Phew, finally got around to answering this post myself.

So, what is the most important thing I have learned, and a question that I still have about each element?

Well, questions I have about them are easy.
- How many definite unique character archetypes are there, and what are they? If I had to guess offhand I would probably guess there were about 60, but when I tried to calculate them my tentative answers ranged from 260 to 1,200. o_O Literary and psychological theorists have suggested different sets of 8, 10, or 16, but I haven''t found a set that I like yet.

- Same for basic character dynamics - how many, and what are they? I listed some above, but the list is certainly not complete.

- Actually, I could even say the same for theme. There must be a finite number of themes, because there are only so many issues that humans care about in a moral way. Hmm... wonder why I''m so obsessed about making lists of archetype and dynamic but not of theme? Although I do collect proverbs, those are like micro statements of theme...

- Plot, this is the one of the six elements that has always baffled me the most. I''ve read like 40 books on the subject and I''m still not comfortable with plot. Sometimes I feel like I have _only_ questions about plot, and no answers. o_O I suppose the most basic question I would ask is ''How does the human mind evaluate what is a satisfying plot?''

- Worldbuilding and register at least I have no questions about. ^_^ I''ve found my favorite register: Chatty and slangy with lots of introspection and ironic humor, literal-minded rather than full of symbolism. Sometimes I would rather read something more poetic, written in fairy-tale language, but if I try to write that way I always end up frustrated because I can''t find the right word and a higher-formality register is too emotionally distancing for the stories I want to write. So, now I enjoy it when other writers write poetically, but I don''t try to force myself to do that. ^_^ And of course each writer needs to find their own favorite register or two. (Some published authors have two distinct registers that they use for different types of stories, but very few have more than two, because writing in a register pretty much requires your brain to, at least temporarily, adapt to thinking that way.)

Worldbuilding, well that has just always come naturally to me. If you have the instinct for how societies evolve and behave, and you study technology, genetics, and the history of thought a little, that''s really all you need for decent worldbuilding; everything else is just detail and consistency-checking. I was writing an article on how to do worldbuilding a while ago, I should probably try to finish it one of these days...

Hmm, I guess with that I''ve seguayed into what I''ve learned. So what have I learned about the other elements? Well I put most of that into my definition of the terms, but let''s see...


About Character:
- The hero and the villain can switch positions if you regard the story from a different point of view. Villains aren''t plainly evil, heroes aren''t purely good. Every major character in your story should be both flawed and loveable if you look at them from the right perspective. A villain that the author likes is generally a well-written villain.

- Also, every single character has their own fears, desires, and motivations. You need to figure out these too, not just the character''s personality, to be able to write that character.

About Character Dynamic:
- IMHO, this is what really makes a story go. You can have all the fascinating wondorus worldbuilding and pretty register you want, but without character dynamic it''s not a story. Character dynamic is how you express your judgements on the themes your story explores, in terms of which characters get rewarded with happy endings and which get poetic justice punishments. Character dynamic is what makes plot meaningful - nobody cares if the hero finds the foozle until you mention that the foozle is a ring so he can propose to the love interest, or the foozle is a medicine to save the sidekick whom the hero would be lost without, etc. One of people''s major subconscious motivations for reading fiction is that they feel like they''re missing some sort of vital relationship dynamic in their lives and they want to vicariously experience this missing relationship through your characters. This is why there are millions of lousy romance novels not only published, but actually read, every year.

About theme:
- It''s often easiest to write a story, read it over to figure out what themes you subconsciously put into it, and then edit to bring these out, make them clear and show why the audience should care. A novel should have a new theme introduced or an old theme revisited in a new situation about every 30 pages. A short story should have only one or two themes, and if it has two they should usually be related.
- Themes also have to do with catharsis, though this might not be obvious from first glance. People write stories where humans are wiped out and animals repopulate the earth to cathartize their guilt about pollution, etc. People write about a powerless person becoming a hero because they''re sick of feeling powerless. People write about getting kidnapped to a strange land because they feel blocked from accomplishing anything meaningful by the structure of thw real world. And readers read these kinds of stories because they need those kinds of catharsis too.

