Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 21.11: The Cold Open - Action

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:31:16 GMT

Posted by: mbarker

Writing Excuses 21.11: The Cold Open - Action

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-11-the-cold-open-action

Key Points: Starting with an action scene. Demonstrates competence of character. Start in media res? Stakes! A reason to care. Moments of humanity. Establish voice, worldbuilding, and character stakes. Point of view. Prologue or cold open? Prologue means two starts! Go ahead and use your cool technique in the action cold open. Tension! Make the reader like the character. Information and reader emotional reaction.

[Season 21, Episode 11]

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[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 21, Episode 11]

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] The Cold Open - Action.

[Erin] Tools, not rules. For writers, by writers.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And we're going to talk about starting your story with an action scene. There are lots and lots of good reasons to do this. My personal favorite is that a good action opening... A good one, for me, demonstrates the competence of the character you want me to like, and now I'm on board. And one of the best examples of this, I think, is the Pierce Brosnan GoldenEye James Bond, where they begin with him bungee jumping on a dam.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And James Bond almost doesn't qualify as a cold open, because it's not cold. We know we're watching a James Bond movie. We already know he's competent. But the reason, for me, that a cold open is so important, an action cold open can be so important is that I need you to tell me why this character has earned the ability to be awesome, and a good action scene can do that.

[DongWon] Yeah. I'm going to fulfill my role as the show's resident hater, and talk about why action scenes as cold opens are really hard to do well. Right?

[Howard] Yep.

[DongWon] I think there's this tendency to want to start in media res, is advice you always hear. Because you want to start with stakes. Right? You want to start with something exciting, you want to start with something that's going to engage people. The problem is survival is not good stakes. Right? Even deep into our story, often, like, if the character lives or not, I don't care about that as much as I care about what happens if the character dies. Right? If the character dies, then all these relationships fall apart, all these people will be incredibly sad, but, like, all of those things have so much more chewiness than my connection to the character continuing to exist on the page or not. Right? And so that is compounded by us not knowing the character yet. Right? Part of why the James Bond thing works is we have a serialized relationship with this character. We know who James Bond is, we want him to do these things, we want him to succeed in his mission. Because we like him, and we know him. Right? Or we have a relationship to him, whether we like it or not. And so I think when you are starting a book with a cold open, the biggest mistake I see... Or an action scene as a cold open, the biggest mistake I see over and over again is thinking that, oh, this is a cool gun fight, that's all I need it to be. Right? And instead, what you need to do is give me a reason to care about these characters that goes beyond just the fact of they might die in this scene.

[Erin] I recently started reading a romance novel called Love Hate Relationship, I believe. And it's...

[DongWon] I love, like, a simple descriptive title. Just, like, tell me what we're engaging with. I was thinking of K-pop Demon Hunters too, which is just like here's the thing...

[Erin] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's what it is.

[Erin] This is what it is. But it is a story sort of a... It was described to me as a Cutting Edge, if you know that old romantic comedy, which also actually begins in an action scene. In the beginning of the Cutting Edge, the movie, you begin with the two leads, one who is a figure skater, a pairs figure skater, and the other who's a hockey player, both doing their score at top levels, and it cuts back and forth between them. And part of what they play with is the contrast between the two sports, which will then come into play when they become a pair together. But in the beginning of this, it really opened with them, with one of the main characters, in the middle of playing hockey. And what was great about it is you get the small, like, things that you need to think about in a sport. So you're getting a lot of micro tension, like, will I get passed the puck? Will I get the thing? But there was a part where the main character looks up into the stands and, like, one of their parents isn't there. Even though they promised to be there.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And though it was only a moment, it gives... It really humanized the person. You're like, this is why it's so important. And they look up again, and they see the scouts that might send them to the college that they really want to go to.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And putting those moments of humanity in allowed me to then really care whether or not they actually made the shot in the end or they didn't. Because I'm already starting to care about them as a character within this action context.

