Story Game meets Discovering a Genre

I realize that one of the reasons I stalled on the "discovering a genre" series is because I lost track of the purpose. 

I originally had the idea of doing this as an extension of the Story Game.

In particular, I wanted to explore a model for a "create your own" aspect of the game.  When I started this a year and a half ago, with the Situation Game, I picked a certain kind of romantic suspense story because I wanted to work with certain formulaic aspects of it.

(For those who weren't following the blog at the time, you can start with the Introduction to the Situation Game, or ending "Let's Play" post, which has an index to multiple posts.  I've done a few minor games and series since. One day I'll get them indexed....)

So when the "Orphans on a Train" pattern struck my fancy, I thought it might make a case in point for building a game out of a very different sort of "genre."

But, you know what? I don't think the "Orphans on a Train" model is suitable for the kind of story that works with the story game.  It's not formulaic enough.  Yes, there are very common tropes and patterns, and they kind of reach an archetype.... but they vary too much to make a kind of story that works with something like the Situation Game.

(And yet, I have some thoughts about how there could be a different kind of game involved, more on that later, first I want to talk about why it won't work for the game....)

Two things struck me in thinking about this:

1.) Ideal Game Stories are Suitable for Satire:

The kind of story that suits the original story game has got to be both predictable, and that predictability has to be part of what is satisfying about it.  Those kinds of stories are part story and part ritual.  We might make fun of the fact that the villain in a certain kind of romantic suspense is always someone the heroine trusts, but that is also what we read it for.

The Orphans on a Train story doesn't fit because the whole point is that it's a story of discovery.  While it might be predictable on some level, it isn't the predictability that satisfies.  It's actually the discovery that is satisfying.  Therefore the tropes are less obvious.  But I think they are still there.

2.) I Don't Want to Repeat This Story (or not exactly)

I am interested in writing a bunch of stand-alone mystery-suspense stories. But I'm not really interested in writing a bunch of Orphan on a Train stories.  I really only want to write one.  This is because, when I read such a story, I find that I'm not reading it to find out how it ends. I'm reading it for the journey itself.

And I don't actually want it to end.

What I personally want out of the story, is kind of like a TV series or even a serial.   It could be a series of episodes that never end because they don't really have a plot arc among them (just a bunch of little stories) OR if they do have a plot arc, it wanders endlessly like life and soap operas.

This is why I decided to set it in the world of The Serial (see, The Case of the Misplaced Hero). 

I don't think this kind of story needs a game really.  In some way it is driven not by the need to vary the same pattern, but to continuously break the pattern.

But then it struck me -- any series is kind of like a genre unto itself.  This is particularly true of the kind of long, unending series written in the mystery genre.  The great ones have their own patterns, with specific pay offs which are expected and loved by the audience, but also risk boring the audience.

Which is, of course, just like the problems of formula fiction -- how to present the desired formula while keeping it fresh.  That was a part of the purpose of the Story Game: to randomize expected elements to keep them fresh and force creativity to another level.

But for all the similarities in purpose, I don't think this is suited for developing a game.

What it IS suited for is developing an important writing tool that I think everyone should master: the Series Bible.  That's a basic foundation for a whole  lot of activities. (Including the possible creation of a game, later.)

And I think that's where I need to focus the "Discovering a Genre" series.  Examine this "genre" to discover the elements I really want to use.

Next time (I hope it will be next week), I'll pull together what I've already talked about, and look at them in the context of what I want to do with the story that's already forming in my head.

See you in the funny papers.

The Map Game

This is an exercise that I came across in creative nonfiction circles. It is meant to evoke forgotten memories an details.  Kind of an idea generation exercise for memoir-ists.  However, I think it is a great jumping off point for fiction writers. 

Step 1.  Take a blank piece of paper and put a small x in the middle.  That X represents a place you lived as a child (or just a long time ago).

Step 2.  Start filling in places all around it.  Where's the school or bus stop? Where's your best friend's house? Where is the cranky neighbor who yelled at you for picking his flowers?

Not to scale, and also upside down (South is at the top)

This exercise tends to evoke long forgotten memories.  It also can help flash out memories.  For instance, when drawing a map like this, I found lots of very blank areas that didn't evoke anything, but when I started thinking about my friends, I would recall, "Oh yeah, that kid lived there... and yeah, his mom bred Siamese cats, and that's where we got Dodger.... and remember the discussion of that one litter that was a mix of Siamese and non-Siamese kittens?"

And this brings me to the first way this is useful to the fiction writer:

I will likely use that discussion of the Siamese kittens in one of my romantic suspense novellas -- the discussion was whether the mom cat had, um, been walking out with a mixed-breed tom, or several different suitors of different breeds.  The breeder was certain it had to be several, because she thought eye color and coat color came from different genes, and the Siamese color kittens all had blue eyes.  (She was wrong in this:  Siamese coloring is determined by a kind of albino gene that is heat sensitive.  This same gene also turns eyes blue, and it's responsible for the weak eye muscles that make many Siamese cats cross-eyed.)

This is an ideal sort of memory for my heroine -- because one of her relatives would like to believe she is the bastard child of an unfaithful wife.  The memory of the discussion of kitten parentage evokes both character and information, as well as some thematic elements.

And... memories are maleable things.  Often, when we recapture some image from childhood, we only half remember it. We often can't even be sure we remembered right or understood it at all.  This makes for great fiction writing tools, because we can fill it in in all sorts of ways.


The House Map

Another version of this exercise can be to draw the plan of a house you lived in as a child. (Or a classroom, or other place you spent a lot of time.)  You can include the yard or barn.  Where was your room? Are  there any rooms you don't remember well, because you didn't spend time there?  Where were you when you first saw The Wizard of Oz on TV?  Where were your for your birthday party?  Sketch out the furniture you remember.

One of the reasons I like this one better than the other is because it can evoke the patterns of life.  How and where we eat.  Where we spend our time.  How we play and work.  (As I went through a few of these exercises, I was surprised to realize that throughout most of my childhood, I didn't use furniture.  I spent much of my time on the floor.)


The Geography of Your Story

Fantasy writers like to draw out maps of their magical universes -- The lair of the dragon, the mountains, the dark wood, the trail through the badlands.  This is fine for a "road" story where your characters are traveling.  It can also help with world-building, to help pin down details.

However, as with the exercises above, I think that smaller maps, or house plans, can help all kinds of writers.  It is the landscape your drama happens in.   Whether it's an action scene, or a quiet melodrama -- your characters are limited and helped by their physical surroundings.

I suppose this is why the Golden Age mystery writers often included maps of the crime scene in their books -- a tool for keeping track of the clues and action.  But I think of it as even more than that.  Setting is something the characters work with.

I always think of the wonderful scene in the first act of Dial M For Murder: when Ray Milland invites the man he hopes to hire to commit murder into his house and lays out his plan.  Milland's character uses that space first to set the man at ease, then to manipulate him, and finally to rehearse the murder which will happen later.  (I talked about this use of space in a post about Hitchcock and Creative Limits.)


Character's Houses

Although I don't often do maps of my character's houses, I do pause to think about the layout.  I like to feel as much at home in their houses as they do.  Karla's house, in The Man Who Did Too Much, is based on my grandmother's house (but with a bigger kitchen).  Scenes that take place in that house are often very dynamic, just because I have a feel for  it and I find the characters constantly move around within it -- even in a non-action scene.

Mick and Casey don't have a house, but because they are prone to get into action scenes, I almost always have to figure out the plan of every barn and hotel, and saloon and ranch house they may encounter.  (Because sure as shootin' Mick is probably going to have to leap in or out of a window.)

And, of course, every house reflects the owner in some way.  I was thinking about this as George buys a house at the end of The Man Who Did Too Much -- I have a feeling that house is going to ALWAYS be under construction.  And the furniture will change constantly. (Though in the next book it appears he doesn't have any furniture.  Except lawn furniture and a fully appointed professional kitchen.)


So, take some time to draw out some maps -- real ones, imaginary ones.  Don't forget to do small maps of small details, like rooms, and not just where the mountains and dragons are.  You find so much in little things.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game -- Generating a Mystery Story part 2

This is a relatively short post, finishing up my first draft of The Mystery Creation Game.  The first part of the game was posted two weeks ago.

That would actually work as a stand-alone game.  Depending on the kind of mystery you are looking to create, it creates a social situation, and you can generate motives for both your killer and your red herrings, and choose killer and victim randomly.  (The wheel of motives needs work, but the principle is there.)

For a really good, old fashioned "Clue" type mystery, you could create a Wheel of Murder Methods, and randomize elements of where and when, as well as alibis.  I may do a more elaborate version like that later.   I really enjoy playing this as a game.  However, right now, I'm creating what is useful to me in plotting a book.

