Category Archives: Advice

On Daily Word Counts

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

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When I wrote my first completed novel, I had a goal of 10 long-hand pages a day. When I wrote my second novel (my first NaNoWriMo), I had a goal of 1667 words a day. Continuing on through several other novels, I had daily word count goals, and most days I met or exceeded them. I participated in word-count challenges with fellow writers and I had fun.

But then I stopped making my word count goals. I tried again, on and off, but it didn’t stick.

What happened? I’ve been thinking about this for years, trying to find the answer, and I think that I’ve finally found it–the fuel ran out.

Daily word counts are a tool–and whether a good or bad one depends on the writer. They are a measuring stick designed to get us to make progress. We like quantifying and numbers and charts. We see them all the time, and in something like writing a story, it’s nice to be able to quantify it, isn’t it?

It is, but at the same time, I think setting word count goals need to be combined with other motivations. In my past prolific novelist life, when I could write nearly as long as you’d let me, it gave me a stopping mark. A place to say, “Okay, I’ve done it. Time to fold the laundry.” However, without the fuel of passion, word counts became a grind. During past NaNoWriMos, I’d heard people telling others that if they got stuck on their words to (literally) throw non-sequitor ninjas into the story or an explosion. And if that works, that’s fabulous. But it also impressed on me that when you’re doing that, you might just be writing for the numbers, not the story. In that case, I think it’s more valuable to not worry about your word count and spend some time figuring out what happens next, or why you’ve hit the stumbling block you have.

Storytelling is an art, and art can be difficult to formulate into numbers because numbers are far easier to grasp and understand than your imagination. Word counts are made with good intentions–a goal post to make deadlines–a sign of progress–but they aren’t the end all of storytelling.

So if you aren’t writing to word count, what is the alternatives?
1) Writing until you feel done (or you run out of time).
2) Writing to the end of the scene.
3) Writing until the end of the chapter.
4) Writing until you reach the end of the event in the story (which may or may not fall under 2 or 3).
5) Timed writing.

Options 2-5 still have a feeling of “word count” goal writing, and while Option 1 is my preference, I recognize that it’s vague. Yet I still think of the days when I set 1,000-word goals, and regularly got 2,000-3,000 words in a sitting–on those days, I simply wrote until I was done, and I was satisfied–and satisfied with what I got. Nothing felt forced or invented just to keep the words coming.

Not all parts of storytelling are activities we look forward to–revising seems to cause a common procrastination malady and needing to set goals to gain progress (which I also found hard–if I do 10 pages a day and those 10 pages are clean, does that mean I get the day off?). At the same time, many of us are telling stories simply because we want to tell stories. I want to believe that if we are truly excited enough about this story that’s in our minds, we won’t need number goals to get us through the story. Idealistic? Yes. I’m not saying that word count goals are, in themselves, terrible, but they can be a crutch to be aware of. In recent years, a hard goal of X words a day hasn’t worked, and neither has something vague like “write when I want to.”

Yet, I remember those days–those days when I had word counts, but they weren’t the point. Telling the story was. I haven’t found the path back there yet, but maybe when the right idea steals me away again….

In Medias Res

01 Friday Jun 2012

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Beginning your story right in the thick of things, in the middle of some powerful and tense scene, is a tried-and-true method of storytelling. The beginning of your story is the most important part, and using that moment to introduce conflict can really clinch your audience and get it drawn in. Of course, the method isn’t without its pitfalls, and it’s not appropriate to every story, so let’s talk about it a little.

What is in medias res? It is Latin for “into the middle of things” and is the concept of starting your story somewhere other than the beginning. Some stories jump right into the middle and a few of the more daring ones come in right at the end. When a story begins in medias res, it provides no context and the audience is left trusting to the storyteller to fill in who the people are and why they are acting in a dramatic manner. As the storyteller, then, it falls on you to provide that explanation. How is up to you, but there are several tried-and-true ways.

One of the easiest but least interesting ways of providing context is through flashbacks. Better is through conversation. You can go Homer’s route in the Odyssey and combine the two: much of that story is Odysseus telling how he got to the start of the story in the first place! You can also provide backstory through exposition, preferably in small chunks; think about how mystery stories slowly reveal all the clues you and the protagonists need to uncover the who, how, and why behind the crime. If you’re feeling really bold you can just not explain what led up to your starting scene at all, although I think that’s probably best done rarely (although you can get away with it more, I suspect, if your opening scene is a fight of some kind).

