Tag Archives: Writing

BQP board — The Barbie Queen of The Prom board

I’ve always been a big fan of board games. Although my taste in board games has become more refined with the likes of Dominion, 7 Wonders, Agricola, Age of Empires III and more, I had to start somewhere. And I started with Barbie Queen of the Prom (BQP).

First, some background. Growing up, I primarily lived with my dad and my brother. I had to sit through countless hours of He-Man, college basketball, pro basketball, G.I. Joe, golf, and occasionally baseball. While I do appreciate all of these things, let’s just say I paid my dues. So every now and again, my dad and brother let me pick out which board game I wanted to play, and I would almost always choose Barbie Queen of the Prom. And I’m just going to write it now so the embarrassment for them is over quickly: my dad or my brother almost always won. They always got to be queen of the prom! *Folds arms, grumpy face*

Anyhoo, something funky was going on with BQP. I had the re-boot version of the 1960’s board game, and apparently the rules weren’t any clearer in the 90’s than they were back in the 60’s (kind of like actual prom – ZING!). The basic premise is this: you start out with some Barbie bucks and with those you accumulate a dress, a hairstyle, a ride to the prom, and a boy to take to the prom (you didn’t have to pay for the boy, thank goodness). Then, when you got to the prom, you spin (sometimes over and over and over) until somebody gets to be prom queen.

But here’s the weird part – when you got to prom, if you landed on a friend tile (a token with one of Barbie’s friends on it), you picked it up. But the rules were extremely vague about what you actually did with this token. Before this point, every token accumulated was used in exchange for something. After some careful speculation, my dad, brother and I could come to no other conclusion but you could trade in one of your friends for an extra spin – that is to say: another chance to become queen of the prom.

What. The. (Youknow.)

All social conditioning from the first part of the game aside, what’s up with this trading in your friends thing?! That’s so not cool, man.

The moral of my story is this: when things aren’t clear, people can’t help but assume. In writing and in life, if you don’t make things clear, things will start to go awry.

Also, if something doesn’t ring true, people will notice.

All games take a bit of imagination and fantasy in order to come alive. Make sure that whatever you develop rings true and leads the audience in exactly the direction you want them to go (even if that direction is misdirection), or they may just start trading in their friends for a chance to be queen of the prom.

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Kristin Luna is a Marketing Consultant by day and writer by break of dawn. She prefers to wear t-shirts. Kristin, a descendant of the infamous Dread Pirate Roberts, is currently working on a Young Adult fantasy trilogy. When she isn’t contemplating marketing campaigns or writing, she’s crocheting, playing board games, figuring out yoga, teaching her cats sign language, reading, or getting in cabs saying, “To the library – and step on it!”. She is kidding about only two of those hobbies.

Always Bet On Black!

July 17, 2013

Kristin Luna

Craft & Skills Kristin Luna The Writing Life 1 Comment

The first movie I saw in a movie theater was Terminator 2. Because my dad was a preacher and we lived in a small town in Kansas, the theater owner decided that all the ministers in town and their families could come and see movies for free. We took full advantage of this generous opportunity, and while my dad allowed me to see all of the best action movies from the early 90’s, he forbade me to see Ace Ventura. As you may have already suspected, my dad is pretty awesome.

One of my all-time favorite action movies is still, to this day, Passenger 57 with Wesley Snipes. It includes some iconic action elements like a hijacking, an evil hijacking terrorist with poofy hair, poofy-haired henchmen, Tom Sizemore, and an awesome catch phrase: “Always bet on black!”

As it turns out, Wesley Snipes and Passenger 57 inspired me to write my very first story. Here were the elements, written by yours truly on my dad’s Smith Corona Personal Word Processor at 7 years of age.

1. Wesley Snipes. All good action films somehow incorporate Wesley Snipes. Thusly, I made him my main character, staring opposite Whitney Houston (The Bodyguard had a very special place in my heart and CD player at the time). Also, I needed a foil to Wesley Snipes’ seriousness and overall attractiveness, so I chose Mel Gibson as his witty sidekick.