About Plot:
- Well, I don''t claim to be an expert on plot; far from it! But, I''ve learned a few little things. The first paragraph of any story is VERY important. First, if there''s anything you should agonize over and edit 10 times, it should be the first paragraph - it needs to establish atmosphere and present an initial problem, situation, object, or idea for the reader to ponder. Secondly, the initial incident is very important. It should happen within the first five paragraphs of a short story, or the first thirty pages of a novel. Almost all adult readers are able to recognize what the initial incident is when they see it, and if they don''t like it they will probably put the book down, skip the story, whatever, you''ve lost them. It is vital to create sympathy between the reader and the character(s) affected by the initial incident so that the reader will want to keep reading to see what happens next. And third, the climax is again very important - you have to get the reader worried/excited/sympathetically angry, then make events work out in such a way that the reader is surprised and satisfied. At the end of the climactic passage your reader should either be grinning, or panting in relief and exclaiming "Oh thank goodness!" or "Whew, that was close!" Room enough for humor, sap, or melancholy in the denouement.


I guess that''s all I can think of to say.

Ehh...those are too complicated. Let''s cut it down to Orson Scott Card''s MICE quotient (explained better in his Writer''s Digest book Characters and Viewpoint). It''s less confusing.


Milieu - For a game, actually not all that important to anything except an RPG and maybe a few FPSes.

Idea - Ideas are the idea tried to get across by the writer. Not all that important to a game.

Character - Epitome for RPGs, lesser for most FPSes.

Events - Critical. Without this, nothing happens.

quote: Original post by Edward Ropple
Idea - Ideas are the idea tried to get across by the writer. Not all that important to a game.

o_0" Not all that important to a game...?! *sunandshadow faints* Good thing I''m not your English teacher, I would have you writing 500 lines of "Without moral and ethical significance plot is meaningless. Without moral and ethical significance plot is meaningless. Without moral and ethical significance plot is meaningless. Without moral and ethical significance..."

You misunderstand me. I believe it''s important to a plot. But how many games have a plot where a point is put across? I can name maybe four.

Well, let''s see - Starcraft, FF7 (and other FF games), Sanitarium, Harvest Moon, Chrono Trigger, Grand Theft Auto, Syphon Filter, Soul Blazer, E.V.O., Lunar Star Story... There are lots of games, from strategy sims and adventure games to FPSs and RPGs, that make a strong moral statement. Can you think of a game that had a _good_ story which didn''t have a moral or two? Even if the games with good stories and morals are not the majority, they are what this forum is all about creating. I don''t mean to be grouchy (it may be because I''ve been battling the two feet of snow that fell around my apartment ) but a writer is an artist, an artist must have self-discipline and appreciation for the complexity of his art, and it seems lazy to say that a six-element system is too complicated, so let''s not think about two of the elements, and the third isn''t very important either... It''s also amusing to see such a statement in relation to Mr. Card, who very much believes that hard work and suffering are good for people. If I still misunderstand you, then please enlighten me.

I've never played half those games, and I will confess I've never beaten the campaign of Starcraft. You misunderstood me, but then I didn't make myself clear. I wasn't saying /I/ believe that's the way it should be, I'm saying that's the way it appears to me. Very few games, even ones with stories, give a "moral statement". Baldur's Gate, for example. I severely dislike the Final Fantasy series, and the mention of it is making me break out in hives, but to an extent, you're right, those try to give a moral message (but it's always the same damn one...). The greatest RPGs of all time (Lunar, hell yes...) do too. But most games, sadly, don't.

And I just brought up his MICE quotient simply because I thought your six elements were splitting hairs in places (character and character dynamic? That's splitting the same topic in two, in my view). I didn't mean too complicated in that sense - I was sleepy when I wrote that. Is that clearer?

[edited by - Edward Ropple on February 18, 2003 6:55:33 PM]

Milieu Ideas Characters and Events ?
I guess it''s not a bad summary. Milieu encompasses Register and Worldbuilding ? Ideas for the Themes, Events for Character interaction and Plot, I assume.

theme
I wish I could search through the forum to find an old post I made about theme and how to illustrate them in the narration. I had read it in one of my Vampire : The Masquerade books, as an advice to Storytellers on how to make their well, storytelling, better.
I thought it was an interesting concept, a sort of "subliminal message" for the storyteller. It gives IMHO, depth to the writing by allowing the writer to use less direct ways of expressing ideas (suggesting, rather than showing).

