Month: June 2021

The Final Week of Microfiction

This is the last installment of the experiment where I write tiny stories and post them daily on Twitter at @DeferredWords. You can find stories from previous weeks here and here.

If you enjoy this sort of thing, you should check out another Twitter account, @DailyMicroFic, who has been doing this a lot longer than I have. Through them, I discovered the the #vss365 hashtag, where you can find lots of people writing very short stories on Twitter, 365 days a year. See vss365today.com for more info and daily prompts.

I enjoyed writing these. They were a fun exercise in writing under severe limitations, and the format gave some life to lots of little ideas I’ve been kicking around for ages, but I hadn’t been inspired enough to expand into longer formats. I think I’ll have to do it again sometime.

The Furies

The Vine

Desert Bones

Moon and Sea

Politically Correct

Jungles of Minnesota

“No More Kings”

Games for People Who Prefer to Read — “What Remains of Edith Finch”

Video games can be many things. They may be about building empires, stacking oddly shaped bricks, or finding misplaced princesses. Most often, they’re about rather a lot of shooting and blowing things up. Games can be simple or juvenile, and they can certainly have bad writing. For these reasons and many others, games tend to get a bad reputation among the literary-minded.

In this series, I want to highlight a few games that care about story. I want to try to prove to the skeptics that some games have something to say, in much the same way that a good book does. These are games where you can’t die. You don’t need twitch reflexes or a deep knowledge of 900 pokémon. Instead, these games work hard to build deep characters and a compelling narrative, and pull you into their world.

So, if you’re someone who loves books and hates games, consider giving one of these a try. You might just be surprised.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Edith Finch is a young woman returning to her childhood home. She is the youngest of the family, and the last one still alive. As she explains, the Finches believe they are the victims of a curse. Few of them die of natural causes. Instead, they seem destined for strange ends, whether their lives are long or cut tragically short.

As the player, you guide Edith through the Finch house, a seaside mansion that has been built-upon and expanded over several generations, a bit like the Winchester House. You quickly discover that the rooms of the deceased Finches have been sealed off, untouched, like little museum pieces. As you open those rooms up, you get glimpses of each person — visions from their perspective, enhanced by Edith’s narration and her journal entries, filling out her family tree with whimsical sketches. You begin to piece together the history of the Finch family in all of its joys and tragedies.

Each room in the house, each person, is revealed through a unique experience. Each is delightful in a different way. They range from eldritch horror to peaceful meditation. From the simplicity of flying a kite or swinging on a swing to navigating a living comic book to vignettes of a camping trip seen through the viewfinder of an old camera.

The uppermost rooms of the house are stacked in a teetering tower. They are a promise made in the opening moments of the game, as you first approach the house. They are the most recently-built rooms, the ones once occupied by the people most important to Edith. She will have to climb to the apex and come to grips with the legacy of the Finch family.

This poignant anthology of stories about death ends on a surprisingly hopeful note. The purpose of the journal, the narration, and the title all come together to deliver a clear message: it’s your life that defines you, not your death.

Getting the Game

What Remains of Edith Finch is a game by Giant Sparrow. It’s available for PC (from several providers), as well as Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Playstation.

Razor Mountain Development Journal #29

This is part of my ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. Be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead! You can start from the beginning here.

Last Time

I got through two more chapter summaries, fleshed out Christopher and God-Speaker’s interests, and identified some challenges presenting God-Speaker’s Act II chapters to the reader.

Chapter 21

Garrett, Harold, and Christopher take a break in the forest to rest and eat a little. (They have a paltry amount of homemade jerky. They offer to share with Christopher, but he declines.)

Garrett warns Christopher that they will be approaching the main facility shortly, and they need to be very careful or they will be shot. He does his best to scare Christopher, telling him that now is the time to give them any information he might have about the outside world – anything they can use to negotiate with the 550th Infantry.

Christopher tries to explain that they have a strange and skewed view of the outside world, and that he has been open and honest with them. Garrett doesn’t like this answer, and tells Christopher that their blood is on his hands if things go poorly. Harold seems more sympathetic to Christopher, but follows his brother’s lead in everything. Christopher tries to ask questions about the people in the “main facility.” All he gets from the brothers is that it’s where the exiles came from. They left because they thought they were being lied to, but being lied to is better than dying of starvation.

