How Can You See Into My Eyes Like Open Doors, Leading You Down Into My Core
--“Bring Me to Life”, Evanescence
"Explain how this works again. You're telling me that not only do these kids, these second graders you said, not get into trouble at this school, but they also work the system to become rich, famous, and powerful?"
"Basically, although I don't think I'm breaking down how exactly they get powerful. I think wealth, fame, and brute strength all go towards them becoming powerful."
"So when you say the card says your opponent loses his enforcer character because--what'd you say again--he gets set up to be held in custody by the FBI, I'm supposed to imagine..."
"That there's a second-grader being led away in handcuffs telling his parents to call his lawyer."
"Eeyore, you're evil."
----
I am currently in the process of creating and testing a new card game based on a former post I made here. Basically, it will be centered on the cloak-and-dagger world of second grade at a school where the students are in charge. As you might expect, there’s a tongue-in-cheek approach to the whole affair as the whole point of the game is to insure that one’s clique gains enough power to assume control over all comers, eventually progressing to the point where that group will assumably wrest enough control to dominate the world. I don’t know—something about the idea of little kids being sneaky and underhanded appealed to me as a viable game premise. Furthermore, any time the vagaries of a game can swing from one kid winning the Pullitzer for his essay on “What I Did During My Summer Vacation” to being deported to Sweden (“But I’m not even Swedish”) it sounds like a great time to me. Hopefully, it’ll be ready for playtesting soon as I have high hopes to develop and market it in the future.
Of all my hobbies I’d have to say game designing board and card games probably is one of my oldest. Even before I developed my passion for writing stories or writing in general, I was always creatively trying to come up with new ideas to play within the game milieu. From my blatant rip-offs of Monopoly, Super Mario Bros. and other classic games of my childhood, to my unique ideas in the genres of wresting, BMX biking, and fighting games, I think I’ve created far more lasting memories from some of my games than from some of my stories. There’s something about designing a world, designing all of its inhabitants, and then letting everything fall to chance rather than a pre-conceived notion of what’s supposed to happen that has always piqued my interest. It’s one thing to dream up some elaborate and dramatic storyline, but it’s entirely another thing to set the ground rules and have the stories spring to life organically. Not only do I get this sense of creating something spectacular, I also get a fuller sense that the world I’ve created is livelier, more real somehow, because it feels capable of churning out stories with or without me. When I write a story—sure, I sometimes wonder what befalls my characters after my time with them has expired—but I never get the impression that events are unfolding without my direct control. I’m fully aware of how much sway my guidance has over them. With a game it’s different. With a game, by its very nature of being played by more than one person, no one entity ever has direct control over the outcome. No one entity ever holds complete authority over its direction. Chance, luck, and circumstances also contribute to the life-like realism of the way choices play out.
----
"And what would make you believe that I'd ever want to play this game, sugar?"
"Well, for one, you're in it."
"There's a character named Breanne in it?"
"Isn't there always?"
"Oooh, can you make her the most total badass character in the whole game?"
"Like what?"
"Like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse badass?"
"I don't know--that's pretty badass. Besides, it's not up to me how strong she is. You've just got to see how it all plays out. She very well could turn out to be the key to the whole game or she could be the weakest of the weak."
"And how weak would that be? A person's personal lapdog?"
"Worse."
"What's worse than that?"
"The piss boy or girl, it really doesn't matter. I think that's the funniest job title I've ever heard, having to personally monitor and empty a king or queen's bedpan."
---
I think that says a lot about the way I create stories. It’s this love of character and thinking about how someone would act and react that drives my brand of storytelling. It almost doesn’t matter to me what happens as much as whom it’s happening to. Like a game, I believe I have a sense of what a certain person I’ve imagined is going to do in a situation, but, by allowing the story to remain flexible, I give the character room to forge his or her own path. Some of my best stories have literally come from a simple premise as “two characters are walking down the street”—which, incidentally, was a story I wrote and received a lot of praise for in my advanced fiction writing class and probably was a contributing factor in passing that class and my major with a 4.0. I didn’t even know what they were going to be discussing. I simply knew that it was going to be important stuff. I think that’s why a lot of stories involve tremendous amounts of dialogue, because how somebody expresses himself is more vital to me than what is being expressed. A lot of the time I’ll design a character and have no bloody clue as to what kind of story I want to fashion around him. A lot of the time I have characters floating in my mind waiting for a story that fits them.
Ultimately, when I design a game or write a story, it’s because I have a great idea for a world, or a theme, or a character. Very rarely do I consider much what’s going to occur until much later in the process. For instance, in the game I’m designing now, I am having a lot more fun coming up with the various cliques/nationalities/organizations/names each of the characters possess than hammering out the rules. For me, at least, the rules are just a by-product of the world itself. If I’ve designed a compelling enough world and environment, set up a good premise, then the rules will organize themselves in much the same manner that, if I have great enough characters to work with and if I’ve breathed enough life into them, the story will present itself easily.
Plus, a cabal of second-graders bent on world domination is pretty much a story that writes itself.
----
"And how does the game end?"
"When one side gains enough power to take over the school, then the city, then the world."
"Isn't that a case of tomcat wanting to be a tiger?"
"A what?"
"Isn't that a tad ambitious for a second grader?"
