Tag Archives: telling stories

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.

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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.

Okay, What’s Next?

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Advice, Ann, Experiences

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Do you have a scene in your head that you replay over and over? Most people have stories on the brain. Some of those stories are witty things we wish we’d told the rude person on the bus, and sometimes they are fantastical stories about dragons and knights. Whatever the story in your head is, write it down.

Mike and I talked about this last week when we were reviewing his post on “Little Stories.” Originally, he just said to encourage the little stories and let them go. I told him that it would be better to suggest they write them down, even if they’re never going to “go anywhere.”

Why do that? Why not save the writing for the big “important” stories? Sometimes, your brain gets stuck on something. A scene, a chapter, a moment, a piece of dialogue, and it recycles it over and over.

Often, once you’ve written it down, your brain frees up to say “Okay, what’s next?”

This is where keeping a journal can come in handy. I have a 750words account that I’ve been writing in daily for some months now, and it’s full of little stories. Things I wish I could say to rude people, better ways to have explained a complicated situation, fictional moments with fictional characters that aren’t stories so much as a slice of life only interesting to me, and a lot more. Once I’ve written these things down, they are free. They exist outside of my brain, even if no one ever sees them. My brain says, “Okay, what’s next?”

How many people say, “Oh, I’ve got this story that’s been in my head for years. Maybe someday I’ll write it down.” Oftentimes, those stories are a small collection of scenes, but they keep replaying over and over, and feel like a huge, completed opus.

Start writing them down. Write down all of the complete and incomplete moments. Figure out what happens before and after that moment. Let your brain refill with another story. Don’t be afraid of “wasting time” or that you can only write the words that you someday are going to show to others. Don’t be afraid that if you write it down, nothing else will come—something will, even if not right away. Every word you write is practice, and every amount of practice moves you forward–maybe as you get better in prose, or you simply move out some stale thoughts from your brain so fresh new ones get in.

So try it out for a while–in a paper journal or an online journal or wherever you prefer. Write down those little stories in your head–those little snippets and moments and slices of life, and see what comes next.

Little Stories

02 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Advice, Inspiration, Mike

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Humans love to tell and hear stories, and every one of us has several of our own to tell. Facebook, Twitter, the evening news, anecdotes we tell at parties–we fill our lives with little stories.

Sports commentators know this; they fill dead airtime between the action with little tidbits about players’ lives. The coverage of the Olympics (which happen again later this year!) does this quite well, and you can bet I’ll be doing at least one article about Stories in Sports while London hosts the Games.

But even better than sports commentators at telling little stories are children. In fact, they excel at it, when allowed. Children at play spontaneously create little stories in many of their undirected activities (and some of them even do so in their directed activities!). Play with a child and let her drive the interaction. Eventually, she’ll almost certainly begin a little narrative and assign you a role; sometimes you might even be told what your role is supposed to be, but don’t count on it! You might never know the story she’s telling herself, of which you are a part, but you can be assured that there is, in fact, a story being told.

As with many parts of society that people reject, we can learn a lot from children in this regard. When we’re kids, society encourages us to tell stories. To use our imaginations. Unfortunately, this means society views storytelling and imagination as child’s play, and as we grow older we tend to give up creating stories and only tell those that actually happen to us.

Society makes us dull.

To Hell with that, I say! Telling stories is what we do, and those stories needn’t always be merely shared experiences.

If you’re reading this, you’re almost certainly interested in telling imaginary stories. In that case, it’s time to embrace the ways we used to tell stories.

Little stories.

Look around. There are lots of opportunities to get back into the practice of telling ourselves little stories. Those little stories will help us when we want to tell bigger ones. They’re practice for us, but they’re more than that; they are also inspirations. Some of those little stories we tell ourselves will eventually grow into the bigger ones we wish to share with other; some will become just parts of those bigger ones.

Most of your little stories won’t go anywhere, but you should write them down nonetheless–even if you don’t share them. Even if they only stay in your journal or your 750 Words account, don’t worry about it. These stories still serve an important purpose. They are practice.

But how do you practice these little stories?

People watching is an excellent way. The stories you create about those you watch can be as fanciful or plausible as you like. It doesn’t matter. Just tell a little story, no more than a sentence or two. “That woman with all the tattoos? A professor of applied mathematics.” “The bald old man? Vampire hunter.” “That collection of teenagers? Theater troupe.”

Games lacking a built-in narrative (like chess) can also supply you an opportunity to tell simple, little stories, as can those with only a minimal narrative (like The Settlers of Catan). Although telling those stories to yourself are fun, it’s even more fun if your opponent(s) join in with you.

There are lots of opportunities to find little stories in our lives. It’s just a matter of us embracing those opportunities.