Garrett makes a flag from a branch and a white shirt. They continue walking. As the sun rises, they walk out into a treeless area at the food of the mountain. Garrett directs them to hold their hands up, while he holds the flag high. They walk out slowly.

The sounds of small animals, birds, and pebbles under their feet seem menacing. Christopher half-expects the sound of gunshots. Instead, just as he’s beginning to let his guard down (and his tired arms), there’s shouting, and fully-equipped soldiers swarm from the boulder-strewn slopes above.

Cliffhangers:

  • What will the soldiers do to them?

Mysteries:

  • 21.1 – What was the conflict between Razor Mountain and exiles? What lies are they feeding their population?

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher has been kidnapped and his captors seem interested in him only as a bargaining chip. Still, he feels sorry for them and the bad situation they seem to be in. As they approach the mountain and he sees them get worried, he starts to seriously worry that he may just die here.

Notes:

  • Yet another chapter where I had an easy cliffhanger available! I just had to pull the exciting bit from the start of the next chapter to the end of this chapter.

Chapter 22

God-Speaker is in a new body, in excellent shape in the prime of life. He stands in a carved cave-chamber, with six other people, around a stone table. This is a war council, and they are his military leaders.

They describe the movements of a small war party that is approaching the mountain. He lays out a very conservative defense. His friend, Strong Shield, complains that they have better weapons and better tactics, and this approaching army stands no chance of defeating them. God-Speaker agrees, but explains that he wants as few casualties as possible, and the best possible defense. Becoming overly-proud and lazy will lead to their destruction.

Strong Shield suggests that once they have destroyed the attackers, they should mount a counter-attack to prevent any future threat. He suggests they send a permanent military presence, and essentially begin to build out an empire. God-Speaker dismisses the others so they can talk privately.

When they are alone, God-Speaker explains that he is thinking about stopping all interaction with outside groups, faking the destruction of the village at the base of the mountain, and hiding their knowledge and wealth from the rest of the world to avoid conflicts like this.

Strong Shield says this is a path of weakness. He thinks he would be a better leader for their people. He tries to kill God-Speaker, but God-Speaker is ready for him, and kills his friend. He weeps over the body.

After a few minutes, he composes himself and calls the others back in. He tells them that this is a man he loved like a brother, and he was betrayed. He makes it clear that if anyone else is thinking of betraying him, they’ll meet a similar fate. The gods of the mountain make him unstoppable.

Cliffhangers:

  • Nope

Mysteries:

  • 22.1 – What are the voices/gods/artifacts? What power do they really give him? (Really a continuation of 16.2)

Episode Arc:

  • The imminent attack doesn’t worry God-Speaker, but he is hyper-vigilant anyway. He fully believes the doctrine he’s espousing – laziness and pridefulness will lead to mistakes and failure down the road. This also applies to his friend, Strong Shield. He loves the man, but the artifacts whisper to him that he’s not to be trusted, and they turn out to be correct. He has taken precautions, and he’s ready, but it still crushes him to be betrayed like this. He’s determined to close off his heart to avoid this emotional pain in the future, and immediately begins to erect walls of fear between himself and his other close lieutenants.

Notes:

  • This is the first big lesson for God-Speaker, teaching him that his fear of others is justified. Only by constant awareness can he avoid death from unexpected directions. The voices from the artifacts can help him.

Results

I worked through two more chapter summaries. (I’d still like to get more done, but I’m slowly coming to accept that this is the average amount I’m likely to get done on this project in a typical week.)

Expanding the original, bare-bones chapter summaries has been a useful exercise, but what I’ve noticed most of all is how frequently I throw away opportunities for cliffhangers! There have been so many places where I put an exciting event with an uncertain outcome at the beginning of a chapter. Pulling it out of that chapter and putting it at the end of the previous chapter gives me that extra suspense without even having to rearrange the plot.

Another Week of Microfiction

I’m back, for the second installment of the experiment where I write tiny stories and post them daily on Twitter at @DeferredWords. You can read the first week of stories here.

Our Time Together

The Last Game of Go

The Warp

Black Clouds

Starfall

*(Yes, it should be “pens.” Thanks Twitter.)

Knight, Forsaken

A Concern

There’s one more week of stories left. I’ll post the final installment next Wednesday. See you then.

