Category: Setting

Your Story as an RPG Campaign

Quan

One of my all time favorite comic books is Gold Digger by Fred Perry, published by Antarctic Press. It’s a fun, engaging story with amazing anime-styled art, constantly growing and evolving characters that pays heavy homage to 1980’s cartoons. In reading one of many insights from the creator, he mentioned that he plots his characters and stories as if his comic book were a tabletop Role Playing Game. That struck a chord with me. In fact, I think this can be a great mechanism for any writer looking to craft stories around their characters and worlds, especially if you’ve done a lot of character development and worldbuilding but can’t think of a story to tell about them.

How to play a tabletop RPG

If you’ve never played a Role Playing Game before, the set up is actually pretty simple. One person called the DungeonMaster creates a fictional world and scenarios within that world that the players, who are pretending to be characters with different backstories, personalities and abilities, respond to. And then the DungeonMaster progresses the scenario based on the players’ responses, and so on until either the players are killed or they accomplish their goal. It’s basically like an interactive campfire story, or even an improv script reading for actors in a movie. There are other details involved like determining levels and handling probabilities for success or failure of the player’s decisions, but at its core, interactive storytelling is what Role Playing Games are really about. And it doesn’t have to happen in just a high fantasy setting like the most popular RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve seen Role Playing games for Superspies, Superheroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lovecraftian Horror, and Feudal Japan. You can apply this model to any situation where people can assume roles. Heck, you could even argue that Monopoly is a form of Role-Playing Game, where you play the role of a real estate mogul.

You are the dungeon master

This applies to your storytelling in that You are in full control of the environment and everything that happens within it. The Dungeon Master is responsible for knowing the setting and parameters of the campaign. That includes everything from the place the adventure will be happening in and all the details of it, as well as the noteworthy elements of that place like its history and role within the rest of the world. The DM also needs to know about the denizens that inhabit that place, both major and minor. The DM needs to know how the world of this story works, and what the players can and can’t do within that world. This is you. It is your responsibility to set up the parameters for your characters and give them a world to operate in, goals to accomplish, obstacles to overcome and other people/animals/things to interact with. 

Also, as the DM, you are responsible to reacting to the decisions the players make within your campaign. Every action has a consequence, and you need to be thinking of how the environment reacts to your players’ actions. An RPG campaign is a constant dialogue between DM and players, with each reacting to each other to progress the story.

You are the players

Likewise, you also assume the role of the players. Each player in an RPG party creates his or her own character which may or may not be a reflection of the actual player. They act and react to the scenarios the Dungeon Master presents, and they gain experience in various areas in response to their decisions. When you write your characters, you are getting in their heads and making their decisions, reacting to the scenarios and challenges you placed for them as the Dungeon Master. So as a writer, you need to really thunk of how that character approaches that scenario. For my high fantasy story, I actually used the color pie from the popular game Magic: The Gathering to lay the foundation for my character’s personalities. And it is what I refer to when I need to figure out how they would act and react in general.

Actions and reactions

As I said earlier, the Role Playing Game campaign is a constant dialogue between Dungeon Master and Players, as well as a constant interaction between the players themselves. This is a dialogue you need to be cognizant of as you develop your story. Nothing in your story happens in a vacuum. The decisions your characters make in relation to the story have an effect on the environment, so that change must be reflected.  And as the situation changes and evolves in response to your characters, your characters have to respond to those changes. That interplay has to happen in a natural, organic way that progresses the story naturally. So on one hand you need to be intuned with your character’s personalities to know how they will react to various situations. But you also have to have an in-depth knowledge and familiarity with the environment your characters interact with.

Getting to know your characters

Even as the DungeonMaster has sourcebooks and reference materials to help them get a better understanding of the world an everything in it, the players have materials they can reference, also. They keep stat sheets listing their name, background, occupation, class, inventory, spells learned, weapons in hand, as well as the levels of experience they have in all necessary areas. This is valuable for a player knowing what they can and can’t do in response to the given situation. You might want to go this deep in developing your characters. It is a great way of knowing what your characters have available and what their true options are in any given situation. Keeping track of levels may help, too, because that shows just how well-versed and experienced your characters are in things they are trying to do, which greatly affects how successful they can be at it.

