Each Scene is a Story
Written by Harry
July 25, 2008
To get the most out of scenes on a play-by-post game board, build anticipation like you would in a short story.
If you look closely at some of the best scenes in our creative writing game at Escaping Reality, you’ll see that these scenes follow the same formula any full novel would.
Each scene is a story within itself. There is an introduction, the rising action, the climax, and the let-down that follows as the action slows before wrapping up the scene.
Heighten the anticipation. You do want people to wonder what’s coming next. You don’t want them to get bored whipping through reading through a grocery list of details or thoughts.
Also, give other players and characters in the scene and a reason to keep going. Toss them a hook. Internal thoughts are fine, dialogue is great and so are actions. If you do too many of one and neglect the rest or rattle off a resume shotgun style, you eliminate the chance for other players to respond to anything.
You leave players with nothing to work with and nowhere to go.
There is no time. There is no prescript pace. There is only here and now, and the stories of the lives of the characters we build.
Let them live. Let them breathe and love and fear and move and talk and warm to each other or shy away and run. Let the story be your guide. Don’t guide the story.
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It’s almost like real life sometimes - you know what you would like to have happen, but you don’t always know when it will happen or if it will happen at all.
Something I’m still trying to get a hang of is when to keep a scene going in order to explore it more, and when is a good time to wrap the scene up. I suppose that’s something that comes with practice.
Allison’s last blog post..Taste and Create 10
That’s a tough one. It’s a combination of spotting certain cues and also having a gut feeling.
Sometimes, too, a scene starts to wind down, you don’t want it to, so you stir it up with something no one can resist. That’s fun.
Oh. Wait. Does that make a new scene?
James Chartrand - Men with Pens’s last blog post..Landing a Guest Post Gig: It Isn’t That Hard
Exactly. *confusion*
So should we always follow the intro -> rising action -> climax -> let down formula, and if there’s more material to explore in the scene after that, start a new scene? Or continue the action in the original scene?
James, I think you have only managed to confuse me more.
Allison’s last blog post..Taste and Create 10
It’s a talent of mine.
Break and start anew is always the better choice until you learn how to pick up a scene before it lags past the point of graceful saving.
I’m going jot that down as the first note in my new writing notebook. Maybe even tape it to the wall next to my computer so it’s in front of me while I write my posts.
Often, before I post, I reread and ask myself if anything interesting happened in what I just wrote. If not, I’ll go back and tweak it. Like Lizzy suggesting Selene pose as her significant other, that was added for some fun and interest value to an otherwise dull (in my opinion) post.
Nicole’s last blog post..What would you do?
I’ve been noticing a few people this week on the boards asking me how to jump start a scene.
On the ER boards a lot has happened to the characters, but whenever some of them get together, they’re hashing over the same old small talk. Why not ask questions of the other characters what they felt during one of the other scenes?
We had a fight at the diner, a shark in a freshwater lake, we’ve had monsters under the bed, and vampires in alleyways. Talk about it! Dig and find out what was going on for everyone else in game - that is as far as your character would know.
James and I are constantly thinking of ways to get other characters to admit to information they need to share and it isn’t always easy.
Take for example Lizzy (Nicole’s character) in the hospital. She had a hell of a dream and Cole wants to know what that was. She won’t tell him, so as an ST, I had him leave the scene so Lizzy would hopefully open up more to Selene (Wendi’s character).
Worked like a charm.
Now we have two player characters bonding, Cole may or may not get more information later from Selene and everyone is happy and interested in what happens next.