Killing Characters (The Right Way)

Have you ever read a book where an important character died, and you felt completely crushed by that death, as though you had lost someone real? Now, have you ever read the death of a character and felt…nothing? The big build-up led to that moment, and you just couldn’t muster anything but indifference?

Killing characters is in vogue these days, but there are good reasons and bad reasons to do it. When characters die in service to the story, the impact can be huge. It can be a moment that your readers will remember forever. When characters die for the wrong reasons, you’ll be lucky if your reader only feels indifference and not outright irritation.

The Wrong Reasons

There are plenty of questionable justifications for charactericide. Let’s start with a few reasons to not kill your characters.

First — to “spice up” the story, or make it more edgy. Some authors assume that adding more sex or violence automatically makes their story more mature. But just because it contains “mature content” doesn’t automatically make it better. In fact gratuitous mature content that’s not integral to the story can easily come off as juvenile.

Second — to show that your villain is evil. Don’t get me wrong, a villain killing key characters as they advance their agenda can be important story beats. The problem is more when murder is used as a substitute for characterization. Does the villain kill for a reason? Do they have a personality beyond “that crazy guy who’s always indiscriminately killing?” If not, you may end up with a dangerous character who still manages to be flat and uninteresting.

Finally — to make your life, as the author, easier. You may find yourself deep in the slog of the second act, absolutely despising one of your characters. Maybe their personality developed in a really annoying way. Maybe they just want to do things that push the story in a direction you don’t want to go. It’s tempting to just “get rid” of them. But that doesn’t really solve the problem. Chances are, that character didn’t get a nice, meaningful arc.

What you really have to do is decide if you want to keep that character at all. Maybe they don’t belong in this particular book. They might need a big personality adjustment. Fix the character, adjust the plot, or pull them out of the story. It’s a bad idea to just knock a character dead in a random spot, even if it might be cathartic for the author.

With those out of the way, let’s talk about some good reasons to kill a character.

An Inciting Incident

At the root of each story is an inciting incident. This is the moment when the protagonist’s world changes. It’s the moment that introduces the major conflict or tension that will drive the story. You can be sure that your protagonist losing someone close to them will turn their world upside down and throw them into conflict.

As a well-worn example, look at the beginning of Star Wars. Luke Skywalker’s old life is over when his aunt and uncle are killed and his home is burned down by the Empire. He has nothing left to tie him to his former home, and he has a whole new reason to want to fight the Empire, something he was already considering.

This kind of character death isn’t without dangers. To be an effective inciting incident, it has to happen early. That means the reader is still getting to know your protagonist, and they’re very unlikely to have any strong feelings toward the character(s) you’re killing off. They need to see how those deaths hurt your protagonist, but their empathy is naturally going to be limited. Even among crazed Star Wars fans, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who really loves Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

Developing a Character

The middle of a story may be the most interesting time to kill off a character. The reader has had a good amount of time to learn about your characters, to understand them, and to empathize with them. The middle of the story is also when you’re deep into the conflicts and tension that drive the story. That dead character is going to leave others behind, and their death can and should influence how the remaining characters move forward.

The death of one character may reveal more about another character who lives. In Ender’s Game, we discover two-thirds of the way through the book that the protagonist has killed two people. We watched him fight those people, but never knew the outcomes. Ender himself isn’t told that he has killed, because the people manipulating him know that the knowledge might destroy him. As readers, we understand that he doesn’t want to be a killer. He hates the very idea. But people around him have learned how to manipulate him into killing, for their own purposes.

Sometimes, death reveals more about a why a character is the way they are. Sometimes, it shows just what they’re willing to do. In the Hellblazer comics, John Constantine watches the people close to him die. People he trusts and loves. He learns that letting people get close is dangerous. It leads to pain. That’s why he does his best to be a sarcastic asshole: so he can hold everyone important at a safe distance — for them, and for himself. But, of course, he doesn’t always succeed. People get close, and suffer the consequences.

John Constantine is a complicated character though. He’s far from the typical goody-two-shoes superhero. In fact, he’s often the anti-hero, and perhaps occasionally the villain. He kills. Sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for his own selfish reasons. Sometimes because he just doesn’t care. He can be cruel and manipulative as much as he can be soft-hearted.

