Feb. 12th, 2015

[identity profile] mbarker.livejournal.com
Writing Excuses 10.6: The Worldbuilding Revolves Around Me ("The Magical 1%")

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/02/08/writing-excuses-10-6-the-worldbuilding-revolves-around-me-the-magical-1/

Key points: Be aware that sometimes worldbuilding sets a small group at the center. Look at the dramatic possibilities and conflicts for characters outside that group! Pay attention to the magical 1% and the un-magical 99% in your world. Look at what happens in the interstices of the great events. This is fertile ground for humor, for laughing at tropes. At the point when a secondary character meets the Jedi Knight, there are two paths -- maybe I am not really the hero of my own story, OR No, I AM the hero of my own story. When a world is built around the magical 1%, looking at all the other people gives you a richer world, and more potential for conflicts. You need the everyman for us to relate to. Fairytale structure does this, often, with the everyman stumbling into magical worlds. Consider Samwise Gamgee, Hansel and Gretel, and John McClane... and put your everyman character barefoot stumbling through the woods!
Who is waiting in the wings? )
[Brandon] Okay. We're...
[Laughter]
[Brandon] We're degenerating quickly, but I'm going to say this was an awesome topic. I want to thank Max for coming on and actually we had two writing prompts. I want to hear Max's before we started. Let's go ahead with yours.
[Max] Oh, great. Sure. Well, thank you first very much for having me on. Honor to be here. So this is... Howard was telling me this is more of a story seed than a writing prompt.
[Brandon] That is just fine.
[Max] So, think about the last time you lost at a game. Videogame, boardgame, poker, whatever. What was the sort of process of thought and emotion that led up to that loss? Did you overplay your hand, did you outsmart yourself, did you just couldn't keep track of everything in your head at once? Then try to replicate that moment in the dramatic structure of a story. But, you can't put any games in the story. It has to be a story about making the same kind of mistakes, making the same kind of edge plays, failing or succeeding in some ways and failing in others.
[Brandon] Excellent. That sounds wonderful. All right. This has been one of our wildcard episodes. Next week we will be back to discussing structure. So, you've been given homework. Just a reminder. Coming up next week, we will be talking about this again. For now, you are out of excuses, now go write.

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