2. The Marijuanas. I knew – at 7 – that drugs had to somehow be in the story. Either the Bad Guy had to be on them, smuggling them, or giving them to minors. I chose the latter. My Bad Guy, married to Whitney Houston, was the most infamous marijuana dealer in all of Los Angeles. One day, Whitney goes into their closet to look for a hat on the top shelf and, lo and behold, all of the drugs are there. (I asked my dad if I could put in a cuss word when she finds the drugs. He suggested “shoot” or “darn” instead. We reached a compromise with “Oh crap!”) She calls the police right away, because it’s the right thing to do.

3. A secret place to hide. Wesley and Mel are FBI agents tasked with keeping Whitney safe and hidden from her drug-pushing husband. I thought up an exotic place where most of my movie-story would be filmed – a place where no one would even think to look for them: Hawaii.

4. A blossoming romance. Oh c’mon, you knew it was coming. Wesley and Whitney fall for each other.

5. The twist! Drug husband has a dirty agent in the FBI who tells him Whitney is hiding out in Hawaii. Drug husband is happy to hear this, as he already has a drug ring in Hawaii and he needed to work on his tan anyway.

6. Cue huge action sequence with GUNS! A shootout ensues on the beach. The drug peddling husband’s henchmen get picked off one by one by Mel and Wesley. Mel gets shot in the shoulder, “Go find him! I’ll hold them off!” Mel says, and off Wesley goes to find that drug husband guy.

7. Like all good action movies, Wesley and drug man have a long fight that leaves them both exhausted. Wesley somehow wrangles his gun back, then says something moral and/or funny like: “Smoke this!” and shoots Bad Guy/drug husband.

8. The kiss. Wesley and Whitney make out at the end, Mel says something snide but funnier than: “Get a room!” The camera zooms out, showing an aerial view of the scene and the beautiful beaches of Hawaii.

And there you have it.

Whatever inspires you, pursue it. Movies are a fantastic medium to shape our ideas into a more realistic presentation. If you need to cast movie stars as your characters so that you can see them clearly in your mind, do so. If one of your favorite movies taught you a little something about story structure, use it.

And if you learn one thing from action movies from the 80’s and 90’s, it’s that you probably shouldn’t do drugs. Or Wesley Snipes will find you.

Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, and also what he looks like going after drug dealers.

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Kristin Luna is a Marketing Consultant by day and writer by break of dawn. She goes to bed at 9:00 PM. Kristin, a descendant of the infamous Dread Pirate Roberts, is currently working on a Young Adult fantasy trilogy. When she isn’t contemplating marketing campaigns or writing, she’s crocheting, watching action movies, figuring out yoga, teaching her cats sign language, reading, or rounding out her handmade Jadzia Dax figurine collection. She is kidding about only two of those hobbies.

Not So Final, After All

May 31, 2013

Brandon M Lindsay

Brandon M. Lindsay The Writing Life 1 Comment

For those of us who had video game controllers in our hands at the time, the year 1997 will forever live in infamy. While nary a year goes by that doesn’t make a gamer go squee, that year was significant in that it made gamers feel so much more than mere excitement. They felt anger, sorrow, surprise, frustration, hate, love, and loss-all in the same moment. That moment can be encapsulated in two words.

Aeris Gainsborough.

For the uninitiated, Aeris (or Aerith in the Japanese version) was one of the playable characters in Final Fantasy VII, one who *SPOILER ALERT* met her tragic end *END SPOILER* in one of the most pivotal moments of gaming history. The reverberations of that scene can still be felt today. The reason it-and the rest of the game-was so significant was because it showed us the storytelling capabilities of video games in spectacular, blindsiding fashion.

Of course, games had stories before then. Earlier entries in the Final Fantasy series, especially VI, are known for depth of characters, but not to the level seen in VII. Until then, game stories for the most part seemed to be little more than window dressing, or at least a well-kept secret. FFVII made storytelling a mainstream expectation.

The impact on me was deep. I was astounded that the state of gaming proceeded from the emotionless and abstract intellectual challenges of games like Tetris to experiences that could move you. Not only had Final Fantasy VII taken me to a world where magic was possible, but a world where the depths of human emotion were plumbed. I have no problem invoking a cliche, because there is no other way to say it: that game was life-changing.

