…I wrote an anticipatory piece about a little video-game called No Man’s Sky. Back then—ten years ago, eek!—No Man’s Sky seemed more of a vision of the future of video-games than something concrete. We were all enraptured by the idea of infinite exploration, a living universe populated by the unbridled creativity of algorithmic chance. And then came the fall—the disastrous release of No Man’s Sky that garnered it such negative reviews and perception.
It would be pointless for me to write about this, or indeed No Man’s Sky’s epic recovery and transformation into potentially the most beloved sci-fi exploration game of all time. Many other writers and journalists have covered this topic in extensive and sometimes hands-on detail with the developers, so there is very little I can add.
What I do want to share is how, ten years later, No Man’s Sky still manages to feel fresh. Slipping back into the game feels like walking back into a bright dream. There is an energy about it. A ferocious clarity of vision. And I think the core of this is something that we writers, artists, and creatives can learn from.
There are two intertwined elements that make No Man’s Sky such an immersive and, frankly, addictive experience.
The Glorious Vicissitudes of Chance
The first I have alluded to already: chance. The randomness of the worlds creates a feeling of personal discovery that is intoxicating. This is something we writers, in particular, often forget. The visual artist intuitively understands that the accident of a brushstroke, or a combination of colour, can create revelation. Glass-makers literally do not know how their final composition will appear, for in the firing process colours change, structures shift, and the whole warp and weft of the thing transforms. There is an element of randomness, of chaos, inherent in the art-form, and a part of its joy.
Rolling the Die
We writers, by contrast, tend to believe in working everything out logically. Yes, we receive surprises when our characters misbehave, but rarely do we leave anything to chance.
But sometimes, chance is what a story needs. Sometimes, rolling a die to see whether a character lives or dies, or where a party of explorers end up next, is exactly what a story needs to take some unprecedented leap into the unknown. I have used this technique, particularly with my GameLit / LitRPG series Levi’s Game, where certain locations and creations were procedurally generated.
We receive surprises when our characters misbehave, but rarely do we leave anything to chance.
Joseph Sale
I did this because the locations actually are procedural in the story, so it felt fitting to reflect this in the creative process and challenge myself—and my characters—with an unexpected outcome. Incidentally, if you’re curious about how this turned out, the first book in the series has recently been released on audiobook. Check it out here.
But procedural generation can be applied in any number of ways. Once you start thinking more like a Dungeon Master and less like a writer, you begin to realise that storytelling is pure play, and randomness becomes not your enemy, but a way of accessing previously inaccessible powers of surprise.
The Depth of Mystery
The great David Lynch once said, “The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.” And he is absolutely right. Human beings are called by the siren-song of mystery. We yearn to know the unknowable. Nothing intrigues us more than a riddle that seemingly has no answer. It is why Mystery fiction will remain evergreen.
Mystery is the second—and far less talked about—element that No Man’s Sky gets right. We awaken on a strange world with no memory of who we once were, only the stark reality of a destroyed ship, limited supplies, and the will to survive. However, it seems there is some kind of benevolent force in the universe, for we are given clues in the form of cryptic messages, guiding us back to the true path and towards some ultimate destiny.
We know so little, at the start of our journey. And the more we find out, the less it seems we know. There is a species called the Gek who leave ancient standing stones, imparting knowledge of their language to explorers. Why? There are robotic sentinels patrolling some planets and protecting their bio-diversity. Why? Were they left behind by some colossal civilisation now undone? Every answer prompts a new question. But most mysterious of all is the question of our own nature of why we are called to strive, survive, and reach the stars. It is an unanswerable mystery. The heart of the human condition itself. And somehow, impossibly, No Man’s Sky captures this.
Stepping Into the Unknown
As writers, we tend to want to explain our reasoning, to provide motivations for our characters, to ensure our plots hang together logically. I am not advocating we abandon this entirely. But what No Man’s Sky—and indeed the great masters of literature—teach us is that mystery must prevail. Without mystery, there is nothing to compel the human imagination. The unknown is not to be feared; it is our natural habitat. If we are to inspire and ensoul the world, we must go forth into that vast dark without fear, without caution, and fully embrace the divine mystery of the universe, for it is only in embracing the mystery that we can finally embrace ourselves.