So what is the major benefit of in medias res? Instant conflict means instant interest from your audience. If you do it right (and this part, at least, is hard to do wrong), you’ll hook your audience without a lot of effort or risk. I think that must be one reason in medias res is so popular with storytellers.

“Without a lot of risk” isn’t the same as “without risk,” though. I think the biggest danger you run into as a storyteller using in medias res is to not follow through well with the rest of your story. Yes, you’ve captured your audience with your opening scene, but if you can’t keep your audience engaged you can still lose it. How many stories have you started because they had such amazing beginnings but that you later abandoned or thought about abandoning because the rest of the story was dull and lifeless? It does happen! Fortunately, I think it’s a pretty rare occurrence, but it does happen.

But don’t let that risk discourage you! I do heartily believe it’s pretty hard to mess up by starting a story in the middle! If you can write a strong opening scene there’s a really good chance you can write a strong everything-else. Storytellers and readers of a story seem to really like in medias res and I think most audiences are more than willing to trust that you’ll explain what’s going on—assuming that’s even necessary.

So when should you use in medias res? I’d say pretty much whenever you think it appropriate. You can use it in any genre or with any medium. Starting off with a dramatic, high-conflict scene doesn’t have to mean violence (although that’s certainly appropriate for multiple genres). A simple conversation can be in medias res if it carries high stakes with it and the rest of the story is affected by it.

Examples of in medias res abound. It seems to be a favorite of Homer and of war movies, and of course a lot of mysteries begin with the commission of crime, but perhaps the most famous modern example is Star Wars: A New Hope. You know how that begins, right? Two spaceships fly in across the screen, clearly in the middle of a battle. Minus the word scroll at the front of the movie there is precious little context to define who the opposing sides are and why they are shooting at each other in space. That comes a little later. You can find a bunch of other examples at the Wikipedia page.

Where to Start?

18 Friday May 2012

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Start at the beginning, continue through to the end, then stop.

That’s pretty decent advice for storytellers (although it precludes more experimental narrative structures, like in the movie Memento) but if you’re struggling with where to start your story it doesn’t actually help. “Where do I start?” “At the beginning.” “But what is the beginning?” “Um…”

In real life, a person’s story begins at birth and ends at death. Or does it? Even for most of us, whose tales will likely not extend beyond our own personal terminal points, the beginning of our stories are not so clear. Is it at birth? Conception? When our parents met? What about the other direction? High school graduation? Military enlistment? The day we met our long-term partner?

A story, an artificial narrative, should be easier to define. Right? Maybe. Just like the question of where our personal narratives begin, we must ask when the story of our protagonist actually starts. Is it the birth of our main character? Probably not. Yes, a story about a person’s life can work (just look at Forrest Gump or The World According to Garp, but it’s a risky proposition. Maybe I’m just not exposing myself to the right stories, but the “person’s life as a story” seems to be a pretty rare narrative. Most people are simply not interesting until at least their mid-teens, anime and manga protagonists notwithstanding.

So, okay, I’ve established when we shouldn’t begin our story, but I haven’t really helped with advice for when we actually should.

One consideration to determine the start of your story is medium. Simply put, what form are you going to use to tell your story?

Let’s start short. For a short story, you want to begin your story as close to the end as possible. A general rule of thumb I was taught in my fiction writing class is to keep your short story all in the same day (or, you know, 24-hour period, if it happens at night). Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”–an amazing story, by the way, that seems to have at least partially inspired The Hunger Games–occurs over the course of a few hours. But what a few hours those are!

For a longer narrative, say a novel or ongoing webcomic or serial, you want to start at the point the primary protagonist’s life changes in and intersects with the presumably longer narrative. Often, a longer narrative begins when someone enters or exits the primary protagonist’s life. If you’re going to make your main character an orphan, the day he or she becomes one works pretty well for this: it worked for the stories of Harry Potter and for Nobody Owens. On the other hand, if you want your protagonist’s life to change because something (or someone) entered it, the day that person (or thing) is introduced is also an excellent place to start. That’s what happened to Frodo Baggins and Antimony Carver, for example.