"You weren't in my second grade class, B."
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
"Explain how this works again. You're telling me that not only do these kids, these second graders you said, not get into trouble at this school, but they also work the system to become rich, famous, and powerful?""Basically, although I don't think I'm breaking down how exactly they get powerful. I think wealth, fame, and brute strength all go towards them becoming powerful."
"So when you say the card says your opponent loses his enforcer character because--what'd you say again--he gets set up to be held in custody by the FBI, I'm supposed to imagine..."
"That there's a second-grader being led away in handcuffs telling his parents to call his lawyer."
"Eeyore, you're evil."
----
I am currently in the process of creating and testing a new card game based on a former post I made here. Basically, it will be centered on the cloak-and-dagger world of second grade at a school where the students are in charge. As you might expect, there’s a tongue-in-cheek approach to the whole affair as the whole point of the game is to insure that one’s clique gains enough power to assume control over all comers, eventually progressing to the point where that group will assumably wrest enough control to dominate the world. I don’t know—something about the idea of little kids being sneaky and underhanded appealed to me as a viable game premise. Furthermore, any time the vagaries of a game can swing from one kid winning the Pullitzer for his essay on “What I Did During My Summer Vacation” to being deported to Sweden (“But I’m not even Swedish”) it sounds like a great time to me. Hopefully, it’ll be ready for playtesting soon as I have high hopes to develop and market it in the future.
Of all my hobbies I’d have to say game designing board and card games probably is one of my oldest. Even before I developed my passion for writing stories or writing in general, I was always creatively trying to come up with new ideas to play within the game milieu. From my blatant rip-offs of Monopoly, Super Mario Bros. and other classic games of my childhood, to my unique ideas in the genres of wresting, BMX biking, and fighting games, I think I’ve created far more lasting memories from some of my games than from some of my stories. There’s something about designing a world, designing all of its inhabitants, and then letting everything fall to chance rather than a pre-conceived notion of what’s supposed to happen that has always piqued my interest. It’s one thing to dream up some elaborate and dramatic storyline, but it’s entirely another thing to set the ground rules and have the stories spring to life organically. Not only do I get this sense of creating something spectacular, I also get a fuller sense that the world I’ve created is livelier, more real somehow, because it feels capable of churning out stories with or without me. When I write a story—sure, I sometimes wonder what befalls my characters after my time with them has expired—but I never get the impression that events are unfolding without my direct control. I’m fully aware of how much sway my guidance has over them. With a game it’s different. With a game, by its very nature of being played by more than one person, no one entity ever has direct control over the outcome. No one entity ever holds complete authority over its direction. Chance, luck, and circumstances also contribute to the life-like realism of the way choices play out.
----
"And what would make you believe that I'd ever want to play this game, sugar?"
"Well, for one, you're in it."
"There's a character named Breanne in it?"
"Isn't there always?"
"Oooh, can you make her the most total badass character in the whole game?"
"Like what?"
"Like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse badass?"
"I don't know--that's pretty badass. Besides, it's not up to me how strong she is. You've just got to see how it all plays out. She very well could turn out to be the key to the whole game or she could be the weakest of the weak."
"And how weak would that be? A person's personal lapdog?"
"Worse."
"What's worse than that?"
"The piss boy or girl, it really doesn't matter. I think that's the funniest job title I've ever heard, having to personally monitor and empty a king or queen's bedpan."
---
I think that says a lot about the way I create stories. It’s this love of character and thinking about how someone would act and react that drives my brand of storytelling. It almost doesn’t matter to me what happens as much as whom it’s happening to. Like a game, I believe I have a sense of what a certain person I’ve imagined is going to do in a situation, but, by allowing the story to remain flexible, I give the character room to forge his or her own path. Some of my best stories have literally come from a simple premise as “two characters are walking down the street”—which, incidentally, was a story I wrote and received a lot of praise for in my advanced fiction writing class and probably was a contributing factor in passing that class and my major with a 4.0. I didn’t even know what they were going to be discussing. I simply knew that it was going to be important stuff. I think that’s why a lot of stories involve tremendous amounts of dialogue, because how somebody expresses himself is more vital to me than what is being expressed. A lot of the time I’ll design a character and have no bloody clue as to what kind of story I want to fashion around him. A lot of the time I have characters floating in my mind waiting for a story that fits them.
Ultimately, when I design a game or write a story, it’s because I have a great idea for a world, or a theme, or a character. Very rarely do I consider much what’s going to occur until much later in the process. For instance, in the game I’m designing now, I am having a lot more fun coming up with the various cliques/nationalities/organizations/names each of the characters possess than hammering out the rules. For me, at least, the rules are just a by-product of the world itself. If I’ve designed a compelling enough world and environment, set up a good premise, then the rules will organize themselves in much the same manner that, if I have great enough characters to work with and if I’ve breathed enough life into them, the story will present itself easily.
Plus, a cabal of second-graders bent on world domination is pretty much a story that writes itself.
----
"And how does the game end?"
"When one side gains enough power to take over the school, then the city, then the world."
"Isn't that a case of tomcat wanting to be a tiger?"
"A what?"
"Isn't that a tad ambitious for a second grader?"
"You weren't in my second grade class, B."
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
posted by mojo shivers @ 3:18 AM
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