|
|
Xangles Blorkk:
Fusing Skits and Prose into Mush Update - July 2009
The current problem with skit-prose ("skip" for short)--and one of the
things contributing to the lack of material on the site--is the
increased difficulty of editing it as the material grows. You
can't edit skit-prose with a standard text, document, or html
editor if you ever want to revise anything. The Urgg's
stupidity
must have gotten to the skip griters (skit-prose Blorkk writers),
because we figured, well, just make sure to get everything right the
first time! It turns out that we're not in the thousandth of
a
percentage of human writers who can write final works in one
shot. So, in order to develop the medium of nonlinear
skit-prose,
we now have to get off our lazy grumples (if we had them) and start
developing a way to edit it, or it's almost impossible to write.
This is a nontrivial get-off-our-grumples task, because any
editor will have to continually evolve as the idea of
skit-prose
grows, and as we write more particular material. Consider the
following passage.
| -What's a frwoa? -It's probably like a really bad lavender rated horror film. =That's so contrived, 'cuz their frwoa text is lavender. I bet our subtitles are cherry. =I'm
sure they're pink, Dan. You're ridiculous cherry tank top is sucking
all the red out of IDS space-time within about a billion kilonanits.
My pink lingere, on the other hand, uses up a minimal red-hue quota. ||
*ZGRRGUGT*. Alright, we're in Dan and Kim's kitchen. Looks like
they're pink, and they're watching some old grade-B lavender sci-fi
film. Wait, Grorg, why are you cherry? >Glorgs
of Hell! You're right. The smorshal warmper must have misfired. I'm
in the wrong font, too. How am I supposed to help conquer Earth in
Arial?
|
Let's
say these are written in the order they're spoken; the first depth
(lavender) before the second (pink), and then finally the puke green
& rotten cherry depth. Then let's say a fourth
through
seventh depth is added. Then, for the eighth, the
writer
decides to insert a plot twist revealing the first speaker is actually
a time traveling Urgg, who ate some bad Okuakan plastic mulg and
developed the sudden need to get plastic surgery and impersonate a
frangles character, who use the word 'frwoa' (fractal work of art)
instead of the synonyms 'grwoa' (an Urgg frwoa) or 'xwoa' (a general
Xangles 'frwoa'). Then let's say it becomes a crucial plot
element for that Urgg to mess up and say 'grwoa' or 'xwoa' instead of
'frwoa', giving away a key clue to that if noticed would alter our
xangle (point of view) of everything that follows from the
first
depth to the eighth. In this case, the writer might want to
change the color lavender--as well as the spoken word 'lavendaer'--to
grape.
Firstly the word 'frwoa' has to be changed. Then
the word 'lavender' needs to be changed to 'grape' a dozen times if
it's mentioned that many times in the first depth. Not a hard
chore with a simple 'Find & Replace' editing tool, but then
this
has to be done in every
single
other depth that follows (or references) the first. If this
was
the first Area 51 depth and there were 51 depths, the same dozen edits
would have to be done on all 51 document files. Then,
the color of not just some, but every
lavender dialogue line in all
51 depths would have to be changed as well, whether we're working in MS
Word, Wordpad, Notepad, or an html editor. Finally, at a last
glance, maybe the writer decides the shade needs to be a couple notches
bluer! Same process, and so on, for every single small edit
in
any given skit-prose frwoa.
Editing becomes incredibly
tedious incredibly fast. Ideally, we'd like to be able to
change
the color of any given skip depth with a single click, and/or
change the symbol at the start of each line that distinguishes them
along with the color. And of course be able to re-edit the
material entirely, especially if a significant change is made, such as
re-writing an entire frwoa depth. Simple software can be
easily
written for this--such as a program that re-orders a text file of
numbered depth lines and inserts the proper depths into an html
file--but if the medium of skit-prose is to evolve, we would need skip
editors with more features as time goes on, such as a multi-featured
interface that would display the colored lines as you type.
(Like
a C++ editor will automatically color certain keywords as you program).
Or, re-color every single depth line to be a few notches
darker
or lighter, or a bit more blue, or yellow, or red. Then a
griter
might want to cut and copy and paste whole sections of a single skit
depth while it's intermingled with many others, instead of cutting and
pasting every single individual line.
Even more complex
potential uses now surface. Multi-depth sub-plots could be
organized into groups; maybe we want to add or delete a five-depth
commentary that isn't crucial to the story line.
Or, keep
the commentary, and have what it comments on forever a mystery.
As the idea of nonlinear skit-prose is currently presented,
one
could already make use of a full skit-prose word processor like
Microsoft Word. So of course, if the complexity of
what
nonlinear skit-prose is capable of develops, it could need something as
powerful as a small programming language to properly
handle complex plot depths (especially in a multi-writer
project),
that could be rendered or compiled into a final result. And
as
with everything, such a program could be used by a beginner to do very
simple things, or more complex things if a griter wants to learn more.
Of course, just reading
final works of skit-prose also would make great use of skip reading
software. To skip some skip and surf and sip some more, as
the
old Blorkk proverb goes. There are multiple complex things a reader
might want to do, such as punch up any given combination of multiple
skit depths to see how they interconnect, or adjust the colors or fonts
themselves to make reading easier, or to actually shift around the
depths to create their own customized re-arrangements of the stories.
It might sound complex and dizzying, but its just the first
contact with a new medium. Think of being exposed to poetry,
or
prose, or reality television, or a strange movie like Memento, for the
first time.
So, writing / reading software is the biggest
issue facing Blorkk skit-prose development at the moment.
Check
back as initial simple writing software is posted if you'd
like to
fool around the techniques yourself. Of course, actually
updating
current skit-prose material more than a few pages a kilonanit would
help, but that would violate the prime mandate of Xangles, Frangles,
and Blorkk: to galantly and tirelessly expand the vast boundaries of
hyping the material, to eschew the guilt of its eternal nonexistence.
And if that fails, the final last resort is of course always
to
point out that the material is just so complex, that you're
all
just going to have to wait until the end of time to actually read it, at which
time you'll be so infinitely entertained, that you'll finally
understand why
the end of time is worth the wait. (As everyone at the dawn of time always
says).
|