Notes, Reviews, Speculations

EPOCH’s weblog features criticism, craft essays, and interviews by editors current and former. It is updated regularly during the academic year, and occasionally during the summer.

The Writer’s Guide to Ludonarrative Dissonance
Matthew Bettencourt Matthew Bettencourt

The Writer’s Guide to Ludonarrative Dissonance

While there is no ludology to a short story, we bear a similar narrative burden: how do we make it clear to a reader what it is we mean to say? There is no “player choice” to contend with, but we do have disparate elements to wrangle together under the cohesive umbrella of “story:” syntax, structure, whatever other craft buzzwords you can think of. If our story is an ironic confrontation with high society at the turn of the 19th century, for example, how might we craft a first sentence to make all of that clear to our reader, to set their expectations, to instruct them on how to read the rest of the book?

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Interview: Alexandra Chang
Matthew Bettencourt Matthew Bettencourt

Interview: Alexandra Chang

But the mysterious part for me, and I think other writers probably speak to this better than I do, is that feeling of reentering the story and paying very close attention to my own reactions, instead of pushing aside the feeling that something's off. In life, there’s this inclination think, “Well, if I can’t immediately pinpoint what’s causing this off feeling, then just leave it as it is.” But as a writer, it’s hard to get away with that. You have to listen to that gut feeling of something being off and actually try to figure out its source.

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