[DongWon] I would argue that there's three things a cold open really needs to do. Right? One is establish voice. Second is establish worldbuilding. And the third is establish character stakes, not just character bolts. What matters about this character? Right? And so kind of what you're describing with Cutting Edge and then with this book is you get a sense of the worldbuilding. Right? This is about skating, here are the values, it's being good at this thing, all of that. There is the voice of it, which hopefully is coming through in the prose in a way that's really exciting. And then there is, why do we care about this character? Them looking up in the stands and seeing that their parent is missing. One of my favorite examples of an action cold open, pulling from film, is the Matrix. Right? The Matrix starts with this thing that is the most vibe-y, the most voice-y thing in the world. Right? Especially in 1999, we had not seen anything like this. And it was just like mind-blowingly, like, cool and interesting, it was such a strong aesthetic. It was such a strong worldbuilding component, because it starts with this idea of like searching for this thing and then you're getting this cool technology, both in terms of how they were filming it and then also the cyberpunky hackery story that's embedded within it. Right? So we're getting that worldbuilding and that voice. The thing that movies can do that books can't do is show you a picture, though. Right? So we actually don't have a lot of character stakes in that scene. And a lot of film examples will have this problem, where you won't have a lot of stakes, because you can replace that with the audience looking at the scene and enjoying the physicality of the scene and building a relationship with the character based on how they look. Right? We like Trinity because she's hot and cool. Right? Like, that is basically what they're relying on, and it works. Right? We like James Bond because he's suave and doing slick stuff. Right? Like, he's jumping out of an airplane, he's, like, shooting guys in an alleyway. Right? These kinds of things work as a cold open. Being able to see the character builds that stake in a different way. When you're doing a book cold open, you need to give us things to care about that character with. Right? Like, I think of Six of Crows as an example where you kind of start... It's not necessarily an action scene, you're kind of, like, going through this, like, weird prison, but you're following this guard, and then it devolves into action over the course of it. But because you learned so much about him and his interiority as we move through this space, by the time things are popping off at the end, and... Spoiler for the prologue... By the time he dies at the end of that, it feels sad because he's encountered things that are way out of his scope of reality, his ability to manage these challenges, and we know enough about him that it hurts, because we care about this guy and his relationship to the world.

[Erin] This explains a lot to me about... What you just said, in that I think when people are writing, sometimes when you're writing your action scene cold open, you're seeing, like, the James Bond gunfight, but your reader may not be seeing it in the exact same way. And as somebody who can't see things in my head a lot of times, those action scenes can leave me a little cold, because I cannot envision...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Everything that's happening, so the details of how cool the gunfight are, I... Like, a lot of times, they just kind of run past me...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And any emotional moment, any character moment, I will seize on. But if there's none of that, and it's just pow, pow, pow... In a movie, it works because I can see it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But in a book, I find it sometimes hard to track, or to know why I should.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, why should I be tracking it, actually?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And why should I be caring about it?

[Howard] This comes back to a tool that we should all have ready access to in our toolboxes, and that is point of view.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Howard] If you are doing your action cold open in strict first person POV, then you don't have the ability to give us someone else's perspective on the awesome thing that the main character just did. We only get their opinion of what it is that they're doing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] But we get very quickly embedded in their voice. Which is awesome. By the same token, when we talk about movies, that's... And comics, that's cinematic POV or cinematic third person, where we tend to follow as if it is a third person limited POV, but we're following via a camera that is looking over their shoulder. And so we will be looking at other people. Knowing that that is what movies do can help you understand how to do it with prose.

[DongWon] Yeah. That's what I would say for the action cold open in prose. Think of it as a vehicle for voice and worldbuilding. The thing that you're doing to pull us in is be so voice-y and so interesting and introduce elements of your world in nuanced and complex ways. And then the last thing you're doing is giving us stakes. Stakes are the failure point, but the hook is the voice and the world. Right? When you're doing that. That's why, when we see an action cold open, it's most frequently in isolation from your main story. And that is either by a different perspective or a different place and time. I would love to dig into that more when we come back from our break, though.

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[DongWon] Okay. Before the break, I was talking about one of the things about a cold open that makes it a cold open, I think, is really important is actually kind of isolating it a little bit from the rest of your story. Right? Either through perspective or through time as a flash forward or a flashback. Erin, before we started recording, you raised an interesting question, which is, what's the difference between a prologue and a cold open? Do you have thoughts on that?

[Erin] No, that's why I asked.