To that end, I created one more element of the game.  The Big Wheel of Crimes and Theories.  This wheel has 165 items on it so far -- too long to put in this blog post.  For now, you can find it on this generic Blog Page. 

It could be used to replace the simple "motives" wheel -- but I like using both.  And that's because of how I use it (more below).

The Big Wheel of Crimes and Theories is really more suited for those of us who write mysteries with elements of suspense.  These are stories which have an extra level of skullduggery in them.

So even though the victim may have been killed out of the usual jealousy or greed, there is also the issue of the smuggling ring or blackmail, or the buried treasure.  And that's the kind of story I tend to write.

If you're going to use this wheel, there is a reason you still might want to use the motive wheel separately:  Every suspect has a motive -- so there can be lots of motives. However, you really shouldn't have more than one big secret plot. Unless they tie in together really well, you don't have a bank robbery AND a smuggling ring AND a plot to cheat the dowager out of her land.

Now, you might want to use one of those as a red herring in and of itself -- a theory your detectives come up with that proves false -- but then you really have to choose one that is compatible with the facts created by the real back story.

Which brings me to how I use this wheel differently.

Browsing Vs. Random Choice

This wheel could be used for random choices like the rest.  As a matter of fact, I did use it that way earlier.  But I apparently didn't even bother to write down what choices came up, because I have no record of them, and I don't remember what I rolled.

I just rolled them and continued brainstorming, and forgot them as soon as the story started latching onto a direction.  Then, after I had a feel for the story and the characters, I went back and browsed through the list, using it as a reference.  Sort of like using a list of baby names to help find the exact right name for a character.

That's the point of making the list so long and exhaustive: so that I can find an element that fits the story that is growing in my head.

That's a different purpose than random choice. Spinning a wheel creates a challenge, and forces you to look closer at a particular option you didn't choose -- it forces you outside of the box.  Or it forces you to stay inside the box and think up some way to make it interesting.  Either way it makes you work. 

Browsing a whole list, if it's long enough, prompts your mind to consider many options to find the right one.  It reminds you of things you might overlook or not have thought of.  (A random choice can do that too, but only with one option at a time.)

While I really like using random choices for stand alone stories, for series fiction, it can be very important to get the choices right. To keep the tone, think at the proper scale. (Some series need a "big" plot with spies and international intrigue, and some will need to stay very small and domestic, for instnace.)  For that kind of thing, it can be more useful to use the wheels as references and browse them for the right option.

(Plus, if you come up with three for four you like and can't make up your mind, well, you can flip a coin or spin a very small wheel to randomly choose one of those!)

So to sum up:

With the Mystery Game, I do continuing brainstorming.  As I mentioned in the first post: start with your existing series or idea.  Roll a set of characters and their relationships with each other, and brainstorm a basic situation on those characters and your existing ideas.  Then roll motives and get an idea of who might have killed who and why.  You can roll a big crime behind the crime at this time, or you can wait until you have more of an idea of what you want, and browse the big list to find the exact right crime secret to suit your story.


Next week I'm going to a little stand-alone game -- more of an exercise really.  It's unrelated to anything we've done so far.   I'm going to have you draw a map.  Not a dramatic map, nor one from a story, but a real if mundane map.  It's an exercise in memory that tends to spur ideas.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game - Caring About The MacGuffin

For those of you new to the story game: this is a series of games based on using random choices to generate ideas.  The purpose is to spur creativity, speed up decisions, and maybe force you out of your comfort zones to try something different once in a while.

I created the original Situation Game to have  a lot of fun and stockpile dozens of romantic suspense ideas. 

This game -- the Mystery or Whodunnit Game -- came together under different circumstances.  And I realize that I need to step back and talk about that.

My problem: I did not like how the mystery plot side of the next Starling and Marquette story was going. (That is, the "Man Who" series.)  I realized that I was trying to build the plot out of the front story, rather than build it for itself.

The Front Story in a Mystery

Most mysteries have a front story and a crime story.  The front story is often called the subplot (or "B Story").  This is the story of what is going on with the series characters -- usually unconnected to the case of the week.  For instance, in the TV show Castle, we have the ongoing romance between the lead characters, and the "bromance" between the sidekicks.  And the ongoing melodrama of Castle's mother and daughter, who have their own lives that impact his.  There has been, at times, a large plot arc in which Beckett was investigating the secrets behind her mother's murder, which sometimes became the crime plot for an episode, but often was just the front story.

I call this the "front story" because it's the story that's going on in the foreground.  Right in front of you.  The investigation is a part of the front story, even though it overlaps with the crime story.  I include it as front story because it happens in front of the audience, and it's another part of the characters' lives.  The investigation is one of the things your characters do.

And in some series, the investigation is all there is to the front story -- we don't always have any info about the characters' personal lives.  We still may read or watch that series to spend time with the character.  It's still a front story.

With a cozy th this blending of front story and investigation is stronger; because we're talking about an amateur sleuth.  There's no leaving your personal life at home while you're at work solving the case with an amateur.  Solving the case IS personal.

My problem is that the front story interacts with, and is impacted by, the hidden mystery story.  And the more they interact, the more depth your story has -- because each adds something to the other.

And that's golden, because for me the front story is the most important part of the story.  It's why I read or watch, and it's why I write.  So the more layers added, the better.

But interweaving multiple story lines (including one which is hidden and must mystify the charactes and audience) is tough and takes a long time.   Especially when you do as I was doing, and try to build the hidden back story out of the front story.  That just wasn't working for me.  I found myself stretching and straining the mystery plot to suit what was going on in the front story.

I realized that I had two problems: the mystery plot is just a MacGuffin, but I am very persnickety about MacGuffins.

MacGuffins - The Audience DO Care

Hitchcock definted the MacGuffin as "The thing the spies are after but the audience don't care."

I would change that definition a little.  The audience does care about the MacGuffin, because it drives the story, and the characters care about it, so it had better not be something stupid.  However, the audience is flexible about what it is. It could be something else and still work. And that's the key:

The MacGuffin is something that both drives the story, AND is interchangeable with other MacGuffins.

Hitchcock's example is in his movie Notorious. The script was in development before the end of WWII, and the FBI was concerned that the spies in the story were smuggling uranium.  Everything related to The Bomb was top secret at that time, including the value of uranium.  Hitch told them that he would have no problem changing the script.  It could be industrial diamonds instead.  Notorious is a love story; that's the only part that mattered.

As it happened, the war ended and uranium was no longer a state secret, so they left it as the MacGuffin for Notorious, and Hitchcock got on with finding ways to film Hollywood's longest kiss without breaking the Production Code rules.

Hitch was like that: he would take on a project just so he could do something like see how long of a kiss he could get away with.  Or he wanted to have a chase scene in a theater.  Oooo. What if somebody was killed by a theatrical safety curtain falling on him -- Irony!  Or wouldn't it be cool to shoot a scene in which the badguy falls from the top of the Statue of Liberty!

I have to admit, that's how I approach a story, much of the time.    And that's the thing that led me to realize what I need to do next with the Story Game.

Magic MacGuffins

The point of the story games -- all versions of it -- is not to replace creativity, but rather to get to the most creative parts of your writing quicker.  It's about randomizing the parts that are exchangeable.  In other words, the MacGuffins.

So I think the first thing to do if you want to create your own personalized game, is to start figuring out what your MacGuffins are.  Now, your MacGuffins may not be an object, as it is in most spy stories.  It may be the whole crime plot.  Or it may even be some aspect of the front story.  It's anything that you may have trouble deciding what it is (because one choice is as good as another), but once you make that decision, you can move forward and play with it creatively.

For me, it's the backstory.  In a mystery, that's who killed whom and why.  And how they decided to hide it.  The backstory can be exchanged for a different backstory, at least early on, but it has such a strong impact on the front story, I find it's almost like geography.  It's something that my characters have to deal with, so it impacts the front story.  It gives me something to hang the front story on.  It gives me opportunities for what the actors call "business."

One example might be in the first Starling and Marquette story, The Man Who Did Too Much.  After an exciting action sequence in which Karla and her house are attacked by a couple of thugs, and George rescues here, these two lead characters -- who have not been working together -- return to her house to apply first aid, make a snack, and form a pact.  It's a long character scene, but it's all driven by what is going on in the investigation.

For me to write that scene, I don't necessarily have to know every detail of the crime, but I do have to know what clues they are looking at.  Or where they are coming from or who they have spoken with.  I need a spring board to work with.

Hence... the game.

Flexible Springboards

With the previous game, The Situation Game, I had a rule that you roll out all these random elements and try to come up with a story idea with them as rolled, but that you can, at any time, overrule any item. 