Sometimes, death can reveal secrets. Perhaps the dead character has been hiding things, and those secrets can only come out once that character is no longer there to protect them. One character killing another may also reveal an animosity that was kept under wraps. In The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, we believe that the protagonist is seeking treasure and riches. It is only when he ends up in a fight to the death with the other major character that his true intentions are revealed. Little bits of carefully parceled back-story take on entirely new meaning as the twist unfolds.

Resolving an Arc

If the middle of the story is the most complicated time to kill a character, the end of the story is probably the simplest, although it’s not without its challenges. The end of the story is when the reader knows the most about your characters. They ‘ve been with them, through thick and thin. They empathize with the good guys, and they’re hoping against hope that the bad guys will lose.

In a traditional tragedy, the hero dies at the end. Their mistakes or failures catch up with them. They may go down swinging, or they may realize the error of their ways. In a more modern take, the hero may save the day, but sacrifice themselves in the process. No matter what leads to their death, it should mean something. Back in our Star-Wars example, Darth Vader is an exemplar of this. He is an important villain throughout the original Star Wars trilogy, and only at the very end does he realize his true feelings, saving the day and his son.

Of course, many villains think they’re in the right all the way to the end. They go down swinging. But their death typically ends the main conflict, and often resolves one or more characters’ arcs. These other characters probably have strong feelings about this, to be explored before bringing the story to a close.

The Takeaway

When you feel tempted to kill a character, ask what it accomplishes. How does it affect the characters who are left behind? Does it move the story forward?

Put yourself in the shoes of your reader. Will they be excited? Heartbroken? Or bored and irritated? It’s surprisingly easy to kill a character. What’s hard is killing them the right way.

Razor Mountain Development Journal #28

This is part of my ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. Be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead! You can start from the beginning here.

Last Time

I worked on the chapter 17 and 18 summaries (and also identified some things I may want to go back and improve).

A Little Characterization

I spent a little time this week thinking about Christopher and God-Speaker’s personalities and came away with more ideas about what each of them is interested in.

Christopher loves drawing. Not necessarily what he would consider “real art,” but sketches, doodles, and little things in the margins. As a boy, he loved drawing and programming. When he went to school, he chose a degree in computer science. It was the pragmatic choice — the jobs were plentiful and paid well, as opposed to the challenge of making it as an artist. Yet another example of Christopher avoiding risk and choosing the safe path. As a result, he still has a little nagging regret that he didn’t pursue art beyond a hobby.

Christopher was always fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci’s journals. He got into the habit of similar journaling, mixing sketches and little blurbs of text. He doesn’t journal consistently, and he doesn’t follow any particular format or try to get anything out of them. In fact, he rarely goes back and looks at what he’s written. However, this is an important way that he processes things.

I also decided that Christopher has a habit of talking to himself. This is a bit of an aid for writing a character who spends Act I alone, but it also mirrors God-Speaker and the way he listens to the voices from the artifacts and from the people whose minds and bodies he has usurped over the centuries.

Christopher exhibited this tendency at a young age, but his father worried that it would make him seem strange to others and cause him to be bullied or mocked by other children. Christopher’s father discouraged it, and as a result, Christopher has learned to mostly suppress it around other people. It starts to creep in more as he spends days alone in the wilderness.

Finally, I decided that God-Speaker has a weakness for music. He has avidly followed the development of various instruments and the advancements of music theory over the years. He has a collection of music players (from wax cylinders to records to digital) and a handful of musical instruments in his offices. He also writes music from time to time, but he keeps it secret, never showing it to anybody. He sees himself as a hobbyist, and is afraid that his work is bad, despite centuries of occasional study.

God-Speaker’s Act II

I realized as I came into chapter 19 that the God-Speaker chapters very abruptly change from a sequence where everything is close in time to a series of vignettes with many years in-between. Meanwhile, Christopher’s chapters continue to be close together on the timeline.

I could explicitly break the book into parts. I think that a major delineation like that cues the reader to be on the lookout for bigger changes in structure, like jumps in time. I’m not sure it’s a particularly elegant solution.

