In this week's episode, we consider how the Nintendo Switch does the simple things well, and examine how writers can likewise do the simple things well to write excellent books. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 223 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 18th, 2024 and today we are discussing five lessons for writers from the Nintendo Switch, of all things. Don't worry, the analogy will make sense later in the show. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I am pleased to report that Ghost in the Tombs is completely done and is currently publishing on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. The links are already live on some of those stores. This episode should go out on the same day as my newsletter, so by the time this episode goes out, the book should be available at all ebook stores. If you are subscribed to my newsletter, you will also get a free ebook copy of the short story Ghost Tablet. So that is one of the many excellent reasons it is a good idea to subscribe to my newsletter. You can find the details how to do that on my website right at the top. My next main project now that Ghost in the Tombs is out will be Cloak of Illusion, the 12th Cloak Mage book. I am 31,000 words into that. I'm hoping to have that out before the end of November, if all goes well. After that, I am 11,000 words into Orc Hoard and hopefully that will be out in December, if all goes well. As I mentioned earlier, the audiobook of Shield of Darkness is out, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at Audible, Apple, Google Play, and all the usual audiobook stores. We are also working on Shield of Conquest right now, and that is being recorded as we speak. Hollis McCarthy is also recording Cloak of Spears and that should hopefully be out before the end of the year, if all goes well. This week, we're not doing Question of the Week because all my time was going to finishing Ghost in the Tombs, but we will be doing another Question of the Week next week, so watch for that on my website and social media. 00:01:54 Main Topic: 5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from the Switch Now let's go to our main topic for the week, five lessons that writers can learn from the Nintendo Switch. So what can writers learn from the Nintendo Switch? A common complaint I sometimes see among newer writers is that all the stories have been told already, and that there are no truly original stories. Why try writing a mystery novel? Haven't they all been told? Why try writing a romance novel? How many different ways are there for a woman to meet a man and fall in love? Why attempt to write an epic fantasy when there's already Lord of the Rings and Mistborn and Shannara? Haven't all the stories already been told? That is a fair question, but it misunderstands the nature of stories. It's as profound a misunderstanding as saying that just because you've eaten one cheeseburger in your life, there is no need to ever have another or saying that since Pizza Hut makes pizzas, there is no need for anyone else to ever open a pizza restaurant or even to sell frozen pizzas. To dispel this misapprehension, let us turn to the Nintendo Switch. It is not unfair to say that the Switch is one of the most popular game consoles in the world and is likely Nintendo’s second best-selling device of all time. The Switch is also significantly less powerful than its chief competitors, the various Xbox and PlayStation models offered by Microsoft and Sony. For that matter, the Switch has only received moderate updates in the seven years it has been on the market. Its internal components are basically those of a decent smartphone from 2017, yet despite that, the Switch has significantly outsold both the Xbox and the PlayStation over the last seven years. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune for Nintendo. The Switch's predecessor, the Wii U, did so badly that the CEO of Nintendo at the time took a 50% pay cut to help avoid layoffs. One thinks American CEOs could stand to learn from this example, but that's a different topic. So to go from that to the best-selling console of the last seven years is quite a swing of fate’s pendulum. So let us then ask the obvious question: why did the Switch do better than its competitors, especially when it was so relatively underpowered compared to them in terms of hardware? The answer is simple. The Switch did the basics, but it did the basics exceptionally well and doing the basic simple things exceptionally well is often much harder than people imagine. The Switch doesn't have a lot of the more advanced features from the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation ecosystems, but it doesn't really need them. The Switch is easily portable. It has a strong library of first-party titles. The loading speed isn't great, but it's adequate. It has Switch Online for all the old ...