Variance and unpredictability

One thing RPGs feature that might be unfamiliar to you is the element of chance. Not every decision the players make is guaranteed to go as intended. The success or failure of many decisions is determined by a roll of dice or a coin flip, this creates a level of tension and unpredictability, and gives another variable the player and the DungeonMaster must react to. If you are ever in a situation where you don’t know what should happen next, perhaps you can adopt this method and let chance decide. Have your character decide to do something, and then roll the dice to see whether that decision gets the intended effect. And if the roll comes up not in favor of the decision, then you need to ask yourself what a failed decision looks like and how best to portray it.

If you are in need for some inspiration or something to jumpstart your storytelling, perhaps treating your story like a Role-Playing game might be that catalyst for you. It helps organize your ideas and plans into a cohesive narrative, and can help you truly visualize the story you want to tell, as well as all of the elements within. And who knows? It might even interest you in giving an actual Rope Playing Game like Dungeons & Dragons a try. Just don’t forget to bring your 6-sided dice.

Making Your Story Adaptable for Stage and Screen

Quan

I had picked up a cheap DVD at the dollar store a while back. It was “Blast” starring Eddie Griffin and Vivica Fox. It was a decent flick, nothing spectacular, but it wasn’t horrible, either. What surprised me was that the movie was based on a book.

Being a book writer, it always raises an eyebrow when a novel gets optioned for a movie or TV show. And it’s not just the holy grail franchises like “Twilight”, “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, “Da Vinci Code”, “Bourne”, or “Harry Potter”. Even lesser-known properties like “Virgin Suicides”, and the short-lived (but AWESOME) TV show “FlashForward” are based on books. Heck, even nonfiction how-to books like “Think Like A Man” got movie treatments.

So I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering how to get a piece of that action.

There’s a lot about getting your story optioned that is out of your control. You have to find a connected literary agent that can get your story in front of movie execs or people with enough power to make stuff like that happen. You have to have a studio actually interested in your story. And then there’s negotiating a fair deal, and hoping the guys adapting your story for screen don’t butcher your creation to the point where it’s not recognizable (Think the movie version of “I Robot” vs. the book). And that’s if the story actually makes it to film – many optioned properties get lost in the development process and never actually get made into movies or TV shows.

But one thing you CAN control about the process is making your story easily translatable for television and movies. This way you story becomes more attractive to would-be producers and film execs, because they can see an easy path to getting the story in the format that will make them the most money.

Break down your book into its core elements.

Remember, movies are visual mediums, and you don’t have more than a few hours (which translate into about 150 specially formatted pages) to tell a complete story. So your story needs to get to the point and stay there. First and foremost, you need to know the core elements of your story: The central characters, the central conflict, and the setting. Most films and television episodes are plot-driven, which means you want to make sure the plot that moves your story forward is strong and engaging. With characters, you want your main characters to have strong, definable characteristics that the actors portraying the role can build around. This doesn’t mean you eschew nuance and subtlety completely, but you want to make sure that your character’s defining traits are front and center and inform most of their behavior. The setting should be well defined, enough so that your readers (and a potential producer) can visualize where everything is happening.

Your book synopsis as a movie outline

After you find these core elements, then you want to build the skeleton of you story, or find the skeleton in your existing story. Most publishers and agents require a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of your story for submission anyway, so now is a good time to put one together. Write a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of your story, and then go back and filter out the details that are least vital to the plot. Look your outline over and then determine if the plot is strong enough to carry onscreen (or stage, if you want your story to be adapted into a play). These scenes are the ones that need the most of your attention when you write your final story. They need to stand out, engage and keep the narrative moving forward.

The plot points also need to drive home the central conflict of your story. Who is you protagonist, what are they up against, and what is at stake. These elements need to be front and center throughout your story. Ultimately, you want to be able to explain the biggest elements of your story in one sentence.

With those elements established, then you can go back in and build everything else on top of that, while still keeping everything pointing towards your core elements. Just about every story I write is intended to be adaptable. Godmode was built as a sci-fi horror story, but there is heavy action and character development moments to establish Elijah and his supporting characters, along with ever-raising stakes that escalate from simple survival, to protecting people near him, to rescuing his wife and child from a nemesis that was a former friend.

