This past week I’ve been experimenting with a new story, one that is more of a game to write than something… I don’t know, serious.
I’m a huge TTRPG fan and love to read up on theory of play. One of the most common and popular pieces of advice is that when you are prepping scenarios for players you should prepare situations and not stories. Meaning come up with a problem for players to solve, rather than a plot for them to follow through.
The most exciting way to play is to throw players head first into a problem and to let them squirm and wriggle their way out of it. What you don’t want to do is have solutions already in mind, because if you attempt to steer people in the direction of your solution you tend to kill the thrill.
It’s the problem solving, stakes, and consequences that arise that make the game fun.
Thinking on this type of improvisational problem solving made me think of a passage in Stephen King’s On Writing where he touches on the differences in writing a plotted novel and a situational novel.
He explains that stories like Misery, Cujo, and Gerald’s Game are stories that automatically incite plot based on their basic premises.
“A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a what-if question.”
Stephen King On Writing
“And none of the story’s details and incidents proceeded from plot; they were organic, each arising naturally from the initial situation, each an uncovered part of the fossil.”
Stephen King on writing Misery
By making the problem the heart of the story you are creating the playground that makes writing fun.
When you work to find solutions for the characters to escape, it’s almost like you yourself are doing the escaping.
It’s kind of like day dreaming what you’d do if you were stuck on an island. How would you survive? How would you escape? What about food? Shelter?
By putting yourself into the situation, you sort of engage yourself in a different way when writing. It just seems a touch more interactive and a little less passive.
Maybe writing is supposed to be a game like that, at least in terms of genre fiction.
How would you enact a heist?
How would you deal with an alien on your spaceship?
How would you deal with zombies surrounding your house?
How would you deal with witnessing a murder?
Pick a problem and see how your characters get out of it.
Nothing revolutionary here, I know, but still something potentially big for me. Certainly makes writing stories more about something.
Like an escape room.