This, of course, is a very broad bit of advice, but it should help you at least conceptualize where in the narrative you start your story. If you’d like, we can revisit this topic in the future and look at more specific advice for starting out. I already plan on revisiting the topic at least thrice more: once to talk about the pros and cons of starting in medias res, once to talk generally about starting out in games, and once more to talk about starting games in medias res.

The start of your story is an important topic, after all, since in traditional print storytelling (short stories and novels) the beginning is absolutely the most important part. Without a good, solid beginning, you won’t be able to pull in an audience.

So definitely let me know where you’d like me to go with this idea in the future. And maybe I’ll share some of my own struggles with starting stories.

Come back next week when I look at the start of game narratives.

The Star of the Show

15 Tuesday May 2012

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This last weekend, I was an at excellent live action roleplaying game. The theme was a pulp adventure, so there were lots of high stakes and drama, but one thing that occurred to me as we ran through the adventure is that there were approximately 25 main characters in this story. They were all unique characters with their own motivations and depth, and watching us all funneled through a storyline was quite the interesting experience.

LARPs are an art form all their own and nothing I say here should be taken as a criticism of it, but it got me to thinking about story media in which there are singular–or at least smaller sets–of stars in the show, and how we define them.

One of my particular weaknesses in building characters is that I like to make plain Janes who have interesting people they support around them. I think this tends to be because I, personally, prefer to be in the role of a supporting cast and crew (which I’ll talk more about next week). That’s all fine and good in life, but when you’re building a star for a particular story, you’re looking at a different spectrum of qualities.

For example, one of my first LARP character ideas for this game was a young woman who had basically been raised on an salvage/mercenary airship, who had an eccentric godfather as the captain and lead of this crew. She was a sometimes adventurer, and otherwise jill-of-all-trades support. I mulled over this idea for a few weeks, but knew it was missing a spark. Ultimately, I realized she was a support member for a cast of more interesting NPCs who would not appear in the game.

Now, in her own story, she could emerge as the star of the show, or perhaps I could take a deeper look at the cast and have someone else emerge as the star of the show and let her remain as support, but none of this would have worked well in a LARP, in which there are 25 stars of the show–each with their own wildly divergent personal storylines. So I’ve kept the idea for a later story.

In an archaeological fantasy novel I was plotting some time ago, the main character was a concubine who had a secret an archaeologist very much needed. I puttered on this story for a while as well, and eventually when talking to a friend, she succinctly said, “So your main character is basically just a plot device?” and I realized I needed to take a deeper look. In that case, I decided she would make better support cast to the archaeologist, who had more at stake in this story.

Even in an ensemble cast, such as the trio from the Harry Potter books, there is a primary character, even if the supporting characters are just half a step away. Harry, in those books, has the most going on, and he has the highest personal stakes among the trio. In the Lord of the Rings, there is a huge cast, but eventually they are broken into smaller groups with their own emerging leaders. I’d say Samwise Gamgee and Aragorn emerge as the stars of the show when all is said and done. (And I suspect others have convincing arguments for other characters in the lead.)

It’s possible to have multiple stars of the show, but I believe one is likely to be slightly brighter than the others, and the star is not always the Point of View character. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are classic examples of this: Watson is the point of view because he is someone the readers can identify with, whereas Sherlock is not.

All that said, how do you find the star of your show?

Consider:
1. Which protagonist has the most stakes or personal investment in the story?
2. Could story/end result happen without that protagonist?
3. Are there specific, important things that character does in the story that can’t easily be replaced by or delegated to someone else?

These might not be the only litmus tests to define your star of the show, but they should help you get on your way. Do none of your characters “pass” the test? Or one specific one you want to be your star? Consider the star qualities, and rework that character so he or she can shine.

Know Your Story

11 Friday May 2012

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On Monday, Ann and I watched a British movie called Centurion. We… weren’t exactly sure what story they were trying to tell. We were both kind of at a loss to figure out what the movie is really about, and the best I can come up with is that it’s trying to tell too many stories all at once. On the one hand, it’s about the focus character—first his quest for vengeance, then his less grandiose struggle for mere survival, and finally his love for a woman he meets along the way. But it’s also about the lost Legio IX Hispana, the inability of Rome to subjugate the Picts, and the political machinations of Roman Britain. In other words, for a 90-minute movie it’s just too much.

