As the story writer of Imagiro Studios, I (Allen, the guy
writing blog posts) work really hard to explore and get exposed to various
types of story to find inspiration, which ultimately means, a lot of reading,
watching, and experiencing....but mostly reading. Its obvious that I'm an avid
reader and I know bit about story development (you would think that someone
would be an expert after reading so many books but no...I'm no where close),
and that will be the focus of this week's topic. This goes hand in hand with
our previous post about RPG game development since RPG is a major element of
RPG is the story. So we hope you find this post useful in helping your
endeavour.
I must admit that this post is a little different from the
others. It's almost like ranting about various points, but I promise that we'll
cover all the bases of good story development. We're not teaching ways to
develop a story (everyone does things differently and have different story to
tell, so we'll leave that up to you), what we are aiming for in this post is to
point out some aspect of good story and some pitfalls that you might want to
avoid. Also, everything discussed here is from our experiences, it's not like
we did some literary study. Point is, take this as a brain teaser that gets you
thinking about how you want to do things.
must have a main storyline with side stories that doesn't
deviate too much (have side stories fill various holes or reasons of the main
storyline)
Stories are like journeys, where a series of words evoke
your imagination to form images in your mind. And like journeys, a story needs
a beginning, transitions, conflicts, climax, and an ending. In other words,
stories need structure to form a plot or storyline. No matter what form of
storytelling you use, a structure is there for you to follow, the only
difference is the variation of events in the storyline. One thing is for certain,
stories that do not have clear storyline tend to have the feeling of being all
over the place with events and ultimately confuses the audience. Here at
Imagiro Studios (and I personally) try to come up with stories that are
coherent with a clear storyline. Don't get me wrong, a clear storyline does not
mean making it fully aware to the audience, it does, however, mean making it
fully clear to yourself, let us dive further into this.
A good story cannot be written on the fly. It needs a lot of
planning and fiddling just like working with game mechanics. How I like to
imagine story development is like a metal chain. The chain itself is the
storyline, it has a clear beginning, a stretch, and an ultimate end (no, I am
not thinking about a circular chain, that would be the counter simile), where
each link in the chain is an event that binds other links together and form the
chain. The important thing here is that links bind the links before and after,
this is a good expression to story development because this type of
relationship is key to making a story coherent. Each previous event has some
ties to some past and future events which leads to development of other future
events and finally all tied together with an ending. It is the best tool to
make the story move along without the audience fully realizing that they are
getting dragged along the story. A very coherent story is very smooth in its
transition, the audience would see that things are happening and things are
going somewhere naturally rather than thinking about why some things happened,
more on this later. For us at Imagiro Studios, story development is done with
care and a lot of planning, I personally take it serious enough to come up with
the most coherent story, a lot of times the first draft isn't very exciting
since it just covers the sequence of events that occurs, but as the drafts gets
more refined, character personality, settings, and emotions all contribute to
adding flavour to the story. However, the most important is a coherent series of
events that is called a storyline. A key element that I like to use is to plan
out an overall main storyline where possible loopholes or sources of confusion
are explained prior to encountering those situations. The device I use to
accomplish this is to use side stories or quests to set the stage so that later
encounters that seem random or out of place have an explanation that was given
prior. This device not only explains holes in the story and give coherence, but
it also allows game developer to integrate seemingly random side quests into
the overall storyline and make the player feel like every quest or mission they
do matters in the development, the illusion of choice is the expression used in
the industry. But be very careful when using this device, never deviate too
much from the main storyline, main thing is to have side events explain things
in the main storyline, it should never be too overpowering or long that it
makes the player forget what the main storyline is.
Good story planning leads to coherent stories which flows
smoothly, allowing the audience to ride the adventure without too much
involvement. However, this does not mean that the story should be predictable,
a predictable story is a boring story, it means that there isn't enough depth. Subtle
elements that lead on the audience are good devices to add depth, no matter
whether the elements lead the audience astray or on the correct path, it adds
mystery which keeps the audience guessing what might happen next. You surprise
them once then have them keep guessing. As an avid reader, I find that the
smallest things in events are sometimes very significant and it provides good
hints of future events, you can utilize this in your story development to add
subtly which gives the audience with an analytical brain some future sight as
well as the reward of realization when you tie up all the loose ends in the end
and make reference to the small things.
Loose ends are the worst to a story. Unless you are planning
to develop an afterstory to finish the original story, please please please do
not leave loose ends. It makes the story feel incomplete and leaves a bad after
taste. If you have a good storyline, the ending the key to keeping it good
until the end, I have encountered loads of good storylines that are ruined by a
crappy ending that is either anti-climatic or incomplete. I can deal with it
being anti-climatic because perhaps my vision of the ending was more grand, but
an incomplete ending (one that leaves loose ends) are just unbearable, they make
me rant, often violently, plus the feeling that I wasted my money and time.
This issue can be easily dealt with by good story planning. Keep a list of
character and their events, and see to it that everyone receives a proper
ending so no one gets left behind in the void of incompleteness.
There are tons of material out there teaching story writing,
but most importantly is that you have a story to tell. A passionate story will
always get through to the audience the telling method just determines how much
of it is amplified. Also, there are lots of ways to tell stories, the
traditional way, simultaneous storylines that converges, reverse storytelling,
and ending as beginning journey are just some alternative ways of how a
storyline can be form. However, no matter what format you tell it with, just
remember to use the appropriate structure and not confuse the audience. Keep
them interested and guessing the next events while riding a smooth current of
imagination.
