2022-04-02
Writing is hard, more than I thought.
This is the first time I’m working on something that actually has some structure and goal in mind instead of just meandering through my scattered brain to write something. I honestly don’t know how much time I spend on writing my own stories till I started.
I’m starting to see there’s some lag time when I write. I am trying to think about the structure and the direction but I can’t seem to do that clearly. the guide asks what the goal of the scene is it’s rather hard to nail it in the first writing especially with my approach of writing. What is my approach?
I wrote some prompt yesterday and I thought it would be nice to continue on to build up on it. on both occasions I had to think for a bit before I was writing them and that was a good 3 to 5 min thinking before my fingers started to move to write them. Unlike yesterday today I was thinking to write them with some goal in mind, seed some misbelief in the protagonist but I struggled to come up with it and decided to just write down whatever that was coming to me and see what I ended up with.
Turns out it’s messy and all over the place as my brain wasn’t thinking in a linear structure but it just constantly branches and I needed to make sure I write them down else I will forget and this made it really difficult for me to stay focused on the writing a clear flow of story. However I was able to flesh out the things around the story itself. It did take a while before I was able to nail down what the misbelief should be given to the protagonist and in the end it was refreshing to know that I can write about 600 words in about 30 minutes with some time slated for thinking.
D&D is easier than writing, I swear.
So I run D&D sessions on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Yes that is a lot and I love it. The biggest challenge would be coming up with the content and so far I only had handful of occasions where I was stuck with the content and asked for a break only once or twice in my 2 years, going third thanks covid, or running 4 to 5 campaigns a week. How you might ask? Well here’s the reason why,
D&D is a collaborative storytelling
I’m not the sole writer of the story, my role as a game master (GM/DM) is to create a setting and conflict for the players to interact with and whatever happens happens. there fore I don’t have to think about what each of actors on the setting are thinking about. Yes I do have to think about the non-player character (NPC) responses and personas and all but it’s rather easier to craft them compared to what I am doing for the writing itself. Plus a lot of them are improv storytelling at the time of the session with some seeds so I do not plan the entire thing. Because if I plan too much then it feels scripted and feel like I should force the story to follow that script.
The other part of the equation of D&D is the players they get to see the setting and the conflict I have created and figure out ways to resolve them if they wish to or just leave it as is.
Take today’s group for instance, they’re currently in a two island with five settlements each run by a cloud giant. They are going around to understand what is happening in each of the settlement and they have learned so far.
- Voracious cloud giant - slave driver for incense sales and having issues with a group a religious group focusing on happiness
- Warmongering cloud giant - frequently hosts blood sports to pick out raiders to raid neighbouring settlements to loot and looking for which settlement to raid.
- Passive cloud giant - taking care of the people on his settlement and moving further inland to protect the people from warmongering sibling and the village is suffering from a magical plague.
- Mercantile cloud giant - amasses wealth through trade with other islands to keep the village thriving and have hired foreigners to live in a city to protect his assets.
- Religious cloud giant - yet to be revealed.
There’s no right answer what the players would be doing in the islands but they are thinking of what they are going to do to either help out the people in the islands by taking a side. Right now they’re thinking of taking out some of the giants and help them to create a council of giants to unite them. As a GM I am talking to them out of character (OOC) to bounce ideas back and forth not to plot but to think about npc responses and checking with each of their goals to see if it aligns. My goal is to create an interesting story with them.
Sometimes I do nothing, seriously nothing.
So it’s a collaborative storytelling and sometimes, GM doesn’t need to be involved at all to have fun. I’m just there to do some rulings on how things will be settled. Here’s on example happened today.
I have given the party a bag of tricks, which allows you to summon animals that lasts for a day or until killed, three times a day, in previous island expedition. One of the player asked about how does it work, where are those animals are from and where do they go once the duration expires. We had some discussions on what it might be and after some discussion we have collectively arrived that.
- The bag of tricks have three spirits that will manifest in an animal form for a day at random, unless they’re all summoned at once.
- these spirits have personalities and they are Dumb / Haughty / Loyal inspired by the three hyenas from the Lion King.
It was all players discussion and I was steering the conversation in some directions and they make the calls and I just set that as the rules of the bag of tricks.
It’s lot easier for me to write the setting and wait for the players to interact and fill in the gaps. I am struggling to write a short story based on my campaign settings and I’m spending most of my time on thinking about what is going on each of the character’s head - or I’m just overthinking it.