In this game, I'm finding that an even more flexible approach works.  Since the plot of a mystery is driven by theories, you really need several possible main plots, most of which will turn out to be false.

But I'll tell you about that next week when I get to the big crime behind the crime wheel, which I'm now going to call The Big Wheel of Crimes and Theories. 

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game - Generating a Mystery Story

The Mystery/Whodunnit Game is a variation of the Situation Game -- in that it focuses on creating a situation and cast of characters for a story. That is, what the situation is at the beginning of the story and the forces that will drive the story forward.

Two differences: Mysteries, unlike classic suspense, tend to be series fiction, and so this formula does not include the series elements -- in particular, no hero or heroine.  No protagonist.  That should already be set by the series itself.  The other is that I may experiment with my first plot wheel for this game.  (However, I'll get to that on a later day.)

The Assumption of Series

I've made three assumptions in creating this game.  I made these assumptions because... well, that's what's useful to me right now. 

1.) You've already developed your series.  You know who your protagonist(s) are and their relationships with other characters, and you know the location, etc.  You know the flavor and themes of the story.  You may or may not have written books in this series. (I may come up with a "Series Generation Game" later. For now you'll just have to make do.  Hey, write fanfic of your favorite mystery series.)

2.) The goal is to make this a long series.  This game is meant to come up with lots of classic mystery puzzles/plots.  (It still might help you if you are going to do only one or two stories -- but my point in creating it is to speed along the puzzle end of the story.)

3.) You already have an idea that you want to flesh out.


Start With an Idea

In my case, right now, I have an opening scene with no story. It has a couple of minor hooks to take the story further, but I have no idea what they mean.

However I often start with something else, just as nebulous: I might have a title I think is cool. (I do this often with Mick and Casey.)  Or I might have an idea for a tricky clue, or a cool chase scene.  Or a location, or a guest character.

These are all the sorts of things I normally keep on the shelf until I come up with an idea to suit them.  The point of the game is to skip the shelf. I'm too old to wait for ideas to ripen or to happen to find the right story. (My idea shelf is getting more and more crowded all the time.)

So the point of this game is to take an inspiration or idea, and get a mystery plot for it NOW, and get on with the writing.


Create a Character Relationship Circle

This is an upgraded version of the Random Relationships Mini-Game I put at the end of the first Story Game post.  

A quick summary of the  relationship game again:

*Decide how many characters you want.
*Roll a character, then roll a relationship. The relationship tells you what the character is to the next character.
*Keep rolling characters and relationships until you get to the end, and the last character's relationship will be with the first on the list.

I have created a somewhat more complicated (but also more flexible) version of the game:

I roll ten characters and relationships.  The first seven make up a circle, as I decribe above.  The other three are peripheral characters who I can attach to the circle any place I choose -- like charms on a charm bracelet.

Why did I choose this number of characters?

There's an old rule that you can't have more than five main suspects in a murder mystery.  IMHO, that really doesn't do it, because a really great mystery, a la Agatha Christie, will also have minor characters who have parts to play, and sometimes they will turn out to have done it. (And no, that's not always cheating -- I'll talk about that another time.)

But mostly, those minor characters are important as witnesses and motives. (I.e. a killer might have killed to keep a secret from a wife or boss who is a minor character).  Even if you never treat those other characters as suspects, each character has a life, and everyone in that life affects the story.

At the same time, I do like the main suspect list to be kept to a manageable size.  However, until I write the story, I don't know how these characters will develop.  Sometimes a minor character will grow on me, sometimes a person I thought was major will be dull.

So I create ten characters, and even though three are "peripheral," they are actually all equal at this point in terms of who will become the major characters and who are minor. The "peripheral" factor is just to make the mix of relationships a little more natural.

Here are the current lists/wheels for choosing Characters and Relationships.  (You can and should adapt these at will to suit your series and style.)

Characters: 

1. Female Child (1-12)
2. Male Child (1-12)
3. Female Teen (13-18)
4. Male Teen (13-18)
5. Female New Adult (19-24)
6. Male New Adult (19-24)
7. Female Adult (25-39)
8. Male Adult (25-39)
9. Female Middle Age (40-59)
10. Male Middle Age (40-59)
11. Female Senior (60-90)
12. Male Senior (60-90)

Relationships (to next character)

1. Parent/child
2. club/church/organization acquaintance
3. sibling
4. cousin or aunt/uncle or niece/nephew (depending on ages)
5. stranger
6. friend
7. enemy
8. coworker
9. boss
10. neighbor
11. admires or admired by
12. lover/spouse/best friend forever


First Brainstorming Session

After rolling the characters, I look first at the circle of the seven -- and see how they are clustered. This in an of itself will gives some idea of how these characters interlock -- and how they don't.  In a mystery, indirect connections can be the most interesting ones.

As it happens the first time I rolled this, I had two people were strangers to others, and several club/church acquaintances.  This broke the main ring into two clusters.  Hmmm, how are these two groups separate and what brings them together?

That's where my original idea came in handy, and that's also where the three peripheral characters came in handy.  But before I thought of either of those....


Place the Character Circle in the Series!

The location of your series and the kind of people that reside in it can help a lot in filling out the story.  You also have your regular characters and how they might connect in.

In the case of my "Man Who" series, the location is a Northern Lower Michigan beach town.  So with two different groups of people associated by a club or church.... it makes sense for one of those clubs to be the Country Club, and the others to be local members of a church.  The locals would likely work at the country club, and that would connect them.

This idea was strengthened by the fact that my originating idea involved an event which happens in a bar or tavern -- that could be the country club bar.  (And that really makes the idea take off for me!)

The next step is to figure out who might want to kill whom.


Motives and Suspects and Victims, oh my!

I created a list of motives.  I'm not fully happy with it yet, but it worked for me so far.  (Maybe I just got lucky.) Here it is:

1. Jealousy
2. Resentment
3. Money - victim is a threat to wealth the killer already has
4. Money - inheritance
5. Money - theft
6. Money - indirect, money will go to someone else
7. Frame up - Victim is just collateral damage in a plot to hurt someone via framing them for murder.
8. Sibling Rivalry
9. Victim stands in the way of romantic obsession
10. Victim is blackmailer
11. Victim knows something (not a blackmailer)
12. Revenge
13. Falling out among thieves or other plotters
14. Righteous crimes - killing a killer.

Now, I'm going to need motives for suspects as well as for the actual killer, so I chose three of these numbers at random.

Then since creating the relationship circle hadn't given me definite ideas on which character should be the killer or victim, I chose three of them at random and assigned the motives to them.

And then here is the trick: those characters can be killer, suspect, or victim.  The motive might apply to why that person is killed.

This is still the brainstorming stage.  Even the motives can be flexed and turned to suit the situation that arises.  So even though you rolled up "Sibling Rivalry" that rivalry can be connected to a rivalry over inheritance or a romantic obsession.  At this point I'm just looking for the emotions that tie the characters together.

So, at this point I just blather on paper or screen.  Do general brainstorming, maybe even try to find a theme. (Like maybe the siblings aren't the only rivals in the story. Maybe other characters have other kinds of rivalries. Maybe the victim fostered rivalries.)  I'm just looking for things that will get my imagination running.

Because I'm not done yet.

I mean, I could be.  This is enough to get a good story going.  But I'm not because I like a complicated story, and I like an element of intrigue/suspense in my mysteries, so I like there to be a bigger conspiracy or plot to go along with the murder.


Next Friday, I'll talk about my big spiffy new Wheel of the Crime Behind The Crime (which I think might replace the Crime Wheel in my romantic suspense game).  I'll also talk about my first foray into an actual plot wheel -- a Wheel of Reversals to help think ahead about those turns of event that happen at the end of each act of a story.

But that's it for now.  I'll do a Sunday Update with some new pictures and covers, and maybe a list of the movies I'm looking at for the Tuesday Plot Theory series.  And then on Tuesday, we'll continue with introducing characters in the first section of hte story.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game: Plot Structure and Finding The Wow

(I'm working on a central directory page for the Story Game, until then, you can review the Situation Game from Fall via the last post: Let's Play! which has an index of posts up to to that point.)

Creating the Situation Game was easy.  I'm stumbling as I try to figure out how to deal with the Plot Game.  And I think it's partly because I know so much about plot theory -- the dozens of theories of story structure, etc. -- that it's hard to get a handle on where you spin the wheel.  Every story has an Inciting Incident in the first act.  And at the end of the first act the character commits to the quest.
There is no way to do a "wheel of inciting incidents" or "wheel of character commitment."  They are things that happen, but not kinds of things that happen.  And they really have to adhere to your situation.

