Samven's Writing Lectures

[Samven]

Story and characters have always been a huge passion of mine. Writing plots and dialogue has been my biggest passion since I was a wee lad and, having just finished a Master's Degree in Creative Writing, I figured it was finally time for me to do what DerVVulfman suggested I do when first joined the Save-Point forums. So, without further ado, here's the first in what will hopefully be a number of little tutorials on story-writing!

1. Beginning your story

A few of my friends in the amateur game making scene have come to me to ask for help in thinking up a plot. They usually complain that they have all the characters sorted, all the cool battle skills, maybe even some designs or music to go... They just don't know how to start this grand adventure. Thus, their first question for me is usually something along the lines of, "How do I do it so easily?"

Well, the answer is that I don't. Nobody does. Nobody just wakes up with an entire plot outlined in their brain. Don't be stupid.

In fact, trying to work out the whole story before you do any actual work on your game is probably the worst thing you can do as you're just pushing precious development time back. It's all very well saying to people that you have this amazing Mass Effect beater all lined up but if you just keep telling us about it you'll never be in a position to show us anything. You know. Because you'll have wasted so much time gabbing off. The sooner you can churn out that starting town and dungeon, the sooner you'll have something to impress people with.

"But how can we make those things if we don't have a story sorted?" Many people reply when I give them that answer. Well, the answer is that, if you've got some characters, you may already have something to base your first little story arc on.

Let's look at Final Fantasy VII. Because everybody knows Final Fantasy VII. Ultimately, the bombing raid ends up having nothing to do with the main story: which is effectively a quest for revenge against a psychotic murderer. So, if that's the case, why are we bothering with this attack on a power plant? Because it's something the characters would do. Cloud is a mercenary: he fights people for money. Barret is eco-terrorist: he blows up factories to save the environment. So, naturally, the best way to introduce the audience to these characters, what they do, how they work together and all of that is going to be having Barret hire Cloud to help him blow up a reactor. It worked well there and there's no reason why it couldn't work for you. Examine your characters. Think about how they interlock and, if you've written them as well as you think they have, something is going to click sooner or later. Don't worry if it's something simple, like two best friends hitching a ride to the land of high adventure to win fame and fortune, as even that can be a good opener. Just look at Ys. Almost single game in the series starts with the main character Adol on a ship or on a shipwreck.

All in all, unless you're writing some sort of stable time-loop narrative, you really shouldn't worry too much about how you begin your story. It's very rare that the reason you went to the first dungeon is going to be the same reason why you're fighting the Dark Lord Malicio in sixty hours. For the most part, the call to adventure is just an excuse to boot the hero and their starting companions out the door so that they can start hunting for the real story.

Sam Rowett
Pywritechnics