Now, this post isn’t actually a deconstruction or review of that movie, and I’m somewhat picking on the writers, but it gives me a launching point for today’s topic. And that is this: When you’re getting ready to tell your story, make sure you know what it is. Said another way: If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

I don’t mean you can’t have subplots or multiple weaving main plots. You most certainly can, as long as you know what the story is you’re trying to tell, you remain primarily focused on it, and you communicate it to your audience. This doesn’t mean you can’t throw your audience a curve ball and change what you present as being the story, as long as it’s a natural evolution in the narrative, you planned for it all along, and you provide a proper conclusion for your actual story. China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun is a perfect example of what I mean.

And if you’re telling a multi-part story, or think you might be, you need two main stories to tell for each part: the overarching one and the individual one of each piece. If you’ve ever considered writing a series of novels (for example) you might have heard the suggestion to make each book stand by itself, because you can’t control how a reader discovers your series. Assume that I’m echoing that advice here, because discovering an ongoing series in the middle (without realizing it) and not being able to follow along is extremely frustrating. I think the Harry Potter and Star Wars series do this well; conversely, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix trilogy, and The Hunger Games series do it poorly (although I thought Catching Fire did this a little better than Mockingjay).

Depending on the length of your story, you might need or want subplots to feed into the main story, and that’s not only fine it’s probably desirable. But keep in mind that these subplots really do need to feed into the main story and not detract—or distract—from it. A short story, for example, has no room for subplots. Anything longer needs them. Usually, these subplots will come from supporting characters (because, presumably, the primary plot is about the focus character) and will often expose their backstories and be a part of why they become a part of the main story. And, really, the most important subplot in a longer piece, at least in genre fiction, and if it’s not already the primary plot, will almost always be the motivations of the primary antagonist.

This is a problem that even I run into with some of my story ideas. For example, off and on over the past few years a friend and I have been developing a webcomic; the characters are designed, the world is mostly built, and the subplots are largely lined up. I even have some story arcs to take the characters through (my friend is the artist; I’m in charge of writing). What I lack as the storyteller, though, is an overarching story. Sure, since it’s a webcomic I could just string along a bunch of unrelated story arcs, and for a while I think our audience would be okay with that. But at some point everyone, especially I, would want to see the story go somewhere. So since I haven’t figured out yet what my story is I’m not ready yet to begin it. Once I do figure it out, though, you’ll be among the first to know.



What’s Your Motivation?

08 Tuesday May 2012

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Why do you tell stories? Why are you telling this story?

  • Is it because you want to see your name in print (or the screen)?
  • Is it because you want to be a New York Times Bestseller and retire early?
  • Is it because you have a story that won’t let you be alone until you write it down?
  • Is it because you love telling yourself the stories you can’t seem to find already written?
  • Is it because you enjoy seeing your story come to realization from a seed in your mind?
  • Is it because you enjoy hearing from the readers and sharing your experience?
  • A combination of these reasons?

There are infinite motivations to go to the trouble of telling a story–for yourself; readers; or even in the case of more interactive storytelling, the shared experience. None of them are right or wrong or better than one another, but I think knowing your motivation as a storyteller, and of your story, is a key component, not only to reaching that goal, but to maintaining your passion while doing it.

If you are telling your story because you can’t get it out of your head otherwise and it’s been churning in your brain for years, you might be writing for your own peace of mind. It might not even require you to write the whole story from beginning to end (although telling part of a story, for me, usually creates the next part of the mind worm); it might not even require you to revise the story or show it to anyone else. Another motivation might be secondary, or even non-existent.

If you’re writing in hopes of widespread (or even self-) publication, then there are other steps involved–editing, revision, market research, submission, etc. If you’re writing to become the next NYT Best Seller, then you’ll need to do a lot of market research and work at getting your story interesting to a broad audience.