So, even though plot theory is a part of the game, the actual game itself has got to get its hooks in a completely different kind of theory.  You've got to drill down into genre, archetypes and a little something that Hollywood calls a "Wow."

So I'm going to tell you about one more plot structure theory.  A very simple one.  A very very simple one:

Action Movie Structure: put in a WOW every seven minutes.

That's it.  Sometimes people say a Wow goes in every ten minutes or every five minutes.  Sometimes it's three little wows and then every half hour you have one big WOW. intil the end, which is all Big Wows.But the overall theory is pretty much, keep hitting the audience with Wows.

And we've seen those action movies.  I call that genre "Movies In Which Things Blow Up For Absolutely No Reason Whatsoever."  I also call them "Friday Movies," because they are a great thing to watch on a Friday night after a very tough week at work.

But the concept is not just limited to those kinds of movies.  Comedies, for instance, often use this same concept.  Keep the jokes coming, and if one fails, well, the audience will laugh at the next.  The theory behind this is that you should never bore the audience. It's related to Raymond Chandler's advice to bring in a man with a gun whenever the story flags.

Wow Isn't Just About Big Explosions

There are good stupid action movies and bad stupid action movies.  The bad ones are where it's just noise and flash and there is no actual Wow invovled.  There is more to a Wow than just making something big and loud, and if we're going to take this concept outside of the stupid action movie genre, we have to understand what a Wow is.

A Wow has to be satisfying.  This may involve paying off on something we expect, but usually it pays off unexpectedly or ironically.

Star Wars (the original Episode IV) starts with a classic Wow: a space ship racing though space, blasters firing. We think we're seeing a pretty big space ship...

But then from just above the camera (as if it is coming from behind the audience) we see the bigger ship that's chasing it.  That is, we see the front of it enter the screen.  Oh, yeah, we think, that's bigger.  But then it keeps coming.  We haven't seen the end of it yet.  Oh, that's just the front bumper!  It's still coming, and coming.  OMG, it's really really big!  The ship just goes on and on and on.

If you've never seen this on the big screen you have no idea what it was like back in 1977 when theater screens were enormous. That scene would actually make you hunker down in your seat.

That's a wow.

A similar Wow with a different effect is when the Tyrannosaurus Rex is chasing the jeep in Jurassic Park and you can see in the rear view mirror 'Objects in mirror are larger than they appear."  This one works because it's surprisingly understated and ironic.  Same with Jaws when the shark flashes out of the water to be properly seen for the first time.  Only Roy Scheider sees it.  He's scared stiff (as we are) and says "We're gonna need a bigger boat. " (Spielberg was the master of the Wow, especially the ironic wow -- which contrasts something shocking or impressive with an understated comment.

Wows are about the audience's emotional response.  Which means a lot of the time they are archetypes or cliches.  The audience wants to experience it again and again... except that it doesn't always work so well when it's not unexpected.  Then the creator has to work at it.

For instance, dropping a luxury car out of an airplane was a Wow the first time it happened, but thereafter it was a Ho Hum.  It's no longer a surprise, and the irony isn't enough to make it fly.  But that leads me to an example of another kind of Wow, the Payoff Wow.

The Payoff Wow

There's a great "Stupid Action Movie" called Con Air.  I sometimes think the premise of that movie is "What if everyone in the universe, including God, had their IQ docked by about 25 percent?"  This is a movie which didn't try to do anything new, they just worked really hard to put a little extra something into every cliche to turn it back into a Wow.  They didn't always succeed, but like a fast-paced comedy, they keep coming at you so fast that if one thing doesn't work, the next thing probably will.

They used the old "luxury car drops from the sky" routine, and they turned it into a Wow by giving the audience a relationship with the car.  It belongs to a character you really hate, the the more you know him the more you hate him.  The car is a symbol of what you hate about the character, so you hate the car too.  The car almost has it's own subplot, and they build multiple Wows into it. At some point the car gets to fly through the air.  Wow.  Then when that car falls out of the sky... it falls at the feet of the owner.  The guy we hate.

And that's a big Wow.  Because it's a payoff.  It's like a punchline of a joke.  We are rewarded for patience.

Even Art House Movies Have Wows

An intellectual movie will Wow it's audience with moments of insight.  These will also involve irony or unexpected turns or payoffs.  They also have their equivalent of the big loud explosions: beautiful imagery in a movie, or incredible poetic language in a book.

There is a famous scene in the middle of The Third Man, when Joseph Cotton is walking home in the dark and empty streets of Vienna.  He thinks his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) died before he even arrived in Vienna. (At this point in the movie, we haven't even seen a picture of Harry.)  And he knows that he's under surveillance by cops and crooks.  He's drunk and pissed off so when he sees someone concealed in the shadow of a doorway, he taunts the guy. Calls for him to come out and show himself.  The guy doesn't come out, but then someone opens a window and casts a light into the shadow.... it's Harry.



That's a Wow, too. It's surprising and ironic, and what a classic look on Orson Welles' face!

The Third Man is chock full of "art movie" Wows (gorgeous cinematography, and careful counter-intuitive pacing, spritely zither music in a thriller plot). You could say it's the Arthouse equivalent of Con Air: You are barraged with Wow moments.

A wow can be a joke or a speech or a kiss, or surprise.  But it can also be something expected.  It can be the thing that the audience hopes for and anticipates with glee.  When Columbo turns around and says "Oh, there's just one more thing..."  That's a Wow for the audience waiting for it.  In a slapstick comedy, when there's a pie on the mantelpiece, you just know the movie ain't over until it is thrown.

A Wow, then, is basically any moment or event that gives the audience satisfaction.  In every kind of book or movie or poem or play, the Wow is what the audience is watching or reading or listening for.  That's why so many cliches are also Wows, because anything good is going to get used over and over again.

Part of what defines a genre is what kind of Wow the audience is expecting.  And because they've seen it all before, one of the skills of the master of any genre is to be clever and interesting with those expected Wows.  The masters are those who find a way to make them unexpected.

Wows and The Story Game

I'm thinking that the Plotting Game is going to have to revolve around Wows.  Yes, we'll start with plot theory, but to create a form for a plotting game, we're going to have to drill down from that into Wow territory.

So we're going to take a look at each act in a four-act structure and think about how it applies to genre, and then create Wheels of Wow for each item we identify.

So next week, I think we can finally get to Act 1.

See you in the funny papers.

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Story Game - The Psychology of Plot

Welcome back to The Story Game!

This fall we created The Situation Game (which focuses on everything in place before the story starts -- characters, motivations, conflicts).  I have a few people testing it, and it's shaping up nicely, but there are a few tweaks I'll need to do.

(The last post for the Situation Game -- "Let's Play" -- starts with an index to all posts in that series.)

This Winter we're going to focus on plot.

And even though the game itself focuses on formulaic fiction, the goal is to understand the mechanics that apply to all kinds of fiction. (Or at least more kinds of fiction.)

So though I will, as usual, bring in ideas and examples from literature and movies and comic strips and any storytelling medium, the focus of the game right now is still the "Woman in Jeopardy" Romantic Suspense Story.

(However, I myself will be pushing over into other mystery genres as much as possible soon.)

Plot As Game

When you think of turning story telling into a game, plotting certainly seems to be the most natural part to use.  Especially when you're talking about pulp fiction formulas.  Part of the inspiration for this game was Erle Stanley Gardner's plot wheels.

Oddly, I found when I started this phase of the game, the pieces of this part of the game were just not falling into place.  Perhaps it's because I have a lovely image in my mind as to what a story game should look like:

The image involves a wonderful three-dimensional game board representing the journey of the protagonist through an unknown landscape, with cards and dice rolls and spins of the wheel springing surprises on him as he goes.

That's attractive, because it mimicks the experience of reading formula fiction.  You sorta know where it's going, but the details and twists and turns are a surprise when they happen.  And, if you anticipate those twists and turns too much you get bored.

And I think that's why this magic game board is attractive to me: writers know what's going to happen.  Sure, ideas come at you by surprise sometimes, but the actual process of writing is slow enough that most of the time, you're ahead of any surprises, and far ahead of even the most astute reader.   You have to set the twists and turns up.

Being a writer can be like being an actor.

An actor has to know the play and rehearse his actions long before he presents his art to the audience -- and so he has to find ways to keep it fresh for himself, to keep some sense of spontaneity going.  Of course, live performances have one thing that keeps everything fresh: accidents happen.  Another actor misses a beat, or delivers a line differently, and you have to adapt for that.  Noises in the audience, a missing prop.  All of this keeps live drama from being boring.  Sometimes actors even introduce challenges intentionally -- surprising (an annoying) their fellow actors with unrehearsed twists and turns.

