On Drama

Here’s a taste of what drama actually is, how to achieve it, and how it relates to game writing.

At its core, drama is about conflict. Tension between one force and another must exist to generate interest. We build characters that the audience can relate to in an effort to invest them in the conflict that arises out of the tensions we create. We tease the audience by oscillating between near-wins and near-losses for the protagonist. We grip them by raising the stakes every time something goes right or wrong. Just when all seems lost, something happens to push the story into climax where the tension is resolved and the “normal” is reestablished.

Here’s a little graph I whipped up to illustrate:

Variations

This is the basic form of a dramatic storyline, but there are as many variations as there are stories. Sometimes the story has no “climax” because the antagonist wins and the new normal is one that’s not so great. Sometimes the new normal isn’t just getting back to the first normal, as in the graph: sometimes the new normal is better than before, and other times it’s worse, even if the protagonist wins.

Notice that there are scenes sitting at regular intervals along the “normal” line. Generally, we pace the action we expose to the audience by having one exciting scene, followed by a slow scene used to flesh out characters or reflect on what has been happening. Sometimes these slow scenes are skipped toward the end of the narrative as we approach “all is lost” and “climax,” in order to maintain momentum.

One trick that modern writers have been using for around 10 years now is that of showing an exciting scene from later in the story as the first scene. Sometimes it’s “all is lost,” but it’s always a scene in which the antagonist has the upper hand. After that scene is shown with no explanation, we are treated to the “normal,” followed by the regular story arc.

This serves the dual purposes of engaging the audience with excitement to grab their attention right away, and to compel them to stay to find out what was going on in that scene and what the resolution will ultimately be.

Conflict Layering

Crafting a good conflict requires what I call “conflict layering.” A Jedi versus a Sith Lord is a conflict. It’s better if the Sith Lord is the Jedi’s father, because that introduces a counter-conflict: on the one hand you want to save the galaxy, on the other you want to save your father.

The more points of tension you can create, the more engaging (and potentially confusing!) the story can be. Sometimes that means giving texture to the primary conflict by introducing doubt (as in Star Wars), and sometimes that means providing sub plots that carry their own arc running simultaneously with the main arc.

This often means the difference between a good and a bad story. The most highly regarded stories are those that draw out sympathy from all sides. A mother who has to choose which of her children will live and which will be put into a Nazi oven. We hate the Nazi guard who takes that child. That guard also hates herself for what she does, but feels she must continue to feed and care for her sick son. But maybe her sick son is actually a psychopath who kills animals and rapes women at night. It’s not his fault though because his abusive step father raped and killed his older sister when he was younger, so he’s scarred. We still hate the guard, and we still want to rescue the child, but now we have reservations because of our sympathy for the all the characters involved.

This is just one example of a layered conflict, and how revealing more information in progressive scenes can provide texture to a story arc.

Drama in Games

Goombas guard the land around castles in Marioland, and Mario has to overcome them to reach his goal. Narratively, Mario’s normal was disrupted when his girlfriend was stolen by Bowser, and now he searches through castle, after castle looking for her. True to dramatic form, each castle is more difficult, or higher stakes, than the previous. After each victory, there are fireworks and brief rest before he starts again at a comparatively easy point in the game, working his way toward the more difficult castle at the end of the land.

Finally Mario reaches the final castle, kills the deadly Bowser, and is reunited with Peach, reestablishing the normal.

In a sense, games are fundamentally dramatic because they involve a conflict between the player’s goals and the rules of the game. That’s at the mechanical level. Layered on top of that is the story which often involves a protagonist overcoming great odds to reach his goal.

A great many games rely heavily on one drama or the other. Most gamers have suffered the stilted game play of a game with fantastic characters and a great story, just so they could see the resolution. Still more games have nothing but a cursory story, yet the mechanical drama is so engaging that we ignore the weak storytelling because we enjoy the challenge of the game mechanics.

I think the goal of a game designer should be to make both of those dramas compelling.

Game design should interweave the mechanical drama that arises from game play with the narrative drama that we create for the characters as backdrop. In a sense, the game play in this medium is our way of making the player “feel” the tension that the character feels. By creating progressively more difficult mechanics, we convey the sense of achievement, hope, and challenge to the player: the same senses that the character he controls feels about the story events.

The two dramas should operate in harmony, each keeping pace with the other as we provide greater and greater challenges for the player and character alike, until finally–the character having compelled the player to push all this way–the player pushes the character over the finish line, reestablishes the normal, rescues the princess, and lives to fight in another sequel.