Category Archives: Theory

Beginnings in Games

22 Friday Jun 2012

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Let’s say you have a story you want to tell using the medium of a tabletop roleplaying game (TRPG). Good, good. The world needs more GMs. (And also note that some of this post is also relevant if you want to tell stories with other kinds of games as well.)

Where do you start?

No, I don’t mean where do you start your preparations for the game. I mean where in your storyline do you bring in the player characters (aka the PCs; aka the protagonists)? I’ve already done one post about general advice for starting a story, but games have their own needs sometimes in conflict with general storytelling advice. So here are some considerations I ponder before starting up a game.

Length of Story

How long of a story you want to tell, or perhaps more pertinently how many sessions you want to spend telling it, is probably the single greatest consideration. If you plan to run a multi-year epic story that tracks the rise of the PCs from mere peasants to near demigods, you need to tie them in a lot earlier in the storyline than if you plan on just running one or two sessions.

Even for a one-shot game (one where you play a single session with no continuity with other sessions), where you can start much close to the end of the story, you probably need to do more than just start with rolling initiative for the climactic battle. I mean, you probably could do that, but you’re going to struggle with making that into a story that engages your players. I suppose that is the gaming equivalent of flash fiction (stories of about a thousand words or less).

How to Introduce the PCs

Tying in with the above point, how and when in their careers you bring in the characters matters as much as where in the storyline. What I mean is, do you bring in the characters at the start of their careers (at 1st level, if you’re playing a level-based game) or sometime after they have gained some experience?

In medias res: Yes, you can start a game in medias res. Be prepared to answer (or better, work with your players to answer) a lot of questions early, though.

It can be a lot trickier because you have to then work with your players to establish how they got into that situation. And I’ve seen some people complain about these kinds of starts as “railroading,” which I disagree with on the principle that railroading (that is, the GM exerting so much control over the game’s plot that the players can do nothing to change it) doesn’t exist–only poorly set expectations.

The classic way to start an adventure, “You’re standing outside the entrance to the dungeon,” is definitely a case of in medias res. Why the characters are at the entrance to the dungeon and how they got there are glossed over completely, if addressed at all; all that matters is they are there and they have a dungeon plunder. While that certainly worked just fine in the 70s and early 80s, and the method definitely still has its place and adherents, it seems these days that people expect more from their RPGs.

Starting a game in medias res might be with, “Roll for initiative,” but that doesn’t seem as common (although it was recommended as the beginning of choice in the gamemastering section of the old West End Star Wars RPG). Anyway, starting a game with combat can really get your players’ attention. (And although beginnings aren’t as important in games as in fiction having a memorable start doesn’t hurt.) The real trouble with starting with combat, though, is making the beginning so awesome you can’t maintain the same level of excitement throughout the rest of the game.

You look trustworthy!: Then there is the equally tried-and-true method of telling the party’s (that is, the group of player characters) coming together. This doesn’t have to be terribly creative or extensively roleplayed, but it’s a great way to start a long-term game. This is the equivalent of starting the story the day the main character’s life is thrown into upheaval. Except, since it’s an RPG, you’re talking about the day that several peoples’ lives changed and brought them together. This can be an in medias res opening, with all the PCs coming together to defend their home town from an invasion, or it can a much more laid-back start, where they are drawn together by some other, milder, method (posted announcement, town crier, contest, mutually witnessed event, or whatever). This method works perfectly well for characters just starting their careers (i.e., 1st-level), but it can also work for more experienced PCs who just happen to finally meet.

My Olde Friends: The other side of that coin, of course, is the “You’ve all known each other for several years” method. The main problem with this approach, though, is that the way people who have known each other act comfortably together takes time to develop both in real time and in the imaginary space of RPG characters. What I mean is, characters who have known each other for years are going to act a certain way around each other. It’s hard to capture that kind intimacy and trust with characters you just created ten minutes earlier. That said, this method opens up a lot of storytelling opportunities for both you as the gamemaster and for your players. It’s particularly good for characters who aren’t just starting out, but childhood friends who decide to band together to become adventurers also works.s

…

This post is quite long enough, I think, but there’s more to be said about starting out. I haven’t even gotten to the mysterious man in the darkened corner of the tavern!

