Welcome To my World

Hello and welcome to the little corner of the internet dedicated to the work and ramblings of the multipotentialite author, game creator and storyteller Jon Howski.This site is still very much in it's infancy and more content will be added in due course. If you want to be notified when new content is added or when new creations are released then please feel to join the newsletter by clicking on the "Stay In The Loop" button below.You can also get in touch directly by using "Say Hi" button - we're always happy to hear from people with a genuine interest in telling (or being told) stories.

Multipotentialite - it's a thing!

First and foremost you might be wondering what the heck the term multipotentialite means. Allow me to enlighten you.According to Wikipedia Multipotentiality is an educational and psychological term referring to the ability and preference of a person, particularly one of strong intellectual or artistic curiosity, to excel in two or more different fields. It can also refer to an individual whose interests span multiple fields or areas, rather than being strong in just one.By contrast, those whose interests lie mostly within a single field are called "specialists."Or to put it another way, a multipotentialite is someone who is incredibly curious about many different things (usually to an obsessive degree). However it’s not all sunshine and roses as many multipotentialites (this author included) often suffer from you could term chronic “shiny squirrel syndrome, being constantly distracted by the next new thing and struggling to finish what they start.One of the best online resources I found that really explained the concept and put it into perspective can be found on the Creative Hackers website starting with this particularly insightful essay https://www.creativehackers.co/posts/multipotentialite-the-happiness-dilemmaIs It considered a form of neuro-divergence? I don’t know and I don’t particularly care. I’ve come to accept it as an inseparable part of who I am and I prefer to think of it as my super power - the power to be interested in and excited by many, many different ideas, things and concepts. To put it simply multipotentialites are never boredAlthough multipotentialite is a modern term, the idea of someone with many passions is not new. Any student of history often hears mention of polymaths or Renaissance people. Multipotentialites have, indeed, existed as long as human societies.So what has all of this got to do with me?
Personally, I’ve come to realise that if I’m not being creatively satisfied for too long then I totter on the brink of depression and I’ve stood too close to the edge to not realise when I should step back into the light.As an author having multiple potential avenues to follow I can’t help but fly in the face of conventional wisdom regarding genres and series. Stick to one genre, write in a series. Sorry tried that, failed too many times. As a storyteller (I prefer the term storyteller to author as it means I’m also not limiting myself to one particular medium - see I've done it again) one passion of mine is investigating new ways to tell stories, not purely focusing on the linear arc of paper books but considering other aspects as well.

Published Stories

There’s no point calling my self an author if I haven’t published any books. Technically I’ve published two, a non fiction practice book to help learn the Ukulele and my debut effort as a science fiction author*.You can find details of them both and links to purchase them below.

But rather than just harp on about those books I'd rather take the space to tell you a bit more about the kinds of story I like to tell and why.So common wisdom (and for most people it probably is good advice) in the author publishing world is to pick a genre and stay in it. In fact what's better is to write in a series inside a genre and focus on read through to build an audience.However so many authors that I know get frustrated and feel limited when trying to "colour between the lines", true multipotentialtes know our strength lies in following different pathways and combining what we find in new and interesting ways.I'm a big fan of SciFi / Space Opera so it's only natural I'd try my hand at writing that. I also enjoy the works of Terry Pratchett, Rick Riordan, Dan Brown, Andy Weir, Hugh Howey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard and so so many others so the idea of telling stories in a single genre is an anathema to me.Actually it turns out that there is another genre, a super genre if you like that contains all the stuff that doesn't really fit into a single predefined box (a bit like me). So what is this magical place where all the interesting stories go? It's the speculative fiction area of the book store.You can learn more about speculative fiction HERE and HERE but in a nutshell it's an umbrella term for all the weird, wild (often darker), mashups where things come together in new and interesting ways.Turns out I'm in pretty good company as well as the genre includes such luminaries as Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Aldus Huxely, George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, both Chuck's (Palahniuk and Wendig), and Irving Welsh (to name but a few) within it's ranks.So if any of this sounds interesting to you (or you'd like to learn to how play the Ukulele) then please feel free to check out my (eventually) expanding body of work.