Action and Dialogue matters

Since movies are a visual medium that moves in realtime, you do not really have the luxury of delving deep into aspects that cannot be visually represented on the screen/stage. So inner thoughts, explanations of how stuff works, lengthy descriptions of history and settings, while still useful and essential to your story, all take a backseat to strong dialogue and action (and by action I don’t just mean shooting, fighting and blowing stuff up. By action I mean stuff happening and moving the plot forward). So you want to make sure your characters are talking or communicating to each other in some way, shape or form, and that they are interacting with their environment.

As long as you have a strong core to your story, and your story is moving and engaging, then moviemakers should be able to see how they can bring your story to the screen. Now it’s just a matter of finding a moviemaker willing to give your story a chance. Go for it.

Creating a Sourcebook for Your World

Quan

Sometimes, when writing a story, your world gets so big that it gets hard to keep track of everything that is happening in it. You can introduce so many different elements, settings, threads and characters that telling a cohesive story that stays faithful to everything you’ve established becomes a challenge. This is especially true when you’re writing a story that needs multiple installments or sequels. I faced that problem with a story I am currently seeking representation for as of this post. I have already started writing a follow-up book, and in writing it I realized I had set up a lot of concepts in the first book that I need to flesh out before writing the second. When that happens, You might want to compile a reference source that explains everything about your world that you can come back to when you’re stuck. This is usually called a story bible, or a sourcebook.

RPG elements

The best known sourcebooks are from tabletop Role Playing Games. The Dungeon master needs source material to create the scenarios for the other players to operate in, so he uses books full of material that references locations, landmarks, magic systems, races and cultures, along with key characters and any other details about that scenario that the Dungeon master may need. Armed with this information, they can then create adventures for the other players to get involved in, and be prepared for any action or reaction the players may exhibit during the game. You can apply this same principle to your story. In essence, you are both the Dungeon master and the players, and you want to be armed with as much information as you can generate to craft the most cohesive story you can make.

Elements of sourcebooks

Many, many years ago Lloyd Brown wrote an excellent article on developing Sourcebooks for tabletop Role-Playing Games (You can read it here https://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/free09jun05.html ). Let’s take the elements he introduced and expand them for a broader range of world-building.

The Tone

In creating your sourcebook, you want to establish what the overall mood or ambiance of your world is. Is your world dark and foreboding? Paranoid and suspicious? Bright and optimistic? Grand and regal? Satirical and Tongue-in-cheek? What is the overall tone that you want your readers to feel as they engage your settings? Take some time to describe how this world feels.

The Places

Landmarks and important locales are a defining element of Role Playing games as they present backdrops for the players to romp through. This is also true for general fiction. Take some time to describe and explain the most important places of your setting How they are built, what important events occur there, and what importance they have to the overall world. If you can even map out the locations, whether its a map of their interior or an exterior map of where they are in relation to the rest of the world, that will also be a great help.

The History

The original article says it best: “Give a background on the setting’s history, explaining how it got to where it is now. If it’s a fictional setting, you might start with a creation myth and work from there. If it’s an alternate history setting, where your history deviates from real-world history is a good starting point. For science fiction games, background elements usually include Earth’s exploration of space and first contact with aliens.”

To elaborate on that, any element or concept that has any importance in the story should have a history attached to it, explaining how it came to be in your setting and what led to its importance. And any detail of your story that deviates from real-word sensibilities will also need to have some backstory attached to it. And don’t forget to make sure all of your histories and backstories work well together, to help avoid conflicts.

The People

Explaining how the people live in your world is paramount to your story. You want to delve into the different races, classes and cultures and how they operate within your word, as well as how they interact with each other. Use every tool at your disposal, from describing art styles and rituals, to traditions, dress styles and cuisine. You can even mention their language tics and music. Anything that will help you as a writer and the reader get a clearer picture of how the people in your world live and breathe will help, and the more, the better.

You might also want to add some details about your most oft-used characters. It could be a great reference for both you and the reader as you continue depicting the situations those characters get themselves into and out of.

The Religions

Religion and faith play a heavy role in how the real world operates, so it must have a place in your world, too. Even the lack of a central religion in itself is a tenement of belief. Take time to explain the roles religion has with your people, places, culture and history. Who do your people believe in? How do they express those beliefs? What landmarks and rituals do they associate with those beliefs? How do these beliefs affect the way the world is run, and how different cultures deal with each other? These can have a profound effect on your story, so you might want to take some time to flesh these details out.