I’ll have to revisit starting your game again in the near future. And then I can move on to the most important part of your campaign: the end. Oh, and I guess I really should talk about why I think the idea of railroading is bunk. Lots to say, and with the excitement I have for D&D Next I’ll probably start talking about storytelling in games more often moving forward. :)

Oversharing

14 Thursday Jun 2012

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I really enjoy worldbuilding. Or rather, in the case of my favorite setting (Earth), world-modifying. I tend to put a fair amount of effort into it (sometimes more than my storytelling!) and want to show off what I’ve created.

This is a problem, though, and one I struggle with whenever I tell a story (in any medium, including games).

How is it a problem? According to all the advice I’ve ever seen, we should as storytellers prepare a lot more of our world than we share. I’ve seen various percentages and fractions and ratios thrown around, but the basic point is we should know a lot more than we show. It helps us add verisimilitude and consistency to our stories, and helps us reduce the chances of contradiction and logical fallacies.

But if you’re at all like me, you want to show off everything you’ve made, often at the expense of your story or the interest of your audience.

I think this is a natural inclination, but maybe not. It might come, especially among fantasy writers, by our introduction at impressionable ages to the works of Professor Tolkien. He is the master of oversharing, and indeed that seems to be the point of his works: to reveal a vibrant and living fantasy world. Character and plot take back seats to setting. Note that there is nothing at all wrong with this (see my article on The Three Foci for why I believe that), but even then, you can and should hold back something.

On the other hand, an author I believe who not only does incredible worldbuilding but also knows exactly how much to share and how much to hold back is the author of another popular fantasy series: JK Rowling. Ann and I have been re-”reading” the books (in audiobook format) and I’ve been struck by her excellent use of foreshadowing and subtle worldbuilding. It is clear, knowing what I know about the overall storyline, that she knew a lot about her universe and her storyline as early as… well… the first chapter of the first book! Yes, Rowling has revealed a lot more about her universe since she completed the books, but it is all superfluous. It might explain a few things, but none of it was needed for her story so, although she knew it, she left it out.

That takes discipline as a storyteller (I think… although maybe for some people it just comes naturally?), and it’s something I want to begin to emulate (say, for my recently mentioned NaNoWriMo story…).

How about you? Do you find it easy or difficult to hold back from sharing everything you’ve created? And if you do hold back, how easy is it for you to decide what to share and what not to?

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.

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.



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.

Seeding Your Story

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

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Last week, Mike linked me to this article about 8 tips on writing from Kurt Vonnegut. For the most part, I agreed with these tips.

On the other hand, I didn’t fully agree with this one:

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

This information can be interpreted many ways: does he mean go crazy with the info dumps? Be blatant with your plot points? Indeed, if there are so many pieces of information that I can see the ending coming without finishing the story, then why would I read it? Isn’t that in direct violation of tip #1?

Some stories–particularly horror–just don’t function with this advice at all. I mean, if we saw what was coming in a Lovecraftian piece, would it be nearly as interesting? Would it even be Lovecraftian?

So what does he mean here? Well, I can’t speak for Mr. Vonnegut, but my take on it would be the following:

Seed your plots with enough information so that when your readers get to the end of the story they can see the progression, and the conclusion makes sense. Conversely, if they could not finish reading the story, they could, with some consideration, create an ending for themselves (whether or not it was your own).

(This still doesn’t work with some specific niche story types, but it does fit on a broader level.)

What are your thoughts on the matter? Should you give it all away at the beginning, sprinkle throughout, or wait until the big reveal at the end?

Face of the Enemy

30 Friday Mar 2012

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So last week I talked about the importance of interesting and memorable antagonists. Ann provided a counterpoint about interesting and proactive protagonists.

This week, I’m going to talk a little more about antagonists.

First, let me revisit protagonists: in a lot of stories, particularly (it seems to me) in science fiction, a small group of protagonists face off against a much larger organization, be it a government (it usually is), an army of invaders, or reality itself (a la The Matrix). The protagonists are presented as heroic freedom fighters going up against some monolith enemy that nobody seems to like.