Example : one of the faction in the story is traditionally associated with fire, for their use of it and their defiance of it (fire is lethal to vampires, scares them witless, just like the sun). At the beginning of the story, this faction (the Sabbat), is dominant.
To show this in a indirect manner, the scenes were the action takes place includes elements related to fire : in the background, a building is burning (possibly the haven of the heroes).
As the story progresses and the power of the Sabbat decreases, the images of fire used are accordingly smaller. Some bonfire in the woods, a barrel around which some homeless are warming up.
As the last remaining forces are wiped away, a final image could be described : a candle blown out, a cigarette squished, dying embers being scattered by the wind (of change )

I had never thought of something like that, and I find it''s a brilliant idea that I am eager to try on my players.
But I think it would be even better used in writing as a way of illustrating themes. (They had a specific word for those images, but I cant remember it for the life of me...)

anyway

plot
I think it''s all about closure. We just have a feeling that something just doesnt fit, or is missing and it disturbs us.
We *expect* things in stories which would not normally happen in real life, precisely because we know that in real life, things happen as they should, not as we would like them to.
We expect so much because stories, as you pointed out S&S, are there to help us; through absolute horror or absolute joy, we experience catharsis, or elation (to feel elated, yes ?).

IMO, if you intend to provide the reader with catharsis, you go for the greek tragedy style : things start bad and they go down and down the drain. It''s like listening to sad depressing music (Lisa Gerrard works for me) when you are sad and depressed : some people wont understand and start worrying that you might commit suicide, while others will simply let their own bad vibes be drained away and out of their system. Just like rock is a good way to release Angst.
I am not sure about the plot structure itself, but a general guideline would be : when you reach a point where things could actually get better, when a ray of light seem to shine at the end of the tunnel, when a hand reaches out for you; things get worse, the light is that of the train coming towards you full speed, the hand is there to keep your head under the water...

the other type of plot is all about overcoming obstacles, it''s just a tale of life, really. We go through obstacles, and we get stronger. You dont deliver the princess before you have had to kill an ogre or at least hacked your way through a forest of thorns
It''s a bit boring in my opinion... see my first post about the kind of "unbalanced" plots I prefer

Do you see any other types of plots ? other "parameters" that could be tweaked to make something different ?

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

quote: Original post by Edward Ropple
You misunderstood me, but then I didn''t make myself clear. I wasn''t saying /I/ believe that''s the way it should be, I''m saying that''s the way it appears to me. Very few games, even ones with stories, give a "moral statement". [snip]

And I just brought up his MICE quotient simply because I thought your six elements were splitting hairs in places (character and character dynamic? That''s splitting the same topic in two, in my view). I didn''t mean too complicated in that sense - I was sleepy when I wrote that. Is that clearer?

Ah, I see now. ^_^ Hmm, I suppose you could consider character dynamic to be an aspect of character; I personally think it''s more closely related to plot since both share that 4th dimensional aspect and none of the other elements really, do, but then that''s a matter of perspective. And for morals, it''s certainly true that there are games that don''t have any. I just feel that the purpose of this dialectic community is that we as artists are striving to do the best game writing we can do, which to me means: strong characters, emotionally involving and intellectually interesting atmosphere, plot, and worldbuilding, and unifying moral themes. So I try to keep that ethic central, especially in discussions of writing technique. ^_^

quote: Original post by ahw

IMO, if you intend to provide the reader with catharsis, you go for the greek tragedy style : things start bad and they go down and down the drain. It''s like listening to sad depressing music (Lisa Gerrard works for me) when you are sad and depressed : some people wont understand and start worrying that you might commit suicide, while others will simply let their own bad vibes be drained away and out of their system. Just like rock is a good way to release Angst.
I am not sure about the plot structure itself, but a general guideline would be : when you reach a point where things could actually get better, when a ray of light seem to shine at the end of the tunnel, when a hand reaches out for you; things get worse, the light is that of the train coming towards you full speed, the hand is there to keep your head under the water...

the other type of plot is all about overcoming obstacles, it''s just a tale of life, really. We go through obstacles, and we get stronger. You dont deliver the princess before you have had to kill an ogre or at least hacked your way through a forest of thorns
It''s a bit boring in my opinion... see my first post about the kind of "unbalanced" plots I prefer

Do you see any other types of plots ? other "parameters" that could be tweaked to make something different ?

Ahh, you mention plot types.

Have you seen This Thread?

I''m sure you remember This One, since it was your thread.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
I''ve found my favorite register: Chatty and slangy with lots of introspection and ironic humor, literal-minded rather than full of symbolism.

Then no doubt you would love the two books I recommended above, for the first person narrative is chatty and slangy with lots of introspection and ironic humor, and is literal minded rather than full of symbolism. It''s a shame really, because the stories are a gritty narrative about a PI team in Boston - not really your thing, and yet the register is just what you''re looking for.

*sigh*