Another option is to sprinkle enough context into the first of these vignette chapters to make the time transitions clear. Some ways to do that:

  • Make direct mention of years passing in exposition.
  • Show that God-Speaker is much older through changed physical attributes
  • Highlight changes to Razor Mountain that must have taken years to complete

The first chapter that “jumps” in time will be the most jarring. After that first jump (and definitely after the second), the reader will be primed to look for clues as to how much time has passed in subsequent chapters. For that to work, I still need to provide clues, such as:

  • Each chapter after the first, God-Speaker is in a different body that he has taken over
  • In each chapter, Razor Mountain and the people around God-Speaker have changed
  • In each chapter, God-Speaker is dealing with a completely different set of problems (but following a progression as he consolidates power and hides from the world, all in order to be as safe as possible)

Chapter 19

God-Speaker is older now. It’s a cold morning, and his body aches. He greets a fresh group of ice-age migrants to the village at the base of Razor Mountain. He thinks to himself that there are many migrants, and there will soon be too many people in the village. He will have to be more selective about who he allows in. These newcomers are somewhat in awe, except for one young man who is determined to be unimpressed.

God-Speaker brings them to a large hall in the middle of the wooden buildings, where they eat a large meal, to impress upon the newcomers how good life is here. He answers some questions and deflects others. He asks them about their skills. The irritable young man claims to be a great hunter.

After they’re done, he leads them around the village, showing them where livestock, proto-grains, vegetables, berries and mushrooms are all being cultivated. He shows them stores of preserved food. He shows them a mine and a simple forge where they’re developing smelting and metalworking.

Finally, he explains that this “great tribe” is superior to small tribes. He tells them that he was called here by the gods of the mountain. He listens to them, and learns all the wisdom that allows the village to thrive. The newcomers are eager to join, and God-Speaker convinces the young man by flattering him and explaining that his skill in hunting will be vital to teach others.

God-Speaker passes them off to someone else to get situated. He follows a path up to a cave entrance, and heads into the mountain. Again he feels his body wearing out and knows that death is stalking him. He hears the whispering voices, and they grow louder deeper into the cave. Soon, if he can learn the secrets of the voices, he thinks he will show them something truly amazing: his own rebirth into immortality. He just has to do it before his body gives out.

Cliffhangers:

  • Will he die, or be reborn?

Mysteries:

  • 19.1 – Can the artifacts actually make him immortal?
  • 19.2 – Are the voices actually gods?

Episode Arc:

  • God-Speaker works to convince the group of newcomers to join the village, especially one skeptic who comes around by the end. He is building and carefully controlling a community, and developing power through the artifacts.

Notes:

  • Need to research what naturally occurring plants, animals and mushrooms would be available in this time period and location.
  • Need to research primitive metalworking.

Chapter 20

Christopher wakes in the night as he’s being roughly bound and gagged. He has a bag put over his head. He tries to scream, but can’t make much noise, and receives a blow to the head. Woozy, he is unsure if this is something orchestrated by the people he just met or someone else.

He is dragged and shoved and stumbles for a few minutes. He hears two voices speaking quietly, and thinks he recognizes one of them: the man who was guarding his room.

After some time, he feels cold air and hears that they’re moving through an echoey space, perhaps a cave, and then into snow outside. He becomes more and more sure that his captors are Garrett and Harold. They argue whether they are making a good choice, and whether they’ll be allowed back into the mountain. They discuss some of the contents of Christopher’s pack, which they apparently brought with them.

Finally, they stop to rest and remove Christopher’s head-bag and gag (warning him that he’ll get another knock on the head if he’s loud). Christopher begins to understand that they’re betraying the others and they may be afraid of Amaranth catching up. Garrett tells Christopher that if he has any useful information, he should talk now, because the professional interrogators up at the mountain will be far less pleasant. He tries to sound threatening, but Christopher thinks he’s actually nervous. Harold doesn’t like the plan at all, but does what Garrett says anyway.

They continue walking the rough, heavily-wooded slopes toward Razor Mountain in the faint moonlight. Christopher decides there isn’t much he can do but go along with them. He decides to wait and see if any opportunities for escape present themselves. Harold expresses the opinion that he thinks the 550th might just shoot them all on sight. Garrett doesn’t respond.

Cliffhangers:

  • Will they be shot on sight?

Mysteries:

  • 20.1 – Who is up on the mountain? What is the 550th?
  • 20.2 – What is the situation between the Razor Mountain people and Garrett and Harold’s people?