Many examples abound: the rebel alliance against the Galactic Empire, the Districts against the Capital, the fellowship against the armies of the Unblinking Eye, the Fremen against the combined armies of the Harkonnens and the emperor, &c. (This list barely scratches the surface, really.)

In those stories, the heroes are facing nigh-impossible odds against opponents so overwhelmingly powerful it seems improbable that they can succeed. Rather than even try to present the entirety of their respective conflicts, which almost always encompass multiple clashes of armies scattered across vast geographic areas, the storytellers focus their attention (and rightly so!) on a small group of protagonists. While it might certainly seem epic and story-worthy to talk about those small groups of characters facing off against the full weight of the oppressive regimes they face, few well-known stories do this. Why?

Because just as we as storytellers must focus our attentions on small groups of protagonists who help shape their struggles against their overpowering opponents, so too must we give a face to our otherwise faceless antagonists.

Endless ranks of anonymous, uniform masses can easily create a sense of scale, of oppression, and possibly even of dread (especially in a cinematic presentation). We are programmed by our storytellers to fear and hate large, faceless organizations, whether they be rightful governments, powerful megacorporations, or guardians of reality. Such an amassed force makes for a poor antagonist, though, simply because of that facelessness.

A vague threat is a poor substitute for a good antagonist. To really invoke an emotional response in your audience, you need to present someone to focus on.

With that in mind, let’s go back to my examples.

The Galactic Empire has umteen zillion stormtroopers, but it is Darth Vader who scares us. You know, from the moment you see him, that he is the “face” of the bad guys. He stands out. He menaces. While the rebels try to bring down the Empire, it’s really Darth Vader they must defeat.

The Districts want to bring down the Capital, but Katniss focuses her attention on President Snow. People die all around her, but ultimately those deaths push her ever closer to her goal. Tantalizingly close…

The Fremen are part of several massed battles led by Paul Atreides, yes, but ultimately it falls on Paul (and his sister) to overthrow the emperor and kill Baron Harkonnen and Feyd-Rautha, even as a climactic battle rages outside.

One reason Luke, Katniss, and Paul don’t have to try to take on massed armies on their own is that all of them have their own massed armies fighting for or around them. The conservation of Ninjutsu goes both ways. While the protagonists cut a swath through the enemy forces, the important, named antagonists can do the same to the protagonists’ allies.

This allows you to set up epic climaxes where the main characters face off against the main antagonists and have their duels, even while some immense battle rages around them. You should definitely give glimpses of the major battle raging all around them but keep the focus on the main characters—protagonists and antagonists alike.

And note that this sort of one-on-one battle (metaphorical or literal) isn’t only important in rebels-versus-oppressive-baddies stories. Anytime you have large forces colliding in your stories, it is vitally important to give all the sides at least one person each for your audience to identify with.

As a final example, think about the Trojan War and how it is presented to us in literature: In the Iliad, Homer goes out of his way to talk about duels, naming each opponent and describing the outcome, but spends little time at all talking about the massed armies.

Take a look at your stories–are your antagonists a faceless menace? Can you come up with a handful of them to stand as the face of the enemy?

Putting the “Pro” in Protagonist

27 Tuesday Mar 2012

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Last week, Mike talked about protagonists and antagonists, and pointed out that in many iconic stories, the protagonist is reactive and the antagonist is your proactive character. This week, I wanted to talk about reactive and proactive protagonists, and how they drive a story. Now, many characters are going to be a mixture of both–they might start reactive and then become proactive as the story progresses, or they might start proactive and then begin to react as their actions lead to fallout.

Many of us in our day-to-day lives are reactors. We sit comfortably in whatever we’re doing, whether that’s a desk job or acting as a lone gunman. The events that cause change–a lay-off, breaking up with a significant other, coping with a death in the family–are usually things that happen to us, rather than events we go out to seek. When it comes to storytelling, many characters are in the same situation, only that which they are reacting to often gets kicked up to the next notch or three in severity or drama. For example, instead of a fender-bender, the whole interstate crumbles below them. Instead of helping a friend move, they must move a Ring of Power across the known world. Given our experiences, we often default to make our characters reactive, because protagonist are capable of reacting to circumstances much greater than mere average Joes living average lives who do not get stories told about them.

