Puzzle Agent Novel
Pardon the Pun, but I had a "Novel" Idea. Why not take Telltale's next game and turn it into one of those crime Novels? So I got to work today and cranked out the first chapter of What I call "SCOGGINS: A Mystery Novel based on the Game 'Puzzle Agent.'" Here's a look at what to expect:
"It was a very normal day in Washington, DC. The Potomac River was running out into the icy Atlantic, the national Memorials were drawing thousands of tourists, and there was absolutely nothing happening in the J. Edgar Hoover building, the home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was enough to make a man go insane.
Nelson Tethers was located in department Z9: the department of Puzzle Investigation. It was the most criminally boring job in the world. Every time that Nelson tried to get a case, the FBI told him the same thing: no.
Nelson, in a case of extreme boredom, had fallen asleep on his desk. His mind had a habit of playing tricks on him. In a moment of randomness, a strange someone, or something, had strolled into Nelson's office. He couldn't tell, since they were dressed in a astronaut's suit.
Nelson was pondering who this was, when the figure picked up a pencil and scrawled out a message in his crossword puzzle. Nelson was terrible at reading upside down, so he was trying to figure out what the paper said.
Suddenly, the figure slowly, but surely, lifted up his visor, revealing some thing so horrible, it caused Nelson to scream at the top of his lungs.
Then, he woke up, still screaming. He noticed that there was nobody there, but he had ripped his crossword puzzle to pieces. He put it back together, which revealed that there, in fact, was something written on it: the word “Scoggins.” Nelson paused. What could it mean?
Suddenly, the phone had rung, which surprised Nelson. They told him that he had received a case. The eraser company that had supplied erasers to the White House had suddenly stopped their shipment of erasers. The other divisions of the FBI had been assigned to question the halt, but all they were given as replies were mysterious puzzles, which made no sense to them.
They were sending Nelson to investigate this mysterious and abrupt cancellation. He was excited to be out in the field again, but he was shocked when they told him the location of his next assignment: Scoggins, Minnesota.
Nelson's head was filled with questions as he headed to Dulles International. What had happened at the eraser factory? What was with the puzzles that would be involved? Who was the mysterious man who had alarmed him about his mission? And would he get a decent meal on the flight? Little did he know that the truth was going to come up to him and put a gun straight to his pale temple."
Be honest about my writing and please respond. I'll finish it after the game is released.
Chapter One
"It was a very normal day in Washington, DC. The Potomac River was running out into the icy Atlantic, the national Memorials were drawing thousands of tourists, and there was absolutely nothing happening in the J. Edgar Hoover building, the home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was enough to make a man go insane.
Nelson Tethers was located in department Z9: the department of Puzzle Investigation. It was the most criminally boring job in the world. Every time that Nelson tried to get a case, the FBI told him the same thing: no.
Nelson, in a case of extreme boredom, had fallen asleep on his desk. His mind had a habit of playing tricks on him. In a moment of randomness, a strange someone, or something, had strolled into Nelson's office. He couldn't tell, since they were dressed in a astronaut's suit.
Nelson was pondering who this was, when the figure picked up a pencil and scrawled out a message in his crossword puzzle. Nelson was terrible at reading upside down, so he was trying to figure out what the paper said.
Suddenly, the figure slowly, but surely, lifted up his visor, revealing some thing so horrible, it caused Nelson to scream at the top of his lungs.
Then, he woke up, still screaming. He noticed that there was nobody there, but he had ripped his crossword puzzle to pieces. He put it back together, which revealed that there, in fact, was something written on it: the word “Scoggins.” Nelson paused. What could it mean?
Suddenly, the phone had rung, which surprised Nelson. They told him that he had received a case. The eraser company that had supplied erasers to the White House had suddenly stopped their shipment of erasers. The other divisions of the FBI had been assigned to question the halt, but all they were given as replies were mysterious puzzles, which made no sense to them.
They were sending Nelson to investigate this mysterious and abrupt cancellation. He was excited to be out in the field again, but he was shocked when they told him the location of his next assignment: Scoggins, Minnesota.
Nelson's head was filled with questions as he headed to Dulles International. What had happened at the eraser factory? What was with the puzzles that would be involved? Who was the mysterious man who had alarmed him about his mission? And would he get a decent meal on the flight? Little did he know that the truth was going to come up to him and put a gun straight to his pale temple."
Be honest about my writing and please respond. I'll finish it after the game is released.
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Comments
Oh, I didn't mean as an actual, store-bought book, I was just going to print out the pages and put them in a binder. But, if TTG lets you, a "real" book would be awesome(possibly even bundled with a download code for the game).
Nah, movies are old-school. Make it a video game!
THERE'S ALREADY A GAME. THAT'S WHAT THIS IS BASED OFF OF.