Set Expectations

24 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Advice, Gaming, Mike, Theory

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Telling Stories in Games Series: Part II

I enjoy telling and experiencing stories in a variety of media. I’m also a big fan of storytelling experimentation and innovation, both in what stories are told and in how. My love of experimentation with stories in games pretty frequently runs afoul of what my players want. Ultimately, those games end prematurely, either through player unhappiness or my own apathy (or both). I’d say more of the games I run end in failure (I mean, opportunity!) than conclude naturally, although my success rate has increased over the past few years.

I attribute that increasing success to properly setting expectations. If you are planning on telling a story with a game (from acting as the GM of an RPG to creating a new story-based Facebook game) you will increase your chance of success by setting a reasonable expectation for your players.

Start With the Basics

The most basic pieces of information you need to share to start setting expectations for your game and story are those common to every story in every medium:

  • The name of the story (or “campaign,” if you prefer)
  • The system you’re going to use
  • How long you expect it to last (weeks, months, years?)

How you share this information is up to you. (I recommend email.)

More Details

That information is all well and good, but it doesn’t really say much about your story. Even a fairly evocative name (like, say, Warmakers) gives only a single hint to what your story is about (unless you’re into ironic or clever names, of course). So you need to give your players more to go on. Your primary goal is to make sure your players know the kind of story you want to tell. To do that, start with this kind of information:

Focus
In the first part of my Telling Stories in Games series I talked about focus. Your players need to know the kind of focus you intend on running up front. I won’t rehash that post; just go ahead and read it. :)

Freedom of Choice
Setting-focused and plot-focused RPG stories rely heavily on the illusion of free will. Players like to think they can do anything, but in reality they usually want to help you tell your story. Let them! But you need to let them know up front how much they can expect to alter the plot.

If you have a full story outline for your game, let the players know ahead of time that you’ve got a story you want to tell with them. You obviously still need to give them actual freedom of choice now and then (oh yeah, that’s definitely a future article), but if they come into the game knowing you have an agenda, they will forgive most of your heavy-handed attempts to steer them back on course.

This is the kind of gaming that some people decry as “railroading,” but I argue that (1) railroading is a myth and (2) the complaints about it come from a lack of setting proper expectations. (In fact, I feel this so strongly I have “The Myth of Railroading” listed for a future entry in this series.)

Of course, you can overdo your storytelling and not give your players any meaningful choices. That isn’t a roleplaying game. It’s not even a shared narrative. It’s oral storytelling with goofy props, and while there are times when such a thing is appropriate and appreciated, the gaming table is never one of them. (See DM of the Rings if you need a humorous example.)

The Warmakers game I ran some years ago had a destination in mind. No matter what the players did, the finale (but not its outcome) was set. How they got there and what they could bring to the party were completely up to them, so they had lots of freedom (oh no, I mean lots of freedom), but everyone knew from the beginning where the story was heading.

Tone
If your style of storytelling in games is not unknown to your players, you might not even need this part. And even if you do list it, you don’t need to use a lot of details. For example, my default story tone is “light-hearted but with a dark undertone.” How much that undertone moves into the primacy of the story depends on the players and the story.

Scope
How grand a vision to you want your story to be? This is going to be limited somewhat by how long you expect it to last, but those two factors aren’t necessarily connected. Let your players know if they can expect their characters to possess godlike powers or if they’re going to struggle to buy a box of instant noodles to split.

Consistency and Change

If you plan from the beginning on changing some aspect of the story, hint at that by saying “The story will start as…” or “The tone will initially be…” Telling the players that your story is going to be one way and then presenting it in another is a pretty good way to lose players. Nobody likes the ol’ bait-and-switch. On the other hand, if you warn them up front that some aspects of the game might change over time, they at least are forewarned.

Of course, people change over time, and so do their interests in their stories. If you want to change some aspect of your story, let your players know as soon as you can. In my experience, at least, players are open to change as long as they are warned ahead of time and allowed to give some feedback. Announcing a change right as you make it is not a good way to treat your players. Advanced warning is the key.

Final Challenge

You have some categories of information you should share with prospective players in your game, now let’s see what you have to say! Write out the expectations for a game you’re running or considering to run and share with the rest of us in comments. I’m interested to see!

The Three Foci in Games

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Gaming, Mike, Theory

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Oh hai, I’m moving my posts to Fridays. Ann will occasionally post on Thursdays, so from now on we’ll be posting two to three times a week: Tuesday, sometimes Thursday, and Friday.

Telling Stories in Games Series: Part I

There’s a chance you didn’t know this, but most (but by no means all) of my writing and editing experience comes from tabletop roleplaying games (TRPGs). When Ann and I mapped out what we wanted to do with this blog, I knew that I wanted to do a series of posts about telling stories in games (I’m going to aim for one or two per month). The recent announcement of D&D Next (aka 5e) makes this series seem somewhat more timely than it would have been otherwise.

