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In which we are back...
Nov. 18th, 2007 10:00 amMade it to Tucson and back yesterday, and had a great time! We picked up a new vehicle (so for the first time in over two years we're a two-vehicle family again) which was really great. The Viking loves his new Xterra and it's got a trailer hitch and roof racks so we can maybe get back into playing SCA again. I miss making tangible things, and the Society was great for encouraging that.
There's a joy in a job well done in creating a piece of clothing or jewelry or a scroll/award or other Arts & Sciences projects that I just don't get from writing (I think probably because of the delay between my part of the project's completion and it actually manifesting into a tangible "thing").
This brings me to a conversation I had yesterday during our second stop in Tucson. We met up with Don Dehm of Pulp Gamer at the game day that Bo (aka Boyan Radakovich, creator of the card game, High School Drama) organizes at Espresso Art near the University of Arizona every month. We did a fun interview for the Pulp Gamer podcast (which I'll post here when it's produced). Afterwards as we discussed Pulp Gamer and the challenges facing a company that produces professional-quality podcasting, I pointed out that writing and podcasting face some similar problems when it comes to doing them professionally. The major overlaps I saw are two-fold.
First, they both require an investment of time, energy and attention for an audience to seperate the bad from the good, the professional-quality from the talented (or not-so-talented) amateur-level, and the enjoyable (for them) from those which are not. Many creative fields do not suffer from this issue, or suffer from it to a much lesser extent. With graphic art, be it drawing, painting, sculpture, fiber art or any other non-transitory visual medium, the audience is able to make a snap-decision as to whether the art is to their liking or not. Even an untrained viewer can look at a drawing and know in a fraction of a second whether they like it or not. And while some art forms may intentionally take on elements that untrained observers might mistake for amateurishness, it's usually pretty easy to tell someone who is just "messing around" from someone with experience, training or natural talent at the first glance - literally in the first fraction of a second. Similarly, viewers of static graphic art, regardless of the medium, can put two pieces next to each other and say "I like this one best" or "This one's obviously more professional" without any real problem or effort.
Not so with writing. Even a flash fiction (500 words or less) piece requires an investment of a minute or so to read; not much time in the grand scheme of things, but easily 30 to 60 times more than is required to form an opinion and impression of a piece of visual art. Short stories or longer books (be they fiction, non-fiction or somewhere between as most game materials fall) require a proportionately greater investment on the part of the viewer, in order to determine not just whether the reader will "like" them, but the writer's true skill with his or her art: plotlines, character development and pacing are every bit as much a vital tool to the writer's skill as punctuation and grammar, and while a reader may be able to suss out the extremely-poor writer from a talented one in the first paragraph based on skill with the language alone, it often requires a greater investement of time to determine whether someone is just "messing around" or whether they have skill, experience or talent with the medium of written words. As well, while it's possible to read two pieces back to back and compare and contrast them, there is not the sense of immediacy that one gets with looking at two pieces of visual art back to back. The time, energy and attention that is required to get an impression from a piece of written media is just so much more than that of a piece of visual media that it makes it difficult to do.
Podcasts are much like written material in this respect. You can't just glance at a podcast and know if you like it or not. You can't tell in the first second what the quality of workmanship and innate skill of the creator is. You have to invest some time, effort and attention into it, and even then it's harder to compare, say, two podcasts' quality than that of two websites, pieces of digital art or other static visual art forms using technology.
Now, while this seems very simple and logical, what it means is this (in my opinion). The general public is less willing to (or able to) judge amateurish efforts in written media as unacceptable than they are amateurish efforts in other visual art forms. And, conversely, people are less willing to spend the extra money to get a professional quality product (well written and edited in the case of textual products, and well written, edited and produced in the case of podcasts) than they are to, say, spend extra to have someone create a logo for their business or produce a professional quality website for them. People who wouldn't think twice about drawing their own logo, doing their own art for their t-shirts or producing their own website will balk at the idea of paying a writer/editor a decent sum to blog for their company, to craft their advertising text, or even to produce sellable text for them in the form of written text products (either by writing it for the company or by editing the company's product into a more useable, readable, professional quality end product). The same situation exists with podcasts; few companies are willing (yet) to spend money to have a professional quality podcast produced for them, in part because it's not as easy to tell at a glance, the difference between an amateur product and one that's professional.
The second point of comparison, for me, is the prevalence of the amateur producer in both writing and podcasting. The vast majority of people above the age of 4 in most first-world countries are literate. This is the textual equivalent of being able to draw a stick figure or sketch out enough of an idea to not get kicked out of your friendly-local Pictionary game. A small portion of that number have the education, skill, creativity and/or talent to be decent writers in a professional manner. However, because of the aforementioned requirement of time/energy/attention to discern good quality writers from passable ones, and because the base skill of written communication is something that the vast majority has, people tend to think that anyone (especially themselves) could be a professional writer if they just (Fill in the blank here... had the time, got a break, put their mind to it, knew who to approach, etc.) This leads to (especially among the gaming community, or other niche writing markets) the idea that good writing or editing is not uncommon and certainly not something worth much in the way of compensation.
Similarly, since anyone with a computer, a microphone and some very simple software /can/ put together a podcast, many companies feel that investing money for a professional quality podcast isn't necessary, when they could just have one of their members do it themselves.
But for those who are going to read the book (and who have read others to compare it to)... for those who are going to listen to the podcast, who use podcasts as an information medium, the difference between "meh" and "professional" is clear. And if you're a company who's using written media or podcasts as either a product or a form of advertising and connecting with your target audience, wouldn't you want to come across as professional as possible?