Mythology counts in this category, too. The fantastic creation myths and legends of pantheons and history explaining how cultures see the world is also fair game for delving into.

The Tech

This wasn’t covered in the original article, but it really should have been. If your world has any element that operates outside of the norms of the real world, you need to explain how those aspects work. It could be explaining how magic works in your high fantasy setting, or explaining what vampires and werewolves can and can’t do in your horror story, and definitely explaining how the outlandish, futuristic gadgets work in you sci-fi or espionage story. Having a concrete set of rules for how these important elements work grounds your story and makes it easier to stay consistent the more you write about it.

The Secrets

Your setting will have loads of secrets waiting for your characters to explore and discover. The more prominent ones that have a direct effect on your story will probably need to be fleshed out if they haven’t already been covered in the previous topics. Take the time to really delve into the who, what, where, why and how of these secrets, and possibly explain why they are secrets to begin with.

Referencing

While some of the more well-known story franchises have been known to publish their sourcebooks, it is really more for your own personal reference and understanding of the world you are creating. So be sure to keep your sourcebook handy while writing so that you can come back to it whenever you need to check the accuracy or consistency of something you are writing. And be sure to keep your sourcebook flexible. You will be introducing new ideas, concepts, places and people constantly to your world, so you need to be able to update your sourcebook as needed.

You will find having a convenient reference source for the world you are creating to be a valuable resource, and it may even prompt you to do more deep exploration of how your wold works, which will in turn add more material to your sourcebook that you can mine for stories. I am constantly adding new ideas and concepts for the high fantasy trilogy I am currently writing, and most of those new concepts, landmarks, people, histories and ideas are built upon stuff I had added to the sourcebook long ago. Take some time aside to develop this, and your stories will be better for it in the long run.

Creating Alternate Realities

Quan

Alternate realities and parallel earths has been a staple of storytelling since HG Wells’ The Time Machine. There is something intriguing about asking “What if” and exploring possibilities of what would the possibilities be if something that happened, instead happened differently. Exploring these possibilities can make for some very compelling stories if handled correctly.

One Event That Changes Everything

One of the fantasy stories I am seeking publication for deals with an “alternate present” which is a normal, modern world that had a singular event in the past change the course of history. Perhaps you can introduce a new circumstance into the world you’ve created, which alters the world and creates a new set of circumstances.

Start At the Ending.

Another approach is creating your alternate reality and highlighting the current differences from your original world, then going back and explaining how those changes came about. This is a good option when you already have ideas for how your alternate reality will be portrayed. Just go ahead and preset the ideas you have, then go back and explain how everything came to be later.

The Butterfly Effect

Sometimes creating an alternate reality is as simple as taking a decision one of your characters made and asking yourself what would ave happened had they made a different choice. This has been the basis for many alternate timeline stories from Marvel and DC.

An easy way to do this is to take a decision or action that was taken in the story and have your character do something else, maybe even the exact opposite of the action. That will create the catalyst for your world to change.

Ripple Effects

However you choose to approach your new alternate world, it would behoove you to do a deep dive into your new status quo and truly flesh o the details o how that world operates an how people operate within it. I advise creating a bible or appendix explaining as many details about your world as you can muster up. This will serve as the reference point for your world and establish the new rules and parameters of that reality that you will abide by as you craft your story. How is the flora and fauna changed in your new reality? How are economics and politics affected? How do people live and coexist?

Whether it be the goatee-clad evil alternate Star Trek characters, or the many alternate Earths in the Marvel and DC universes, exploring alternate realities is a great way to come up with and develop new story ideas.

Starting Over

Quan

So you’ve just finished writing your epic manuscript. It is your masterpiece; the story you’ve been born to tell, that you have poured all of your heart and soul into for months, if not years, on end. You’ve carefully chosen every word and phrase, and did a ton of research to make sure the story was authentic. In your mind, it is perfect.

Then you hand the story you are so proud of over to your beta readers or your content editor to look over. And they shred it. They find massive, gaping plot holes, or serious believability issues, or huge flaws in your character development, or serious inconsistencies with your setting, or technical/historical inaccuracies. Or even worse, all of the above. Nothing short of a complete overhaul is what you need to make your beloved story publishable. And the story is too dear to you for you to discard, so that means you’ve basically going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. So how do you go about handling that?

