Author: Logan Sidwell

When Time Slows Down: Enjoying Conventions

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

My friend and I attended FanX this year. It was our first time. There were rooms filled with cosplayers, a massive vendor hall, and tons of celebrities (my favorite was Henry Winkler, who stood in front of his signing table shaking hands and hugging visitors). But at some point, wandering around staring at people and spending money got tiresome, so we attended a presentation. Something Star Wars related, he’s a big fan of the franchise.

When we sat down, he was on the edge of his seat. Sat up, attentive, and eager to learn. I was slouched in my chair. About ten minutes into the presentation his stance slackened. By half an hour he was holding his head up with his hands.

Then I pieced together what was happening.

This was his first conference. He had come expecting a content dense presentation, an action-packed lecture stuffed to the brim with anecdotes and stories from the extended universe. What he got was plodding, a gently paced lecture suited for resting rather than for learning. My friend was operating at a different time scale. The wrong time scale.

I couldn’t blame him, when I attended my first writer’s conference I had to make the same adjustment. When we’re young, schools are our conferences. Conferences where every minute is tracked and recorded, where learning is expected, and where education has no choice but to run at a breakneck pace. Your average presenter isn’t like that. They take their time, lose track of their thoughts, answer audience questions, and take the scenic route.There’s no test at the end of the lesson and the presenters aren’t trained educators. 

I didn’t recognize it until that moment with my friend at the Star Wars presentation, but time at conferences is slower. And to have a good time, you have to slow down with it.`

Appreciating the Present

My expectations for my first Writer’s Conference were way too high, and way too self-centered. I was hunting for the ‘most’ educational classes, searching for subjects that would maximize my education. Truth is, if your entire goal is to sponge up information on a subject, five hours on youtube watching carefully edited videos will deliver way more reliably than a conference. That’s not what conferences are for.

Conferences are for being present. They’re for stopping, looking around, and finding yourself surrounded by like-minded people from a million different backgrounds. They’re for conversation with your peers, sharing your experiences and learning from others. The poorly-kept secret of conferences is that the best event of every conference takes place after it ends, Bar Con. Having a couple drinks and conversation with someone you’ve never met with a similar interest often teaches you more than any presentation could ever hope to. 

This isn’t to say I don’t attend classes, nor do I ignore the content of the lectures, it’s a major consideration, but it isn’t the only consideration. Going down the calendar of a conference, I search for presentations from people I look up to, friends I’m there to support, or experts far above my level. And every one of these presentations gives me something different. 

From those who are a few years ahead of me in my career, I pick up advice for my immediate future. From friends, I take tips on how to give engaging presentations of my own. And from experts, I discover just how much I still don’t know. Even if the content of the presentation isn’t tuned to my skill-level or interests, the person giving the presentation still brings their own perspective to the world, and that new angle is always worth seeing.


In short, being present at a conference means seeing the people around you and hearing what they have to say. We spend so much of our lives focussed on ourselves, there’s something healing in listening to others.

Maximize Your Enjoyment, Not Your Day

I don’t fill my schedule. There may be classes from 10am to 7pm, but chances are I’ll only attend 2/3rds of those. The second you find yourself rushing from class to class, you’re missing the point of the conference. Often after a class, I find myself in a conversation with a peer, or maybe run into someone sitting on a couch in the hotel hallway, and that conversation will last as long as a class. Sometimes a group of us leave the event to get a long lunch. We’ve left the conference, but it’s those moments of spontaneity that stand out in my memory.

When I’m tired, I take a nap. When I’m hungry, I get lunch. When I’m tired of seeing hundreds of people, I find somewhere quiet and work on a project of my own.

Slowing down means being aware of yourself. No one’s getting grades for their attendance. You could spend the whole event sitting on a couch chatting with anybody passing by and you’re still enjoying the conference. Just because there’s a schedule doesn’t mean you need to shape yourself around it.

It Takes Practice

I’ve found a lot of people don’t enjoy their first conference. By the end, they’re underwhelmed by the lecture content, overwhelmed by the crowds, or just plain lost. Inaccurate expectations and self-imposed pressures make a conference something it isn’t.

Then they attend a second time. There’s a few more familiar faces, they skip a couple classes, and they go to bar con. By their third conference, they love it.

I think my friend would enjoy FanX a lot more the second time around. We’d show up in costume, learn technique from the other cosplayers, spend a while chatting with friends, and when we attend a presentation, slouch a little in our chairs.

Foundation’s Edge (#4), Isaac Asimov – Book Review

/ Logan Sidwell / 2 Comments

29 years after writing the original trilogy, Isaac Asimov continues Foundation’s generation-spanning space epic with Foundation’s Edge.

The Foundation book series has always been a little strange. Every one of them has felt a bit like an accidental sequel to the last. The first book was a series of short stories, the second book threw the original concept in the trash, and the third book took the ideas from the first two and developed them into a spy thriller. 

Combine all that with an author coming into his own and every one of these books feels completely distinct. I’m happy to report that the fourth book in the series continues the pattern of genre-bending ideas and thrilling twists at a galactic scale. 

Read my discussion of the first three Foundation books here: How Asimov Saved The Foundation Books

Plot

Over a century after book 3, Foundation’s Edge tells the story of Golan Trevize, a council member in the First Foundation, as he investigates the invisible powers pulling The Foundation along the track to becoming a galactic empire. In parallel, Stor Gendibal, a leader of the psychic-led Second Foundation, uncovers a terrifying truth about the Seldon Plan.

For the first half, the story is a political thriller. At each twist and turn, Asimov makes sure to keep the audience fully informed as to what each action did, what it was aiming to do, and how each of the minor characters changes the calculation of the book.

