Category Archives: Craft & Skills

This month we’ve discussed great games that inspire, games that highlight effective storytelling, or that identify pitfalls in the creative process. We’ve also discussed some of the dangers of trying to port game scenarios directly into book form (review that excellent post here).

I’m going to visit that topic from a slightly different angle and discuss the effectiveness of finding avenues for creative input. It’s hard to build a great story, and harder still if we try to do it in a vacuum. Utilizing creative input sources can prove effective in developing foundational concepts for your story. The goal is not to try writing a book directly from a game scenario, particularly if it pulls in any material that may be copyrighted elsewhere. However, it is possible to utilize a RPG or other creative input source to explore some of the general concepts you might be kicking around as the foundation of a story.

For example, if you want to flesh out a new magic system, inviting your gaming friends to utilize that magic system in a game scenario can really help. They’ll try to break the rules, and they’ll try to use it in ways you never expected. The experience will force you to think deeper and broader than you might have on your own, and lay down rules and boundaries you had not realized you needed. This is particularly useful if you don’t have someone who makes a good sounding board to brainstorm ideas and plumb the depths of your new concept.

You can also explore other aspects of the world building in a game. What are the nations and races that exist in this world? Do they get along? What motivates them? What do people eat? What kind of money do they use?

In my family we play a customized RPG that utilizes only one 20-sided die for all decisions. It removes a lot of the technical hassle of similar games and relies more on the storytelling skill of the person leading the game. It’s also an excellent creative workout routine. I rarely plan out the details of a game beforehand, so am forced to come up with each element in a just-in-time delivery sort of way. I’ve found it helps break down creative barriers and triggers some exceptionally creative moments.

I’ve used this process as a way to explore multiple story concepts. Many of them prove mediocre or uninspiring, so we drop those and try something different. A few have resulted in ideas with lots of potential. Those I set aside for later exploration, or launch secondary game scenarios to consider further.

Once I’ve got what I need, I throw away the specifics of the game, including the characters, and start building my story from scratch – drawing upon the foundational concepts we explored through the game.

Storyteller — The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais, oil on canvas, 1870

But RPG gaming is not the only creative input I use, and it’s not even my most productive. Even better is good old storytelling. In our family we tell a lot of stories, and I’ve used that verbal story time to develop magic systems and explore plot concepts with my kids. It’s proven highly effective. Kids (2 of mine are teen-agers now) provide instant feedback, and they are brutal critics. If an idea isn’t working, I know about it instantly. On the other hand, if a story generates lots of enthusiasm from them, I might be on to something.

The danger there, just as with using RPG games, is to recognize that the novel you write will not be the same as the game (or verbal story). A couple years ago, I spent a lot of time developing a story line with my kids. They actually came up with the original magic system idea, which I then fleshed out and used to launch into a series of stories where we explored many other aspects of the world building. The resulting story proved so engaging that I decided to write a book based on all the material we produced.

At first I tried to follow the story line we’d developed, since we were all so enthusiastic about it. However I quickly ran afoul of the hazards lurking down that road. After those hard-learned lessons, I threw away that unproductive plotline and made a hard break – the story would not be a novelization of our hours of storytelling. Instead, I would craft a novel from the ground up, building upon some of the foundational elements we explored in that storytelling, but the plot and characters were entirely new. The resulting novel is a YA fantasy titled Set In Stone, which is now in the hands of my agent. Hopefully we’ll find a home for it soon.

Take Away: Use any creative avenue available to you to explore creative ideas, but remember the limits of what you can accomplish. Take the foundational elements, strip out the rest, and go build a great novel.

Where else do you turn for creative input to explore story concepts as you begin working on a new novel?

World of Warcraft: The Fiction Addiction

August 26, 2013

Quincy J. Allen

Craft & Skills Quincy Allen Storyline The Writing Life World-building 2 Comments

My name is Quincy Allen, and it’s been three days since my last login. Okay, okay, so that’s a lie. I logged in last night, but I won’t apologize for it.

Now that I’ve outed myself as one of those “lamentable” adults who dabble in MMOs, let me tell you why. Like a lot of writers, writing is not my only gig. I’m a tech-writer by day, operate a small but growing book design business by night, and do my writing in the wee hours as time permits. That means that I need to decompress from time to time. Slaying damn near any mob that gets in my way is a perfect way to accomplish it.