[DongWon] The question...

[Erin] That's why I asked you.

[laughter]

[Erin] But I feel like, like, a lot of prologue... Like, some of the things that you're talking about, I often see in prologues.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Which is that they are a worldbuilding delivery mechanism, and what they do is they... They're like, I need everyone to understand that, like, the great shebang is what got this entire thing started. And so I want to put you in the mindset of a person who was there when the great shebang happened, and then it kills them at the end, so we know we're not following them anymore.

[DongWon] Totally.

[Erin] I feel like I see a lot of that sort of setup of world through action...

[DongWon] Yeah. Yeah.

[Erin] And it's difficult... It's interesting. I wonder if you feel like it... How well it works. Because I wonder if the danger is, number one, that people might not be excited about it, they might not be interested in the action.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But, number two, if they get really interested in the action, and then you pull them to somewhere else in the story, are they going to be like, I wish I were further back or further forward in the actual time period that the story is that I'm now having to read.

[DongWon] You really got to... The challenge of it is, you're almost doing two starts to your book. Right? And that's the challenge of a prologue, in general, is you kind of got to start the book twice. Right? And starting a book once is really hard. Now, that said, you can give us two different tonal openings, and that can be part of it. Right? So your prologue can operate as a here's the one vibe, and then your next open, that's the opening to, like, your actual plot is a different vibe. But it has to be interesting on its own terms. So I'm thinking of Fonda Lee's Jade City as an example of this. It's one of my favorite sort of action cold opens, which is, you get these two idiots who are going into a restaurant to try and rob a guy of his Jade. Right? And that scene gives us the worldbuilding and the stakes. We see what kind of world Janloon is. We see the perspective of why Jade matters so much to these people. We get to see what is capable... What people are capable of doing with Jade, because it... Surprise, the robbery doesn't go smoothly. And, we get all this voice of the world and the characters and the vibes and the stakes of these two idiots trying to accomplish this thing, even though we know they're idiots. Right? And so we start with that specific image and that specific element of we're like, oh, this world is so cool. These criminals are so fun. I want to spend more time here. We're getting this very like Guy Ritchie kind of opening in terms of, like, a crime story. And then when we jump to chapter 1, we're getting the perspective of the daughter, whose name I'm blanking on right now. We're getting her perspective as somebody returning to this city. We get this perspective of, like, oh, this prodigal child coming home. And we get a sense of a different kind of story that we're entering into. So, you can lose momentum by doing that. But because we also have a clear entry point to the story, both these two openings kind of work. One is a cheat, in a certain way, to get all the worldbuilding on the page without having to explain it through your main character's perspective, and then you can just enjoy spending time with the main character.

[Howard] It's worth pointing out that the example that I led with, GoldenEye, technically I would say that's a prologue. Because at the end of that scene, when he flies away in a plane, we end that scene, and we do the James Bond music, and then it's 10 years later.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That feels very prologue-y to me. But it establishes what kind of world we're living in, and it establishes who our final villain will be. Spoiler alert, Sean Bean.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Well, that's that movie ruined.

[laughter... Also... We've ruined a movie... From 20 years ago... He dies...]

[Howard] I want to bounce back to the Matrix really quick.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And draw a metaphor here. The Wachowski's invented the bullet time photography rig...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Howard] Which was essentially looping a set of 100 cameras or something...

[DongWon] Something crazy like that.

[Howard] Around the action so that you could fire them all off at once and create a 3D rotation on film in the pre-digital, pre-CG days. They leveraged that technology in their opening scene. They didn't save it for something later. What is this? Well, it is an establishment of voice. This is a coolness. This is a visual, but it is a cool thing that's going to happen again. And so, when you are writing your action cold open, if there is some cool technique, whether it is using brackets to describe the way aliens yell...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Or whatever, don't be afraid to use it in that opening...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Action scene. Because you are communicating to the reader that this is a thing that can happen again later, and if you do it well enough, like the Matrix did it well enough with the Trinity fight, we're hungry for it to happen again, and you get what is, to my mind, a big win, which is I keep turning pages because I want to read something like that...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] From you again.