Joseph Sale
Joseph is the author of more than 30 books, including The Book of Thrice Dead, Virtue’s End, Dark Hilarity, and The Claw of Craving. He is drawn to the baroque, the spiritual, and the mythic like a moth to flame.
He lives in the south of England with his wonderful family, where he obsesses over table-top RPGs, trading card games, book bindery, esoteric Christianity, and anime.
The 2006 Christopher Nolan film The Prestige, based on the novel by Christopher Priest, has a lot to tell us about how to write compelling stories.
Though there are many things to learn from the way it presents us with a story of two rival magicians, perhaps the most important learning point is the concept embodied in the title itself.
For those who don’t know, “The Prestige” is the third act of any magician’s trick, in which what they previously destroyed, or made to disappear, returns – to the delight and adulation of the crowd. As Michael Caine’s character, Cutter, observes, “It’s not enough to make something disappear. You have to bring it back.”
“It’s not enough to make something disappear. You have to bring it back.”
Our mythologies and religions are full to bursting with gods and human beings who return from death. From the wounded King Arthur, who will one day come again from beyond the veils of Avalon, to the crucified Jesus who lay three days dead in the tomb yet rose, to the dismembered god Osiris, who was reforged from scattered body parts by his wife, Isis, the list goes on and on.
The recurrence of this image throughout history and across innumerable cultures is evidence that the idea of a “prestige” is hardwired into our deepest psyche. We yearn for what was lost to return to us. The concept has filtered through into modern-day popular culture too: The Return of the King, The Return of the Jedi, even Superman Returns. There is a sense that true heroes, true saviours, come back to us when we need them the most.
Of course, sometimes this deep human need is exploited for quick cash grabs, as in the “endless sequel” effect in which our favourite characters just keep coming back time and time again. In these instances, often it is the case that the story begins to lose all meaning, because there are no real stakes; the heroes are invulnerable, and even if they seem to die, they always come back without a scratch.
However, when this mythic principle is handled with sincerity and integrity, it can produce some of the most startling and moving moments in cinema, prose, poetry, indeed, any medium. The initial disappearance of the figure who is going to return need not even be via death; it can be just that: a disappearance.
Consider how Gandalf leaving Helm’s Deep in the second Lord of the Rings movie shapes the narrative. He leaves the story for some time, long enough we almost forget where he’s gone off to, but at the critical moment, when all hope seems lost, he returns to save the day (bringing with him the “lost” Rohirrim) in a sublime eucatastrophe.
I often hear writers talking about how they have “written themselves into a corner” by disposing of an artefact, character, or even a place. Many of these issues can be fixed by building the concept of a “prestige” into your fiction from the get go.
And on that subject, I always admire a writer who has the guts to kill their characters, and sometimes a character simply has to die, and die forever, for a story to end, for it to have any meaning. But whilst the bitter fruit of death, or loss, is sometimes what is needed to round out a tale, the far sweeter fruit of return also has its place. This is more true of horror, not less.
In Nolan’s 2010 film Inception, he remarked that “Positive emotion trumps negative every time”, and I also happen to agree with him on this front. A sad death at the end of a book can be devastating. But a “prestige,” a triumphant return, is infinitely more powerful; it shakes to the bone. Death, after all, is merely existential.
A return is transcendental.
In fact, it’s magic.
A sad death at the end of a book can be devastating. But a “prestige”, a triumphant return, is infinitely more powerful; it shakes to the bone.
Joseph Sale
Joseph is the author of more than 30 books, including The Book of Thrice Dead, Virtue’s End, Dark Hilarity, and The Claw of Craving. He is drawn to the baroque, the spiritual, and the mythic like a moth to flame.