***

Each of these motivations could (and probably will) comprise a whole host of columns on their own, but I feel a key to enjoying and thriving as a passionate storyteller is to know your motivation. Just as motivation drives your characters, it drives you as a storyteller. If you know why you want to tell stories (or that particular story), then you can make sure that the stories you tell fit both your motivation and your process. If your passion for storytelling is flagging, and you don’t feel, well, motivated, maybe it’s time to look into yourself as much as your story and see what drives you.

Expose Yourself

04 Friday May 2012

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I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike the old “Write what you know” advice and instead advocate “Write what you want to read.”

Expanded out a little, that becomes, “Tell the stories you want to experience.”

But to know what kinds of stories those are, you need to do some homework. What, homework? Yes. I know it will be terribly rough for you, but you need to expose yourself to stories.

Note that I very specifically avoided saying “…but you need to read a lot of novels.” If you want to be a novelist, you obviously should be reading a lot of novels, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to just them. Watch movies. Read webcomics. Try graphic novels. A story is a story, and although the way they are told varies by medium, the basics of good storytelling transcend those limitations.

When I wanted to be a fantasy novelist, oh so many years ago, I heard the further piece of advice, “Read a lot of novels, including those outside your genre.” To this day, I believe this is excellent advice for all storytellers, from novelists to webcomic artists to screenplay writers to graphic novelists.

Why?

Well, a good story is a good story, regardless of its medium or genre. Regardless of the often arbitrary category in which it is filed. Don’t be embarrassed by these labels assigned to stories by publishers, bookstore owners, or movie theaters. There are amazing stories told in every kind of genre, in every kind of medium.

Want examples?

When I was an aspiring fantasy novelist and heard that advice I went to my mom and asked her to recommend a good romance novel. She went through her collection and found me a historical romance. I read it. I enjoyed it. I remember little about it except the lead character’s surname, which I later co-opted into my own stories because I thought she was cool. The story was inspiring in at least some way, even though I was so far outside the target audience.

Except I am, because I’m someone who enjoys a good story. And that’s another related point: as a storyteller, you are the target audience of everything.

Let’s go with another example. I have a friend who recommended The Hunger Games trilogy to me, although he was a little embarrassed, because they are YA. I told him it didn’t matter, because of my mantra, “A good story is a good story.”

So go forth, friends, and expose yourself to stories. Not just those in the genre you want to write. Not just those in the medium you want to create in. Experience stories all across the spectrum, from dystopian YA to historical romance to mainstream tales, as novels or movies or sequential art.

Does It Count?

01 Tuesday May 2012

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Several years ago, a friend asked me what I’d been reading lately. What I had been reading at that time was another friend’s novel manuscript for critique. When I explained this, he said, “That’s not a real book.” I said, “I think reading 200k words of story constitutes as a ‘real book,’ whether or not it’s published.”

“Oh,” he said, and dropped the subject.

With the growth of the Internet, we see serials and other web-stories on the rise, and we read them and enjoy them. With social sites like Goodreads, blog networks, and Twitter, we now have public challenges, like “read 52 books in a year.” These are well-intended challenges, trying to get us reading more and widely.

I’ve tried these challenges, had the little counter images, but then found myself trying to figure out what “counted” What is a “real book?”

  • Does it count if I’ve read it already?
  • Does it count if it’s a manga or graphic novel?
  • Does it count if I listened as an audiobook instead of print?
  • Does it count if it’s not yet a collection, or I read it while it was being serialized?
  • Does it count if my friend’s unpublished novel or fanfic?

I’m not sure why these things plagued me, but I wasn’t the only one asking themselves, or others, “does it count?”

Depending on the challenge, maybe it doesn’t count. And it shouldn’t matter, but we like these widgets and memes, and being part of a community doing something together.

Since I took up knitting and spinning, my reading time plummeted as I found myself having to choose to do one or the other. Sometimes I watched television shows and movies instead because I missed stories, and eventually I rediscovered audiobooks, which I’d always been uncertain of before.

I started listening to them while I worked, while I knitted, while I did chores, and I grew to love them. But then I got worried–was I less of a reader because I listened to books instead of reading them in print?

Truth is, I don’t think so. Print versus electronic versus audio–they’re all the same story, all the same words. Whether I’m reading them in print or on a screen, I still hear the story in my head. When I’m listening to an audiobook, it’s still the same words coming into my head–it’s just through my ears instead of my eyes.