I’ve had a few instances like that, where I had to take my idea back to the drawing board after someone I was pitching my ideas to swiss cheesed a number of my concepts and characters. So here are some of the approaches I took.

Find Your Core

You really want to start by getting to the heart of your story. What is your story really about? What is the driving conflict and theme? Oftentimes, problems arise when your story drifts too far away from its central themes and conflicts. Examine your characters and the world they exist in. You should be able to summarize the essentials of your setting and each character in a sentence or two. Boil everything down to this core and start rebuilding from there.

Asking Why

When finding your core, the best way to develop things is to look at the tenements you are building your story around and asking why they have to be that way. Why is your heroine so cynical? Why does your villain want so badly to execute his nefarious plot? Why is that landmark in your setting so meaningful to the narrative? Come up with answers to those questions, and then ask them again of your new answers. Get to the bottom of why your most important elements are so important, and use that as the basis of your retelling of your story.

Delve Into Your Backstories

sometimes the best way to fix what is going to be in your story is to delve into the details that won’t be in your story. Your backstories give flesh to the skeletons you have of your setting, plot and characters, and give you reference points to use when developing your story. Take the elements you plan on introducing and the concepts that might need some explaining, and explain them: where they came from, how they got to be the way they are, and what effect they have on the rest of the world and characters. Be cognizant of inconsistencies and stuff that flat-out doesn’t make sense within the context of the story you want to tell.

It might even get to the point where you need to create an entire story bible or sourcebook to explain everything that is going on in your wold and with your characters. I plan to address the ins and outs o creating one in a future blog post.

Double-check Your Research

There may be instances where your critics poke holes into the accuracy of some of your story elements. When this happens, then its time to delve deeper into your research. New information is constantly being added for just about any topic, and perhaps some of the information you gathered at the time has been further developed, or even refuted. So it would be prudent to do a double-check to make sure that the information you gathered is still accurate and relevant. Make sure your facts are straight and that they apply properly to the story you are telling.

And this research includes the overall criticisms from your beta readers and content editors. Take a second look at what they had to say about your story elements and see if you can address those critisisms directly in your rewrite. In addition to the negative stuff also pay attention to the stuff they liked or that really caught their attention. These are elements you want to build on and prominently feature.

Try Something Different

Sometimes the best approach is to take your core ideas and simply build something new out of them. Both fantasy stories I am currently seeking representation for as of his post had instances were I had to do that. My urban fantasy thriller Needle of the Southside came about from a failed sci-fi/fantasy hybrid epic I was writing in the same vein as Final Fantasy 7’s narrative. While bouncing ideas off of my content editor, she found a ton of questionable plot and setting issues with the story as I was planning it (I actually had thumbnailed a 4-issue comic book about the story at the time). So I had to scrap the story and restart the narrative. In doing that, the core story elements, along with her insights, led me in an entirely new direction for the story.

Likewise with the fantasy epic I wrote called Return of the Tyrant. There were a ton of plot elements and adventures I had planned for the heroes of my story, but while talking about my ideas with my content editor (we bounce story ideas off of each other often), she found that many of my ideas would be problematic to execute in a first novel, if at all. So I heeded her advice and put those ideas on the shelf for further development, but that left a void in what I had planned for he first book. So I had to craft new adventures, which meant introducing new characters and settings, which took the story in an entirely new direction from what I had originally planned. The adventures I originally had in mind can still be used, but I will now have to adapt them to fit the new direction the story is going in for future follow-up books.

Starting over can be a frustrating, daunting task. But if you are up to the challenge, you can take the remnants of what didn’t work, and truly craft something memorable, which will be many, many times better and more engaging than what you had originally come up with. So don’t be afraid of the process.

The City as a Character

Quan

If you’ve ever read fiction reviews, you may have heard the phrase “The City is a character within itself.” have you ever wondered what that means? How can an inanimate, non-sentient location become an actual character? Well, obviously this is not to be taken in a literal sense. When the location a story is set in is so vivid, and engaging that it takes a life of its own, then that is what this phrase refers to.

Think of some of the more iconic locations in fiction. Whether it be Castle Rock in many Steven King novels, or The Shire in The Lord of the Rings books, or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld locations, or even the cities of Metropolis and Gotham in comic books, these are iconic locations that are more than just a static backdrop for the characters to operate in. Much more.