[Erin] I will say it's interesting, because it creates... I'm always interested in... When stories are creating a different Journey for the reader than they are the characters. And so if you're telling the reader, wow, there's this really cool thing that could happen in the world. A lot of times in fantasy prologues, or cold opens, you'll see, like, the use of a really extreme version of magic or a technology, often a mistake...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Ruins everything. And then you'll go forward and it's like people rediscovering that magic or trying to figure it out. But in the... But they don't know. They're like, oh, I'm just trying this new thing. But in the mind of the reader, they're like, I know what this could do, both positively and negatively. And so it's like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire time. Which is a really fun way of creating tension in a reader, even in a low stakes time for the character when they're just playing around, because you know that, like, Hiroshima happens in 3 days, so this lovely, like, meal that everybody is happen... Is happening around their table isn't just a meal, it's one of the last meals. Or it's leading to something like [garbled]

[DongWon] Well, The Matrix, again, is a great example of this. We see Trinity do the cool bullet time Jump, and then the rest of the movie is when does Neo get to do that? How is he going to go on his hero's journey, to call back to an episode a while back, but how is he going to get to the point where he is able to do the thing that she does. So we get sort of this magic system moment early on of, like, here's how she can break the reality while inside the Matrix. And then he's going to build his way up to doing that. Right? So we get that tease of a possibility. But, also, it is so... Howard, you're absolutely right. Where the Matrix is a primarily voice forward opening. Right? And if you think about all of the Cinematic tools being put on display there, from the technology to the costume design to that horrible green palette that everything has, is this idea of like... They're using voice to pull us in. Right? And so, I'm going to disrupt the idea of this episode a little bit at the end here, which is think less about whether or not you're starting with an action scene, and think more about what tool you're deploying to pull readers in. Right? So, I think action openings are often voice openings, and I think that the Matrix opening has more in common with, for example, the start of the movie Alien, which again is establishing a voice, establishing an aesthetic, and a technology, and pulls you into this incredibly slow pan through the ship, as it shows you the soundscape, it shows you the slowness of things, it shows you the way the technology looks and feels in this movie, which is going to matter a lot more than where the story ends up in the craziness at certain points.

[Howard] I want to enumerate some things, kind of summarize a little bit. DongWon, early on, you ticked off three elements you wanted an opening to do. You wanted...

[DongWon] It was voice, worldbuilding...

[Howard] Voice, worldbuilding...

[DongWon] And stakes.

[Howard] And stakes. And, Erin, you mentioned tension as something you want the reader to feel. And I've said I want the reader to like the character.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Howard] I see these as parallel categories. There's the informational category, I'm giving you information about voice, about world, about character stakes. And there is the reader reaction emotional category of I like the character, you are making me tense, you are... And I'm going to add one just because I want to have three... You are making me interested enough to keep turning the pages. As you are crafting your openings, you need to be thinking about doing all of those jobs...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Howard] With your words. And that's the part that's so tricky.

[DongWon] Yeah. And just to explain a thing, for me, stakes is tension. They're the same thing in my mind. Character stakes is what introduces and maintains tension, and that is also tied up with how you feel about the character in terms of liking them. So I think we're all agreed and kind of saying something very similar. I just wanted to be clear about that.

[Erin] Yeah. And I just wanted to say that something that I've found is that in working with students who are really used to visual media...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] They're used to playing games or used to watching things, is that a lot of that work is happening in ways that are not explicit. So a thing that's explicit on the screen is the action. Like, this guy shot that guy in the face. That is a thing that we know happened. But the, like, I like this guy because, like, after his first three attempts to, like, shoot the guy didn't work, he found another way to do it with, like, a stapler, and, wow, that was really ingenious. Made him seem really competent, made me like him. I understand the stakes because all these different things that we're talking about. And so something that I would challenge people to do is when you're looking at action scenes, if you're patterning a written one after something that's visual, actually go through and look at an action scene and write down all the things that are happening in you. The things that you are thinking, the things that you are doing to fill in the gaps between the actions. Because those are the things that you're going to have to put on the page that the cinematographer and the actors and the music do when you're in a visual form.

[Howard] And I would just like to lean in and say, damn it, Erin, that's the homework I was going to give. Like. literally...

