#multilinear

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So this may come up this year given everything, so I figure I’ll talk a little bit about it now. There’s this story. Transmundane. It may start getting written this year.

The main reason I haven’t done any writing on it so far is because of what the story is and how the story works. Transmundane was conceived as a multi-linear novel, meaning that the story is told from the perspective of every character you encounter. From the start of thinking about it, there was a built in way so that you could bounce back and forth between characters.

Originally it was going to be a much more visual thing. I had plans to animate it in Flash1 and have areas of the screen clickable when they were shown so that you could switch to another character’s perspective, then go back wen you crossed paths with the original character again. If you ever did.

And then I remembered my art skills.

The idea of the multiple stories happening at once and switching between them, though, has been one thing that stuck. There were six character’s whose exploits you would follow through the narrative and it was supposed to be the user’s choice to follow who they wanted to follow as they moved through the book, learning things with the characters and being capable of ultimately knowing the whole story while none of the characters ever gt that.

When I read Game of Thrones, I trashed the idea of just switching perspectives per chapter once and for all.2 The structure just didn’t work with what I was doing and I wanted something very different in how I wanted it to work. It had to be some sort of interactive thing. Something that didn’t rely too much on visuals.3 Something that put the control in the user’s hands and gives them the chance to go back and follow a different character through a section of the story if they are curious. Or let them continue on with the current path without context if they aren’t.

I think I have most of that figured out, though. After looking at Twine, I now have a hundred notes for a custom system I want to build to tell this story. Which, in turn, means I should probably sit down and figure out the plot and an end point and all that nonsense as well.

Why yes, I am procrastinating on working on Fate. Why do you ask?

That dates the conception of this, doesn’t it? Whoops. [↩]

Especially since I think I read less than half of Dance with Dragons because I hate everyone at this point. [↩]

Because, again, lack of art skills. [↩]