What makes these places so memorable? The answer lies in how they are portrayed. These locations are presented with such ambiance and detail that they can function as fully realized areas independent of the characters operating within them. When you hear of Gotham, you can see Gotham in your mind’s eye and actually envision life there, Batman or no Batman.

The advantage of having such a well-developed locale for your story is that it adds a new layer of uniqueness to your story, and a new level of authenticity. If your location is so well developed that your story literally cannot happen anywhere else, then that is a great way to measure how well-developed your setting is. When the novel “Clockers” was adapted into film, Spike Lee was able to take the entire story out of its original Boston setting and place it squarely in Brooklyn, NY. I argue that if the locale had been better presented and made more integral to the story Spike would not have been able to do that.

Just as characters can have varying levels of depth, so can settings. Anything and everything can be used to bring a location to life. Here are some things you can highlight to do just that.

1. Geography

A locale’s geography and architecture can play a key role in making the city unique. When writing, be sure to include landmarks, specific locations, and descriptions of some of the more notable parts of the city. Include street names and building names whenever you can. Mention local businesses, parks, and monuments, even if they aren’t the focus of your scene. These details will help your reader be able to see the city in their mind’s eye.

2. Local weather

You can really define a locale by its weather. Is your setting in Sunny Los Angeles, Muggy Miami, Snowy Denver or Rainy Seattle? Describing the weather of you locale can also serve to set a certain mood and tone for your story, and also the mood of your characters.

3. History

Adding references to the locale’s history can also add to the character of a locale. If a building your characters are at has some historical significance, that can add a great deal of gravitas to whatever is happening there. Furthermore, if a city has any dark secrets in its past, you can really have that play into what is currently going on in your story.

4. Local slang, customs, fashion, cuisine

What is life like for the average folk at your locale? What are the aspects of life there that are unique to that area? Whenever I write about specific cities like Chicago or Detroit, I love to include the local cuisine, especially the hot dogs the city is famous for (i.e. Chicago Dogs or Detroit Coney Dogs). If you can actually describe how the food tastes, all the more better. The local slang and colloquialisms can also set the place apart, along with the way people in that area dress.

All of these techniques, especially if combined, can really give your locale a distinct character and feel. Adding these details can really help your reader visualize the place and feel like he or she is actually there. When that happens, then the setting becomes an integral part of the story, almost like it was a character unto itself.

Metroid and Environmental Storytelling

Quan

While reading this excellent review of the hard to find fan-made AM2R videogame, I came across a term that intrigued me. It was a term I had seen before in Mark Rosewater’s articles about designing cards for Magic: The Gathering.  That term was “environmental storytelling” and it is what makes it possible for a game like Metroid 2: Samus Returns, that has no dialogue or cutscenes, to tell a complete narrative.  With this form of storytelling, you are using details within the setting itself to provide clues as to what is or has been happening. This is independent of any dialogue or interactions from your characters. 

For instance, in Magic: The Gathering’s “Scars of Mirrodin” storyline, the land cards  for each of the three acts in the storyarc are painted to show the once pristine environment gradually deteriorating over time as the world is infected by parasitic invaders. It is even deeper in Metroid 2, where each environment showcases how and why the ancient Chozo race created the deadly Metroid creatures before the monsters turned on their creators and destroyed them all. Everything is part of the tale, from the lack of creatures in rooms where a Metroid dwells, to the darkness and desolation of the abandoned factories, to the areas near the Metroid’s central breeding ground being completely devoid of life, to even little touches like the Chozo statue towards the end being broken with an icebeam upgrade lying at its feet to show that their advanced weapons weren’t strong enough to stop the Metroids from killing them. You can gain an understanding of what happened from paying attention to the details of the environment, without nary a word being said or any cutscene handholding you through the narrative.

I did something similar in Godmode. Elijah does a lot of exploring in that story, and each level of the building he is trapped in tells its own story as he discovers details about it. That includes exploring his old office, which was evacuated in a hurry for some reason, and coming across clues which show how hat occurred, and maybe even why. I tried to make it so Elijah and the reader are able to figure out the details, connect the dots and deduce what happened at the same time. I did cheat a bit with the triggered flashbacks, but the general gist is still there.

HOW TO INCORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL STORYTELLING INTO YOUR NARRATIVE.

