The Nintendo Switch’s Lesson For Writers

A common complaint I sometimes see among newer writers it that all the stories have been told already, and that there are no truly original stories. Like, 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? Or 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’s 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’s no need to have another. Or saying that since Pizza Hut makes pizzas, there’s no need for anyone else to ever open a pizza restaurant or to sell frozen pizzas.

To dispel this misapprehension, let us turn to the Nintendo Switch.

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 from 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.

And yet the Switch has significantly outsold both the Xbox and the Playstation. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune for Nintendo – the Switch’s predecessor, the Wii U, did so badly that the CEO of Nintendo took a fifty percent pay cut to help avoid layoffs. (One thinks American CEOs could stand to learn from his example, but that’s a different topic.) So to go from that to the bestselling console of the last seven years is quite a swing of fate’s pendulum.

So let us ask the obvious question – why did the Switch do better than its competitors, especially when it was so underpowered compared to them?

The answer is simple. The Switch only did the basics, but it did them exceptionally well, and doing the basic, simple things exceptionally well is often much harder than people imagine. It 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 Nintendo classics, you can play it handheld or docked, and it’s popular enough that developers want to bring their games to it whenever possible.

All that sounds simple, but it’s much harder to do than it sounds, and the basics done well are always a good thing regardless of the field.

In fact, that is traditionally part of Nintendo’s design philosophy. Nintendo has a thing they called “withered technology” (another translation is “lateral thinking with seasoned technology”), which means rather than trying to use cutting edge technology, they used tried-and-true older technology and think about developing unique experiences with it. In other words, they used well-established basic technology to build the Switch (it wasn’t exactly cutting edge even in 2017), and just tried to use it well.

How does this apply to storytelling and writing?

The same approach taken to writing can work out quite well. Don’t try to be fancy or flashy. Focus on the simple things and do them as well as you can, and that will probably work out better than trying to be flashy or being “creative” in a way that only ends up being off-putting to the reader.

So, then. When it comes to writing fiction, what are the simple things that you can do well? What is the “lateral thinking with seasoned technology” you can employ with writing a novel?

1.) Understand the genre you are writing in, and hit the appropriate tropes for that genre.

A lot of writers, when they’re first starting out, try to do too much. Like, a fantasy author tries to write a 12-volume epic fantasy series as their first try. Or someone who tries to write a book that simultaneously a romance, a magical realism coming-of-age story, and somehow also a memoir.

If you can’t clearly state the genre of your book, you’re going to have a hard time selling it, and you might also have a hard time even finishing it.

What do I mean by the appropriate tropes for the genre? That’s just a way of saying the storytelling conventions that readers come to expect in specific genres. In a happily-ever-after clean romance, the readers will expect no explicit scenes and that the heroine and the love interest will end up together by the end of the book. Romance tends to have a lot of very specific subgenres, but the rule holds for many other genres. Epic fantasy readers typically expect a quest, some journeying, and a band of arguing adventurers. Mystery readers expect a mystery with an actual solution at the end. Thriller readers would look forward to some well-executed fight scenes in a secret government building.

Some writers dislike the idea of writing to genre tropes. Think of it this way – if you go to an Italian restaurant and order spaghetti carbonera, but the waiter instead brings out a steak burrito bowl with a side of French toast sticks and maple syrup, you’re going to be disappointed. Are there people who would enjoy a lunch of a burrito bowl and French toast sticks? Almost certainly, but the vast majority of people who go to an Italian restaurant are going to expect Italian food. The same thing applies to genres.

And if you dislike writing to genre tropes, remember that readers dislike books written to genre tropes when it’s done badly. If you do it well, they appreciate it.

2.) A protagonist with a relatable problems.

Another important basic in genre fiction is a protagonist with problems that the reader can find compelling.

There’s an endless tedious discussion about whether or not the protagonist should be likeable or not, and it often degenerates into the Internet Standard Discussion about gender politics about whether or not a female protagonist has to be likeable when a male one does not. That completely misses the point. What makes a character sympathetic to the reader is the character experiencing a conflict or some sort of emotional pain that allows the reader to sympathize with them.

Whether the character is likeable is less important than sympathy.

Let’s take two examples from recent television – Syril Karn and Dedra Meero from the Star Wars show ANDOR are unlikeable but sympathetic characters, while Jennifer Walters from SHE-HULK is both unlikeable and unsympathetic. The difference between them is instructive for writers.

Syril Karn and Dedra Meero are both essentially unlikeable – Karn is a wannabe mall cop with puffed-up delusions of his own importance, and Meero is working for the Empire’s sinister secret police as a mid-level officer. Yet Karn’s circumstances make him emotionally sympathetic – he’s stuck in a dead-end job and living with his cruel mother. Meero is trying to do the best job she can and fighting against her obstinate and clueless colleagues within a cumbersome bureaucracy, something many office workers can empathize with. Indeed, it’s clever how the show sets her up as a strong woman making headway in the male-dominated secret police organization, only to yank away the sympathy when she brutally tortures one of the show’s protagonists.