He lives in the south of England with his wonderful family, where he obsesses over table-top RPGs, trading card games, book bindery, esoteric Christianity, and anime.
Unlock the Magical Creator Within – A Workshop for Fiction Writers with Joseph Sale
Unlock The Magical Creator Within is a workshop designed to help unleash your full creative potential using a mixture of psychological, spiritual, and most importantly practical techniques.
In this session you will explore the history of the “Muse”, the divine source of inspiration, and the first principles of establishing contact with the Muse; going back to early childhood experiences of beauty and how we can harness this in the now; practical exercises from yogic mudras (hand positions) to breathing techniques that centre the mind and open the channels of creative thought; and much much more.
Unlock The Magical Creator Within is your ticket to writing your best-ever story, one that is not only entertaining but also healing.
Your instructor: Joseph Sale
Joseph Sale is an editor and writing coach who’s published more than 30 books, including the acclaimed novel Dark Hilarity, the epic poem Virtue’s End, as well as ghost-written best-selling autobiographies and non-fiction books. As an editor, his clients have been nominated for the Bram Stoker and Splatterpunk Awards, been finalists in the National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Awards, and even submitted to the Pulitzers.
Now, Joseph Sale is on a quest to manifest the beautiful and divine in the world, and wants to show other creators, editors, and writers how to do just that. This workshop is based on his new release, THE DIVINE: Unlocking the magical creator within.
Workshop Includes:
Free Paperback or eBook copy of The Divine: Unlocking the Magical Creator Within(Paperback options depend on Amazon shipping options to participant’s location. Shipping is free.)
A seat at the live Zoom Class on Monday, October 3rd, 2022
Unlimited access to replay and workshop follow-up notes
Access to instructor for private questions
Workshop Outline:
0. First Principle of the Muse
An overview of what the Muse is and why we need the Muse.
1. Early Experiences of Beauty
Why is Beauty important how does it influence us?
2. Invoking The Muse
Practical exercises to draw down the dew of inspiration.
3. The Cave of Ideas & Wonder
Journey into the hidden depths of your subconscious and find your cave of ideas and wonder.
4. The Shadow Self
Learn how to harness your Shadow Self to produce greater art.
5. Becoming Magical
Changing your creative practice will change you.
Details
Zoom link will be sent via email on day of event
Access to replays will be sent after the event
Books will be sent out upon registration. An email will be sent within 24 hours to confirm shipping details. (Shipping is free)
If paperback book cannot be delivered to participant within one week of the class, the eBook format will be sent.
How can you create characters your readers can’t stop thinking about?
We are excited to have writing coach, editor, and author,Joseph Sale, back to teach us a groundbreaking method that will help you create deep and believable characters. Instead of having to invent what happens next, your characters will act out naturally. This makes it easier to write incredibly compelling narratives that readers can’t put down!
What You’ll Learn
Why it’s important to determine the deeper psychology behind your characters’ behavior
Why you need to know the difference between objectives and motivations
Why Motivational Mapping is better than Myers-Briggs and other personality-based systems
How motivators create interesting conflict for stories
The importance of the lowest motivator and how to use it to create believable conflict between character
Self-knowledge will help you build better characters. Find out what your own motivators are!
Discover and Leverage The 9 Motivators of Your Characters
How to write books that cast a spell over your reader and change them forever.
What is a book of power?
Our culture, and indeed many cultures across the world, are full of legends about magical books containing forbidden knowledge, sources of energy, or secrets that might elevate one to the level of a god – or at least a wizard. In my own travels and explorations of the occult, I have encountered many such rumoured tomes, all of which, to a degree, made the same promises: the power to fly, to create wealth, turn invisible, even to move mountains.
The greatest books, the true “books of power”, are themselves spells that work upon the unconscious of the reader.
One of my favourite occult theories around “books of power” is that of the oneiric grimoires – books accessible only upon astral or dream-planes. One cannot ever “own” such a book, one can merely access it in states of altered consciousness. Attempts to write these books down in full invariably go badly; madness and death seem to await those who try to defy divine decree and manifest the un-manifestable.