So now the question becomes how can you use that in YOUR story. Here are some simple tips:

1. The Devil is in the details. The biggest need is to make sure you pay attention to the details of your environment. Everything that describes where the story is happening can offer a clue to the narrative, whether it be the sights, or sounds or even smells of the setting. A place that smells of rotting flesh will tell you something died there. A place smelling of rotting flesh and bleach will tell you that someone died there…and someone else tried to cover it up.

2. Place key artifacts in the environment. Much like setting up a mystery, you can plant clues directly into the setting that tell exactly what happened or what is going on. It could be a television, still on, showing a news reporter speaking on a related event (something movies do a lot), or a trinket from some event that happened related to that event (say your story had something to do with a circus. You can have some circus peanuts laying around in your environment to allude to that).

3. Show the environment changing over time. Perhaps every time your characters go to a certain place, the lace has subtle changes to show that something is going on. Maybe something is out of place that was in place before, or the lighting is different, or something new has been added or taken away. This can denote that something in the story itself has changed, and this can add to the impact of that change.

If you incorporate the environment into your story, you should be able to make for a fuller, more immersive experience for your reader. I advise you give it a try for your next story.

BTW, if you haven’t played Metroid 2 yet, give the game a try and pay attention to the backgrounds to see what I’m talking about…

Magic: The Gathering and the Art of World Building, Pt. 2

Quan

If you’ve read my previous post about how the card game Magic The Gathering uses its cards to build worlds, you know that I feel this could be a valuable tool to help a writer flesh out the setting of his or her story. I briefly explained how I did it, but now the question becomes “how can YOU do it?”

I have a few tips.

In MTG, the cards are elements of a world: flora and fauna, people, cultures, landmarks, important events, etc. Each card has its own mechanics that tie in not only to the game, but also to the element represented. For instance, if I were to make a card for one of my characters from my new manuscript Return of the Tyrant – an elf that is the last surviving elf in his world because he killed every other elf, it would be a creature card that destroyed every other elf in play and prohibited anyone from bringing any more elves out until that elf was destroyed. Now the card itself tells the elf’s story whenever you play it. To the makers of MTG, this is called “flavor.”
Each piece of flavor you add to a given element, whether it be a picture depicting the element, or some text explaining the element, or built into how the card works, deepens the story of the element and adds new dimension to your world.

Magic: The Gathering’s Color Pie

MTG’s foundation is a color-based system that defines every aspect of the game. there are five colors, each with its own personality and methodology, and that is the lens through which every aspect of the game is focused. (broadly: red=freedom and emotion, white=order and selflessness, black=selfishness and pragmatism, green=nature and balance, blue=intellect and invention) Each culture, creature, event and landmark is seen through the view of what color ethos it most closely represents. This actually makes defining the core aspects of worldbuilding elements easier because it gives you a base to develop around. If you have a culture of stoic warriors, you might want to lean them in the direction of a red-white combination, if you want some mad scientists, you make them red and blue or green and blue, and a mafia-like organization would be white and black. A cold, calculating manipulator could be blue-black, while a classic good guy could be monowhite.

Using a Game to Discover Your Story’s Theme

By using a game to develop your world, you can also detect broad thematic elements that can help you develop your story. Every world in Magic the Gathering has an overall theme, whether it be the adventure world aspect of Zendikar to the History-reverent world of Dominaria. once you discover the themes behind your world, you can use that as an aspect of your story. for Return of the Tyrant, the theme of extinction and lost civilization became prevalent as I was developing the cards in my game.

I’ve discovered two approaches to this method that work well. The first is what I call a Tourist mentality. You are a visitor to your world, and you are merely recording the stuff you observe as you travel through it. This is good for coming up with the people, animals, vegetation, landmarks, etc. that make up your world. The second is what I call the Historian’s mentality. Your job is to archive and describe in brief the histories and cultures that shape your world. This is how events, backstories and traditions get created…and often are good incubators for spinoff and follow-up stories.

Now, you don’t have to use MTG exclusively to do this. Any game can be used this way. even such classics as Monopoly and Chess. Or better yet, you can try your hand at inventing your own tie-in game. This would be a good idea because you now have a ready-made merchandise item once your book gets published.