After a series of political maneuvers, speculations, and schemes, Golan Trevize is sent off in search of ‘Gaia’, humanity’s legendary origin planet. At this point, the book’s genre suddenly changes. In a single chapter, we move from political thriller to treasure hunt. Adventure and mystery keep the story moving and the stakes climbing ever upward, ending in a satisfying conclusion.

Asimov’s Writing

Isaac Asimov learned a lot about writing in the nearly thirty-year gap between the third and fourth books. For the first time in the Foundation series, Foundation’s Edge tells a single, continuous story. Multiple POVs, yes, but it begins at the beginning and ends at the end. No century-long time jumps and no being introduced to an entirely new cast of characters halfway through the story. In this book, we have the time to get to know the characters and truly understand their motivations.

For a good bit of the story, I was confident it was setting up a new trilogy. The first half was paced much slower, deeply exploring the political intrigue while reminding the readers of the events of the past three books. By the two-thirds mark, there were a lot of starts without a lot of resolutions. I was pleasantly surprised when the final third of the book jumped into high-gear, delivering a tense and action-packed finale that closed every thread and reached the grand-scale the Foundation series is known for.

The Conclusion

After the first three books, the Foundation series felt like it was over. The goal of galactic empire was centuries away, but all the major factions had reached a balance, and the ending felt inevitable. With this story, Asimov re-contextualized past stories and painted the inevitable conclusion as a defeat rather than a victory, he introduced adventure and mystery to a completely mapped galaxy and layered new complexities on an already complicated universe in a way that breathed new life into the series.

Much like Asimov’s first and third books, Foundation’s Edge is a conclusion. But this time, the story also feels like the beginning of something new.

That Time A Space Simulation Turned Into a Spy Hunt

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Readers of my blog know I used to simulate star-trek style spaceships. It was my entry-point to the world of writing, storytelling, theater, and tech all at once. A part of the reason I studied computer science was to make sense of the one part of the simulator I didn’t understand. My first written stories were simulations written to fill a story vacuum. As a flight director, I was lucky enough to not only write the stories, but perform them.

I told hundreds of stories in my five years simulating starships. Mostly I stuck to my biggest hits. Occasionally we’d test a new story and fiddle with it to make things more exciting. But this flight wasn’t like that. It was supposed to be a nice, normal mission. Instead it ended up being my most memorable flight in a half-decade of incredible stories.

Setting the Scene

The nine crew members each donned their uniform, a felt poncho modified with starship colors and branding. It was a birthday party, every kid was in second or third grade. A bit young, but me and my team had dealt with worse.

One side a school, one side a spaceship.

To reach the ship, they needed to pass through the ‘teleporter’, an old photography dark room door, the revolving kind. They’d step in two at a time. I’d remind them not to touch the side lest they be lost to space, then spin the door 180 degrees.

Pitch black for half a second, then the bridge of a starship. Even when you knew the trick, it still felt like magic. The UCS Everest was a large vessel, suited to handle parties of 10-15. There was a main viewscreen at the front and tiered seating at the back. A staff member would ask the arriving crew their job position, then direct them to their seat.

Once everyone was seated, I would teleport in behind them and the epic boarding music would fade away. Safety instructions were always boring, but from the very first second I could tell this crew was different. Eyes wandered, kids whispered. I talk quick, but this crew had no interest in any of it.

When the safety briefing was done, I had a single instruction for my staff. “Get through the training as fast as you can.”

We had a set of junior controls for young crews. Instead of everyone having a distinct job, they were all prompted to do the same activities together and drive the ship as a single unit. For groups younger than 4th grade, it was really the only way to keep them from being overwhelmed. Unfortunately, the most recent windows update had broken the juniors controls, so all we had were the advanced systems.

The Flight

The crew was both overwhelmed and not particularly invested in the story of the mission. They were supposed to fly to an endangered planet and help evacuate the citizens. For crews like this, we like to put a ‘doctor’ on the bridge to help them out. Whenever I came on over the speakers as the main engineer and told them they needed to ‘undock’ or ‘set course’, the doctor secretly made sure the task got done.

In this case, the doctor was basically flying the ship on their own.

Fifteen minutes into the flight, I could tell things weren’t working. I was quietly telling my staff to get ready to ‘board the ship’ as various alien intruders and wacky characters, but while that was being prepared, I needed the story to continue.

The Breakthrough

There was a political situation surrounding the endangered planet. I was on the speakers as a Texan ship captain warning them of the dangers. None of it was clicking, the whole mission was feeling like a bust. Then I said the words that changed the course of the mission. “The mayor of that planet is a crafty fella– he’s got people everywhere. Keep an eye out, you may have a spy on board.”

On the cameras, I could see kids’ heads popping up and glancing around. Their security officer, just eight years old, jumped out of his seat with a toy phaser in hand. There was still conversation being picked up by the microphones, but they weren’t talking about a party. They were talking about the spy.

Not yet realizing what had happened, I had the ‘ship doctor’ get back to the bridge to help them navigate the upcoming asteroids.

The second he teleported in, every kid in the room was out of their seat and yelling at the top of their lungs. They all made different accusations, but there was only one message: The Doctor was a spy.

My first reaction was frustration. Everyone had left their computers, which meant no one was driving the ship, which meant the mission was frozen in place. But these kids had never cared about the mission in the first place. As I watched the doctor get forced into the brig at phaser-point, I saw what I had been looking for since the start. A crew that cared about the mission. Not the space theater or the advance controls or the working together. They only cared about hunting for spies.