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher is kidnapped. He’s confused, fearful, and a bit beat-up. He decides he is going to have to do something if he wants to get out of this situation, but isn’t sure what. He pacifies himself thinking that he’ll wait for a better opportunity

Results

I got through two more chapter summaries, fleshed out Christopher and God-Speaker’s interests, and identified some challenges presenting God-Speaker’s Act II chapters clearly to the reader.

Weekly Microfiction

Last week, I talked about a little experiment I’m doing — a very little experiment! As a slightly silly way to get back into writing short stories, I started putting out microfiction on Twitter, @DeferredWords. Every morning for the past week, I’ve been posting a story in a single tweet, and I’m going to keep doing it for a couple more weeks.

Here are this week’s stories:

Gary Left

Princess, Under the Moon

Carlos and Esteban

Angela’s Enlightenment

Space Wizards

Dana Asks

The First Time

See you next week for seven more micro-stories!

Reference Desk #10 — The Story Engine

The Story Engine is a card-based tool to generate endless, semi-random writing prompts. It’s is billed as a tool or multiplayer game to aid in writing fiction, playing tabletop RPGs, or just to be played on its own. It started out in 2019 as one of those Kickstarter projects that caught fire and got fifteen times as much money as they were asking for. Now, the full product is launched, along with myriad add-ons enabled by Kickstarter stretch goals.

As a writer, a TTRPG player, and general lover of boxes of cards with nice art, I decided to try it out.

What’s in the Box

The main box comes with 180 cards. There are also three 60-card “expansions” that can be purchased separately: sci-fi, fantasy, and horror; and six 18-card sub-genre “boosters” for cyberpunk, steampunk, eldritch horror, post-apocalyptic, mythological and dystopian. I went for broke and got the whole collection. The core set is genre-agnostic, but the add-ons are clearly focused on speculative fiction.

The build quality is solid, which I appreciate as someone who has accumulated quite a few board and card games of varying quality. The box is a sturdy, fold-open affair that latches with magnets and has a sleeve. The cards are glossy, nicely weighty paper, and the illustrations are evocative. The cards aren’t plastic-coated, so expect the edges to get roughed up as they’re repeatedly shuffled.

How Does it Work?

The cards are divided into five different types: Agents, Engines, Anchors, Conflicts and Aspects.

  • Agents represent characters
  • Engines represent a goal or desire
  • Anchors represent places, things, and ideas
  • Conflicts are challenges or difficulties
  • Aspects are adjectives

In its simplest form, I can play one card of the first four types, in sequence, to generate a random prompt, such as

A daredevil (agent) wants to enact a secret plan revolving around (engine) an election (anchor), but they will bear the scars for all to see (conflict).

I can then customize that prompt in two ways. First, each card has 2 or 4 prompt phrases depending on type, so it can be turned 90 or 180 degrees to change the “active” phrase facing me to something more inspiring. Secondly, I can add an Aspect. Since aspects are adjectives, they can be applied to the noun cards: agents (characters) and anchors (places, things, ideas).

With those changes, I might transform the first prompt into

A tormented fraud (agent + aspect) wants to unmask the conspiracy of (engine) a rebellion (anchor), but they will bear the scars for all to see (conflict).

The guidebook that comes in the main box also suggests ways to use the cards to generate character concepts, items and settings, as well as several more complex prompts that utilize more cards. These include things like conflicted characters with multiple goals, or two characters in conflict over related goals.

Finally, it includes rules for multi-player storytelling games and some helpful hints toward RPG players as to how the various prompts might be used in building campaigns, settings and scenarios.

Despite all these prescriptive rules for building prompts, The Story Engine is also happy to tell you that this doesn’t have to be rigid, with hard and fast rules. You can use the cards however you’d like.

1. A robot wants to map an obsidian prison, but they will have to try something frightening and new. 2. An archivist wants to pay an old debt with a corrupted tool, but they will have to resist a great temptation.

My Experience

The Story Engine does a good job riding the line between too specific and too vague. I often find writing prompts irritating when they’re little more than a vague topic, but too much detail obviously takes any agency away from the writer.

I filled a few notebook pages using the “simple” writing prompts. Not all of the results were instantly inspiring, but I was able to glean a few ideas that feel promising, and a few more that seem like they could lead somewhere with a bit more time and thought.