What can I say? It’s better than going Postal. Some people play golf. Some watch sports. I’m currently working my way towards the Pinnacle of Storms in order to slay Lei Shen who threatens all of Pandaria. Lei Shen’s power derives from ancient Titan technology, and the Titans were a race of elder gods who deemed the life of Azeroth unfit to breathe.

Over my dead body.

World of Warcraft has been a perfect environment to let off steam for someone who appreciates good storytelling and kilometers-thick back-story. WoW arguably has the most exhaustive canon of any game out there, and it creation goes all the way back to the game’s incept in 1994 in the form of Orcs and Humans. From those meager origins, a worlds-spanning history going back over 10,000 years has been born.

In many respects, that’s what has kept me playing WoW. There’s an almost never-ending sense of discovery as the main storyline unfolds for the players, and there are hundreds if not thousands of side-stories woven throughout the environment to keep someone like me intrigued.

There’s a lesson for all writers in what Blizzard has accomplished with their flagship product. History. If you’re writing contemporary fiction, then your history is written for you, and you can draw from that. If you’re writing alternate history, fantasy, or even future sci-fi, then you should do at least some work in creating your own canon. I can give one example that I use in the novel I just wrapped up.

It’s steampunk fantasy fiction set in the Old West. A half-clockwork gunslinger with magic-imbued mechanical limbs must protect a 15^th century vampiress from being sacrificed to raise a demon army. Simple enough, but the obvious question is, where the hell did the magic come from?

That part wasn’t as simple. I wanted to make the presence of magic in the Old West at least plausible in my head, so I had to alter history. Granted, this tidbit of data isn’t explained in the series I’m referring to, but it is revealed in another series I’ve started, which takes place in the same universe. Essentially, I had to assassinate a 13^th century Pope in order to have magic exist in the Victorian era.

Having done so opens up a wealth of possibilities in my writing and gives my rather critical notion of plausibility a leg up. Basically, I can believe in my own “invention” and build upon it as I see fit with cultures, characters, and histories that all have that single changed moment in history as their foundation. All roads lead to Rome, as they say.

This is a technique I recommend for all writers. While your story takes place “now,” you should have a strong understanding of “what came before.” Not only will this make your story richer, it will give you virtually limitless destinations that all have the same look and feel, because they all derive from the same point of origin.

If you’re writing the fantastic, then take some time to sketch out the timeline around your story. Know what’s going on in your world and have at least a moderate understanding of its history. Empowered with this knowledge, you’ll find that the depth of your storytelling increases by a factor of, and the creation of both sidelines and spin-offs is that much easier to write.

P.S. If you run on Kil’Jaeden, keep an eye out for a DK named Moondawg.

On Cannibal Dwarves and Other Character Problems

August 19, 2013

Leigh Galbreath

Character Leigh Galbreath The Writing Life 5 Comments

So, I’m sitting in a living room with a bunch of people I know only marginally, next to a friend of mine that I’ve known for years. This is a role playing group my friend has been a part of for years, and the campaign has been long established. In an effort to speed things along, I’ve inherited a player character, a dwarf, who seems awesome on the page, then I’m told, “And he eats his own kind after they’re killed.”

Um. Okay. I can roll with that. I mean, I don’t have to play it that way. It’s my character now, and that little oddity was far outweighed by an ability to kick serious bootay.

I should have known, though. I really should have.

We proceed to play the game, and I start to realize that my character’s cannibalistic tendencies are the tip of the iceberg. The next clue came when the game master brings in a non-player character who is supposed to be the group’s guide, the priest of some god…and he hates everyone. And I mean everyone. Come to find out, this guy is the group’s guide because they are cursed by said god for defiling its temple.

I figure, okay, I can roll with that, too. I like non-heroic characters. This could be fun.

And then one of the other players decides that his character is going to go perform basically a home invasion on a farm nearby. A couple of other players decide to go with him, and about half the room toddles off to have their jollies, and just when I think I can roll with that too, the first guy decides he’s going to rape the women at the farm.

Yes. He insisted on role-playing it. And yes, the GM let him.

I don’t know about you, but…seriously?

A few years earlier, I was playing D&D with some friends I’ve known for a long while. The guy running that game was laid-back enough to let us play any type of character we wanted, including non-heroic verging on evil characters. And then he proceeded to try and have a normal, epic-type fantasy campaign that requires characters other than non-heroic verging on evil. Just getting these guys to get together into the same room required one of the other characters to go completely against type (this irritated me). Never mind becoming a cohesive, cooperative group. In the end, we were all fried by a dragon, and some god or another gave us all a choice to either change into lawful good characters or die (this made me get up from the table).