If the flight had been a field trip arranged by a school, I would have paused here. The crew would have gone back to their seats and we would have discussed what their priorities needed to be. But this was a birthday party, and when you’re flying a birthday party, it’s best to reserve the lectures for the really bad behavior.

A small brig for 6 suspects

So the mission changed. I ordered a volunteer dressed as a security guard to go up and help the kids interrogate the doctor. But their blind hunger for spies was worse than I thought. The security guard ended up in the brig right next to the doctor.

I was down to two volunteers. The next one I sent up with no costume at all and specifically told the kids that this person was not a part of the story. Just a staff member there to guide their experience. They reluctantly agreed not to stuff her into the brig, but there were plenty of murmurs that she was ‘secretly a spy’ anyways.

Now that I knew what kind of story we were telling, I knew what kind of tools we should use. We planted a device in a tunnel under their seats and set off the alarms until they found it. We played crazy ‘hacking’ noises over the speakers and flicked the lights from red-alert to green-alert to a bunch of other colors while they flipped switches on a panel. Whenever there was downtime, I didn’t even have to fill in the blanks, the crew would sprint right back to the brig and resume their interrogations of the prisoners.

Then came the masterstroke. An away mission to the lower decks. It’s a funny thing, kids love getting onto the starship, but once they’re on the ship, all they want to do is leave. There was a second starship right across the hall. We redirected that ship’s camera feed to the main view-screen. I told my last volunteer to go in there and stand around.

When the kids saw the footage of a person in a uniform doing nothing, they went wild. Never had they seen a more guilty figure in their lives. The staff member led them on the away mission and they caught the ‘spy’ with ease. They were thrilled for an excuse to use the phasers.

On their way back to the ship, the crew bumped into two unfortunate staff members who were returning from a lunch break. They were dragged to the brig like everyone else.

The Finish

With the end of the mission closing in, I decided it was time for a trial. We gave each student a seat and made them all a part of the jury. One by one we brought out the suspects. I wish I could tell you they were thorough in their questioning. I wish I could say they even listened to what each prospective spy had to say. But they didn’t. It was closer to a witch hunt than any form of judicial process.

At the end, they decided it was the doctor who was the spy. Of course it was, he was the first suspicious figure on the bridge and the only one they all remembered capturing. I told them they were right and that they had successfully completed the mission.

They cheered and ran off with their parents to eat cake. Great reviews all around, although I’m guessing that dying planet from the start of the mission would have a few complaints.

When we finished restoring the bridge from the child hurricane that had ripped through, I sat back and took a breath. One of the other staff members walked over to me with wide eyes. “That was amazing! I’ve never seen a mission like that before. You should write it down and fly it more often!”

I smiled and shook my head. We had improvised 2 and a half hours of nonsense. A playful nothing to distract a bunch of ten-year-olds. It was none of the magic that had drawn me to the program in the first place, and used none of the tools that made the simulator cool. Just one long string of chaos, and we were lucky the kids had liked it.

The Invisible Man and The Picture of Dorian Gray: Two Masters Explore Consequence

/ Logan Sidwell / 2 Comments

Intro

I love stumbling across paired stories. Those rare and curious times when two different writers take on the same concept around the same time. There are plenty of Hollywood examples. Armageddon and Deep Impact. White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. The Illusionist and The Prestige. It feels like two philosophers each making their own argument in the public forum and by reading their story, you see the full journey to their conclusion.

In the 1890s, two of the greatest authors of their time wrote two of their greatest books. First was The Picture of Dorian Gray. Originally published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890 and expanded into a novel in 1891, it stands as Oscar Wild’s only novel in a career writing plays and poetry. Then in 1897, two years into HG Wells half-century long science fiction career, he released The Invisible Man.

Both stories have been told and adapted and shared millions of times over the years, both stories have outlived their creator. And while the two stories on their face appear completely different, both try to answer the same question: What would a person become if they could act without consequence?

To me, these two books are my favorite example of paired works. An opportunity to see a sci-fi writer and a playwright approach the same philosophical concept. A chance to observe two masters each bring their own unique perspectives and reach vastly different conclusions.

Two villainous leads

When a skilled storyteller knows what kind of story they want to write, even if they don’t know the details, the nature of the story trims down the possibilities. If you want to tell a story of someone reconnecting with a community, it means they had a community to begin with. If you’re writing a revenge power fantasy, it usually helps for the main character to at one time in the past be a uniquely skilled fighter. I like to call it ‘novel-writing algebra’.

In the case of a theme like ‘no consequences’, both storytellers realized they had to start from the same place. To truly explore the space, each story’s protagonist had to be more villain than hero.

The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the story of eponymous Dorian Gray, a young man that values his appearance and youth above all other things. After realizing all his cruelties appear on his portrait rather than being reflected onto his person, he embraces his worst tendencies. Hurting those who love him, extorting, murdering, everything he can think of in one long hedonism treadmill.

The Invisible Man’s protagonist is just as reprehensible, but in his own way. Jack Griffin, for what it’s worth, earns his invisibility. He discovers the means to turn living tissue invisible and uses it to burgle, rob, and threaten. But it wasn’t the invisibility that made him that way. He robbed his father even while his skin was still opaque. Throughout the book he is teasing and cruel to the people he is closest to. The kind of man no person would want to associate with in real life.

A pair of cruel characters for a pair of moral lessons. How else could you teach it? If you start with a good character using their protection for a good cause, you end up with The Invisible Woman saving the world in a comic book.

Both authors realized that in order to explore the concept of consequence fully, they needed a bad actor to exploit the situation.

Freedom from Consequence

At the question of ‘What does a bad person do without consequences?’, our two authors diverge.