The complex prompts include more cards and more structure, and as a result they are less open-ended and more inflexible. These are sometimes too detailed for me, feeling like there’s not enough room for filling in the blanks. However, you can always swap cards or break the rules to get something more to your liking.

The individual cards are also just fine as prompts by themselves. Sometimes a one-word character or setting description is all you need, especially when trying to flesh out an idea in progress. The pictures on the cards also do work as extra inspirational elements that don’t insert more words into the mix.

What about RPGs?

I’m not currently running a campaign, so I haven’t tried incorporating The Story Engine into one. However, I have used the similar dice-and-table-based prompts in The Perilous Wilds to run totally improvised one-shots of Dungeon World. I could definitely see using The Story Engine to do something similar.

If you have a home brew campaign, these prompts are probably going to be more useful than if you’re trying to add to a pre-written one. They might also be fun for generating NPCs on-the-fly when your adventuring party takes an unexpected turn.

Conclusions

So far, I’m pleased with what I’ve gotten out of The Story Engine, and I’ll continue to use it. My only concern is that the prompts might start to feel samey after a while. Even if there are technically billions of combinations, the cards will eventually become familiar. Still, with the core and add-ons, I have quite a few cards to work with. I think I’ll be using these cards as a story brainstorming tool for a long time.

If you’re unsure, the core set is a good starting point, and it’s genre-agnostic. If you’re not writing speculative fiction, the add-ons don’t offer much. If you are writing spec-fic and The Story Engine sounds exciting to you, buying one of the bundles gets you a pretty steep discount vs. buying piecemeal.

Check it out at https://storyenginedeck.myshopify.com/

Razor Mountain Development Journal #27

This is part of my ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. Be forewarned, there are spoilers ahead! You can start from the beginning here.

Last Time

I finished the chapter summaries for Act I and reviewed how the process is working. I tend to change my process for just about every project I work on, so I’m always reevaluating.

Chapter 17

Some of the surprised exiles draw guns on Christopher as he enters their underground hideout. Amaranth interposes herself between them and Christopher. She has a furious sign-language argument with them that Christopher has difficulty following.

Ema, the leader of the exiles, is drawn out from an adjacent room by the commotion. Amaranth appeals to her, and she has one of the other exiles (Harold) keep watch over Christopher in a supply closet while she goes with Amaranth into the other room.

Christopher is still shocked, but he asks Harold what’s going on. He tries to explain that he’s been lost and is just trying to get back home, but Harold politely asks him to be quiet and wait for Ema. After a few minutes, she comes back, and has him brought into her “office,” another store room with an old table and cot.

She sits him down and makes the others leave. She explains that she’s in charge, and she’s going to ask him questions, and he’s going to answer. She doesn’t trust him, and her goodwill depends on how honest she thinks he is.

She asks him who he is, and he explains his job and where he’s from. She asks him why he’s here, and he explains everything from waking up on the flight to the point where Amaranth found him. She’s skeptical of his plane story and his surviving the jump. She’s worried that if he was shot at, the people at Razor Mountain might be aware of him now. Christopher tries to ask questions about Razor Mountain, but she cuts him off.

She begins to ask stranger and stranger questions, about the general state of America and the Soviet Union, and whether there have been any nuclear strikes. She asks him who he really works for. She threatens him and asks again why he’s here and how he plans to escape. He gives up trying to answer reasonably, and tells her there’s no point if she’s convinced he’s lying about everything. Again, he tries to ask her questions about what this place is. He tells her that her ideas about the outside world are very skewed.

Ema finally stops the questioning, seemingly defeated, and brings him out into the main room, where the others pretend that they weren’t listening in. She tells them to do what they want with him.

Cliffhangers:

  • What are they going to do with him?

Mysteries:

  • 17.1 – Why do these people seem to have strange ideas about the outside world?

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher starts out in shock, and gets progressively more confused and disheartened.

Chapter 18

Christopher is introduced to the other exiles, who seem like reasonable people, at least initially. They all have questions, mostly about his arrival and the outside world. Christopher feels intimidated by all these people focused on him. They have mixed reactions to his responses, and again he gets the sense that they have strange ideas about the outside world. They are clearly disappointed. He notices that Garrett is stand-offish, but constantly watching him. Amaranth hovers, almost protectively.