That's what Improv is.  Making it up as you go along, playing with the cards you're dealt (and having no script to fall back on).

For a lot of plotting games out there, that's the purpose of using a random choice generator.  It creates an improvisational freshness.  You never know what's going to happen next, and a choice could throw you off your plans, so you are, in essense, writing on the edge.

It's sort of like writing a round-robin story by yourself.

(You know what a round robin story is, don't you?  One person writes a page or a chapter and hands it off to the next person, who writes the next bit.  Each person taking an equal part, locked into what went before and having to come up with the next bit based on it.)

But there is a problem with this kind of beat-by-beat improvisation, though.  Most round robin stories start off strong, but they quickly go down hill and become boring and dissatisfying.  This is because the parts are equal and there is no opportunity to set up anything. There is never a real arc -- just leaping back and forth of the story line.

The Pulp Plot Formula

If you just look at the standard pulp plot formula, as the Lester Dent formula for pulp short stories, or my own Maverick formula, you see something similar going on.  These descriptions of plot may be useful to seeing structure -- but the fact is they are very straight line descriptions.  Basically, the same thing happens in each act.. only more so.  The hero gets in trouble, then he gets in worse trouble, then in the worst trouble possible, and then gets out of it.

That doesn't really get into what a good plot does.  Even in the most formulaic plot, the pulp hero doesn't just get himself into deeper and deeper trouble at random.  The trouble builds, on piece on another.  Each action affects what happens next.  And more important, each action reveals more information, which changes the perspective of the audience -- what the audience thinks. (This was partly touched on by the Maverick formula -- as Maverick also has his mind changed with each act).

If the story is to feel satisfying, it has to be a psychological unit.  It must lead the character -- and the audience -- through a psychological cycle.


The Psychology of a Story

Stories exist to play "what if?"  The point is to put us through a virtual crisis.  Or maybe I should call it a "Virtual Change in Conditions" -- because the crisis could be a happy one or a terrifying one.  Although all humans react differently to different changes and crises, there is a common pattern that happens inside our heads.  Stories reflect that.

I was thinking about it last fall, and I realized that the standard plot formula -- whether it's the 7-Act Movie-of-the-Week structure I talked about it last summer, or the 4-act structures of Lester Dent and Maverick, or the classic Hollywood 3-Act structure -- all have mild association with Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief.

I don't think this makes a good formula for your writing (well, it might) but it does help us see the psychological progression of a story.  We may rational purposes of all kinds for any particular story, but this is about the irrational side of us -- that psychological pattern that needs to be gone through to feel satisfied.


Act 1 - Denial  (The Set Up - What It's Like When Everything's Fine)

Every story starts with set up.  The character and audience believes the world is a certain way.  The story often lets the audience know that something is wrong before the character, but not always.  Either way, there is something wrong, something that the character doesn't realize he has to react to.  Then the inciting incident happens, and the character is forced to recognize it and react to it.

Act 2 - Bargaining (Treating the Problem Rationally, Because Everything is Still Fine)

Usually this is the second half of Act 1.  The character first reacts by thinking they can take ordinary action that fits into their worldview (that is the "denial" worldview that everything really is, basically, fine).  They run around trying to do things the right or habital way.  Aliens attack their house, they try to call the cops, or run away or hide or do those things we plan to do in a crisis.

In other words, they feel the problem is a reasonable one and you can take normal, reasonable actions to "bargain" it away.  But they find they are wrong, and that they must react more strongly than they ever thought.  And that makes them more determined to deal with this problem than ever.

Act 3 - Anger (Expending Energy, Because Things Are Not Fine)

At first glance this section (which Hollywood would refer to as the first half of the second act) would seem like it isn't about anger.  But think about what anger is: a release of stress and energy.  And what triggers anger? Frustration.  When you try to deal with something reasonably, and that doesn't work you get frustrated, and that pushes you to do things you wouldn't have thought to do otherwise.  And maybe that means Hulk Smash!, or maybe that means you set aside your ordinary tasks and go after the problem.  This is the point when the kids screwing around in the basement actually did make Mom come down there and settle it.

So though this equates to the anger part, this is also the most energectic and often fun part of the story.  This is where the characters go all out for something. At least until they crash.

Act 4 - Depression (Failure, Desperation and Truth)

Merely going after the problem with more energy and commitment failed.  You might have achieved some joyously exuberant triumph, but it's a an empty success.  The Thing That Is Not Fine is still there.  And maybe it's not only stronger than you though, it's worse than you thought.  The stakes are higher than you thought... and yuou're not up to it.  You expended all that energy for nothing. You may have even made things worse.  You feel weak, inadequate, and you don't know what to do.

But that's what it takes to give up on denial.  You have to hit bottom before you can see the truth.  

This is the part of the story where all seems lost, and many secrets are revealed -- at least one of which is significant enough to give you some kind of renewed hope.  You don't know if you're strong enough or smart enough, but at last you understand what is going on.

Act 5 - Acceptance (Facing Reality and Conquering It)

When you see and understand the truth, you are at last able to go after the problem in a realistic way that has hope of success.  And because you were wrong about the problem before, this section isn't just about overcoming the biggest problem, it's about surviving and becoming a new person, a wiser person.

This Is Not a Plot Formula

Don't take the psychological points above too seriously in terms of what your character faces or how he or she reacts to it.  It's really about emotional energy -- it's a way of seeing what emotions dig into the "lizard brain" of your audience as the story progresses.  It's what the brain expects to feel:

The opening is logical, then next section high energy, the next low energy, and finally satisfaction and wisdom. (And because this is about emotions, "wisdom" can mean completely dumb things like blowing up the bad guys.)


What does this have to do with The Story Game, then?

Well, first it explains why creating wheels of problems which act like beads on a string won't create a satisfying story.  The difficulties that assail the character from plot point to plot point can't be equal in this kind of story. (There are other structures that don't work like this, or which only deal with part of it -- I'll be talking about some of those later -- probably not within the Friday Story Game posts, but maybe on a Tuesday -- just going into different kinds of story theory.)

What I'm thinking is that the way to approach this part of the game may be to peel it back in layers, or to take it in "modules." We're going to use the above theory, as well as the MoW theory I mentioned last summer as a kind of lens, as we look at our Romantic Suspense genre plot (as well as other kinds of stories) act-by-act in a four act structure.

Next week we'll talk about Act One - the Set Up. Which is a very busy act in terms of things you have to do with it.  You've got to introduce everything, sew the seeds of your ending, "Save the Cat" (and maybe "Kill the Puppy" for you villain), as well as have your hero and heroine "Meet Cute." (Though I think they might also "Meet Suspicious" in a romantic suspense story.)

Before that, we'll have a Sunday Update, and on Monday I'll have an Artisan Writer thoughts on the upcoming year in publishing.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game - Having Fun, Looking for Game Testers

I have been rolling a story a day since I posted the "Let's Play" post.  As of this writing, that's 21 story situations, including the one I rolled for that post.

I haven't been playing full out and writing stories from them (yet), just rolling numbers, filling out the forms and doing enough brainstorming to test whether I can come up with a viable idea that interests me.

The goal here was to:

• Test the game, see what needs adjusting.  (And nearly all of it does need adjusting.)
• See how much fun I can have with it.  (Which is "lots.")

But the surprise is how well it has been working as a creativity tool.  It's actually working.  For work.

This game has been great in helping me come up with viable, robust ideas that excite me -- and this even though this is not really my main genre.  If I needed to become a pulp writer who turned out a novelette or novella a week, this game certainly does give me the material.  At least half of these stories excite me.  All of them, so far, are something I could write with reasonable interest. (They are books I would be interested in reading, anyway.)

The game really wasn't intended to be that kind of production tool, though, and I have no idea if this flavor of Romantic Suspense is of any commercial value.  But you know, there are two parts to productivity.  One is marketability, but the other is enjoying what you are doing enough to keep doing it.

I still have two big questions:

Will it work for other genres and types of stories?

What I have found so far is that the stories it generates vary.  Some of them really seem more suited to Romantic Comedy (no mystery or suspense) and others seem especially suited to Mystery Suspense with a romantic subplot.

Also, a big part of the Woman in Jeopardy suspsense story has to do with where the plot goes.  And if you choose not to head for a Happily Ever After ending, you could have an outright thriller on your hands. (And sometimes even with an HEA ending.)

So even though I think this Situation/Character Structure part of the game should be changed for other genres and types of story.... I also think that it's easy enough to simply do that in the plotting end.

The biggest problem, though, is that this game really is suited for stand alone stories.  Not for series.  That is, I can't use it to come up with a murder plot for George and Karla or even Mick and Casey.  (At least, not yet.  I've got ideas I'm working on for that....)