HG Wells goes down the obvious path. Mayhem, havoc, and immediate self-serving cruelty. In every action, The Invisible Man acts as untouchable as he feels. HIs dealings with others are impatient and demanding. As the story goes on, his ambition grows. His vision expands from short-term robberies to an ‘epoch of the invisible man’ by means of violent threat.

A bully. That’s all Griffin is. The second he gets an ounce of power, he stretches it to its utmost with no plans for the future. At the outset, this feels like the only answer. A person without fear of reprisal tries to force the world into their vision of things.

But Oscar Wilde’s take is vastly different.

Dorian Gray isn’t an ambitious man, he’s petty. Looks matter more than character. Charm more than soul. Over the course of a lifetime, consequences seem to evade him. When a man comes to avenge his sister, he realizes that Dorian Gray couldn’t possibly be the man from 20 years ago, after all he hasn’t aged a day.

When Dorian is given the freedom to do as he’d like, he doesn’t shape the world, he plays with it. People and institutions become toys to be tinkered with, broken, and tossed away. Even when hiding a body he handles the whole situation with a cold psychopathy. The dead man isn’t a person, it’s a thing. Dorian accumulates wealth and connections all through the world and his capacity to do expands, but the answer to ‘what will he do’ seems to come down to a single answer: whatever he feels like.

Although Griffin is supposed to be the more intelligent of the two characters, Dorian without a doubt makes better use of his power. He feels more real too, like one of thousands of kids born and raised into wealth under a system built to protect and empower them. A lifetime with no fear gives him a detachment from his actions. Everything is a game to be played and moved on from.

When the hammer comes down

Both authors reach similar conclusions at the end of their stories. Even if a person sees no immediate consequences to their actions, there are always consequences.

The Invisible Man gives the easy answer. If a person behaves cruelly for a long time the world will eventually hunt that person down and deliver the consequences nature tried to protect them from. Jack Griffin’s final moments are spent being beaten by a mob. Victim not of a single action, but the sum of all his behaviors.

I don’t know how much I believe it. There are plenty of stories of people getting away with their crimes, even in a court of law. Even tyrants die of old age from time to time.

Oscar Wilde gives a different vision of ‘consequence’, and one that is clear from the beginning of the book. With every sin Dorian Gray commits, his portrait changes. A cruel smile at the edge of his lips, bloodstains, scars. The portrait isn’t just a magical painting, it is a reflection of Dorian’s soul, and for me, the better answer to the question of consequence.

Even if the world never retaliates. Every evil action distorts a person’s truest self. A murder doesn’t just stain the hands, it stains the heart. By the end of Dorian Gray’s life, the portrait doesn’t even look human. Terrible deeds have reshaped the man so far as to cut out his humanity entirely.

Conclusion

It’s impossible to move through life without seeing the occasional villain. I think that’s what makes the theme of ‘consequence free action’ resonate. Injustice is a part of life. Maybe what that makes these stories palatable is knowing the author will deliver some kind of justice by the end.

To me, The Invisible Man has the feel of a comforting moral tale for the upstanding in society. Eventually evil will be held accountable, even if it takes awhile.

But The Picture of Dorian Gray gives an answer that feels truer to life. Justice is not exact. Sometimes the worst of the worst escape their consequences and the good suffer in their wake. The only thing that can truly be said of the person that acts with no fear of reprisal is that they will eventually lose their personhood entirely and by the end of their life become unrecognizable to the world around them.

Something Changes When Story Moves From A Book To A Game

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I didn’t start my writing journey with books. It wasn’t short stories or fan-fiction either. My original medium of storytelling was a bit more improvised. 

Star Trek Simulations.

It sounds a little silly, but for the first five years of my storytelling journey, I was a game master. Crews of birthday parties and corporate events would show up, I would give them a mission, put them on their ship, and send them on their flight. Whenever they spoke to the computer or the main engineer or an alien, it was usually me. When the ship took damage and smoke rolled in near the security terminal, I was flipping the switches.

It’s where I cut my teeth. It’s where I learned how to make the big moments of a story pop. And when my time flying starships came to an end and I made the move to telling stories in books, I discovered how unprepared I was.

Telling a story in a book is one thing. Telling a story in a game is something entirely different.

First and Third Person POV

Realistically, it isn’t just a split between games and books. It’s a split between interactive media and non-interactive media. When a reader reads a book, they expect to be told a story. When a player starts a game, they expect to be the story.

In a book, the main character is the main character. In a game, even if there is a main character, the real protagonist isn’t inside the game, it’s the person holding the controls. For a game to feel engaging, it needs to engage not just with the moving avatar on the screen, but with the human being that’s driving the decisions.

Much like in books, games have two main pov styles. First-person and third-person. Note these are different from where the camera is. Those familiar with books and movies will probably understand gaming’s third-person approach to storytelling. There’s a character on screen with a history, traits, and a connection to the world. 

A game like God of War tells the story of Kratos trying to raise his son in a cruel world controlled by the gods. When things happen, they happen to Kratos and Kratos reacts to them. He changes as the story goes on. This makes sense. This is close to traditional storytelling.

For games, first-person perspective storytelling is a complete 180.

A book uses first person to connect more deeply with the protagonist. We’re closer to the main character than ever. We can see their thoughts and how they decide how to act in the world. Games do the opposite. In the first-person perspective, the main character is washed away, made into nothing but a vessel for the player to control. It’s an effort to place the player directly into the story. Now when bad things happen, they don’t just happen to the character, they happen to the person playing. 

