The Story Conversation

(You should read my primer on character archetypes if you haven’t already)

Many flat stories, especially in games, are about a bad guy who wants control and a good guy who doesn’t want to be controlled. The reason it’s flat is not only that it has been done to death, but that there is no real conversation going on. Rarely does the “bad” guy have a chance to explain what’s so great about control and how it could help. Rarely does the hero have any qualms about stopping him.

Interesting conversations have meaningful arguments in them that take time to explore and explain. Both sides have compelling points and often there is only a tentative resolution. Maybe we ultimately decide that freedom is better than control, but we also realize what benefits we’ve left behind that control could have offered, so we have mixed feelings about our “victory.”

Imagine having a conversation to the effect of:

Friend: Control is bad, freedom is good.
You: Yeah, totally.

Then imagine stretching that conversation over the course of 5, or even 50 hours. That’s the recipe for pretty much every game with a lame storyline.

The Story as a Conversation

I’ll quote from the character primer:

…characters enable the story to unfold both physically and philosophically. You might think of the story as a debate between two opposing points of view about your central theme.

Those points of view are debated point-by-point, on different levels. Pros and cons are explored by the actions of the characters and the consequences of those actions. There is a logical thread that makes arguments about fact, and there is an emotional thread that makes arguments about feelings. There’s a supportive thread that articulates one position, and an opposing thread that articulates the other.

The idea is that each of these character pairs argues about the same topic, but in different ways, such that at the end of the story, we feel that the argument has been resolved.

So stories are a sort of debate, in which characters act out the arguments for and against both sides.

Create the Conversation

Here are some steps to creating a meaningful conversation:

1. Choose a central theme, or topic of conversation.
2. Write the two basic viewpoints about the topic. Personify the two points by writing about how a person might come to their position on the subject. These will be your protagonist and antagonist, but it’s not important to decide which is which right now.
3. Write some supporting points for both sides of the debate. It’s okay to make bad arguments as long as you also refute them with another point. Flesh out archetype characters to support the points.

Choose a Central Theme

Here are three great ways to choose a crappy topic:

1. Don’t pick a topic. It’s like prolonged small talk in which a conversation is happening but you’re not really talking about anything. The audience won’t care what happens one way or the other. How’s the weather? Oh, you don’t say. Snore.
2. Pick a topic that is one-sided. Killing babies, anyone? If there aren’t two meaningful sides to take, you’ll end up with a moralistic snore-fest. Your good guys will be good, your bad guys will be bad, and your story will be boring.
3. Pick a topic that’s trite. A conversation that you’ve had 100 times before is boring. Evil aliens are played out. We’ve talked about whether the human race deserves to live or die. We’ve talked about racism. Unless you have a new perspective or argument to make, shut up.

We can pick something trite like Destiny vs. Free Will, or Individuality vs. Conformity which adolescent audiences love. If we feel ambitious we can choose a more open-ended topic like “What is reality?”

For our example, let’s do “Optimism vs. Pessimism.” It probably wouldn’t make a great story, but it’s accessible as an example.

Two Basic Points of View

1. Optimism leads to a better life than Pessimism
2. Pessimism leads to a better life than Optimism

1. Bob is an optimist. He had nice parents, and a happy childhood. He feels like everything always turns out alright in the end.
2. Jim is a pessimist. His father was an abusive alcoholic, and he grew up poor, on a rough side of town. He believes that if anything can go wrong, then it certainly will.

Supporting Points

Optimism allows us to grasp opportunities without fear of failure, and keeps us hopeful when we do fail. It also blinds us to the folly of our plans, and prevents us from planning as carefully as we should.

Pessimism protects us from danger (emotional and physical) by allowing us to stay out of risky situations. It also keeps us satisfied because we expect the worst, so when something good happens, it’s a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, it holds us back from opportunities through fear of failure, and leads to a gloomier mental state.

