I appreciated the experience of remixing... for what I was able to get done with it, anyway. It was nice to have the groundwork of an idea I’d already established through working with Twine; it meant I was already accustomed to mapping the idea onto the Twine format, and knew it was suited for the medium. I don’t think this story would work in any other format.
My draft version of this wasn’t much different than my project 2 submission, so I’m going to mostly address the changes made between projects. For the draft specifically, I’d added two new scenes into the theater (the tae kwon do and the improv group); however, I didn’t know how to flesh them out fully, so I disconnected the links for the final submission. That left me with two scenes to use, both drawn heavily from my own memories. During our workshop, Heather requested I elaborate on what caused the fight with my friend in the first place. Edit: see amended statement, page bottom. I also wanted to see how I’d implement some of the changes we discussed to go back in and “fix” memories. Hence, that scene saw a LOT of expansion, and slowly consumed the left side of my story map. It became an excellent exercise in narrative futility, and spawned one new ending for the story. I had considered putting the Clockwinder in the theater’s audience, but ended up deleting his appearance for lack of context.
I expanded the lore somewhat, adding to the Clockwinder’s history. The other two gods are both mentioned, now; their connections to the Clockwinder are things you’ll be able to ask him about in later versions of the present path. Unfortunately, I was not able to add much of that dialogue now, so I closed it that branch off on the invitation. I felt that would be the best way to avoid leaving the reader on a cliffhanger. As for what I did get on the present path, I drew on the trials and tribulations of my own attempts at meditation, and the fear of never getting through those trials.
Largely for worldbuilding purposes, I added certain details about the church that worships the three gods. I could not think of a name for it, but may end up going with “Horologism”, Its structure is vaguely Christian, while some elements of its practices are Buddhist. And I tried to explain the pilgrimmage. I’m using the word in a very modernized sense; it’s less a personal odyssey than a meditation exercise done at a holy site.
I can’t say I met my initial goals for the piece. I did not get to explore the multiple facets of the past or present, though I got through the planning stages of a nostalgia path. And having the Clockwinder engage in a dialogue was most of my purpose for writing this story to begin with, which I have yet to see realized properly. My goal in doing the remix ultimately became getting it done, given how crunched I’ve been for time. I made the mistake of starting with my expansions of the past instead of going right into the present, which would have yielded a much longer piece and been a far less tedious process. Perfectionism also works to my detriment.Note to self: if you're crunched for time, you have no time to waste on the perfect wording, the perfect anything. If I want any chance at a career in writing, I’ll have to find my way around that.
I’ve tended to go for more traditional storytelling formats in the past; technology was a tool of creation at best, but not a part of the final product. As much of a pain as technology has been for me this semester, I don’t plan to give this story format up, because I like the way Twine makes me think about my writing. Twine is a very expansive format, so you basically have to see the possibilities realized. It also makes it easier to know where I’ve woven in the threads I’ve planted.