Thus is the challenge facing writers/editors and professional podcast creators - how do you convince a company that it's in their best interests to let you make them look as cool, interesting, put-together and enticing as possible?
There's a joy in a job well done in creating a piece of clothing or jewelry or a scroll/award or other Arts & Sciences projects that I just don't get from writing (I think probably because of the delay between my part of the project's completion and it actually manifesting into a tangible "thing").
This brings me to a conversation I had yesterday during our second stop in Tucson. We met up with Don Dehm of Pulp Gamer at the game day that Bo (aka Boyan Radakovich, creator of the card game, High School Drama) organizes at Espresso Art near the University of Arizona every month. We did a fun interview for the Pulp Gamer podcast (which I'll post here when it's produced). Afterwards as we discussed Pulp Gamer and the challenges facing a company that produces professional-quality podcasting, I pointed out that writing and podcasting face some similar problems when it comes to doing them professionally. The major overlaps I saw are two-fold.
First, they both require an investment of time, energy and attention for an audience to seperate the bad from the good, the professional-quality from the talented (or not-so-talented) amateur-level, and the enjoyable (for them) from those which are not. Many creative fields do not suffer from this issue, or suffer from it to a much lesser extent. With graphic art, be it drawing, painting, sculpture, fiber art or any other non-transitory visual medium, the audience is able to make a snap-decision as to whether the art is to their liking or not. Even an untrained viewer can look at a drawing and know in a fraction of a second whether they like it or not. And while some art forms may intentionally take on elements that untrained observers might mistake for amateurishness, it's usually pretty easy to tell someone who is just "messing around" from someone with experience, training or natural talent at the first glance - literally in the first fraction of a second. Similarly, viewers of static graphic art, regardless of the medium, can put two pieces next to each other and say "I like this one best" or "This one's obviously more professional" without any real problem or effort.
Not so with writing. Even a flash fiction (500 words or less) piece requires an investment of a minute or so to read; not much time in the grand scheme of things, but easily 30 to 60 times more than is required to form an opinion and impression of a piece of visual art. Short stories or longer books (be they fiction, non-fiction or somewhere between as most game materials fall) require a proportionately greater investment on the part of the viewer, in order to determine not just whether the reader will "like" them, but the writer's true skill with his or her art: plotlines, character development and pacing are every bit as much a vital tool to the writer's skill as punctuation and grammar, and while a reader may be able to suss out the extremely-poor writer from a talented one in the first paragraph based on skill with the language alone, it often requires a greater investement of time to determine whether someone is just "messing around" or whether they have skill, experience or talent with the medium of written words. As well, while it's possible to read two pieces back to back and compare and contrast them, there is not the sense of immediacy that one gets with looking at two pieces of visual art back to back. The time, energy and attention that is required to get an impression from a piece of written media is just so much more than that of a piece of visual media that it makes it difficult to do.
Podcasts are much like written material in this respect. You can't just glance at a podcast and know if you like it or not. You can't tell in the first second what the quality of workmanship and innate skill of the creator is. You have to invest some time, effort and attention into it, and even then it's harder to compare, say, two podcasts' quality than that of two websites, pieces of digital art or other static visual art forms using technology.
Now, while this seems very simple and logical, what it means is this (in my opinion). The general public is less willing to (or able to) judge amateurish efforts in written media as unacceptable than they are amateurish efforts in other visual art forms. And, conversely, people are less willing to spend the extra money to get a professional quality product (well written and edited in the case of textual products, and well written, edited and produced in the case of podcasts) than they are to, say, spend extra to have someone create a logo for their business or produce a professional quality website for them. People who wouldn't think twice about drawing their own logo, doing their own art for their t-shirts or producing their own website will balk at the idea of paying a writer/editor a decent sum to blog for their company, to craft their advertising text, or even to produce sellable text for them in the form of written text products (either by writing it for the company or by editing the company's product into a more useable, readable, professional quality end product). The same situation exists with podcasts; few companies are willing (yet) to spend money to have a professional quality podcast produced for them, in part because it's not as easy to tell at a glance, the difference between an amateur product and one that's professional.
The second point of comparison, for me, is the prevalence of the amateur producer in both writing and podcasting. The vast majority of people above the age of 4 in most first-world countries are literate. This is the textual equivalent of being able to draw a stick figure or sketch out enough of an idea to not get kicked out of your friendly-local Pictionary game. A small portion of that number have the education, skill, creativity and/or talent to be decent writers in a professional manner. However, because of the aforementioned requirement of time/energy/attention to discern good quality writers from passable ones, and because the base skill of written communication is something that the vast majority has, people tend to think that anyone (especially themselves) could be a professional writer if they just (Fill in the blank here... had the time, got a break, put their mind to it, knew who to approach, etc.) This leads to (especially among the gaming community, or other niche writing markets) the idea that good writing or editing is not uncommon and certainly not something worth much in the way of compensation.
Similarly, since anyone with a computer, a microphone and some very simple software /can/ put together a podcast, many companies feel that investing money for a professional quality podcast isn't necessary, when they could just have one of their members do it themselves.
But for those who are going to read the book (and who have read others to compare it to)... for those who are going to listen to the podcast, who use podcasts as an information medium, the difference between "meh" and "professional" is clear. And if you're a company who's using written media or podcasts as either a product or a form of advertising and connecting with your target audience, wouldn't you want to come across as professional as possible?
Thus is the challenge facing writers/editors and professional podcast creators - how do you convince a company that it's in their best interests to let you make them look as cool, interesting, put-together and enticing as possible?
