Dining With Darius, the Duke of the Dutch: An Interview With Our Site’s Second Dutchiest Author by RKrallonor
RK: How'd you initially find the site?
DC: I guess that I was about ten or eleven years old when I stumbled upon chooseyourownadventure games in the Google Play store. Most of them were demos and had a paywall behind them. After I ran out of these demos, I tried to find games similar to these and thus stumbled on this site. Back then more gamey story games like MyVacation and Dead Man Walking had a lot of prominence on the main page. I remembered having quite a lot of fun playing them and spending a bit too much time trying to explore every nook and cranny of those games. Life happened and I forgot about this site for quite a while till I stumbled upon it again at the start of college. I wanted some English writing practice and always wanted to start a large writing project for quite some time, but never really got down to it before. This was the first site that popped up after a google search.
RK: You wrote your first story, Little Mage's Potion Shop, in 2021. For a first story by a new writer, it is remarkably vast and ambitious. Walk me through the process of developing this game. How'd you go about conceptualizing such a cool slice of game with many interconnecting mechanics? And what would be your advice to noobs looking to make a similar game?
DC: Haha, you do flatter me, but lots of decisions were made due to time constraints and pragmatism. Since I'd never written a story this big before, I wanted to create something that even if it wasn't fully finished, it would still have enough building blocks to be a decent story. So I came up with a structure where I was able to first write the beginning and the two main endings and add as much or as little of the middle parts (the whole room exploring part) as I wanted to. I used to play lots of storygames that had an emphasis on exploring new rooms and environments while solving puzzles, so this was how that mechanic came from. Implementing it was also quite a learning curve, because I had zero experience with programming. It was basically me drafting the entire story in Word along with notes to myself how these pages would link and interact in the story game and then looking up tutorials and begging for help in the forums since I had zero experience. I think the way it worked for me was to develop the story format and game mechanics at the same time so that they would complement each other better. For example, the whole game mechanic with the room exploration wouldn't have really worked if the protagonist was traveling to different places the whole time. My advice for beginners is to experiment a little and decide what kind of branching suits your story the most.
RK: You played a major role in the initial creation of the Thunderdome, and for many rounds, acted as the host. What was running the Thunderdome like? How'd you get into it? And what are your thoughts on what the Thunderdome has now become?
DC: I didn't play a role in the creation of the Thunderdome. It existed long before I even created this account and its first entries are still present if you dig through long enough. Mizal used to host them and I took over for a short time because I liked to read the entries first. I think the fun part about the Thunderdome is that you can see other people's approaches to the same prompt and their writing styles. It's also a much more engaging way to get feedback on your own writing and how to improve on your prose. Due to the format's competitive nature, it was also used as a way to solve spats between different writers on the site. It sometimes had the same feeling as wrestling with people placing bets and smacktalking beforehand, which was honestly sometimes quite entertaining to watch. I haven't been active very much this year, so I cannot say for certain what I think of its current format.
RK: You recently joined Prompt Contest 5, and you signed up for the prompt: A story about an abominable horror has come to a small town and that horror is YOU.? How are you feeling about this contest? Anything you'd like to share about your upcoming entry?
DC: I like writing horror stories, so I think this prompt is fun to do. It lends itself well for the implementation of unreliable narrators and interesting branching options. Since I don't have as much time anymore as I used to have, I will try to keep this project small. Let's say that I'm not in it to win it, but this is just a way to have some fun and get out of the shame pit.
RK: Your horror story, It's a Boy, is often simultaneously admired and is infamous for being one of the darkest and most edgiest horror stories on the site. I've read through it myself, and it is genuinely scarring. How'd you go from “Red Riding Hood” to It's a Boy in its final form? I imagine there was a lot of rewriting, cuts, and edits, that formed. And is there anything from the writing process of this story that you'd like to share with readers of the Gazette?
