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This is a list of how to generally see most pieces of writing work through the lens in which it was created. Why is this list necessary? Well for starters, nuisance is everything. The quicker one can spot nuisance, the faster you can break it all down into components and see a closer interpretation of the will of the author. As you read on, think about what connotations are implied in a piece you enjoy. Think of what word choices are being used and where it leads you to feel. This is not a list delving deep into the craft or style of a specific piece, but rather a list that provides perspective to the skeptical eye. Subtext and nuisance. Master these and you are well on your way to understanding far more than you realize when you analyze a piece.

1. When was it created?

This is a great thing to do when looking at any piece, from a work of literature to a sculpting in a museum. It is always good to know the time period it was made, and how old it is. This gives you a sense of the culture of the time, which is number 3. What this also does, is immediately open up further questions for interpretation. Though this is tempting I urge you to do a few more things before solidly locking your answers.

1. Who was the creator?

This really should be the first step, there is a very fine line between art and artist. A true skeptic will be able to read the artist through their work in time,be able to see the nuisance, just like a good artist will know how to express themselves through their medium in time, it is all just practice. It is also good to know the creator because one can decipher the immediate intentions of the piece once they realize what the artist is going for or wants to reflect.

1. What was the culture like at the time?

Cultures go through shifts and transform depending on the state of the inhabitants within that culture. As the current culture shifts and ebbs, the people change as well, and vice versa. If people in a society grow up in a specific way, the art will eventually reflect it, when the art reflects it, it seeps back into our culture as the new normal. This process happens whether or not one is in agreement or disagreement on how it came to be.

An example of this is Postmodernism. Look at how America was only 50 years ago and look at the nation now. In the arts, postmodernism is now a legitimate genre, for bad or for worse. It was created from a general distrust of modernism and traditional theories and ideologies, this matches perfectly with American society’s skepticisms and abilities to both think constantly about nothing and overthink about everything. How is that possible? No clue, but postmodernism is the sad result. This is why looking at culture in the past and comparing it to the present is vitally important in the arts.

1. Who is the audience?

Just as you can understand a piece by understanding the artist, you can also figure out a lot by whose eyes were meant to see it. Is it a painting by Michelangelo for the eyes who enter the Sistine Chapel? Perhaps it is a short book meant for those who are grieving, like CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed? It could even be a letter to a loved on but whatever it may be, knowing who it is addressed for opens up a world of interpretive tools as to what the meaning as a whole is.

1. What IS the piece?

This is probably the easiest thing to decipher… Unless it is a postmodern piece of art. Even still, is it a piece of literature? A letter? Screenplay? This can also be applied to physical pieces of art, sculptors, paintings. This can be followed up with — Why does the artist like this specific medium? What does he/she express through this medium that they cannot any other? Yes we have a lot of questions we need to ask ourselves but if you want to become a great storyteller; NUISANCE IS EVERYTHING.

1. What is the message of this piece?

Ah, finally we have arrived. After researching all the above and understanding the context in which a piece was made, we can deduce the cultural meaning we as a people can take away from it, the meat. Here is the tricky part— we can not be selfish here. Keep in mind everyone can have their own interpretation. However I invite you a little further to find a deeper sort of meaning. There is only one meaning in every piece that gets distorted as it makes copies in everyone’s imagination. The sentence, “That dog ate my sandwich!” It has only one meaning, though others may think differently. Take the word, “dog” for example. Naturally you will be thinking of an animal. I would like to pleasantly surprise you by actually speaking of a nasty person. “That dog ate my sandwich! Rick’s always eating everyone’s lunch like a dog waiting for scraps.” You see? It’s a simple example except the sentence itself has multiple meanings. By putting everything in its context, it helps us take that extra step for more nuisance to flow revealing even more subtext to be properly understood.

I urge you, storytellers, to practice this daily whenever you read and study a piece of culture or art. Everything in its context helps us as culture shapers understand the world around us. It helps us search for a deeper magic if that work is appropriate here. As CS Lewis wrote through the voice of Aslan in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe … “though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.”

In recent years, I have seen something happening to a large amount of the single players games that have been released. They have a lack of multiple save files. 

For those that do not know what save files are for in games, I’ll explain. Save files are a function use in all games and they are much more important to single player games. Save files allow us to save our progress whenever we are in the game. This allows us to come back to a certain section of the game whenever we choose.

Something that I have noticed in a lot of games as of late is that let’s say you finish a great game and you want to play through that game again but you don’t want to lose all the cool stuff you did in the first run of the game. What games normally would have is more than one save file for a whole new run of the same game. This way you could keep the first run of the game that you beat but then start a whole new one on a second save file.

Games like Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Marvel’s Spider-Man are great examples of games having more than one save file. Now, a trend I have watch happen over the years is that a lot of single player games only have one save file to be able to enjoy their games. Ubisoft games in particular being the biggest offender of this.

Games like Watch Dogs 1 and 2, Far Cry 4, Far Cry Primal, and Far Cry 5 all have only one save file. The list of games like this goes on and on. It amazes me that games with such awesome stories and large open worlds would only allow you to keep one save file at a time and lose all the work you put into the game.

A reason for this could be that gamers simply don’t stick around for the whole game anymore. It’s been stated that gamers only play a single player game through until about the half way mark and then get bored and move on.

So I have reason to believe that game devs simply started to not add these extra save files to their games which is understandable; However, I believe that there are a lot more of us that want to play through a great game more than once to see all that the story has to offer again.

What’s frustrating is that you don’t want to lose all your progress in your game just to play the story one more time. Could you imagine if you wanted play to through all of Skyrim again but lost all of your first save. That would be hundreds of hours lost in the blink of eye.

No one is really sure why we are losing the ability to have multiple save files and it probably is more technical in than I think. The addition of this feature to more games would allow us to enjoy the game again and again to really get our money’s worth.

We are starting to see that more games are bringing this feature back, Marvel’s Spider-Man being one of them and Just Cause 4. Whose prior game, Just Cause 3, did not have more than one save file.

Perhaps the lack of save files is something that will change with time and hopefully devs will see that we want to play through their awesome games more than once. Not by losing our progress in the process.

Currently playing: Celeste