This makes it great for short stories, though.  And it also is surprisingly good for coming up with... the first book in a series.  I have learned this the hard way.  As I write In Flight, I find myself thinking "Oh, that would be a fun continuing character.... Oh, and that would work for a series...."  (Like I need yet another series.  I don't think so...)

Will it work for other people?

If other people do as I do and adjust the game to suit their tastes and needs, sure, it could work for them.  But could this be a package?  An actual game or workbook that people could use to have fun, develop skills and develop stories?  I mean, would the game I'm writing work for people who don't want to write their own game?

I honestly don't know yet.  I would like to publish it.  I think it could at least be fun.  In the meantime, I'm still testing.

I would like to find some people who would be interested in playing with it.  I'd send a pdf (and maybe an ebook version) of the updated forms and wheels/lists.  I wouldn't require anybody to do anything in particular with it -- just play with it and let me know what parts are fun or productive, and which parts are frustrating (or which you simply ignore).

If you're interested, email my cat, maudecat at gmail.com, with a header that says Game Tester, and when things are ready, I'll send the materials out.

In the meantime, I will likely post an update on Sunday (the 15th) but then not again until January 3 -- when I'll begin a the Plotting section of the game.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game: A Preview on Plotting

I lost the post I wrote about what I've learned messing around with the game this week. Maybe I'll post that next week.  In the meantime, here is an off-the-cuff post about plotting, which can serve as a teaser for what we'll be talking about here in January:


I'll let you in on a little secret:

The reason I started writing mysteries with a western twist wasn't because I used to watch that many westerns.  It was because I happened to be watching a particular western which was in reruns on TV Land, when I finally figured out how to plot a mystery.

The problem I'd had up to that point is that I tried to write mysteries the way I read them:  You just start telling this story and let all these mysterious clues mount up and.... uh, then you get stuck.

I was pondering Agatha Christie and couldn't quite figure out how she managed to turn the story upside down with a revelation, and then flip it around with another, and then send it spinning off into space at the end.  And I got the idea of the revelations. What I didn't get was how to handle the front story -- that is, how they worked together.

And what was playing on my TV in the background but... Maverick.  You know that old slightly silly western staring James Garner (and sometimes Jack Kelly and/or James Bond... I mean Roger Moore).  It pushed it's way into my consciousness, and I realized. OMG!  That holds all the answers!

You see Maverick had a kind of pattern to the plot -- at least the ones with James Garner.

Act 1: Maverick would ride into town with a purpose.  He'd be looking for an old friend who owed him money which he needed to get into a high-stakes poker game, or something like that.  And there would be stuff going on, but he didn't give a rip, because he was James Garner.  Eye rolling was sufficient reaction to even the worst disaster that might happen to somebody else.

But something would prevent him from doing what he wanted.  So he'd work out a deal with someone who could help him, and.... just before the ad break he'd discover that someone had lied to him, and he'd find himself with a handful of trouble instead of the money he was owed.

Ad Break.

Act 2: So, Maverick would change his course to suit what he now knew was the truth, and he'd go after his money/friend/whatever with renewed vigor.  He'd overcome some obstacles and usually ignore a few weird things going on (because he didn't care), but by golly, by the end of the second act, he'd find out he'd been told another lie. A bigger lie!  And he'd find he was in trouble.

Ad Break

Act 3:  Okay, now Maverick is pissed off.  He breaks some noses, cuts through some crap, and stomps his way to the truth, just in time to find out.... yep. There was yet another layer of lies, and now, all of a sudden, he was in really Deep Doo Doo.  I mean, no-water-in-the-desert-while-a-lynch-mob-hunts-you deep trouble.

Ad Break

Act 4: And now, knowing the truth, Maverick is able to put his disinterested but really quite agile brain to good use, and also really kick some ass of the people who pulled the wool over his eyes, and resolve both the mystery and his own problem.

What I've just described is a pretty standard pulp formula - only here played for laughs most of the time.  As a matter of fact, recently I was reading through Lester Dent's famous Master Plot for pulp short stories.

Dent's formula starts thusly: "...introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble...the hero pitches in to cope with this fistful of trouble... near the end of the (first act) there is a complete surprise twist...."  Next act is to shovel more grief on the hero, he struggles, another surprising twist, and this happens again, until the hero "really gets it in the neck bad" and is buried in trouble... and he digs himself out.

I laughed when I first read this, because it is so much like the pattern I noticed in Maverick.   And for that matter the part about the twists at the end of every act is a lot like Christie.

But this isn't a mystery plot, it's an adventure plot -- specifically a men's pulp adventure plot.  Nothing to do with little old lady detectives and clues left among the daisies and lying butlers (well, except for the lying part.)


So how did this help me with mystery plotting?

It told me what the front story is.  It told me how you handle what's going on when you are hiding what's really going on.

The front story is that the protagonist thinks he knows what's going on, and he is acting on that.

It is not a case of the protagonist knowing nothing and then slowly and gradually gathering evidence until he knows everything.  No.

A mystery -- and any kind of story based on investigation (even historian stories) -- is about theories.  The character believes something, and he acts on his beliefs.  When obstacles are thrown in his path, he may dodge, but he doesn't actually change course until something big at the end of each act  proves to him that his basic theory is wrong.

Yes, sure, he's learning stuff all along between those big revelations, but everything he learns he fits into his existing theory.  He believes the pretty lady is in distress.  All the clues seem to be about who is menacing her. Then Maverick learns that the pretty lady actually isn't in distress at all, she's a thief.  Then all of a sudden, all the clues have a different meaning.  He moves into the second act with a whole different understanding of what's going on.

So now, when I sit down and try to figure out a plot, the question I ask myself is not "what's the truth behind these lies?" but "where is the protagonist going, and what will be the big thing that changes that direction?"

The Graceful Arc of the Story

In spite of what I learned from Maverick and Lester Dent, however, I really think that stories have a natural progression that is more than just "it gets worse" or "the protag changes direction."

I love the four-act plot structure.  I really think it follows a psychological pattern, where each act has a flavor all it's own. It progresses like a human progresses through the psychological stages of grief.

But that I will leave until January, when I'll start in on a series of posts and games related to plotting.  I don't know exactly how many posts -- probably an introduction, and a separate post about each of the four acts and their special character.  I don't know if I'm going to do separate posts for playing plotting games. We'll see when we get there.

In the meantime, I'll do a few sporatic posts during December, but we won't get back to anything major until January.

(Oh, and watch Sunday for a book announcement. I found a romantic little holiday short story in my files about Jackie and Mary Alwyn -- of The Wife of Freedom.  It's a lot of fun and I hope to have it polished and uploaded before the weekend is done.)

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game - Let's Play!

At last! We get to the moment we've all been waiting for: we get to just play the game.  It's a lot quicker to play the game than create it.  Once you have the story materials in hand, you can play it over and over again -- adding to it, tweaking it or just using it at is.

To review: The series starts with an Introduction and an explanation of the concept of "Character Structure" which we use to create the game.  This game works better with a formulaic story, so we've created a game around the "Woman-in-Jeopardy" type of Romantic Suspense.   (We also talked a little about Erle Stanley Gardener's Plot Wheels, which inspired the game.)

But if you want to get down to the game itself, start with these posts:

*The Situation Worksheet - which we'll fill in using the story wheels.
*Heroine and Hero Wheels
*Villain and Nature of the Crime Wheels
*Titles and Title Words
*Theme

Today, I'm just going to play the game from scratch, and show you how it works for me.  I will tell you a little about how I solve various issues as they come up.

I rolled a story just before sitting down to write this post -- what follows is real-time brainstorming.  (As it happened, the rolls came out easy -- they don't always do so.)


So here we go... Let's Play!

Here are the Story Wheel results

Title Words: Kept, Melody, Justice, Scorch, Crossfire, Guitar, Duet, Breathless, Night, Know.
Theme: Insiders
Heroine Type: On a Secret Mission (such as: revenge; needs to retrieve something; investigative reporter; must prove someone innocent; etc.)
Hero Type: Mysterious Background Figure - Undercover Cop
Villain Cover Type: Authority Figure - Cop
Crime Type: Blackmail, Version 3 (person being blackmailed is the bad guy, third party the primary victim)

Wow, this is the most consistent roll I've done with this game.  Insider theme; multiple cops; and a heroine on an undercover mission -- this screams "Police Procedural."

And yes, there is a brand of Woman-in-Jeopardy Romantic Suspense which overlaps with police procedural (although it tends toward military right now I think) - but it's one I don't happen to read.  Furthermore, though I love to read regular police procedurals, especially regional ones, I don't feel adequate in writing them.