In DOOM, the players inhabit a character only known as Doomslayer as they defeat demon hordes. In Legend of Zelda, the players play Link, a character who never speaks and simply reacts to the world. Even though Link is shown as a real person in the game, he has no distinct attributes, only the ones a player projects onto him.

The Gameplay is the Story

When I first began simulating starships, I found the moments that were most story intense were the least engaging for participants. They didn’t care about two other characters arguing between one another to decide the fate of a planet. They didn’t care about the lore that set up the story. 

In a game, cutscenes are skipped. There’s a reason for this: The main character doesn’t need development, after all, the player is the true main character. And if the main character doesn’t need development, then the only kind of story events that matter are the ones that change the gameplay.

In games, a story is what happens to the main character and what they do in response. If something changes in the world, it has to be at least in part triggered by the player’s actions. And when something happens in the story, it can’t just have emotional weight, it has to mean something for the gameplay.

I used to play a typing game. You were in a cage descending into the depths and sharks would emerge from the darkness with words written on their belly. I’d type the words and the sharks would go away. It was fun, but the story wasn’t exactly engaging. In fact, the setting could have been replaced by a hundred other settings and I wouldn’t have even noticed.

This is the trouble with splitting story from gameplay. If halfway down, the operator radios in to tell me they’ve been in love with me for years, it doesn’t mean anything. The operator isn’t real, the love isn’t real. But if they radio in to tell me all our shark research has allowed us to slow the shark’s attacks, that does mean something. It changes how the game plays, so I become invested in that element of the story.

It’s hard to accept. The story of a game is only as good as how it affects the gameplay. This is where the phrase ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ comes from. If the gameplay and the story aren’t telling the same experience, the player disconnects from the half they don’t care about.

In the world of starship simulation, cutscenes between characters became a no-go. If I had something important to share, it needed to be delivered directly to the crew, and it had to change how they approached the mission.

Interactive Storytelling Workarounds

There’s a certain selfishness to a player’s approach to the story. They only care about what affects them. So how do you tell a story about complicated characters and nuanced situations in a way that makes the player pay attention?

I’ve found three ways:

Optional stories, passive stories, and mysteries.

Optional stories are exactly what they sound like. If 50% of players don’t want the lore, don’t force it down their throats. Sidequests are great, but some people are in a hurry. You leave the B-tier material in the game, but as optional content. Games are a bit like a walk down a buffet line. Everyone gets an entree, most people get the sides, and some people pick up a dessert at the end. In books, everybody gets the same experience. In interactive media, we don’t have the same luxury. It’s up to us to meet each player where they are instead of demanding they enjoy things they don’t like.

The idea behind passive storytelling is finding a way to sneak details into the experience without bogging down the gameplay. Gameplay is king. But if we can find a way to deliver a few lines of dialog without interrupting anything, then there’s no harm in it. This is how God of War told a character driven story, they’d give the player a level to traverse and the characters would talk amongst one another on the way. It’s like playing a podcast while working out. The player’s unrelenting drive to do things is fed, but the context of the story sneaks in with it.

Mystery is exactly what it sounds like. Players enter an area, make observations, and form their own conclusions about the situation. If anything, I think mysteries actually are better suited to interactive media than books. My most successful Star Trek story was one where the crew was coming to save a trapped squadron. When they arrived, they’d discover the squadron was gone. After a brief investigation, they’d discover a wormhole leading to who-knows-where. Without telling the crew a single aspect of the story, they figured it all out, and within a minute or two, they’d inevitably enter the wormhole with no plan on how to get home.

Conclusion

Games come with entirely different expectations. A reader expects a story. A player expects an experience. This post didn’t even discuss handling player freedom, needless to say that’s a rabbit hole for another day.

I had to make some adjustments when I switched from interactive media to direct storytelling. I imagine a lot of D&D Dungeon Masters go through a similar experience. They realize the main character can’t just be a vessel anymore, they need personality, background, and a particular view on the world. Every character can’t just talk to the protagonist anymore, they need to be living, breathing parts of the world with their own motivations.

Both mediums are difficult. Both mediums highlight different strengths. For games, accomplishment is the greatest payoff. For books, it’s usually something a little more philosophical.

If you get a chance, consider writing a story for a game someday. Nothing captures the difference in formats quite as much as watching your audience glaze over the moment you force them into a cutscene.

Logan Sidwell is a sci-fi and fantasy writer from Utah. He started as a writer and director in Ed-Tech, he now strives to marry his background in Computer Science and his years of storytelling to create fun, compelling ideas that explore new ground in technological and fantastical settings.


Check out my debut novel: The Human Countermove

December Update: 100 Days Since My Debut

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December already! It’s hard to believe my debut novel has already been out for 100 days. I set a one year sales goal for myself at the start of this process. A number drawn from speaking to other indie writers, and one I could be proud of if I hit it. 

We hit the goal on day 68.

Some of that was farmer’s markets, some of that was family, but most of it was reviewers sharing their thoughts and inviting others to experience the story. For everyone who bought my book and helped me reach my goal, thank you. There is no way I could have reached this goal without you.

Reviews of The Human Countermove

Now that the book has been out for a bit, I’ve been able to get real feedback from reviewers, family, and friends. 

At my extended family holiday party, I found out that about a quarter of the attendees had read my novel from front to back. As an artist, it’s difficult to glean meaning from loved ones’ feedback. We can’t always take opinions at their face value, especially when the opinion-giver doesn’t want to offend. This meant I had to resort to interpreting signals. This was my system: I knew at least a half-dozen relatives that had bought my book. If none of them mentioned it during the holidays, or only mentioned it in passing, it would have been a strong sign they couldn’t get through it. If they finished the book and mentioned a plotline, that meant the book was readable.