The occultist Kenneth Grant theorised that Lovecraft’s Necronomicon was one such oneiric tome, and that unwittingly the atheist writer accessed it through dream, leading to the creation of the Mythos we know today. Certainly, one feels Lovecraft “doth protest too much” when it comes to the alleged “fiction” of his writing, endlessly insisting in his letters to friends and admirers none of it is real, which surely would be so obvious as to require no justification. Unless, of course, deep down Lovecraft himself feared maybe some of it was real.
Now that’s a scary thought.
I have my own collection of grimoires. I possess books once banned, books containing ritual methodologies which would make most peoples’ skin crawl, books of which only a few hundred copies exist in the entire world. There is one tome I possess which is referred to by those in my circle as simply “his black book”, and despite the courage, strength (or indeed skepticism) of my friends, they refuse to read even a line of it. The irony of this is that my black book is by far one of the least potent talismans in my possession.
I tell you this not to “flex” my library, but merely to illustrate one important point. Whilst many spell-tomes or grimoires plead their significance by virtue of their inclusion of recipes for potions, ritual mechanics, or the lexicon of demonic, angelic, astrological, or elemental names, none of these books are truly magical, or powerful, in the most potent sense. Ultimately, many of these books rely, much like businesses do, upon assuring that “their formula works best” and will “produce results”. Whilst fascinating, and not entirely without merit, any power derived through deploying rituals or recipes learned from such books is circumstantially effective at best.
The greatest books, the true “books of power”, are themselves spells that work upon the unconscious of the reader. They use words as symbols which they bury deep within the psyche, only to activate them at a later stage, rather like the spores of a fungal node bursting into life within the mind of an ant. However, unlike fungal spores, which take over the ant and rob them of agency, these spores catalyst change not death; in fact, they precipitate far greater agency because they remove the previous shackles of limited thought.
They infiltrate the human mind through the back-door of subconscious dream-language. They speak directly to that which is buried deep within us.
I refer to these tomes – and they are rare – as “oneiric psycho-agents”. They alter and shape the dreams and desires of the reader, which in turn reshapes who they are as person. In some ways they operate similarly to a magic mushroom trip, though with far less ambiguity attached, and far greater precision and efficacy. They infiltrate the human mind through the back-door of subconscious dream-language. They speak directly to that which is buried deep within us. Such books are powerful beyond measure. Merely to read them is to feel one’s essential being changing, to open one’s perception to a whole new realm, to activate a dormant current within the Self.
A mage who can author such a book is not to be trifled with. Such writers have harnessed and understood the power of the Word. Words are, after all, magical forces. Words spoke the universe into being. We feel this every time we pick up a fantasy novel and read of worlds hitherto unmapped: the raw energy of unbounded creation. The religion of modern science may ever claim otherwise, as is its want to destroy human imagination, but the spiritual truth remains unassailable because it is experienced, it is lived.
As writers, we must not seek to write works that have only superficial power by virtue of what they include – whether that be popular genre elements, modern zeitgeists, new information, or pop-culture references. We should seek a deeper and more profound power: that of transforming the dreams and desires of whomever should read our work, so that they might become all they were ever meant to be.
As someone who helps upcoming writers refine and structure their work, I get a lot of questions about my craft: how I do what I do, the secret knowledge of how narrative works. All great writing is built on a deep philosophy which, at least in a healthy organism, evolves over time and with greater learning and understanding. Many people look to me for guidance about the underlying principles of narrative and how to work spells upon your reader.
This Patreon, the Mindvault, is built to give you the answers to these questions.
Once a month, I will share with you a Lost Relic – a piece of occult writing expanding on a narrative idea. For higher tier backers, I’ll also be sharing short behind-the-scenes videos about my creative process, the tools I use to create fiction and narrative, the hobbies that feed my creativity, and more. This is your chance to get up close and personal with a fully tentacled mindflayer.
