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# If a book is like an armadillo, then can games be robot armadillos?
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/if-a-book-is-like-an-armadillo-then-can-games-be-robot-a/
- Published: 2011-12-14T17:41:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T15:28:39.000Z
- Description: Telegraph reported on a talk given by The Sense of Ending author Julian Barnes, where he equated the structure of a novel to America’s favorite desert armored mammal: He compared a novel to an armadillo – an animal with an exoskeleton and an internal one. The exoskeleton, he explained, was the overa
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/sxoh9.gif)

*Telegraph* reported on a talk given by *The Sense of Ending* author Julian Barnes, where he equated the structure of a novel to America’s favorite desert armored mammal:

> He compared a novel to an armadillo – an animal with an exoskeleton and an internal one. The exoskeleton, he explained, was the overall structure. In this case, he knew he wanted a short set-up and a long pay-off – about 30 pages to 90\. But he found that as he wrote, the head got longer and the tail shorter – the ratio ended up being 50 pages to 100.

I’m working through *50 Cent: Blood on the Sand*, and even though the game has a ridiculous plot centered around a stolen skull and Tony Yayo having to help 50 Cent climb over walls, it seems that the game’s plot is also vaguely armadillo-y. Just goes to show that even though the guts of the beast might be a bit different, the form of storytelling remains the same.

\[[via](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8950706/Julian-Barnes-Why-a-novel-is-like-an-armadillo.html?ref=killscreen.com)\] \[[image](http://www.action-packed.net/images/sega/Hamster/Armadillo.gif?ref=killscreen.com)\]

*\-Drew Millard*