I went to Griffin's book signing. AMA.
#Setup Griffin had a book signing for The Stowaway at the Chicago Humanities Festival today. It's a choose your own adventure novel, herein abbreviated CYOA. Adal Rifai was moderating/hosting.
I did pay actual American dollars to attend and get a copy of the book.
#Interview Here's what I found out:
- The superfan behind me was annoyed that he listened to 5-6 podcasts Griffin was in and didn't hear about the event. Nobody does it like the McElroys.
- Griffin was inspired by Zero Escape, a
mangavideo game series where you can see a map of where you could have gone. - Justin and Travis were bigger readers as kids than Griffin was.
- Clint does TAZ full time, apparently.
- For the TAZ graphic novels, they winnowed down 80+ hours of audio into 7 books.
- The writing process for the CYOA book was faster but scarier.
- It's aimed at middle grades, which is different from Griffin's games journalism writing.
- Justin, Travis, and Clint gave feedback.
- Griffin enjoys immersive theater, but Justin is the "biggest Sleep No More pervert"
- Andrew Lloyd Weber has gone to some Phantom of the Opera immersive theater experience 30+ times and mouths along to the music, which Adal found sad.
- This book apparently includes >!the floss!< as a plot point.
- Adal says Griffin is a better DM than Brennan Lee Mulligan. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
- Adal thought there was a Lord of the Rings reference with >!kicking something and breaking a foot!<, but Griffin says that was unintentional and hadn't noticed.
- Clint worked for WTCR, but Griffin is not a fan of country music.
- Griffin's advice is to make stuff without intent and don't feel discouraged by half-finished drafts.
- Griffin has tried to learn game programming.
- Brandon Sanderson has a free lecture series on YouTube, if you want to learn from a real author.
- Griffin described Battle Royale as a "Squid Game fantasy type thing"
- Adal said "this has no right to be this good" about the book.
#Audience Q&A
Are you planning on doing a deeper dive into the lore? — He's thought about it, but sequels are hard to think about. This story made sense as a CYOA book. But he'd be excited to explore the broader conflict.
Will you get into other genres/media? — White whale is a game. It'd daunting but his most familiar medium. Game dev tools are easier to use nowadays. He's tried Unity and (Game Maker?), but didn't have much success. He picked up Godot about 6 months ago.
Were you picturing scenes from a graphic novel perspective? — Prose was a big struggle. "Do I want to to write a words book?" he asked himself. He wound up writing a book with about 10 lines of dialogue and "didn't use a ton of what I learned" from the graphic novel process.
What was the process like in writing for a younger audience than usual? — First draft was weird. Every part of a CYOA is load bearing. Changing a scene and its place in the story can lead to lots of other changes. He was quite late on the first deadline, in part because he said "Kids aren't gonna like this." He then(?) realized he had an 8-year-old son, which is the early end of middle readers. So he asked himself what his son would like. He likes Nintendo manga. Griffin wanted to write a book that wouldn't be scary like the CYOAs of the 80s and 90s. He didn't want death, but there was still "terrible peril" and the prospect of being "flung into space."
How do you get over perfectionism? — He would love to have helpful advice. It's something he really has struggled with. He really wanted to stick the landing with TAZ Balance and worked "morning, noon, and night" on it. He was editing up to 45 minutes before publishing the last episode. And then he had a kid. They have a hired editor who "does incredible work" and so he doesn't get hung up on stuff as much. His advice isn't actually to have two kids, but it worked for him.
What's the TAZ writing process like? — It's changed a lot. He wrote Balance like a book, but that was unsustainable. He was trying to squeeze the players through his plot. Live shows made it click. He does less prep work now, which is better?! He then said he uses a process called "vines and landings," which I'll be honest, I didn't quite understand.
What were some other space storytelling influences for the CYOA? —He didn't read a ton of sci-fi/space fiction growing up. But he loved movies and TV. Firefly was a big influence. He really started thinking about it when everyone was stuck inside during COVID. The world is a big part of the story in fantasy, but in space, it's either humans being isolated or tight-knit. Cowboy Bebop, Spaceballs, Neil Stevenson, and Andy Weir were other big influences. Space is lonely. The characters/audience are either there for that or trying to fend it off.
#Conclusion I have an autographed copy of the book. The paper is a little cheaper than I expected, and the text pages are pretty blank. But the illustrations are nice, and there's an abstract map of how the story branches.
Also, I updated the Wikipedia image. He seemed surprised that somebody would want to do that.
This was serious, but feel free to jerk in the comments.