But neither of those possibilities were the case. My extended family had not only read my book, they had shared it around to other relatives and friends. So far, my favorite compliment was when I started telling one of my cousin’s about my next book and they said “Woah! Spoilers!”.

Here’s another signal I’ve been reading wayyyy too much into: At my local writer’s events, I’ve had four author friends approach me about my book. Each one of them has been eager to tell me how they would have made X plotline pop or amped up the pacing during section Y. I love hearing the different perspectives and approaches to storytelling. But in terms of signal interpretation, the number one message I took away was this: They read the whole story, stayed engaged the whole time, and only had minor notes on how to make it better.

I’ve now passed 12 reviews on Amazon. It’s hard to overstate how important getting to that double-digit number really is. Enough reviews helps new readers trust that the book really is a ‘book’ in a market filled with AI slop. So thank you again to everyone who has written a review on any platform.

Audiobook Underway

If you know me, you know I’ve worked as a part-time voice actor for the last six years. Thanks to a few connections, I was able to secure a recording booth for the audiobook version of The Human Countermove without going bankrupt. We’re 15 hours into the recording process and about three-quarters of the way through the initial recording. I’m anticipating bringing in an actor and actress to fill in a few of the voices that I think could be improved. The recording process should be complete by the end of January. After that, we’ll see how long editing takes.

A nice benefit of doing the audiobook is a thorough word-by-word proof read of the novel. There weren’t many errors, but my favorite so far is a moment when I used the word “basket” instead of “bracket”.

Project APHELION Draft 2 Complete!

Project APHELION has been my biggest focus this year. The manuscript is now sitting at 102,000 words. Second drafts are way harder than the first. It feels like 100 hours of constant decision-making. Things that were left for later suddenly have to be dealt with, hints in the first draft have to be cemented into plotlines, characters arcs have to lose much of their ambiguity.

But it’s done! The second draft has been distributed to a few alpha readers. I’m feeling really good about this story. It’s my first foray into fantasy and I gave it everything I had. A third draft is underway to pretty up the prose and fix continuity errors. It should be querying to agents by January!

New Projects

If you’ve been tracking my current projects page, you’ll see I have two new projects. PRINTHEAD and RELENTLESS. 

PRINTHEAD is my megaproject, and it’s been delayed. The rough outline was getting out of hand and one of the three key POVs had a lot of scenes missing. Plus I don’t want to start on my megaproject until I have a few more regular books out for consideration with agents. I will return to this project. I love it too much not to.

RELENTLESS is my silly project. It’s a spin on the revenge power fantasy genre with a much lighter tone (I wrote a bit about that genre here). My last two projects have been so serious, I decided that this time around, I’m having fun. Whenever an idea that makes me laugh, it goes on the page. I’m already 10% of the way through the first draft and enjoying every minute of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were in alpha reader’s hands by the start of March.

Closing Remarks

I’ve been getting closer and closer to my goal writing pace. Having a book out in the wild helps a lot. Having one project to edit and one to write is nice too. One of the hardest parts of being a writer is having a hundred ideas in your head but only being able to writing one or two a year. I’m hoping that problem will be resolved soon.

My website’s been getting a lot more traffic lately. If you’re new, thank you for dropping by! If you’re interested in my writing, I have a few short stories from last year available here and I post essays on various subjects here weekly.

Thank you all for your support. Looking forward to more stories next year!

The Best Art Isn’t Popular, It’s Specific

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

In 2022, I bought a ticket at my local arthouse cinema for the movie Living with Bill Nighy. All my coworkers told me it was terrible. They warned me the pacing was slow, the message was hollow, and the movie was boring. I saw it anyway.

I bawled in the theater.

It’s a good thing no one went with me, they would have been dealing with a blubbering mess for half the show. Three years later, it remains the best movie experience I have had in my life. When I came back to work, my coworkers tried to convince me I was wrong. They told me I had overlooked the movie’s flaws. They told me there was no way I had really enjoyed the experience. But the real message was clear: The group hadn’t enjoyed it, so I shouldn’t either.

Their experience didn’t change my opinion. If I had listened to them from the beginning, I would have missed out on one of the most emotionally impactful evenings of my life.

Living isn’t a movie for everyone. But for a few, it resonates deeply.

Broad vs Specific

There’s a concept in comedy. Broad vs specific. Broad comedy is the kind that everyone will laugh at. A slip on a banana peel, a silly noise, commentary quality of airline food. The most successful comedies in the world are broad comedies. After all, how would you bring in tens of millions in the box office if they didn’t appeal to everyone?

What people don’t talk about is specific comedy. Comedy targeted at a small group of people and appealing to their shared experiences. There’s a reason the cardiac doctor gets gut-busting laughs at the health conference and crickets at the local comedy club. “Drum Sound Check at Medium Sized Venue’ from Fred Armisen’s album 100 Sound Effects is a perfect example, funny for concert goers, totally unfamiliar to everyone else.

But the concept of broad and specific doesn’t end at comedy. It extends into every marketable genre. In music, broad pop music covers dancing in a nightclub while specific country music tells the tragedy of growing up in a particular part of the south. Most importantly, the concept of broad and specific applies to art. Broad art covers wide themes and topics with mass appeal, while the specific speaks to the soul of an individual.

Producing any piece of art meant to generate income means the art must be broad in nature. To be profitable, the artist walks a difficult tightwire: Tell a story specific enough to engage the audience but broad enough to appeal to everyone.

