On Motivation and the Co-worker Scenario Written by David McNeill
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how don’t tell is some day one writing stuff. It was one of the first topics they covered during my university’s writing course, but while it sounds simple, in practice “show don’t tell” means a great deal of things. And it’s also not always right. Sometimes telling is quicker and neater and better, if the audience doesn’t really want to be shown it. Sometimes if your story is from a closed point of view, telling rather than showing can reveal a lot about our narrator. More than anything, the rule exists to assist the craftsman in casting the vessel of their narrative against some northern star - a compass point, generally. A way to guide your work when doing the work of writing prose. Life Is Strange does something unusual, where it continually tells you about your relationship with Chloe and that you have an interesting past. This, despite Max having a handful of dynamic interactions throughout the game with side players. In particular, Warren, who becomes an accidental foil for Max’s increasingly crappy behaviour, despite his own deeply flawed expressions of affection (usb thumb drive aside). All to say the game can and does render relationships that are interesting, but crucially, we see these develop and change over the course of the game. For example, when an inexplicable eclipse looms over Arcadia Bay and the temperature drops, Warren delivers both a handful of exposition to the player, and moves closer to Max to warm her up. It’s not especially brilliant writing, but it is multipurpose scene work. From this one moment, the game communicates: Warren is still very good at science; Max is physically cold; Warren is still attracted to Max; Max is still comfortable enough around Warren not to immediately push him away; and the eclipse should not really be occurring which means some spooky time stuff must be going on. Breaking down scenes like this with a lot of the side characters reveal a similar pattern - because the B-listers of the story are rendered from archetypes, the writers leverage them to deliver exposition while subverting the archetypes, leading to a lot of dynamic, interesting little universes of story. Heck, the game doubles down on Warren’s complexity and has him end up with Stella in the alternate reality. Crazy times, indeed.
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DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