Overlap exists between telling stories with games and telling stories in other media–after all, a story is a story is a story–but some differences persist. Everything Ann and I cover in Story Papers is applicable to game-based storytelling, but I’m not sure the reverse will always be true. Still, even if you don’t play games with a narrative, you might find something helpful in these posts.

Last week, I talked about the Three Foci of Stories as a sort of baseline for all future theory-based articles I write. It seems reasonable, then, to start off this series of telling stories with games in the same way.

Setting Focus

Last week I advised you to avoid setting-focused narratives, unless you’re Tolkien (and even then…). Well, for game-based stories, you can just throw that right out. Setting-focused narratives have been the default for at least fantasy roleplaying games since the invention of the genre in 1974 and they remain popular today in most genres I’ve experienced.

If you’ve played a fantasy roleplaying game on the tabletop or as an MMO you are already familiar with the concept:

  1. The characters are in a settlement with a problem.
  2. The characters go to a nearby bad place and “clear it.”
  3. The characters uncover some clue that leads them to the next bad place.
  4. The characters travel to the settlement closest to the new bad place.
  5. Repeat 1-4 as much as desired, making the problems and bad places larger and more challenging as you go.

That’s a pretty bare-bones macroscopic example of how such stories run.

A small-scale setting-focused story–say, a single adventure–instead details a single location (or if it’s really elaborate and ambitious, several). In fantasy RPGs this is probably a “dungeon;” in science-fiction RPGs a spaceship, spaceport, or a point of interest on a planet; and in modern-day RPGs it might be an office building, some old ruins, or a military base. Whatever the location is, it and its history are at the center of the story.

The first RPG adventures dispensed with any kind of external plot at all and simply began the adventure at the door to the dungeon. Questions about why and how the characters arrived there were irrelevant; the point of the adventures were to explore a new location and uncover its mysteries. Modern sensibilities require a little more plot than that, but a “dungeon crawl” remains a story about a place and what goes on there.

And remember that being setting-focused doesn’t mean your story is limited to one small part of the setting. A story of exploration is setting-focused (maybe with some character focus on the side), whether that exploration covers a single underground complex or an entire world.

Plot Focus

RPGs today are often more interested in plot, especially if they aren’t of the fantasy genre (and even then, plot-based adventures seem pretty popular). Many plots involve saving someone or something from someone or something else–giving the otherwise non-heroic characters a chance at being something more than mercenaries or self-absorbed jerks. The monomyth provides a basic example of an outline for these kinds of stories in any medium, although in games (at least in tabletop roleplaying games) you have to alter it somewhat to account for multiple primary protagonists.

The scope of what the characters save tends to increase as the overarching story progresses. First it’s just a village, hijacked airplane, or doomed freighter adrift in space. Eventually, it’s the entire country, world, or galaxy! (Not always, of course; sometimes the scope only increases to the next-largest nearby town.)

As I talked about last week, plot-driven stories are everywhere. Examples abound! Some of the more common plots that work well in games:

  • Save this place
  • Free the people
  • Stop the bad guy from regaining power
  • Throw down the bad guys
  • Rescue the princess!*
  • Slay the dragon**
  • Destroy a MacGuffin
  • Recover a MacGuffin
  • Escort the important person
  • Take this there

Many of those plots work in multiple genres, even if they appear on first blush to be specific to just fantasy or science fiction.

Character Focus

In many ways, a purely character-focused game lacks story. Or, rather, it lacks a story told by the gamemaster, narrator, storyteller, or host (whatever your title is). A pure character-focused game is pretty much a free-form roleplaying session, where the players take on their characters’ personas and simply interact. You might have a plot you want to introduce, but if the players are having fun in their free-form roleplaying there’s a good chance they will completely ignore it (don’t let it bother you; sit back, watch, and enjoy!).

That’s a pretty extreme example, though, and only barely constitutes an actual story. It’s most likely to happen as a break from your plot- or setting-based story, when the characters have a chance to just interact and the players are in the mood to really get into their characters. These kinds of “filler episode” sessions can be important to the pacing of your game and the enjoyment of your players.

If you want to try to run a game that is largely character focused, you’re definitely going to need the cooperation and interest of all your players. Some might take to the idea and provide long and detailed backstories as well as goals, desires, wishes, and fears of their characters. Others might just show you a character sheet. You’re better off, in that case, with running a plot-focused or setting-focused game instead and integrate player-created stories as best you can. This idea deserves its own post, really, so I’ll come back to it in the future.

Final Challenge

Here’s a challenge for you: Start with a story seed of your liking. Now, produce a one-page outline for it focusing on setting, a one-page outline for the same story focusing on plot, and finally a one-page outline focusing on characters. If you try it, let me see what you came up with!

*Actually, for all that it is considered a cliche in fantasy, I’m not aware of any professionally produced RPG scenarios that blatantly use the “rescue the princess” trope.
**Also an under-utilized trope.