The NYTimes recently released a ‘top 100 films of all time’ list based on a poll of hundreds of industry insiders. What they found was that most of the films on the list were made by a single director with a singular vision. Artists who had managed to dance the difficult dance and produce a story that was both appealing to an audience, and told from a distinct and specific perspective.

A Bored Audience

There’s a vibe in the world today. If you ask your coworker what they think of the movie industry, they’ll probably tell you that everything has gotten a little samey. It’s not true, but it reflects a problem: Many of the movies in theaters these days are so broad they all feel like the same thing.

Modern film finance can only justify a movie going into theaters if it’s going to earn tens of millions of dollars. The broadest movies imaginable. This doesn’t mean specific stories aren’t being produced. They just skip the theaters and get dropped straight into the vast ocean of streaming services.

It poses a problem for marketers. How do you find your audience when your audience only knows to look for your movies in theaters? I think this is why we lean so heavily on ‘genre’ these days. It’s easy to tell someone they’re about to watch a ‘horror’. Folks who know they like horror will tune right in and folks who don’t will move on to something else.

But what about the stories that can’t be put in a box? This is the greatest obstacle to auteur artists breaking out onto the scene. The artist can work on their marketing, but what really needs to change is the audience. We need viewers with the curiosity to try new things.

The Courage to Enjoy What Speaks to You

The thumbs-up and the thumbs-down are the ultimate judges. A simple ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I read a book recently, A Spindle Splintered. The author’s passion was present in every page, the words were delicately crafted. A story of a teen girl with an obsession with Sleeping Beauty.

It wasn’t for me.

It wasn’t that the book was bad, or even that the story was uncompelling. Only that its message was completely unaligned with my background. How does a person review a book like that? A thumbs-down since it didn’t appeal to me, a thumbs-up because I could imagine how the story might resonate with someone else?

Enjoying Living (2022) was a lonely experience. Everyone else at my job had given the thing a thumbs-down, and according to the rules of Rotten Tomatoes, that meant it wasn’t worth watching. I think if each of them had taken the time on their own to reflect on the story, they might have realized it wasn’t the case that the movie was bad, only that it didn’t appeal to them.

Disagreeing with the crowd takes courage. Recommending a specific piece of art can be oddly vulnerable. I think all of us want to know that our artistic taste is ‘good’. But that’s where we confuse the purpose of art. It’s not always there to be enjoyed, it’s there to touch our soul and help us make sense of the world.

Lately, when I hear a movie is polarizing, I buy a ticket. Polarizing doesn’t mean bad, it means its message is specific and only resonates with some of its watchers.

If you get the chance, I recommend you do the same. There’s a piece of art out there for everyone. A specific story that will speak to you on a personal level like no broad art could. The only way to find it is to search. And the only way to truly appreciate it is to have the courage to experience it for yourself.

A Review of My Novel from Guild Master Gaming!

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

This week I was delighted to receive an in-depth review of my debut novel The Human Countermove from Dan Yocom at Guild Master Gaming. Since release, I’ve come to realize my book’s number one audience is fans of games and strategy gaming. This review represents the viewpoint of an expert in that space, so I’m deeply appreciative they would take the time to consider my book and give so much fantastic feedback. Check out what they have to say!

https://guildmastergaming.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-human-countermove-by-logan-sidwell.html

We Need More Aspirational Art

/ Logan Sidwell / Leave a comment

Art holds a mirror to society.

Through stories we see aspects of ourselves and the world we live in. The Circle shows us a world where social media becomes ubiquitous and inescapable. The Fifth Season quietly highlights the bubbling fury of institutional oppression and racism. Neuromancer blurs the relationship between people and technology. Every time, these dark stories end in tragedy. A mirror that reflects a dark and cruel world where people in power serve themselves and sacrifice others without a second thought. 

These stories keep us grounded. They keep us connected to how the world really works. 

They’re also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Too many sad stories about an irredeemable world and people start to believe it. In a world with no principles, staying committed to a moral fiber becomes the losing move. We become cynical and jaded. Once a community stops protecting one another and each individual focuses on fending for themselves, it stops being a community.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. A mirror doesn’t have to highlight our worst instincts, it doesn’t have to reflect our darkest selves. It can do the opposite. It can show us our best selves, an aspirational vision of who we wish we were. Stories of idealists like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or of a new society like the utopian days of early Star Trek.

We need more aspirational stories.

In 1986, Star Trek: The Voyage Home, transparent aluminum was introduced as a curious futuristic invention. A novelty. But not to the chemists and engineers that watched that movie. Transparent aluminum now exists, a case of life imitating fiction. It’s not the only time this has happened. Mobile phones, tables, and voice controlled computers were all first Star Trek tools before they became our reality.

The opposite is just as true. War of the Worlds told the story of a highly advanced alien invasion involving chemical warfare, lasers, tanks, and aircraft. Fifteen years later, we saw almost all these inventions in WW1. Squid Game told the story of increasingly desperate contestants in a lethal competition, now the competition is a real game show (except for the lethal part).

We underestimate the power of collective thought. A politician achieves their ambitions by convincing enough people something is possible. A stock rises or falls not based on the company’s performance, but its perception. If an expert tells a country they are in decline, it becomes true.

So what happens when the only stories we tell of the future are dark and cynical? Black Mirror stops being a warning and instead becomes a checklist. Every person sees every other person’s action in the worst possible light. Billionaires take notes on dystopian stories and program them into their product. The scientists that grow up on these stories fear the consequences of their inventions.

In 2023, Alexander MacDonald, NASA’s chief economist said about the impact of sci-fi writers. “We don’t go to space because we have the machines. We go to space because we have a culture of people who are inspired to build the machines.”