By contrast, Jennifer Walters is both unlikeable and unsympathetic. She’s a rich lawyer who has rich lawyer problems, which is generally not sympathetic to most people. Indeed, she strongly establishes herself as unlikeable in the first episode when she lectures Bruce Banner (who in past movies tried to kill himself in despair over his condition, was hunted by the US government, held as an enslaved gladiator for two years, and brutally beaten by Thanos) about how much harder her life has been than his. As we mentioned with Karn and Meero, it’s possible for unlikeable characters to be sympathetic, but Jennifer Walters is so unsympathetic that the best episodes of SHE-HULK were when she becomes the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist like David Brent from the UK OFFICE or Basil Fawlty from FAWLTY TOWERS and suffers the comedic results of her own bad decisions.

What’s really compelling is when you have a likeable character who has a sympathetic problem. As an added bonus, it’s usually easier to write a likeable character with a sympathetic problem – striking the balance between an unlikeable character with a sympathetic problem is often a challenge. But if the reader likes your protagonist, and the protagonist’s problem inspire emotional sympathy in the reader, then that’s half the battle

What’s the other half of the battle?

3.) A strong conflict.

Conflict is central to storytelling, and if you have a sympathetic protagonist who has a serious conflict, you’ve got yourself the potential for a strong book.

Another way of saying “conflict” is “the problem the protagonist must solve, face, or overcome.” If the protagonist doesn’t have a problem, he or she might as well sit at home playing Nintendo Switch.

Fortunately, it is easy to think up a suitable conflict for your story because in Real Life, the potential causes of conflict are sadly infinite, and you can easily apply that to fiction. Like, if you write epic fantasy, you could have the conflict be the quest to stop the Dark Lord, or if you write scifi, it could be defeating the invasion of Space Bugs. Mysteries have a conflict built-in for the genre – solving the crime, finding the missing person, etc. Thrillers tend to be all about violent conflict. Conflicts don’t even have to be high-stakes – it could be a conflict with a rival at work, or not even involve a person at all, like trying to survive a natural disaster.

It boils down to that the protagonist must have a conflict, and the protagonist must take some sort of action to resolve that conflict. Stories where this doesn’t happen tend to become boring quite quickly.

4.) A satisfactory ending.

The ending is really, really important. You know how a joke isn’t funny if it doesn’t have a good punchline? A story with a bad ending, unfortunately, often becomes a bad story.

What makes for a good ending? The story’s central conflict has to be resolved in a satisfactory way that generates emotional catharsis. In fantasy, the quest needs to be achieved. In science fiction, the Space Bugs need to be defeated. In mystery, the killer has to be caught or the mystery resolved in a satisfactory way. In romance, the heroine needs to end up with her love interest.

Bad endings are ones that don’t resolve the conflict, or resolve the conflict in a way that feels like cheating to the reader. This can include the protagonist solving the conflict through no effort or struggle, or a “deux ex machina” style ending where the conflict is solved simply because the author wants to finish the book.

Granted, this doesn’t mean that a good ending is a happy one. THE LORD OF THE RINGS had a famously bittersweet ending – Sauron is defeated and the One Ring destroyed, but the Elves leave Middle-earth forever, and Frodo is too wounded to return to his homeland and instead chooses to accompany the Elves into the West. There are many other examples – a mystery could have the detective solve the crime but at the cost of his career and his marriage, or the protagonist of a military science fiction story could win the battle but be the only surviving member of his squad.

The ending must resolve the conflict in an emotionally satisfying manner that doesn’t leave the reader feeling cheated.

5.) Clear prose.

Finally, writing clear prose that unambiguously conveys your meaning is one of the vital basics for storytelling.

This is harder than it seems.

An anecdote about the topic – back in 2023, WIRED magazine ran a hit piece on fantasy author Brandon Sanderson about his Kickstarter. One of the criticisms in the article was that Sanderson’s books were written at a “sixth-grade level”, which is debatable, but that’s not the point. The point is that many people have the misapprehension that simple, clearly-written prose is somehow easier to write than more dense or complex prose.

It’s really not, and it’s easily proven.

Think how many people you know in Real Life who struggle to communicate through written communications such as emails and text messages. Think of how many times you have gotten an email from a manager or a client only to have no idea what the person in question is trying to ask for even say. Or how much family drama can be created by a badly-written text message or social media post. In all these examples, people failed to communicate their message through prose.

Therefore, as it happens, developing the ability to write clear, transparent prose that precisely conveys your meaning is a useful skill for anyone, not just fiction writers. It just happens to be especially useful for writers of fiction. When writing fiction, it’s probably best to remain as clear and concise as possible.

Of course, there’s a time and place for ornateness.

Like, you could say:

Write simply and clearly.

Or, depending on the character, you could say:

Therefore, let your prose be clear and unadorned, and not smothered with unnecessary ornamentations, indulgences, and digressions, so that your words may be as a clear pane of glass unencumbered with the grime that obscures the light of your meaning.

Both the say the same thing, but whenever possible, use as few words as possible, but make sure they’re the right words.

CONCLUSION

So, in my opinion, those are the five simple basics for a good book – 1.) understand the genre, 2.) have a protagonist with a relatable problem, 3.) a strong conflict, 4.) a satisfactory ending, and 5.) as clear as prose as possible. All relatively simple things, but if you do them well, I think you will probably have a good book.

-JM