But that works for this blog series because I'm unlikely to write this story -- and that means I don't have to hold back for fear of spoilers or anything like that.  I can do this as a "writing in public" exercise.

(NOTE TO EVERYONE: if this roll and the ideas for it I come up with in this post excite you, feel free to write it.  Consider it an "Open Source" story idea.  We can all play with it if we like. Note also: I do mention some other stories I am actually writing -- such as "Hours of Need." If those idea inspire you, please change them enough so they don't seem like the same story I'm writing.)


Pushing Boundaries

An ideal story roll will push you a little bit where you don't want to go.  That's why we include some contrary choices and things we don't like on our wheels.  But it's also why you have Full Veto Power over any roll in the game. However, my rule is that you can't ditch or re-roll any element until after you have worked through the choices and found what actually is a stumbling block.

Since pushing boundaries is important though, I believe the best place to start is to glance over the worksheet to see where those most difficult spots will be, and then to really dig in and think about that.  Spend a little time to see if you can find a way to make the problems work for you.  You may not find it at once, though, so if you can't find a solution right off, look to the other elements to see if they have any hooks to help you out with this.

For example: The first roll I ever made with this game came up with an element I had thrown in to give myself trouble:  The heroine type came up "Secret Baby."  Ugh!  That element just does NOT click with me.  I don't empathize with the emotions involved in keeping a baby a secret.  However, when I'd rolled all the other items I found a hook into the concept that really worked for me.  The Theme was "self-sacrifice" and the hero type was "Mr. Perfect she runs away from." And a title words gave me "Hours of Need."  And the crime type was related to a clandestine affair.

All those elements pushed me to stick with the "secret baby" trope -- and so I pushed until I had a variation I could work with:  A young woman who runs away from Mr. Perfect because she has to take care of her dysfunctional family, a family where someone is always in their "hour of need."  The secret child is her wild younger sister's child -- and nobody knows who the father is.

And that gave me a character I could empathize with, so that story is on the shelf "in development" to actually write.

Fro this story, I'm going to start by thinking about the police procedural element:  How could I actually write a cop-centered story?  And even if I can't think of a hook that works for me up front, I'll keep a watch for options as I go through the rest of the items too.

My first thought is that two police characters doesn't a police procedural make.  I can make this a small town psychodrama (that is, a soap opera of the individuals in their personal lives, not about the police elements).  This is especially possible since the hero is the Mysterious Background Figure, so we don't have to be privy to his investigation.

I don't have to stick to that if I find another hook in the other elements, but as I look at my title words, I'm thinking there may be a hook that helps me along with this....

The Title Words

We've got no less than THREE music-oriented words in our title word choices: Melody, Guitar and Duet.  The rest are mostly evocative suspense or romance words which will work with the genre.  Great!  Unfortunately, after pausing to generate some titles with these words, I didn't come up with anything exciting.

My top three ideas were pretty simple combinations:  "Crossfire Duet," "Breathless Duet" or "Breathless Melody." But I'll hold out hope for something more resonant after I come up with the story.  (The Night Guitar, Keep to the Melody, Justice in the Night....)

But even if I don't have a title yet, the idea of "Music"gives me a hook into the subject of the story:  Instead of the story surrounding cop culture, it could be surrounding something to do with music.

The heroine could be a musician, the hero's undercover identity could be a musician.  The heroine's secret mission could be to clear the name of a musician friend/relative, or to find out what happened to a missing or dead musician friend/relative. Or she could be an investigative reporter, out to get the straight dope on a famous musician's dark past.  Or maybe there was a mishap covered up, when the "Singin' With The Stars" TV show came to town, and she's investigating.

The mystery/crime could surround a local night spot -- a tavern where there is live music or an open mic.  It could be the center of a local music community.  This could be a community of professional musicians, or just a community of enthusiastic fans.

So the hero and heroine could both be undercover as musicians, hanging out at this tavern.  And that fits with the "insider" theme.

Blackmail #3

Next problem: the villian is a cop who is being blackmailed, and the primary victim is the "third party" (the person the blackmailer threatens to tell), that's a tricky one.  That means the blackmailer is not the most relevant person.

Which means the blackmailer will be a red herring of one kind or another.  He or she could be someone killed before the story opens, which incites the story.  Or he could be a real Red Herring, in that he or she is lurking and doing suspicious things.  He could even be the hero: The heroine's investigation puts pressure on the situation, and that gives the hero an opportunity to put the screws to the badguy (behind the scenes).  This could take on a swashbucklery cloak-and-dagger aspect as the heroine is caught in a deadly game between these two men.

I think the key to this one, though, might be the Victim.

The crime we rolled, Blackmail #3, means that our villain's leading motive is to keep the information from the victim.  What could our cop villain want to keep from someone such that he's willing to become a full blown Suspense Villain over it?  And WHO might he want to keep things from?

This motivation doesn't have to stem from him being a cop.  It could be something completely personal.  However, seeing that he is in law enforcement, two obvious things come to mind: He's an elected official (sheriff) and he wants to keep politically unpleasant facts about himself from the public (with the Public being the victim). OR ... He helped cover up the death of a young music star during a local festival, and this person's mother or grandmother wants to know the truth.

I like the second because that gives our heroine an undercover assignment.  The grandmother asked her to look into it, or the heroine is a relative who is upset about her own grandmother's grief over a dead cousin.  They don't suspect the cop.  They suspect the other musicians. (Hence, the hero.)

Well.... that's a story concept right there.  But there's one more issue that itches at the collar...

What About That Hero?

If the hero is an undercover cop, what is he investigating?  Is he a member of the same department as the villain?  Does the villain know he's a cop?

The simple answer is that he's investigating the death too, for the same reason the heroine is.  (That does not satisfy me.  Too repetitive.)  Also, if this is a small town, it is unlikely that he's a member of the local police, because everybody would know the local cops.  So, if he's undercover, he's got to be a state trooper, or on a task force, or a fed.

And I'm thinking that he wouldn't be investigating a closed case that everybody thinks is an accident.  (And if this is a crime that has been successfully covered up, it needs to appear to be an accident.)  So I'm thinking he's investigating something else.  Something that will turn out to be what lead to the starlet's death.

And maybe, given that the theme is "insiders," the starlet was an outsider who discovered something, or an insider who wanted out -- maybe even someone who fought to become an insider, only to discover something she wanted no part of it.  And she was killed as a part of the cover up.

So she might be the blackmailer after all.

Furthermore, that means our heroine is unwittingly headed down the exact same path.

Now I think I have a story.


It's Never This Easy

I swear to you, none of my other rolls this far have gone this easily.  On the other hand, we haven't done an actual plot yet.  I don't know why the starlet was killed. (I may yet decide that she had an accidental overdose and there is some other non-conspiracy thing going on -- like a rich kid or drunk senator caused an accident.) I don't know what is going on with that tavern, who the people are.  They will be red herrings and helpers.

However, I am glad I changed the game from my first version, and I now hold back on dealing with red herrings and helpers until I get the story concept nailed down.  Creating them can go more smoothly once I know where the holes in the story are.

Other Problems

In the past I've often found I have to tweak the choices to find a story that works for me.  I might have to swap some characters, for instance.

For instance, in "Hours of Need" the villain rolled out as a young woman.  And I kept getting stuck on that. But when I swapped her with another character, that gave me the chance to create the concept about a younger sister with a chiild.  And in the current story I'm working on, "In Flight," I had to dump the title (secrets and journeys) and the theme isn't working out.  (The title words might make a good theme, though.) Also, I think I'm swapping some characters.

That actually happens a lot with a mystery.  It helps to create a twist.  You build a story on one person being the villain, but as you write, you realise this other innocent person also has a motive and could be a great twist.

The changes were good for the story but... with every element I dropped or changed, I did it only after I pulled a story idea together.  I changed them not because they bored me or I didn't like them, but because they got in the way of something good that was taking shape.

Creating More Wheels

One thing that I did with In Flight is make up some mini-wheels to help me move beyond blank spots.  For instance, the hero rolled out as the "Authority Figure - Non-Cop" type -- a guy who gets dragged into the story with her.

That option sounded like a great idea when I put it on the list, but once I was face-to-face with it, I realized that that was a difficult one to make work on a practical level.  But I wanted to make it work, so I had to break out of my "box" in my thinking.

So I broke it down, and came up with a list of kinds of authority figures it could be -- lawyers, trustees, estate managers, bosses -- and rolled a random choice from that. Came up with Boss.  Then, because I still had the issue of how he would be dragged into the story, I broke that down into different kinds of work/romance relationships. (Ones with a vibe I liked.)  He's secretly in love with her, she with him, both secretly with the other, neither notices the other, both hate the other.  Different kinds of bosses.  When I rolled it, I ended up with the kind of boss who barely knows she exists: the suit from the main office.