I remember watching the credits roll at the end of that game and setting down my controller, and when I recovered from my several-minutes-long daze, I thought, “Gee whiz, I should write a video game script!”

So that’s exactly what I did.

I knew, then and there, that I would be a video game writer. I was resolved, even as I researched the job and discovered how difficult it was to break in as games became more cinematic. After finishing what I then deemed my masterpiece, the fabled “Final Fantasy-killer” that gamers have been waiting for without even knowing it, I realized I needed a game plan (sorry – I had to). After all, the game industry doesn’t work quite like movies-writers do not submit scripts that then get turned into games. More often, all the writing gets done while the game is in development by writers who have already proven their mettle. I had to gain some sort of writing credit that would elevate my name into consideration for that unicorn of a job, called game writer.

Hey, why not write a novel?

That was years ago, and prose has since stolen my heart-most of it, anyway. Part of me still yearns to get involved with the medium that set me down this path in the first place. Indeed, I recently signed on to an indie game startup as the writer, though that project has since been put on hiatus. For now, I’ll have to satisfy my creative impulses with writing novels and stories, even though I’ll never forget the love of writing that the Final Fantasy series instilled in me, nor will I forget the flower girl named Aeris who lived in a abandoned church.

The Heart Wants”¦

May 9, 2013

clancy

Clancy Metzger Reading The Writing Life 2 Comments

… what the heart wants. Right? As a kid, fairy tales were the reading fare. You know – Rapunzel (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Sleeping Beauty (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Snow White (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Cinderella (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after). The list goes on. And as a kid, I thought that was the height of romance.

So, when I hit my teen years, I had a firm foundation of romantic beliefs built up. What did I read then? I read Harlequin Romances (boy and girl have struggles, fall in love and live happily ever after). My allowance money went to belonging to a Harlequin book club. I chose the Historical club. Every month I got a box of four to six novels that were some combination of medieval romances, western romances and regency romances. I’d start with my favorite, the medievals, move on to the westerns and then read the regencies.

I read them voraciously and then would have to wait weeks for the next box. Back then, I’m not sure if my library carried romance novels or not. I don’t remember looking. Libraries do now though, I’m happy to say. In between, I’d read fantasies, sci-fi, biographies and whatever else my parents had sitting around. But it was all on hold once I got my new box of romances.

I’m grateful for Harlequin romances for taking up where my fairy tales left off and providing me and millions of women with stories that give us what our hearts want. Not to mention being a major market for romance writers for decades. I still read Harlequin’s and my first dreams of writing included being published by them.

Fast forward thirty years and what do I read and write? Romance. Despite three failed marriages, and the occasional jaded cynic’s hat I wear, beats the heart of a die-hard romantic. My favorite movies are romantic. My favorite storylines in other genres are the romantic ones. Even when dramas and stories end on a sad or bad note, I always think – we just need one more chapter, one more scene and this can be fixed. They can have a happy-ever-after. I know it.

Is it naÃ¯ve? Maybe. But what I love about romance is that no matter the journey I go on – thrilling, sweet, harrowing, magical, tragic – I KNOW that at the end, everything will be okay, the couple will be together and all will be right in the world. Okay, it probably is really naÃ¯ve. I don’t care. I’m a happier person because of it.

This may be a really strange analogy, but bear with me. Romance is like a good natural disaster flick (2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon) which I also love. They’re hopeful. They end on a positive note. And I want that.

Natural Disaster:

Everything is going wrong (global temperature shift/giant asteroid is about to destroy earth)
We rise to the occasion and fix the problem (mankind joins together in global effort to save earth)
When all is said and done, regardless of the fact that maybe the majority of mankind has died horrifically, mankind triumphs and earth survives. YAY!

Romance:

Everything is going wrong (boy and girl have conflict – internal and external)
We rise to the occasion and fix the problem (boy and girl each overcome their own character flaws and whatever else is preventing their relationship)
When all is said and done, regardless of the problems encountered, love conquers all. YAY!

This is why I write romance. My heart wants happy endings. Now though, I want modern fairy-tales where boy and girl save themselves and each other from bad choices/tendencies and work to keep their happy-ever-after happy. That seems more realistic, less naÃ¯ve and still hopeful.

What do ya’ll think?