Seeing Someone Else

12 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Inspiration, Mike

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For more than a decade I thought I wanted to write an epic fantasy novel. I diligently outlined the story, started it, and subsequently restarted it numerous times. One day, though, I realized I hadn’t read a novel in that genre for years. I was no longer in love with the genre. I felt a little lost. The oldest memory I have of my mom reading to me was The Hobbit, when I was around four. Fantasy had always been a part of my life, and indeed I have written many thousands of published words within the genre (and edited countless more).

It might happen to you as well someday. Maybe not the same genre and maybe not after a lifetime of reveling in it, but one day you might realize–as you agonize over a story you’re struggling to even write a love letter for–that your tastes have changed. That you have moved on. That realization can be scary, but don’t panic.

This is an opportunity.

The first thing you should do is stop. Stop feeding your brain with the stories you no longer love. If you can find other kinds of stories to write about, or draw, or film, or otherwise create, then by all means continue to do that. But stop putting into your story brain things you don’t like.

The second thing you should do is start. Start looking at other kinds of stories. Don’t limit yourself to any one kind of genre, medium, or set of tropes. Explore what exists. And a lot exists.

When you’re exploring, remember to not just look outside the genre you no longer love but also the medium in which you create. Novels remain a dominant storytelling form, but movies, sequential art (comic books, webcomics, manga), modern computer roleplaying games, and even some television programs (not reality TV) offer compelling and well-crafted stories. Thanks to the Internet, other forms of storytelling keep cropping up as well (such as Youtube, Escape Pod and its kin, Echo Bazaar, and Homestuck). The Kindle might also bring a resurgence of short stories and novellas.

Ann and I will undoubtedly revisit this list in the future, but the important thing to note for today is that you have many, many options when you’re ready to feed your brain with new kinds of stories. (To say nothing of opportunities for telling stories!)

Of course, this advice is helpful even if you are still madly in love with the genres, media, and tropes you’re creating in. Storytelling isn’t a monogamous relationship; you should experiment around a little. You don’t have to dump your true love to learn something new, and the stories you tell in your chosen genre will be better for your exposure to other types. If you haven’t had enough analogies yet, think of it as cross-training for your story brain.

Today, epic fantasy and I are on friendly terms. Fantasy still informs my works; it continues to have an impact on the stories I tell. For now, though, I have a pretty good idea of what I love and the stories I want to tell, but I also know those might change in the next ten years–and if the change does happen I won’t panic, because I’ll know what to do.

There is No New Thing Under the Sun

05 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Inspiration, Mike

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The title of this post comes from the Bible (an under-appreciated source of some very interesting stories), in the book of Ecclesiastes, which was written about… oh… two millennia ago. While I think perhaps the writer was using a bit of hyperbole to make a point, the attempt to do something completely unique can seem pretty daunting. We’re faced now with four thousand years of world literature, and the number of stories being told every year is not going down.

Don’t worry about it.

You can spend all your life wracking your brain to create something wholly new and not at all derivative of anything else ever done since the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BCE)… or you can just tell the story you want to tell, with the characters you like.

Guess which will let you get more done?

Sometimes you won’t realize how much you’ve drawn from some source or another until you’re all done and can see the big picture. Don’t despair! Try to resist the urge to go back and redo the parts you feel aren’t new or different enough, because chances are (1) you’re the only one who notices and (2) whatever you change it to is also inspired by stories you already know. (There’s probably a neat creative exercise we could do about exchanging one inspiration for another, but let’s save that idea for later.)

How about a personal example of what I mean? I spent months writing this week’s Open Doors column and it wasn’t until my third read-through that I realized how Arthurian it is. The King Arthur stories never consciously entered my mind the entire time I was writing that piece, and yet the inspiration is clear to me now. (The blatant call-out to Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, though, was completely intentional from the beginning.)

I could go back and rewrite it all again, of course, taking out all the bits I feel are too derivative, but in so doing I’d likely just put in something inspired by some other story I might or might not remember, and then I’d be right back to where I am now (minus the self-awareness, most likely). That would be a waste of my time; I have other stories to tell now! Were I not writing this post shortly after scheduling that column I probably never would have mentioned the perceived link to anyone, but it happens to be a pretty good example of what I’m talking about here.

So, in short (too late!): go tell your stories. Write. Draw. Film. Whatever. Enjoy the stories you are telling. Enjoy the act of creating them. Because even if they are “just like” something else out there, whether you’re aware of it or not, they are still your stories–your take on something that you and others clearly enjoy.

Story Papers is not the first blog about telling stories, but it is for us! We hope you enjoy our insights from our own processes of creation and that you join us when we challenge you (and each other) to try new creative techniques and new ways of telling stories. We’d love to hear back from you, so please always feel free to leave a comment or email us! Thanks for reading!