On Writing Pixel Pulps - III

There is something about the idea of 'accumulation' in writing that has always appealed to me. It's not just about the day-to-day stubbornness of the craft—writing two or three pages a day—where, in a short time, you have a novel. Rather, it's the notion that accumulation can be used to justify anything.

I've never been attracted to the elegance of simplicity. Given a choice between minimalist industrial designs and complicated Goldberg machines, I don't hesitate for a second. Exacerbated complexity, redundancy, and gratuitousness are pillars of the kind of art I like the most.

In computer systems development, there is this concept of "refactoring," a procedure by which a developer optimizes code so that it does the same thing but in a more efficient way.

Faced with the idea of refactoring—which etymologically is nothing more than re-considering the elements of the code—I propose the idea of "accumulating." The code is not optimized; more code is written to keep the system doing the same thing.

This same principle guides the writing of our Pixel Pulps. When I was quite a bit younger, I read about the Finite Rules Paradox. Basically, this paradox posits that predicting the next element in a series is impossible because new rules can continually be added to justify any progression. For instance, 1-2-4-8-16... 32? But why not 999? There exists a rule—undoubtedly more complex—that can rationalize 999 or any other subsequent element.

Writing, then, is nothing more than adding rules to be able to narrate anything.

-- Bahnsen Knights is out now... You can even try out the demo if you would like a little taste before delving fully into the world of Pixel Pulps!