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Self-imposed design limitations to stimulate creativity

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Chris:
While there's a lot more to this article on genre, this one part stood out to me:


--- Quote ---Lots of gifted artists have been drawn to genre because of its formulaic nature, and many of our greatest artistic treasures are clear expressions of genre inspiration. In fact, many artists routinely hailed as pioneers in their fields - Shakespeare, Cézanne, Virginia Woolf, Miles Davis, Akira Kurosawa - each demonstrated a keen awareness of genre and produced extraordinary work situated well within genre or other formal boundaries. These artists didn't steer clear of genre "limits." They embraced them.

Artists crave freedom, but most quickly learn that limits, even apparently harsh ones, can be more friend than enemy. In 1922, the great Russian director Stanislavski was invited to stage a production in America. He was asked how much rehearsal time he would require. "Six months," was Stanislavski's reply. Startled, the American producer informed him that it would be impossible to host (and pay) a visiting theater company to rehearse for that length of time. "Not a problem," replied Stanislavski, "Give me three weeks." The production was a triumph.
--- End quote ---

dacharya64:
Very interesting.

Speaking of "pioneers in their fields," I feel that there has been a lot of great innovation and many great authors in the interactive fiction world, but the true progress in this genre has yet to be made. The big names in the game are well-known to those interested in the genre but not much in the general public, and while there are some popular sites and companies set up around interactive fiction the genre--or even just the concept of interactive media--could be pushed so much farther.

Villain Mastermind:
One of the failings of the community may be the way they think of I-Fiction as a genre and limit themselves to certain conventions, but I can't say for sure as I have just recently thrown my hat into the ring.

Interactive Media, and by extension, Interactive Fiction is just a medium like canvas, clay, etc...

Chris:
Interactive fiction, from what I understand, is actually a somewhat restrictive medium. I've played around very little with Inform7, but it seems to very much favor a rooms/objects set of metaphors. Doing something like Emily Short's Letters from the Revolution (don't remember the exact title), or that one game with the shrinking page (anyone know which one this is?), or Candy Box, would feel very unnatural in Inform.

The same goes for most specific engines - Unity, RPG Maker, ren'py, Twine. They all invite, to some extent, a fixed way of thinking. This can be good or bad, but unlike the restrictions we're talking about here, it's not a planned, self-imposed restriction (usually). Do any of you have experience with those engines?

dacharya64:
I've worked with inform before on a very small project, and I agree that it's an entirely different mindset than working on an extensive narrative, for instance. It's quite difficult to pull of anything without heavily relying on rooms and the basic IF format. The same goes for other interactive fiction creation tools--Choicescript, for instance, has very effective use of statistics but you cannot change the looks as much as in Twine and you cannot hyperlink like Twine does. I've found myself having to plan projects around the strengths and restrictions of engines before.

Twine to me seems like a pretty open program, though, compared to other IF programs. It allows for rooms or choices within a narrative, and is openly acknowledged as capable of much more than just creating stories. I think this is why so many people are drawn to it.

On a related note, self imposed restraints apply quite well to noveling too: http://blog.lettersandlight.org/post/53522431708/use-self-imposed-constraints-to-write-how-to

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