Unlike what I’ve done here, you should really get into this, as though it’s a lively debate with points, counter-points, agreement to disagree. Be logical, be ruthless, use guilt, trickery, and deception. Be passive aggressive, be even-handed in defending both positions– you can use all that material!

This isn’t enough for a real story, but more points will present themselves as we write the story. This list is just the seed of the dialogue.

In terms of character archetypes, a reason character might try to figure out whether the reward outweighs the risk of optimism. Maybe he’ll try to figure out if there’s just one answer, or if it might change depending on hold old a person is, or how wealthy he is. The emotion character might not care either way because he’s too busy living the good life, or he might be paralyzed in a bad situation by fear of things getting even worse.

The protagonist probably begins in a somewhat naive state based on assumptions. A guardian[?] will offer supportive advice and insight that will give the protagonist (and audience) a sense of the finer points or deeper moral dimensions of the debate. The contagonist will serve the same purpose, but on the opposing side.

The sidekick[?] will always support the protagonist in the narrative, but in terms of the debate, it’s a great opportunity to create a parallel story thread that argues for the protagonist’s position, but in a different way. You can even have the sidekick support the character narratively, but make the opposite argument.

Larry is Bob’s best pal, and he too is eternally optimistic. He’d do anything for Bob. He’s started a business that he projects will make him rich within the year. The question for you, author, is does his optimism pay off, or not? The skeptic[?] is another opportunity for a parallel thread that makes the opposing case.

Sketch the story

At this point–with an overview of each of the objective characters, you will undoubtedly have some ideas about how all these people relate to each other, and how they might interact. Make some decisions about the beginning and end of the story, maybe some major plot points.

You also have some ideas about the setting (by the way, you should read this note on settings: History vs. Mythology), which affects the narrative in some ways, but rarely affects the actual conversation. Are Bob and Jim high school foot ball players? Proud king and timid prince? Are they mutant space aliens, or futuristic androids?

Place your characters in the world then begin getting to know them: their motivations, way of thinking, strengths and weaknesses.

Be Courageous

When you approach a story this way — in terms of an argument, and with characters who are beginning to have personalities, you will soon experience a bizarre sensation.

Stories and characters take on a mind of their own. One day, you’ll be writing, and decide that for the story to progress a character will have to do something. You’ll try to write that action down, and it just won’t work. The character will look up from the page and say: “You aren’t serious. Both you and I know I’m not going to do that. Try again, author.”

When your characters begin arguing with you, be proud. You’ve achieved some level of competence now — your story and the people in it are powerful and real enough to fight back against you. This is part of what it means to say a story “has legs.”

On the other hand, you know have a responsibility to these people. They each have a story to tell, and it’s your duty now to tell it with the dignity that they each deserve.

What that means is that the story is now free: you are now just a witness to the unfolding story, and your job is to report it faithfully, even if you don’t like where it’s going.

That takes courage as an author.

Kōtiro is a story about isolation and love. Being a sappy romantic, my personal position on the matter is that love conquers all. It’s the most important thing, and it trumps all other considerations. But that’s not what my story says. I realized some way into the narrative that Kō, who starts out agreeing with me, must change. She loses her naive optimism about the power of love, which I hate — I wanted to write a story about how being starry-eyed and infatuated will solve all your problems. The story proved to me that that’s just not how it is.

On the other hand, you’ve seen plenty of movies in which you slapped your forehead (sometimes often) and exclaimed: “What? She wouldn’t do that!” Just like authors get to know their characters well, audiences get to know them also, and form expectations about their personality. When the author violates the dignity of the character, they create a forehead slapping moment.

That happens because an author isn’t courageous enough to let the characters tell their story. He had a preconceived notion about the direction of the story, and ignored the protests of the characters who knew better. He was weak, and as a result he wrote a crappy story that makes a weak argument that no one believes or cares about.

Don’t be weak. Trust your characters to have the conversation you created them to have.