(I think I'll keep that wheel, by the way. It was a fun way to throw in more variations.)

After I finally decided those things, I was able to start playing with ideas of how he could be dragged into the story, and I decided that it was in his nature to get involved.  My imagination took off, and I realized the guy had a very interesting back story.

Moving from Concept to Story

Right now, I could take the concept of our musicians and cops and cover ups and make it a novelette, or a full novel.  I could make it serious or funny.  Though the hero is supposed to be a mysterious background figure, I could make it very romantic or more a mystery with a romance ending.

It will take another brainstorming session for me to get started.  I wouldn't have to do a whole plot before then...

However, I could also play this into a next game: a Potting Game.  Something like the one Erle Stanley Gardner created.

So over December, I'll be creating a new game, maybe even with Plot Wheels.  I might post one or two interim things in the meantime, but I don't expect to get to plot until January.

In the meantime, a lot of what I'll be doing with plot will come from the Movie-of-the-Week plot structure I talked about this summer.  You can check it out if you want to roll some stories and try outlining a plot.

See you in the funny papers.

Story Game Bonus: Theme

This is a bonus post for The Story Game.  It's long, and not fully proofed.  It's just that theme is a really big subject, so I wanted to go into it in more depth. But I also want to finish up the Situation Worksheet before Thanksgiving, so... here goes:

Theme is a very tricky thing -- a very personal thing.  For some people, it's best to not think about it at all and just let your readers discover it.  (This is why I have put the option, in the Story Game, of not using Theme, but using "Subject" or "Prompt" instead.)

Frankly, theme isn't something you impose on a story anyway -- it happens organically, and if you are the sort of person who does think about theme, odds are that you just discover it as you write.

And yet, I have found it incredibly useful in brainstorming.  It can work a lot like a prompt -- you take it up, play with it, if magic happens, you keep it.  If not you adjust it or discard it.  (Which is true of all the elements of this Story Game. We'll talk about that tomorrow when we get to the brainstorming phase.)

What Is Theme?

Theme is the larger subject that a story is about.  It's not a moral.  It's just a personal quality or emotion which the story explores.  In the end, the story may take a stance on it -- and that would be a "moral" -- but the theme is not that stance. It's just the subject of that stance.

It's really hard to write something without a theme.  It just sort of happens.  Usually, though, you can tell a story that has a stronger theme, becuase it ties together in a more satisfying way. Sometimes when the plot itself doesn't hang together too well, but the story seems to work anyway? That's because of theme.

And some genres have specific themes of their own which you write variations into.  Romance is always about finding that "happily ever after." Crime fiction explores justice (or lack thereof).  Within these big themes, the author will have his or her own themes, and a particular series may have it's own theme, and an indivicual story may have it's own variation.

So, for instance, while crime fiction might be about justice, a particular series might be about couples finding their happily-ever-after (mystery/romance), or about a damaged hero struggling to live up to his own standards (many hard-boiled and police procedurals), or about trusting in the genious of a miracle worker (Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, etc.), or it might be about the arrogance of crime (Columbo).  And the individual stories may be about self-sacrifice, or fear, or paying your dues.

And in every case, the theme is also about the opposite.  You can't write about fear without writing about courage.  You can't write about trust without writing about mistrust. (Some people place their trust in Miss Marple, but so many dismiss her as unable to deal with anything serious.)

That's why you shouldn't mistake a theme for a moral. It doesn't work if you limit it to the final lesson.  A theme works best when it's open.  When it's about reflections and shadows.  If your main character is afraid and needs to learn to be brave, it's perfectly okay if there's a subplot where someone is too brave and has to learn to be more cautious.

Just having those two things in a story -- like a mirror image -- creates resonance.  It's like harmony -- two notes that are different and yet they work together.  It doesn't even have to be obvious or overt. You don't have to force it.  Just the fact that you have several people dealing with fear and courage in different ways creates these little notes.

Probably the very best example of using other characters and little subplots for theme is Casablanca.  The theme of Casablanca is survival.  It was made at a time when the world had gone mad, and nobody was really sure any we would survive.  And we see dozens of characters responding in different ways -- some being selfish, some foolish, some brave. 

Casablanca makes a good example of how a story can have both a moral and theme -- and they are not the same: Througout the story, people perish or thrive at random.  People die for doing the right thing and for doing the wrong thing too.  The lesson here isn't about how to survive.  The lesson is that, in a world gone mad, nobody cares about your problems, and maybe you shouldn't either.  You have the option of giving up on survival and just doing the right thing.

It's interesting that the writers and actors and director did not know how this movie was going to end until they wrote the ending.  They had planned four different endings.  But as soon as they filmed the first one, they knew it was right.  And it was right because it gave meaning to the whole story that went before.

That's what theme does -- it ties everything together and gives meaning.

But that's why you can't really impose it, and often have to discvoer it.  (So tomorrow I'm going talk about how that works in the Story Game.)

In the meantime, I'll give you a tip to help you find the theme -- and lesson both -- of a story:


How Does It End?

When I was writing screenplays, I did a "Pitch Festival." That's where you go to an event where there are a whole bunch of execs and agents and such in a room, and you sign up to make 5-10 minute pitch meetings.  The bell rings, you run to your assigned spot, and start pitching, they ask some questions, you answer, then the bell rings again and you run off to the next one.

Some of these execs were very good at pulling they needed out of flustered authors.  One guy finished up each session with one simple question -- he said it was how he know the whole flavor of your story: what is the very last thing that happens, the very last image before the credits roll?

The story I was pitching that day was The Scenic Route -- a story about a pair of directionally challenged robbers who get lost on their getaway.  And when I say lost, I mean really really lost. By the end of the first act, they aren't sure what state they are in.  By the end of the story, they've lost everything - even their cool sunglasses, but they've gained some friends -- something they've never had -- and a kind of family, and the first rudimentary sense of responsiblity.

But they have a long way to go, and the only thing they know how to do is steal, so the end I gave the exec was that they steal a car to take care of their friends, and as they make their getaway, they turn the wrong way.  Ha ha.  Funny ending.

The exec liked it, but didn't ask for the script.

But his question bothered me.  I realized that the ending was wrong.  The whole schtick about making wrong turns isn't a joke.  It's a theme.  The story is, overtly, about characters who struggle to find their way morally as well as directionally.  These guys have no point of reference for either thing, except for each other.  They have no compass.  And that's the theme.  It's not about being lost and making wrong turns. It's about struggling to find your way with out a compass. Because they DO struggle.

Having Luther (who isn't usually the driver, but now he wants to drive because he wants to find his own way) make a wrong turn is not thematic.  It's just random.  Furthermore, because they'd gained some members to the gang who aren't directoinally challenged, they do now have a kind of compass.

So I changed the ending.

Luther does indeed turn right when he's told to turn left, but then we hear the voice of one of his new companions saying "Your other left!"  And we see the car stop and turn around.

Now, when I did that, it wasn't because I had thought of my theme in words.  It was more something I felt.  But feeling it did help me make a right choice.


Themes in The Story Game

Themes are incredibly personal.  I often find other people's theme choices to be incredibly dissatisfying.

Therefore, I recommend that you start your own theme list the way you should collect your own title words.  It can, however help to start with someone else's lists -- to give you an idea of the kind of thing you might use.

When I started this game, I used the Brainstormer randomizer to pick a theme.  Half of their choices don't make sense to me, so I usually keep spinning the wheel until I get something that does.

Here are a few of the words I use myself: Courage, Greed, Mentor/Pupil relationships, Fear, Self-Sacrifice, Indulgence, Growth, Darkness, Fire, Reflection, Twins, Celebration, Exhaustion, Desperation, Survival, Loss, Competition, Secrecy, Taste, Love of Life, Caretaking, Duty, Honor, Dullness, Shyness, Outsiders/Insiders, Barriers, Doorways, Inebriation, Amnesia, Self-Promotion, Self-Sacrifice, Pride, Lust, Steadfastness, Rot, Authority...

Taking the items that speak to you, maybe a few that challenge you, but leave the rest.  Fill it in with your own.

I tend to focus on things that affect the choices a character makes.  Personal qualities, relationships.  However, I sometimes throw in something I see that sparks my imagination. I also like to put in words that have multiple meanings. ("Darkness" in a suspense can mean dark moods, evil motivations, ignorance, and the actual darkness of night or a dungeon.)

In the end, it can be anything that evokes a response in you.  Tweak your list as you go.

Tomorrow we finally Play The Game!  We'll put all the elements together and brainstorm a story concept out of it. 

See you in the funny papers.