Re: The Flat Andy - I think this is one of your best efforts. First of all I think you've done right to try something different from the 'I found this old scrapbook/floppy disc/laptop computer with lots of peculiar stuff on it' format, which is a perfectly valid one but was becoming a little bit predictable, and which also basically always has the effect of saying to the reader/viewer 'Here's miscellaneous heap of material: now you can find your own way through it at your own pace'.
In 'The Flat', the result of moving into a new format, where the presentation of the story relies heavily on the topography of a particular place, has been to give the work a much more cinematic feel; and since virtually all the interiors we see are half-lit, there is a brooding, noirish atmosphere which is well suited to your customary 'dark' subject matter. But the masterstroke, I think, is to count down every visit to 'The Flat', so that after a fixed period we always end with the smashing sound, the knock on the door and the hooded figure in the garden. This time-limit seems to succeed on a number of different levels.
Firstly, it reassures us that we're not going to be stuck inside the story for ever - in contrast to a lot of new media fictions, particularly nonlinear ones, which seem deterring precisely because we feel unsure, when we get into them, how big they are and how long it's going to take us to explore them properly.
Secondly, as a knock-on effect, it makes us much more inclined to revisit the story over and over, because we always feel as if we've been timed out before we managed to see it all, and we often feel thwarted because we were just getting to an interesting bit as the time ran out.
Thirdly, it makes the story a bit like an interactive game in a way, because there's something we're trying to achieve (a full exploration of the story) and there's something else which is making it difficult for us to achieve it (the time-limit), which means that we have to be quick and skilful and remember where we've been before in order to get as much information as possible from every visit before the time runs out. Reading the story becomes more than just a literary/aesthetic experience, in other words: it becomes a kind of contest.
Fourthly, because you're aware that your readers/viewers won't have time to read anything lengthy, you've been forced to prune your writing to a bare minimum, which in turn has obliged your to rely even more heavily than usual on suggestion rather than explanation.
Fifthly, this is a claustrophobic story anyway, and the sense that our visits to 'The Flat' are always being squeezed by a time-limit makes it more claustrophobic still. But lastly, and most importantly, the time limit puts us in the shoes of the child in the story (a little girl? now dead?) who obviously went searching around the flat every time the adults' backs were turned, trying to find out what was really going on there. We feel her sense of urgency and nervousness, which greatly augments the effect of the piece.
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