He keeps trying to ask what is going on at the mountain, but they avoid giving him straight answers. One or two of them respond, but they’re hushed by others before they can reveal much more than “Razor Mountain is a city,” and it has a military presence. He wonders if this is some kind of strange cult, or people who have lived out away from civilization for a long time. He wonders about the bunkers and the radio signals.

He thinks that he might have been better-off alone in the bunker. Eventually Amaranth leads him to another small room, completely bare, and brings in a cot for him. She asks him questions by writing on scraps of paper – is he telling the truth, and does he know of any way to get back to where he came from. He says yes and no. She apologizes and says it may have been a bad idea to bring him here.

Harold peeks in and tells Christopher that he’ll be standing guard, and if Christopher needs anything (like the bathroom) he just has to ask.

Cliffhangers: No

Mysteries:

  • 18.1 – What is Razor Mountain? Why do these people seem afraid of it.

Episode Arc:

  • Christopher starts out confused, and starts to seriously worry that he’s gotten himself in an even worse situation with these people.

Notes:

  • I would like to work in a little more information about the exiles, without giving away all the mysteries of their origins and Razor Mountain.

Results

Sadly, I only got through two chapter summaries this week, and I may still revise these further. Act II is often the roughest, and this was probably the least-defined section when I was originally thinking through the plot. I suspect it may be a slog.

Writing Microfiction

I’ve been feeling the itch to write short fiction lately. It’s something I haven’t done much in the last couple years. I don’t really have the bandwidth to work on another novel alongside Razor Mountain, so something shorter was really appealing.

I came up with a little project: an anthology of micro-fiction. Not just flash fiction (usually 1500 words or less). Not even a drabble (exactly 100 words).

It’s obvious what short-form writing actually defines our modern age: Twitter. Since 2018, each tweet provides a whopping 280 characters to work with. In my experience, that’s about 45 words, depending on your punctuation, white space and trendy hashtags. Is it even possible to write a coherent or interesting story in that tiny space?

Well, I tried the experiment. I wrote twenty-one micro-stories. I’ll let you judge whether the experiment was a success or failure. Every day for the next couple weeks, I’m going to tweet a new micro-story on @DeferredWords. I’ll also collect them into mid-week posts here on the blog.

What’s the Point?

Why bother doing this? The simple answer is “for fun, to see if I could.” It helped rev up my short story brain after a bit of a hiatus. But I was also hoping to learn something in the process. In fact, I learned a few things.

Don’t Be Precious

When you’ve written a story that’s barely a story and you need to trim ten more letters to get below your limit, you are forced to trim things that feel essential. That adjective or adverb feels so good, but is it really needed? What about those commas? Do you really need any articles, ever? Maybe that seven-letter name should be a three-letter name.

The limit is harsh, and it demands harsh sacrifices. I went through this exercise over and over again, and it turned out that the story was often better when I rewrote it around that one or two word edit. It made me think harder about the cuts I should be making in longer projects.

The Barest Bones of a Story

I keep long lists of little brainstorming ideas, which gave me lots of fodder for micro-fiction. When you actually try to write an idea out as the smallest possible story, it becomes apparent very quickly whether an idea has “good bones,” or just a setting or character without arc or resolution. This is a really good exercise to go through for a short story or novel idea, to prove that the concept is solid and to nail down the core of the story.

Form Follows Function

When I started writing these micro-stories, I assumed that any authorial voice would fly right out the window. In some ways, it does. I definitely had stories with phrases that I really liked but had to throw away, because they wouldn’t work in these tight constraints. However, as I wrote and revised more stories, I discovered that even in 45 words, there is space for humor, weirdness, and sometimes even an extra word here or there to achieve a particular effect. Voice is the sum of the choices you make within your chosen constraints.

Variety is Valuable

I’m a firm believer that every story, every book, every writing project teaches you something. As authors, everything we write is influenced by what we wrote before it, and what we learned along the way.

Granted, you can only learn so much from a tweet-length story, but I was able to write a lot of these in the amount of time it would have taken to write one “proper” short story. Each little story with its own fun. Each with its own challenges.

Join In

You can get in on the fun too. Try writing a micro-story in 280 characters. All you need is a little idea. No outline. Put it out on Twitter, possibly with #microfiction. Ping me or send me a DM. Let me know if you learned anything interesting.