Yes, you discovered it. I cannot hide any longer. I am... CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!
No...you don't say
The sheriff invited Nelson to the Moose Ear Diner to have some lunch. Nelson was hungry, so he accepted without thinking twice. Once the sheriff left, Nelson Took some notes:
I'm not sure if trying to adapt a video game to novel works very well. Usually, it comes off as unnecessary. And with this type of game, where none of the audience knows any answers to most of the mysteries we'd like solved, I'd think eventually you'd have to do some wild guessing. Without the puzzles, actually, this game is much shorter, so it probably wouldn't work out well as a book, unless you found some way to really drag it out...and considering the Grickle style and how usually everybody looks the same, it can be hard to describe the people in an interesting way as well.
I don't want to be mean, but I think your writing style is bland. In a narrative sense, you are setting the 'camera' very very far away from Nelson in a sort of '3rd person omniscient' kind of way, but you're writing in a more 'closed' mindset, so that any information we get is from Nelson, but delivered in a way that is 'he said she said' and so on. You could put more of Nelson's voice into the narrative so that it's more interesting, since you can't really write about what other people are thinking.
I'm also wondering about the dialogue, as in, it seems to not be in here. Dialogue and little conversations can really show the personalities of various characters. No dialogue seems strange and also a little boring.
Another thing to think about is small details. It's just another thing to draw the reader in. I've noticed in the second chapter, there seemed to be a lot that was just, well, missing. For one thing, Martha wanted him to stay and eat some hot dish, but where is it afterwards? There's no mention of Nelson eating it or even him noting that he liked or hated it. And wouldn't it make sense for her to give him the room key first before giving him some hot dish? I would assume she didn't just have tons of bowls on hand. It's not a fast food restaurant.
I know a lot of other people have said this tons of times, but there's a reason: Show, don't tell. If you just tell the audience what is what, then you just come off as listing a bunch of facts. It's much more interesting to imply or suggest about a person. For instance, you say Martha seemed to be cooperative? So show it! (Best way is through dialogue.) Bo needs to be crazy? You could have mentioned him twitching, whipping his head around to look at things nobody else could see, or even shared a little of his mutterings about puzzles and whispers and so on. At the end, with Nelson's recap, he mentioned the fence with scratch marks, but you never even mentioned it in the beginning. And I'm pretty sure that the fact that Bjorn just sent him around in a huge circle would have been somewhat annoying to him, but he doesn't show it.
And on the subject of that, you don't seem to be able to peg down Nelson's personality well. With no dialogue, he seems quiet and passive, both of which he's definitely not, and his puzzle genius seems to be more of second-hand gossip by way of narration. You tell us he found a puzzle, you tell us he solved it, and that's that. I sort of pegged Nelson as the type that was well content with his position at work but also very curious and eager to investigate anything mysterious. (Which is why I think he was willing to go up to Bo at first - crazy muttering guys are mysterious) He tries approaching a lot of life the way he does puzzles, but he's not impersonal, instead, very friendly. He's observant and down-to-earth. He can tell when he's in over his head and gets suitably afraid, (chainsaw-wielding women? Little red men? Puzzle Investigators aren't well-equipped for that sort of thing!) but he has a sense of duty and attempts to follow through with his job.
Also, I can't help but think you could have made some wry jokes about the government considering they have a department in 'Puzzle Investigations'. But yeah.
...Uh, sorry about all the criticism...I don't want to look like a jerk...but those are all the things I noticed about your writing.
No more questions! Just run! RUN! EVERYBODY OUT! :eek:
YES! ESCAPE! RUN AWAY!
In all seriousness, Seibert, you need to use great grammar and puctuation to write a novel that people would want to read. I don't think you exactly understand how to write a novel, either.
with grammar like that it will be the greatest book in history.
It very well could be the best ever.
There's no denying THAT.
Now that is just insulting!
he waisted tons of good episodes
you never heard of avatar the last airbender?
I said "He wasted a ton of episodes of Avatar the last air bender!"
I've heard of it, I just didn't understand what you typed.
they made a movie of it and it was easily the among the top worst. this director is famous for making aweful movies and he only ever made 1 good movie, only 2 were average while the other 7 were downright awful. still a novel by seibert about tdp sounds worse. although i just don't think sam and max would ever be a good novel (at least based of one of the games), if anything someone should try something new.
Translation.
Also, am I the only one here who LIKED "The Last Airbender"?
you sicken me sir. he sucked the personality out of that show, like a little leech. sure he had some fancy effects but the characters sucked! no emotion and no relationships made it suck. its like they aren't even the same characters.
I'm glad to know I sicken illiterate people.
Why don't you type with capital letters, then?
because i find it wastes time to hold the shift button and make sure i don't over use it.
Well, you're doing a fine and dandy job with that. At this rate, the last two useable keys will be the two shift keys.