Stories are stories. Enjoy stories, and when you worry about whether or not they “count,” ask yourself whether your goal is to enjoy more stories or “read” 52 books this year of a particular kind.” There’s no right or wrong answer here, it’s just a matter of your anxiety about it. If you’re like me and worry about whether or not things “count,” maybe you, too, need a new “counting” system.

Did I enjoy that story? Did I learn something from it? Then it counts.

Plan for the Sequel

27 Friday Apr 2012

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You’ve finished your story. You got it published in your medium of choice. Now you’re sipping a mai tai on some tropical beach, basking in your success and struggling only with those little umbrellas they put in your drink.1

Congratulations!

Then your representative calls (agent? editor? director?). The company that put your story into the mass market wants a sequel.

Superb!

Just one problem: You told your story. It has a beginning. A middle. And most importantly, an end. The hero wins. The bad guy loses. All the loose ends are tied up neatly with precise little bows.

You left yourself nothing to build a sequel off of.2

So you set to work creating a new antagonist and try to recapture the excitement and tension of your first story. You know, because like me you’re a student of the Maass school of storytelling, that you need to up the tension. That means making the new antagonist worse in some way than the one in the first story.

I think we can all think of sequels that work like this. Where the storyteller didn’t leave an out. A way to continue the adventures of the popular protagonist after the conclusion of the first story.

When you’re telling your story, leave yourself an out or four. Just in case. This ties into the general advice of using foreshadowing. Let us know there are other concerns in the world you’re building besides those of the immediate story you’re telling now. You needn’t do more than drop a name or mention of something else, something bigger, that you can then bring up in a later story if you need to.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, of course, if you’re proposing your story as a single tale there’s not likely going to be a sequel. But that doesn’t mean for sure there won’t be one. Prepare for the “worst” and hope for the “best,” which in this case is the same thing.

Want examples of what I mean? Rather than harp on the stories and storytellers who get it wrong, let me point out a few examples of those who get it right.

Let’s look at two popular examples from genre stories: The original Star Wars and the first Harry Potter book.

In his first Star Wars film, George Lucas (yes, I’m praising Lucas’s storytelling; don’t get used to it) does a good job of both telling a good, complete story and of leaving room for additional tales in the same universe, with the same characters. Think of the conclusion of the first story: at the end of it, the good guys blow up the immediate threat to themselves and their entire universe. The story could end right there and it would feel complete. On the other hand, Lucas leaves plenty of room for continuing the saga if it proved successful (and, well, it did): the Empire still exists, even though its big toy is destroyed; Darth Vader (the face of the antagonist) is still alive; Han Solo still has a big price on his head. Threads to tie the story into a greater tale, if one could be justified (and it was, obviously).

JK Rowling did the same thing in the first Harry Potter book. At the end of that story, Harry has defeated his arch nemesis, Voldemort. Is Voldemort dead? Who knows? There are hints that, although defeated, Voldemort is still around. Plus, there’s the matter of the ongoing dislike between Harry and Snape. Oh, and Harry’s six more years of school, of course. Lots and lots of threads JK could use to continue the story if her book proved successful enough to warrant sequels. But like Lucas did, she also wrapped up the story nicely. If the book flopped, well, at least those who read it would have a complete story.

So while you’re working out your plot and trying to work in foreshadowing for the conclusion of the story at hand, also try to spare a mention here and there of something else you can build more stories on later. One of the easiest ways to do that is to use the Star Wars example3: make the antagonists more than one person who can be overcome in one simple story, but make sure to give them a face whose defeat definitely creates a closure for the story.



1 Or more likely, sipping wine in your dining room. Stories don’t pay that well. ;)
2This is largely an issue in genre fiction. If you’re telling a traditional romance story or something literary, a sequel is rarely appropriate.
3I only call it the Star Wars example here because I already talked about the saga earlier. In truth, it’s a very common storytelling technique. My current-obsession of The Hunger Games trilogy uses the technique. And earlier this week, Mark Rosewater (head designer for Magic: The Gathering; full disclosure: I work on Magic’s website) answered a question on his Tumblr blog about creating whole races or armies of enemies, instead of focusing on a single bad guy. Also: If anyone can find the Stephen Moffat interview mentioned where he talks about creating groups of enemies for Doctor Who, I’d love to read it.