DC: I wrote this story just for fun after I had done two contest entries in a row. The idea came from an old writing prompt contest Endmaster had hosted. I did some research on the old ''Red Riding Hood'' fairytale and found that there were multiple horror stories inspired by this folktale. The original story was already quite gruesome and there were also some academics that said that it was an allegory for rape. So I only amped up the horror elements from the original to its extreme and thus It's a Boy was born. Originally Red Riding Hood in the first outlines was a girl, but I later changed it for two reasons. Some parts of the story wouldn't be as scary if the protagonist was a woman and I thought that it would be more interesting if a man played the role of a physically weak damsel. The hunter being Red Riding Hood's brother served as a way to ground the story's more fantastical elements and as an extra protagonist to keep the story going in certain routes where Red Riding Hood is out of commission.
RK: What books have contributed most to you developing your unique style of writing? Who are your favorite authors and how have they helped you find your own footing as a writer?
DC: I take mainly inspiration from older chooseyourownadventure novels like the Lone Wolf series, story games from the internet like basically most things in the front page of this site and also webnovels like the Wandering Inn. I learned that from their writing that things didn't have to be very serious and deep with flowery prose all the time in order to craft something memorable and fun to read. My favorite author on the site is probably BerkaZerka and Avery Moore. I really liked Dead Man Walking and The Price of Freedom.
RK: Tell us a bit about your on-site rivalries. You've been known to engage in friendly, good-natured competition with several other writers including Petros, Suranna, and Ben. How did these rivalries develop?
DC: I didn't remember having all that much competition with Suranna. With Petros, I like his stories. I think he is really good at writing horror stories, better than me and probably the reason why I had never beaten him in a short story competition. I think this whole rivalry thing started during our first Thunderdome match. With Ben, I stand by my case that his first entries were a pale attempt at emulating Endmaster's stories. It only has edge, but no soul in it. Plus it didn't help that I found him a bit annoying. I don't know what he is up to now, but I believe his latest story was better received than his other entries. So maybe check it out.
RK: Any future plans in running a writing contest?
DC: In running one? Haha, perhaps when I got a long vacation to have the opportunity to read all of them.
RK: What is the most ambitious idea you've had that you haven't been able to write yet for one reason or another?
DC: There was one and this was also my first project too. It was about a doctor and his son trying to find a cure for a disease that is rapidly spreading in the city they had just arrived in. I planned to have lots of political intrigue and stat managing in the story game itself. I chose to not write it back then because I didn't think that my writing skills at the time could do the story justice. My plan is that this story would be one of my last writing projects before I officially quit.
RK: I found Duke of Winslow to be quite an amazing and incredible fantasy adventure. I feel like the themes of maturing into your own person and handling past trauma were handled really well here. You managed to balance great character work with a really interesting and thought provoking theme of seeing monsters where there may be none. I tried to keep it as vague as I can to not spoil anything, but essentially, I really loved this story. What did the writing process and development of this story look like? How did your medical knowledge help with making Noel feel like a real medical student? And what are your thoughts on the reception it has received?
DC: This story was built from two elements. After receiving the feedback that I had gotten from Little Mage's Potion Shop, I wanted to revisit the open world format and semi-non linear story telling and hopefully see improvements from the first attempt. Another thing is that I wanted more Bloodborne-like stories; so stories that combine gothic horror and cosmic horror. The crux of Bloodborne was that it seemed to be a classic gothic horror game but later on it turned into a cosmic horror. The aim of the Duke of Winslow which was heavily inspired by Bloodborne, was to do the opposite of that. As for Noel being a medical student, I actually based him on Daniil Dankovsky from Pathologic and borrowed some of Noel's more interesting character quirks from him. My medical knowledge helped with some small background research like coming up with the street names of Winslow, but let's say that I've taken quite a lot of creative liberties with the medical aspects of the game. I was kind of surprised that this game has been received so well and that a lot of people liked it. This more gamelike format isn't really that popular nowadays so I'm glad that people still wanted to give it a try.
RK: What is a genre that you haven't yet written in, but you are interested to try?
DC: So far I'd written mostly fantasy, horror and romance stories. I think that in the future I might want to do a historical or biblical story game. I really like biblical musicals like Journey to Bethlehem, the Prince of Egypt and Jesus Christ Superstar. Stories inspired by the Bible have a certain earnest charm to them, so perhaps I will try one out.
