One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of stories is that the protagonists rarely make the first move. Where there exists a conflict with a villain, the hero(es) will almost invariably leave the first move to said villains, with a few notable exceptions.
One reason for this is that in general, defense codes as closer to [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Writers, Plot |
Tags: concepts, plot, reactive heroes, writing | 
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Yesterday, I mentioned the design principles of art, and how I use them to create the mental pictures that I turn into my descriptions. So how do I get from principles to composition, and from there to a picture?
The principle I start with when laying out my mental pictures is always dominance. Where would the [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Concepts, Cross-discipline, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: composition, description, principles of art, role-playing, writing | 3 Comments »
When I’m trying to get across a piece of imagery, I start with, well, an image. I don’t mean just getting a basic mental picture; I mean taking the time to take that picture and compose it, as if it were a piece of artwork or a short piece of film, then take the important [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Concepts, Cross-discipline, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: composition, Cross-discipline, description, principles of art, role-playing, writing | 1 Comment »
Yesterday I talked about distinctive silhouettes and why they’re important in comics and other visual media. My question, thinking about this, then became “What’s the prose equivalent? How do we manage distinctive silhouettes when we’re limited to words?
The first thing we need to remember is that for the prose silhouette, most aspects of appearance aren’t [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Character image, Characterization, Concepts, Cross-discipline, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: Art in writing, concepts, Cross-discipline, roleplaying, silhouettes, writing | 1 Comment »
One of the panels I attended at Comic-Con was Bryan Tillman talking about character design—or more specifically, visual character design. I came, I saw, and needless to say, I started thinking about how to apply what I’d learned to prose, to the point where I ended up following up on the jokingly oft-repeated exhortation to [...]
Categories: Art in writing, Character image, Characterization, Concepts, Cross-discipline, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: Art in writing, concepts, Cross-discipline, roleplaying, silhouettes, writing | 2 Comments »
In a book or movie, a montage is pretty straightforward. You do your sequence, whether it’s events, images, scenes, phases of construction and what characters are doing as the “shot” of the scene takes place. After all, you know everything—you know who the characters are, you know how they’re going to go about solving the [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Scening, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: interactive montages, roleplaying | 2 Comments »
Earlier this week, before I went off on a tangent, I talked about what stories were about—their plots, characters, underlying themes, etc. One of the things I’ve noticed on the subject is a problem, or at least a hazard, I’ve run into involving characters with defining characteristics that particularly set them apart.
So a character has [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: about, concepts, roleplaying, Thematics, writing | 2 Comments »
What is this story, or this game, about?
It seems like such a simple question. (Then again, so does “Who are you?”) But I ask it, and people start hanging up—not so simple an answer.
Often people will answer first with the characters around whom the plot focuses. It’s about three women who hijack a war with [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique |
Tags: about, concepts, roleplaying, Thematics, writing | 2 Comments »
“…but just as they’ve passed through the antechamber and into the entry hall, they hear a soft throat-clearing behind them….” and the session ends.
I got on this train of thought because of the commentary on yesterday’s Darths and Droids, which begins “It’s good to end a game session with a teaser for the next session.” [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique |
Tags: endings, plot twists, roleplaying, teasers, writing | 2 Comments »
Last week, I wrote about combat spark, and all the numerous ways to bring it about from the player side. While they’ve got a lot of control, though, we as GMs still need to hold up our end in encouraging combat spark from our players: it’s only everyone at the table contributing that gets us [...]
Categories: Concepts, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Tactics, Technique |
Tags: combat spark, fight scenes, GM Advice, roleplaying | 2 Comments »