* Yes I am planning on publishing several more and this page will be updated as and when. Join my newsletter if you’d like to be notified.

Games

I've always held a soft spot for retro games, and by retro I mean the early 80's through to the end of the century (from the 8 to the rise of 32bit era). Don't get me wrong I still in awe of some of the games on my XBox 360 (and mind-blown by the Series X) - but that ain't retro!A passion for video gaming kickstarted my IT career MANY years ago before eventually moving over into web and app development.I still love simple arcade games but now I find I'm leaning back into more narrative driven games (Zork & Scott Adams Adventureland anyone?). I particularly like solo RPG's and the journalling ones especially. My multipotentialite brain is mulling over a few different ideas for a new series of games that allow the player to build up the narrative experience as they play.Sign up for my newsletter to get more info as these develop.

Software Tools

Not surprisingly a career in IT should feature a few software tools.Back in the day we typed in listings out of magazines in to line editors. As time passed many different software tools were created usually with the same purpose in mind - make creating things on the computer easier.For me typed listings gave way to the Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit. BASIC gave way to STOS with it's built in sprite and map editors. C/C++ gave way to RAD, which birthed tools such as the early versions of GameMaker and eventually the powerhouses that are Unity and Unreal that are setting the standard for storytelling. (Apologies to the countless other tools that have got skipped over along the way!)Application creation used to be the sole domain of the technophile elite but another movement has been gaining momentum over the years and that is the rise of nocode - not so much a single platform more an amalgamation of ideas and concepts that there's an easier way.One of my favourite nocode tools at the moment is Notion, what initially thought of as a note taking app on steroids developed (IMHO) into a full blown nocode solution when they embraced the idea of duplicatable templates. These templates allow for the creation of workbooks, educational materials, writing tools and so much more. I've built many tools using Notion and you'll find a few (aimed mostly at other authors) HERE. Take from these what you want, duplicating and reusing a template is easy but eventually consider looking under the hood and trying to duplicate them yourself as building your own tools is a unique path to deep understanding.

Recommendations

From time to time I come across really cool stuff that I think everyone will like (and by everyone I mean the people who are reading this site - because if you've already dug this deep then chances are you're a part of my tribe 😉 and there's a good chance that what I like, you'll probably like to (apart from pineapple on pizza, I'm happy to let the unbelievers slide).

Author Friends

The Future Of Storytelling

🚧🚧 Under construction 🚧🚧

So this is a fairly big topic and it'll be one I'll probably revisit from time to time as my knowledge and investigations continue.It's also a bit of a lofty claim to be able to predict the future and so this page will be dedicated to ways in which I think it may develop (and the associated tech that empowers it).For now this page might be a bit rambling as I collate my thoughts together. Apologies for that, to paraphrase what a very wise author once said - I apologise for such a long post, I would have written a shorter one if I'd had more time (in time this will probably get shorter as I organise it better).

Linear Storytelling

Let's start at the beginning (pun intended). Once upon a time someone (Aristotle I think) decided that a good story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and that it should follow a series of events in a logical order from progressing from said beginning to said end. The end.However as with most things that's not the end of the story, or in fact the entirety of the story either.So what is a story?A story is the retelling of a series of events that are causally linked into a cohesive narrative, ideally with lots of conflict thrown in to keep things interesting.This is story in it's most basic form and one we're probably most familiar with.

Non Linear Storytelling

By contrast non linear story telling takes the events and replays them out of order and often it's not until the end (or much further on) that all the pieces fit together and things start to click.
It can be thought of as a narrative device to add interest and mystery, a way of raising suspense. Think of flashbacks or flash forwards (if you're a fan of the show Lost). Pulp Fiction (by Quentin Tarantino's) and Memento (by Christopher Nolan) are examples of this type of storytelling. One thing to note is that it can offer require a higher level of engagement and patience from the audience to get the full experience.Non linear storytelling is often used in video games where parts of the story are uncovered as the player progresses, this provides the author with an extra level of difficulty as the pieces have to make sense and the gist of the story be understandable if not all the pieces are found.

Interactive Storytelling

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Collaborative Storytelling

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