We need science fiction stories that imagine and inspire, that tell the stories of heroes saving the day and technologies that transform life in the most wonderful of ways. Most importantly, we need sci-fi stories that dream of a bright future.

But this isn’t just a problem with science fiction, it extends into fantasy and thrillers and mystery and every other genre. We keep telling stories about vigilante superheroes in corrupt societies. What about the leaders that shine a light on corruption and fight to make things better? Instead of cynical wheeling and dealing in the west wing, what about an idealist that manages to get a piece of impossible legislation passed because they inspire their peers?

It’s something I’ve been wanting to adjust in my writing. I want to dream of a better world and a better universe. I want to know that the stories I write inspire a materials scientist thirty years from now to invent bendy glass, or bouncy steel, or non-toxic mercury.

We’ve spent a long time critiquing the present. For incremental change, critique is incredibly important. It keeps us moving forward. But it won’t be revolutionary. It won’t reinvent how we live.

The only way for that to happen is for us to change the types of stories we tell ourselves. Fill the world with moral, upstanding heroes by telling stories of moral, upstanding heroes. Advance technology to improve the human experience by telling stories of technology that improves the human experience.

It’s naive. It’s idealistic. But that’s what storytelling is for. For us to one day live in a utopia, we first have to imagine it.

There’s a Tragedy Hidden in Confucius’ Analects

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The night after I read Confucius’ Analects, I slipped into something of an existential crisis. Nothing big, just your standard reassessment of life direction. The thing is, as much as I had enjoyed reading all the wisdoms, I really didn’t think they’d have an impact. So why was I pacing my kitchen at 10pm lost in thought?

The Analects are a collection of Confucius’ wisdom. Every line reads like a riddle, a clever metaphor with multiple meanings that only become clear after careful contemplation. 

Turns out, those lines weren’t written for people to read them in isolation. Half of The Analects are the oral tradition that goes along with. Two thousand years of teachers passed down context and analysis from one to the other that explains why Confucius takes so many potshots on the kingdom of Lu while praising music from the Shao. Thankfully my copy included much of that analysis, which turned the reading into a fun wisdom puzzle book. I’d read a line, consider it for a minute, then get a full answer from the analysts.

It ages surprisingly well, too. Much of the wisdom is on cultivating a moral approach to life, surrounding yourself with other moral people, and leading from the top-down to reshape a state. Any advice on how to appropriately serve your ‘lord’ easily extends to dealing with a boss at work, and it turns out ‘petty’ people are just as common now as they were in 500BCE.

In the early chapters, I studied each line like a student cramming for a test. This turned out to be unnecessary, as each meaningful piece of wisdom is repeated, reworded, and taken from multiple angles throughout the book. It’s a layering approach that slowly paints Confucius’ vision of appropriate behavior onto your mind through carefully paced character studies and metaphors.

Storytelling is an absolutely key aspect of The Analects. Confucius’ disciples are analyzed one by one throughout, their virtues and vices made clear. Zhong Yu, despite all his positive traits, was impetuous. Despite The Master making multiple interventions, he eventually dies in battle. His passing serves a lesson. A practical example of what happens when you allow certain character flaws to dominate your way of dealing with the world. A tragedy.

Zhong Yu is the most obvious of the tragedies in The Analects, but there’s one that’s far more resonant. The story secretly woven through the entire book. The story that made me run circles around my table in the middle of the night. One character that was present through the whole analects and whose life taught the most important moral of all.

Confucius himself.

By the time The Analects were assembled, Confucius had slipped into legend. The last few sections of the book talk about him as one with the sun and the moon. Down the line, he’s deified. But in the first half of The Analects, he’s a person. A wise person with a whole lot of followers, but a person. And he can’t find a job.

One of the central tenets of The Analects is that leaders shape the morality and culture of the people they are leading. A great minister can shape a state into a moral and upstanding place free of crime. I love this, and I tend to believe this idea extends into the modern day through corporations. A corporation run by a corrupt CEO will inevitably see their own behavior reflected back at them through their employees.

If you accept this statement as true, then talented scholars have an obligation to make every effort to put their talents to use. It’s a cruel world, but you can personally help reshape it by climbing the ladder and showing others the way.

Confucius wants to be hired. That’s his character arc in The Analects. He’s already learned and wise and kind and talented. The only thing missing is the opportunity to put those ideas to work. When he laments his unemployment, it pulls at your heartstrings that someone with so much vision is unable to apply it.

In the later sections, he encounters recluse scholars on the road. Wise men with perhaps as much understanding of the world as Confucius who, rather than taking on the challenge of leadership, retreated into isolation. They encourage him to give up, they tell him his dream of a moral world is an impossible one.

Despite this. Confucius persists. He pushes through the relentless rejections and cajoling of the recluse-scholars. It makes him the hero of the story. A person willing to take on the impossible day after day in the hope he will one day be given the opportunity to reshape the world into a better place.

But The Analects isn’t an uplifting story. It’s a tragedy. Confucius fails. He goes his whole life without the chance to reshape a state into his moral vision.

Yet his wisdom persists. A second chance at Confucius’ vision. A chance for the reader to step up where The Master failed.

This was why I was pacing my kitchen in the middle of the night. Confucius’ tragic failure haunted me and his wisdom echoed in my head. Go out. Apply yourself. Chase opportunity so that one day you can fulfill The Master’s dream of reshaping a piece of the world.

When I went into The Analects, I expected wisdom and wisdom alone. If I was lucky, it would give me a new perspective on how I interacted with others. Instead, I was told a story that tugged on my heartstrings. A tragedy that painted an aspirational vision of a more moral world. Then at the end, I was told the only way to make it happen was to do it myself.