Antagonists in Games

20 Friday Apr 2012

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Telling Stories in Games Series: Part III

Since I spent a couple weeks talking about antagonist and I haven’t done a Telling Stories in Games entry in a while, let’s combine the two!

Who are the antagonists in your campaign?

The Final Boss

Let’s start at the end of your story. Presumably you’ve thought that far out, yes? Or at least you know who your Final Boss is, even if you don’t have the specifics worked out yet how your player characters are going to get to—much less defeat—said boss. If you aren’t planning on having a completely open-ended campaign with no set Final Boss and you haven’t yet worked out who or what your PCs are going to take down at the end, you should probably figure that out. In most stories, the beginning is the most important part, but I’ve found in general that stories told with RPGs (tabletop or computer) make it or break it with the conclusion. So start with the end of your story and know who the Final Boss antagonist is.

Midbosses

Before the player characters get to the Final Boss they will almost certainly meet a number of lesser antagonists along the way. Let’s call them Midbosses. These Midbosses might be lieutenants of the campaign’s primary antagonist, but more often they should be primarily serving their own purposes. Either way, they present challenges to your PCs along the way, giving your players the much-needed sense of accomplishment and progress as they work their way through your story.

And speaking of story, each of these Midboss antagonists needs his or her or its own story. You have the overarching storyline of the campaign, presumably, and waiting at the climax of it is the Final Boss. Unlike what I said in my first antagonist article, the primary antagonist of your campaign needn’t be at least as interesting as the player characters. Usually, this character’s goals are grandiose and simple: conquer the world, kill all the people, destroy the thing. It’s the people along the way who your player characters meet and overcome who you can use to create really interesting stories.

So for these Midbosses my advice stands. Each one needs to be interesting. If you can make their backstories more detailed than those of most of your player characters, you’re doing well. The trick with having antagonists with interesting backstories in RPGs, though, is disseminating the information. How to share backstory with your players is a topic for another day, but assume that about 90% of what you create will only ever be known to you.

But suffice it to say: your Midbosses need interesting backstories. You can get away with not much of a backstory for your Final Boss because, in effect, your entire campaign builds up a reason for the players to care about defeating their greatest antagonist. Your Midbosses, though, often work independently of the Final Boss, at least to some extent (even if they are minions thereof), and so they need their own motivations and backstories.

Midbosses who do their own thing from the very beginning–who are threats to the player characters without tying in to the main storyline–definitely need good motivations for doing so, but just as importantly you need to find a good way of making these side quests interesting and important to your players.

On the other hand, Midbosses who are more or less loyal to the Final Boss tend to be at their most interesting when they not only serve the campaign’s main antagonist but also have their own agendas. Their personal agendas need not be aligned with those of their leader, but it’s hard to make them believably loyal if they actively work against the Final Boss. It can be done, but it’s hard to do well.

Monster of the Week

At the bottom of the antagonist pile, you have those who essentially serve as “monster of the week” for your player characters. These are the main characters in their own little dramas, but the scenarios they feature in are one-shots that rarely tie in with the rest of your campaign, so in the grand scheme of your campaign they are minor characters at best. How much backstory do you give these guys? That depends on how much you enjoy creating backstories, but they need to be interesting enough to make your players care. Often, you can just imply backstory with a few carefully dropped comments or hints, saving your players a long soliloquy by someone they’re just going to beat up on for a little while.

Who Gets What

So what am I getting at here?

When you’re thinking about your campaign and the antagonists you want to throw at your player characters, focus your backstory efforts on the Midbosses—the antagonists who trouble your PCs for a story arc of multiple sessions but who are neither the campaign’s primary antagonist nor just one-shot monsters of the week. You don’t need a lot of backstory for your main antagonist—in most RPGs, just being evil is enough—nor your throwaways. But the antagonists your PCs spend several scenarios and numerous sessions hunting down and defeating really carry your campaign and are the ones your PCs tend to focus on most.

And remember in all of this that an antagonist isn’t necessarily a bad guy, or evil, but merely someone who opposes your protagonists (the PCs). This can be the captain of a city guard, a crazed alchemist, a dogged reporter, or anyone who has a reason to make the player characters’ lives miserable.