After these experiences, I’ve come to learn a very valuable lesson. Well, three lessons, really, the first of which is never role-play with the first group–like, ever. The second was that role-playing evil characters can be, shall we say, problematic. The third was that forcing characters to behave against their nature is frustrating to the point of uselessness, but letting them run roughshod over you won’t get you anywhere.

The same is true when writing, I’ve found. Characters should always be true to their nature, and if you find you’re having to wrangle them into the plot, it’s possible they don’t belong in that story. On the same token, characters who decide to go their own way and get away from you can easily derail the story and probably lead everyone on a tangent that will mostly likely turn into a giant waste of valuable writing time.

And take if from me. Stay away from cannibal dwarves. Nothing good comes at the end of that road.

Where the Rules Come From

August 14, 2013

Evan Braun

Evan Braun Storyline The Writing Life No Comments

My love affair with board games began when I was a small child. Every once in a blue moon, our family would gather around the dining room table and play a board game. When I say “blue moon,” I mean it. It hardly ever happened, and I think the scarcity of these occasions was part of the draw. I was also fiercely competitive, which hasn’t changed much.

Back in the late 1980s, as I was coming of age, the first Nintendo console was brand new. Hot off the assembly lines. I thought Duck Hunt was fun, but oh my God was I bad at it. I always blamed it on poor hand-eye coordination, the same excuse I gave for being so dismal at baseball, football, soccer… well, any sport really, right down to miniature golf. (Turns out I’m not terrible at curling, only middling, but that’s a whole other post, which sadly will most likely never appear on this blog due to being so wildly off-topic as to be side-splittingly hilarious.)

So where was I?

Oh yeah. Nintendo. I was bad at it. I was one of those guys who struggled to get through the first world of the original Super Mario Bros. Those damned killer flower vines always crawled up at the worst moments, and don’t even mention the bottomless chasms. No matter how narrow the holes, I sent Mario and Luigi careening straight into them every time. It’s like riding a bike and trying to avoid hitting a tree while you’re staring right at it—harder than it sounds, trust me.

As I got older, gaming platforms got more advanced, but my aforementioned hand-eye coordination didn’t. I sat back while at my friends’ houses and watched Goldeneye tournaments drag on for hours. When they asked me if I wanted a turn, I politely declined, saying that really, no, I preferred to spectate.

What a crock.

So it was board games for me, but it was hard to find anyone willing to play them. And the selection wasn’t particularly sophisticated; on the top shelf of our hallway closet was a collection of ramshackle Monopoly and Payday boxes, the edges torn and the playing pieces scattered.

It wasn’t until college that I discovered board games could be awesome. My friend Tom invited me over to a games night one evening, and I learned about Settlers of Catan. I loved that game right from the start. I’ve played it probably a hundred times since—and only won twice, which is an ego bruiser, to be sure, but it never stopped me from coming back for more punishment. Today, I get together with my board-gaming buddies about once a month, and we’re always trying out new releases from overseas. It’s a bit pretentious and snobby, yes, and that’s how I like it. And sometimes I even win!

There’s a point to all this beyond a sprawling personal history, I swear.

For as long as I dabbled with games, I also dabbled with writing, but never did the two meet. They were unrelated activities. One had nothing to do with the other. After all, games had rules, and my gestational stories did not. It was years before I discovered structure. Half of the fun of writing was finding out what happened at the end. I suppose some writers still work this way, though at least they usually impose structure after the fact.

Well, games and stories had a lot more in common than I thought. If they’re not quite siblings, then at minimum they’re first cousins. They have beginnings, middles, and ends. They have characters (actual characters sometimes, at other times just players, though the two are analogous). They have probabilities, conflict, and suspense. They have surprises and twists.

Without gaming, I’m pretty sure I would have discovered the importance of narrative structure, eventually. But it would have taken me a lot longer. I’ve now been told that my handle on plot and structure is one of my greatest strengths as a writer, so maybe all those wasted hours watching my friends play first-person shooters weren’t quite as wasted as I initially thought!

In fact, I know they weren’t wasted. For me, games were a catalyst. They were the bridge carrying me from thinking of plot as just the things that happened in a story to seeing them as intentional machinations. The main difference between books and games is that as an author the rules aren’t imposed on me anymore. Now I get to make the rules, and it’s the sweetest revenge.

Can you imagine how good I would have been at baseball if the team with the most strike-outs won the game?

I can.