The boring bits are integrated into the environment and a 3d video game (really a simulation) is unlike a movie, in that the environment is the narrative. This is like architecture, in which dimensional space is used to manipulate feelings of the person experiencing the space. Moving pictures need to supply a passive subject with constant interest or they will lose interest. But in a game, the player is always making the next move.