Magic: The Gathering and the Art of World Building

Quan

If you’ve never played the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, then this blog entry might sound like gibberish to you. Magic: The Gathering is a quasi-role playing card game where you and your opponent play as dueling wizards, with the cards representing the spells you fling at one another. But that’s just the broad explanation of the game.

The story behind it is that each player is a powerful mage with the ability to travel to different worlds, each with its own culture and identity, and the spells are things the player has learned or picked up from observing life on that world. There have been alien worlds made entirely of metal, Scandanavian/Norse themed worlds encased in ice and snow, Japanese-themed worlds full of Spirits, samurai and ninjas, Greek mythology-themed worlds, classic horror-themed worlds, and even a Mongolian-styled world where everyone is at war all of the time. Fascinating stuff.

Of course, now the question is “what the heck does all of this have to do with writing a story?”

The answer? “Everything.”

The thing that sets MTG apart from every other board/card game is the extensive amount of worldbuilding that goes into every set of cards. Through the cards, as well as the tie in e-books, website articles and videogames, you get immersed in a given world that has its own ecosystem, its own bestiary, its own heroes and legends, and its own struggle. And if you’re a story buff, it’s easy to get drawn in and really feel like you are a part of this world.

That is the feeling every writer of fiction should strive for in his or her stories. You want your settings to be living, breathing extensions of your story because it adds more weight and believability to your characters. In fact, some of the greatest stories in fantasy and science fiction were just about the central character exploring his or her world, with hijinks ensuing. (Pratchett’s The Color of Magic and Asimov’s Prelude To Foundation come to mind).  This is where the whole “City is a character” motif comes from, and BTW my buddy Anne Mallory does an excellent job of it in her steamy historical romances.

I thought I’d take a novel approach to said worldbuilding utilizing my passion for MTG. As an excersize for a competition to get a design internship at Wizards of the Coast (makers of Dungeons and Dragons, Duel Masters, and you guessed it, Magic The Gathering), I was given the task of creating an entire set of Magic The Gathering cards, along with the world those cards were set in. there were specific problems I had to solve to flesh out my world, which really stretched my creative muscles. So for this exercise, I decided to use a world I had been planning on telling a high fantasy epic on: a world so ravaged by constant wars, cataclysms and tragedy that it had collectively given up its will to live. (This is actually the world my book “Return of the Tyrant” Is based in). The themes were failure, despair and extinction, with a ragtag band of heroes and former villains fighting to give their world a reason to live, against a mammoth monstrosity poised to destroy them all…and the people actually welcoming the annihilation.

Through this exercise I was able to really flesh out my world and give it its identity, to add layers of myth and lore and create backstories I could explore endlessly if I so chose. I created unique creatures and events specific to my world, and new mysteries, like why the Goblins, Elves, and Merfolk that are fantasy staples are only found via ancient ruins in my world.

I didn’t win the contest (made it to the second round though). But I enjoyed the exercise so much I continued developing my set of Magic cards long after the contest ended, adding new wrinkles and twists. I used as a guide some of the articles written by MTG head of R&D Mark Rosewater which cover the process of designing a set of cards (fascinating stuff. You can read the articles here). As a result, I have a nice toybox to play in for follow-up books and spinoffs to “Return of the Tyrant”.

I also plan on using this technique for an old story idea I was working on in college with a few buddies of mine. We were looking at doing an epic high fantasy adventure set in a world similar to feudal China, and loosely based on the legends of Shaolin and Wu-Tang (and yes, inspired by the rap group). But if I’m going to effectively tell this story, I need to create a believable world.

See where I’m going with this?

Whether I actually start writing the story or not, I think it would be an interesting exercise to see if I can build this world the same way I build the other one. I wouldn’t involve any big creatures, but it would be nice to know if there are any in this world. Also, I’d have to do some more research into feudal China and Shaolin mythology to make sure stuff was reasonably accurate – it doesn’t have to be an exact match to the stuff you see in kung-fu movies, but it has to be close enough for you to recognize the source material. Also there’s the little issue of writing believable kung-fu action when kung-fu works best as a visual. I think that’s the biggest hurdle. But hey, I was able to effectively write video game action, so I think it’s a challenge worth undertaking.

In any case, if you are having any struggles with worldbuilding, I strongly recommend giving this a try. And while you’re at it, give the game itself a try. MTG has been my hobby for over 20 years, and I think you’ll like it too.