Writing your worst nightmare

One of the most difficult parts of writing is to split or gut, to lay out emotions out there in the open for everyone to see. In an effort to do so, I thought up one of my worst nightmares and wrote it down. If this were to happen, I am pretty sure my mind would break completely.

I have even kept my name and my fiancee's name in there, since it is a retelling of my personal nightmare, and not fiction per se.
Context: imagine reading this as a preface to a novel.

On January 14th, 2014, the author of this novel received my letter of acceptance for the publishing of his work.

Overtaken by emotion, His tears of joy flowing to the point he could barely see the sidewalk his feet landed upon, he ran towards the school his fiancee taught at.

His fiancee had already left work, so he saw her walk towards - 

Then a car cut her life short.

He did not hear the drunk drivers' ramblings as he raced past his murderous car, towards his fallen lover. He was stopped by the sight of her fractured skull. Pascale McDuff-Rousseau was no more. I imagine the following hours were a haze, a wailing of screams and cries of hopelessness where no one could reach to him.

There is one thing we know he heard, though.

When the doctor came out to confirm his fiancee's death to Alexandre, I believe his exact words were: “I am sorry, we could not save the mother or the child.”

On that very moment, Alexandre's mind fractured. The news that he was to have a son, a heir to hold with pride, now a lifeless husk marked as medical waste, was beyond his means to cope.

The following work is a testament to a mind now gone. In honour of this bygone man, we published his entire work without alteration. Not even his typos, though they be few and far between, have been touched.

We owed it to this man to show him our respect the only way we truly could. Heal well, Alexandre, heal well.

The world is holding on for you, waiting for the day that you will return. 

May there be such a day.

Jonathan Davies,
Editor for New York Times Press

It is very difficult, perhaps impossible to write engaging stories without spilling out your emotions. I know I tend to write in a very Cartesian manner, to keep my shell intact. This is an attempt to liberate myself from this shell.

From Games to Art: the Evolution of Interactive Stories in the 21st Century

Interactive Theatre was born in the shape of Live Action Roleplaying Games, and it is still mostly limited to the gaming community. Dramatic, Anne Rice-like stories are played as a competition between players for success, and the mechanics of the game still rule most events.

There is nothing wrong with those events. LARPs are great things and satisfy their demographics.

Now, we need to conceive a parallel community for Interactive Theatre. The solution, I believe, is not in getting the LARP demographic to forgo the gaming aspect of their favored activity. They do not want to, and they do not have to either.

The solution is to get new people to try out Interactive Theatre. Some Broadway plays already have the audience interact with the actors or decide an outcome for the play. The Society for Creative Anachronism organizes many events for which participants are expected to dress and act as characters from a given era.

Bring together a crew that would like to act through a plot you'd expect from a Broadway play without scripted lines, dress as they would for the Society of Creative Anachronism, and resist the urge of competition present in the gaming aspect of LARPs, and you obtain a magnificient cultural event, one that would definitely be worthy of the name "Interactive Theatre".

 I hope I will see this one day.