RK: What is something, a specific character or story element that you would change and probably write differently if you wrote it now?
DC: I've unpublished it shortly after the contest was done, so not many people have read it, but in Saint Joris, I would have wanted to add a lot more story arcs to make the bond between the knight and the little girl seem more natural. In my published stories, I would have put more thought into the planning of Gay Old Time, because I think that there should have been a bit more supernatural stuff in the beginning of the story and the pacing really needs to be tightened in lots of places.
RK: What draws you to writing LGBTQ+ characters? You do a really excellent job of imbuing your stories with complex themes that do a great job of capturing your character's struggles, which extend beyond sexuality, but sexuality is a big component. Like, take Duke of Winslow. We have Noel, a trans man who has to come to terms with revisiting a place that reawakens memories that he tried to wash away, of feelings of being cast aside when he was a girl for his younger brother as the male heir, of guilt for killing his brother. How do you intertwine these major character moments and write mature themes in a way that feels authentic to the character?
DC: In many cases the incorporation of LGBTQ+ characters in my stories was because it made the story make more sense or more interesting than if I just wrote a character who's not queer. For example, in the initial outline of the Duke of Winslow, Noel was a cis man. However, I couldn't really think of a good reason why Noel would leave his hometown if it was certain that he would be the heir of Winslow. The moment that everything clicked for me was when I turned Noel into a trans man. Regarding writing queer characters or any character in general, there was one piece of advice that I often heard that I found pretty unproductive; write a woman like you would write a man, write a gay person like you would write a straight person et cetera. I think if you were to do this, that you would lose lots of interesting character moments that would really make them come to life. The fear of childbirth, a fear that is very common in transmen, is a huge part of Noel's character and almost all monsters of the story game were based on that fear. Noel wouldn't be Noel if he wasn't a trans man. Past experiences inform a character's current behavior.
RK: What advice do you have for noobs who want to write large and massive CYOAs?
DC: Planning is key to prevent headaches in the long run. As for actually finishing a story, consistency and splitting your main goal in bite sized goals is key! Instead of a 80k story, a much more feasible goal is writing 500 words and perhaps finish a chapter within a week. Writing doesn't need to be that deep. You are also able to write without inspiration and still have fun. Nothing needs to be a masterpiece and people don't expect that from you.
RK: How do you incorporate symbolism and metaphor in your works? It's clear that It's a Boy is an allegory for real-life rape, toxic relationships and grooming, and the subtle, insidious way that Misha interacts with Rufus was really unsettling. I really didn't like him, even in his human form, and I'm assuming that was the point. Do you ever worry if the deeper themes of your work may be missed by readers? How do you balance being subtle, so it's not obvious and heavy handed, while still being, clear embedding your themes in your story deep enough to where it's not a matter of subjective interpretation whether you meant a specific theme in your writing?
DC: If readers missed the themes of the story or misinterpreted what I wanted to convey, but still enjoyed the story as a whole, I would still think that I did a rather good job. My Dutch teacher once said that the worst a story can do is being boring and I like to agree. If a person puts a book down out of sheer disinterest, then they would never stick around long enough to read the any of the messages and theming. I honestly don't really know whether something that I'd written becomes to obvious and heavy handed. Most stories I write here were mostly for fun, so I hadn't thought too long about a deeper message.
RK: What is a question that you would have like to have been asked but I didn't get to? And how would you answer it?
DC: You had pretty good questions. I never thought that you would have gotten the clues that Noel was a transman. Oh, there is one question that I can come up with.
What is your favorite protagonist you have written?
I dislike every single one of them, because most of them were deliberately written to be either annoying or insufferable especially in the beginning of their character arcs. The ones that aren't, I actually found to be a bit too passive and a bit bland in retrospect. If I had to choose, I would pick Noel from The Duke of Winslow, because I had a real blast writing him and thinking of ways to make him even more pretentious and insufferable in the beginning of the story. I had a whole list of Latin phrases compiled just for him!