So what about proactive characters? Proactive characters usually want something. They want something vitally important–whether for greed or love. It could be a person, an item, or an ideal. They want it so badly they’re pushing aside anything that gets in their way. Aren’t these qualities that we usually associate with antagonists? They certainly can be, but they work just fine for our protagonists, too. Your antagonists should have a level of proactiveness, of course, although they might start by reacting to a proactive protagonist. Chances are you have two willful people who want something that causes them to cross. That something could be money or world peace–it doesn’t matter. Your protagonist could be a treasure-hunter, and the antagonist another treasure-hunter competing for the same prize.

Ultimately, your character is likely to be a combination of reactive and proactive, but chances are that one is going to outweigh the other. Reactive characters often make us boggle at how strong they are–how one thing dumps on them after the other, yet they persevere. (Yet, most real-life people put into that situation will often tell you they would have preferred not to have to be so “strong.”) Proactive characters, I believe, are the people who wow us because they are who we secretly want to be–they aren’t afraid of change or to go after the things they really want–no matter what the setbacks are that happen along the way.

The Most Important Character

23 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Advice, Mike, Theory

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Quick, without thinking about it name the most important character of your story. Go!

Your main character, right? It seems pretty obvious. That’s the character your audience wants to see. That’s the character you have to get all of us to like, so we’re willing to enjoy your story. Even if your main character is a hateful prat, you have to make us love him or her, or else we’ll certainly never stay with your story to the end.

Well, yes, maybe. But I would argue differently. In my mind, the most important character in your story isn’t the one whose story it is, but the one who creates the story:

Your antagonist.

Think about all the stories you know and love. How many of them start with the main character doing something proactive? Can you think of any? I can’t. At least not any iconic characters. Luke Skywalker. Harry Potter. Frodo Baggins. Lyra Belacqua. Arthur Holmwood. Katniss Everdeen.

Their stories begin before we are introduced to them, but not because of anything they do. We are introduced to these characters right as they become personally engaged in their own stories. Right as something happens to them to change their world and drive them, usually reluctantly, toward becoming the protagonists of their stories.

Let’s think about the stories we know and the ones we want to tell. Something outside your main character’s control puts him or her on the path to becoming the protagonist of the story, and more often than not that something is put into motion by someone. That, of course, is usually your antagonist. It’s your antagonist who carries your story, whether you want us to hate or love your antagonist, agree or disagree with them.

Besides, we don’t need to hate your antagonist. In fact, I think the best antagonists are those we don’t hate. The ones who we might even agree with in some ways, were they not such extremists.

You can sometimes get away with a boring, stock, cardboard-character protagonist who nobody really likes. Tolkien did. Lucas did. More importantly even than your protagonist, your antagonist must be someone interesting. Possibly someone charismatic and likeable. Yes, you can also get away with uninteresting antagonists, but you really need something else to capture your audience’s attention and keep it engaged.

Let’s be honest, antagonists like Lord Voldemort and Sauron are not that interesting. One is half-dead for nearly half the books he’s in and the other is a disembodied eye in a tower. Both are more like story elements than characters. They push their respective stories into happening, but they are little more than evil-for-evil’s-sake mustache-twirlers like Snidely Whiplash.

So think about the antagonists who you like; the ones who are interesting. The ones who get you cheering even more than the protagonists in their stories. I consider Severus Snape, for example, to be arguably the most interesting character in the Harry Potter books. Other interesting antagonists I can think of include Spike from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Magneto from the X-Men stories, or Marisa Coulter of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

These characters do despicable things and oppose their corresponding protagonists at almost every turn, but we are drawn to them because, well, being bad is fun. Antagonists almost always have the most fun in stories, if for no other reason than because they lack inhibitions. Where the protagonists are often boring because they have to hold back and play the “good guys,” there’s something freeing about cheering—somewhat—for those who toss aside social mores in pursuit of their goals.

What am I getting at?

Think about your protagonist and how much effort you’ve put into developing him or her. Now take that amount of effort and put twice as much into your antagonist. Your story—and your audience—will thank you for it.

There’s a lot more I want to say about antagonists, but I’ll come back to them over the coming weeks.