[DongWon] You just gave the homework.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Word for word. Very nearly word for word. Okay. And so, fair listener, I'm sorry. I'm just going to repeat what Erin said in my own words. It's homework time. Okay?

[Howard] Take an action cold open from a movie, and sit down and write the things that are happening in it, in terms of worldbuilding, in terms of setting stakes, in terms of defining characters, in terms of how it makes you feel, with regard to tension, with regard to liking the characters. Make notes about all of those things that happened and how they were done. And then, attempt to write a version of that scene that does the same things using words.

[DongWon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

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Writing Excuses 20.26: Gaming as a Writing Metaphor

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 09:34:08 GMT

Posted by: mbarker

Writing Excuses 20.26: Gaming as a Writing Metaphor

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-26-gaming-as-a-writing-metaphor

Key points: What's the difference between experiencing a narrative as a game or prose? Choice, direct agency? Narrative games? Energy and complexity? Games are simulations. What are the actions, what are the verbs? Buy-in! Between games and writing, there's a middle ground of control in games. Competence. Not all books or games are for everybody. What makes a narrative game? Obvious narrative? Present me with a story, don't make me randomly discover it. Make room for the audience. Let them make their own interpretations, draw their own conclusions. How much do I love the characters? How much do I care what happens to them? What are the levers in your game or narrative? Invite the reader in...

[Season 20, Episode 26]

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses.

[Erin] Gaming as a writing metaphor.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] And I'm Dan.

[Erin] And we get to talk about gaming...

[DongWon] Yay! Prepare for a six hour long episode.

[Erin] Yeah. Yeah, I know. I was like, this is actually sort of hard because there's so much that...

[Dan] Yeah.

[Erin] You can talk about when it comes...

[Howard] This play-through of Writing Excuses...

[Erin] Exactly.

[Dan] Kind of a speed run.

[Erin] Oh, my gosh. Yes. But I've been thinking about sort of what is it that separates the way that we game from the way that we write, the way that we experience prose narration from the way we experience being in a game. And the thing that I... the reason I really love games is I actually think that sometimes giving the person experiencing the narrative more choice and more direct agency over what happens, whether that's true or you just make them feel that it's true, changes the way that we experience story. And, for me, that's the big difference between them. But I'm curious, for you all, like, what makes you pick up a game instead of a book for that day? Like, what is the difference between having the same story as a television show versus a game that that show was based on?

[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I love narrative, but I don't love narrative games a lot of the time, like, if a game is very story heavy, I'll often be like… Like I tried to play Last of Us a little while ago, and I just was like, I'm putting this down, I'm going to watch the TV show. Because it… The way it was giving me the story felt so slow compared to what I wanted in terms of my ability to consume a narrative, and then all the opportunities for player choice were so constrained to things that felt like they didn't matter, a.k.a., how I searched the drawers in this room versus the big narrative stuff I was interested in, which is, what do we do about this outbreak plague situation? Right? And so, I think, for me, when it comes to what am I looking for from game experience, I want something that's more energetic and more complex than you can get from somebody telling me a story. Right? So this is why I love FromSoft games so much, where I build the narrative by interacting with the world rather than them telling me what the story is.

[Howard] I think it was… It must've been 15 years ago now. I was at a convention and had the opportunity to go out to lunch with Steve Jackson. And he dropped a bit of wisdom that I have never been able to shake. He said, "All games are physics simulations." And I thought, now, that's not true. That's… Wait. Crap. Every game… Chess! Is a physics simulation, at some level, all games are simulations. And so, when I sit down, when I think of gaming or playing a game as a metaphor for writing, I often think, why would I want to play a game like Burger Time instead of working fast food? Why would I want to play a simulation of fast food restaurants instead of working fast food? Well, because I don't want to smell like hamburgers at the end of the day. But these simulations that we play can teach us things. And in many cases, they can teach us the same things that the job would teach us, only without the risk of smelling like [frieda?].

[Erin] And, I think that also they create a game play loop. So if you're writing a game, the main thing you have to figure out is what are the actions of the game? What are the things that the game lets you do?

[DongWon] What are the verbs?

[Erin] What are the verbs of the game? And so, like, in a… And it limits them. There are always less than the verbs that you can experience in life. Because a game is not going to be able to, like, do, like, and then I scratched my nose for three seconds for no reason. I mean, who knows… Maybe in the future. But it's hard to get to that level of granularity. And so, they then have to make those verbs things that you are going to want to choose. And, it's funny, I'm thinking back to, like, weeks and weeks and weeks ago, when we talked about second person and how second person requires buy-in. And games are often a second person medium, and, similarly, you have to get the player to buy-in to this is the situation I want to be in. These are the verbs that I want to be able to use to navigate that situation. Like, you may not like the… I love a narrative game. But where it feels like I don't have enough verbs to, like…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Move this narrative forward. Whereas I'm like, oh, actually, for me, the listen, the experience, the watch it unravel is a verb that is one that works well for me. Which is why different people have different desires and loves of games. Like, some people like a puzzle game, like I do. Some people like a narrative, some people like I want to shoot the thing from a weird angle.

[DongWon] I mean, this is why tabletop can be so interesting too, because even in this case, buy-in is so important and difficult to get. So when you're trying to get someone to play a new game system they've never played before, just the lift of getting them to understand what the core metaphors and verbs of the game are can be three hours of sitting there and walking someone through the session or whatever it is. And so how you get that buy-in in terms of, like, what are the world building hooks, what are the character hooks, what's the setting hooks, to get them on board with the idea of these are interesting verbs I want to interact with. I think that can be such a challenge with really effective game writing.

[Dan] Yeah. Erin, I'm glad that you enjoy narrative games…

[Laughter]

[Erin] I'm buying them all.

[Dan] Because I'm with DongWon on this one. And I find that I don't like the way games tell stories often. Which is strange to me, and I'm trying to figure out why, and I don't know if I can articulate it. But, relating this back to writing, I… There's an interesting middle ground of control. And we talked about this a little bit. Whereas I'm going to just go and work in a burger restaurant, then I have control over what I'm doing. Maybe not as much, because I am an employee. Right? Where is if I'm going to read a book about that, I have no control whatsoever. And games exist in that very intriguing middle ground, where there's a lot of interaction, there's a lot of input from both sides. And that's… Writing for that is very different.

[Erin] Yeah. I was just thinking about, like, the competence thing as well. Like, we people love a competent character. If you want people to love your characters, one way to do it is to show them being really good at something. Because for some reason, we like it. We like feeling competent. And in a game, like in a burger… There's a game that I play on VR called Star Tenders, where you are tending bar for aliens. And the entire game is just like increasingly complex drink orders, that you have to try to make before your customers get mad…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And wander off in an alien type way. And so what I like about it is, like, you're not expected to master it the first time.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like learn… You get to learn a skill and then they add a little bit more. They had a slightly more complex thing, and all of a sudden, like, the verb that was hard for you in the beginning is one of a much larger sentence that you're able to manage. And that gives us a feeling of competence that really makes us feel like we are able to advance. But I think it's hard to do in prose. Like, you can show a character going through that journey, and have you really relate to that character, and therefore you go through that. But in games, because you're the one who has to make the physical motion, it often feels like in that physics simulation, like, you got a chance to level up.

[Howard] I had a friend tell me years ago. It was the very first of the Batman Arkham games. And he said, "Oh, my gosh, this game was so good." And he described this one scene that plays out. And he says, "And I was Batman. I got to be every bit… I got to do all of the Batman. I did all of the moves, I used all the tools, I used all the whatever." And I played that game and realized, I do not get to be Batman. I was not good enough. I did not learn fast enough. And I got tired and I moved away from it. And that's fine. You play a game for a little while, you decide it's not for you, you play something else. But the idea that the simulation of whatever can map out players differently, where a player gets to have an experience that they've been dreaming about their whole life and maybe didn't know it. My friend Joey, a Batman book would not have made him feel the same way that game made him feel.

[DongWon] Well, and I think that kind of ties into what makes Hades such a big success, is the way they tied narrative to failure. Right? When you fail, you get a little more piece of story, you get a little more piece of interaction. And then you repeat the loop. Right? Like, they were able to build the storytelling into the road like nature of the game. As you go back through it, you learn more about the world, you learn more about the characters, deepening your investment in the character and in their relationships when you do fail. So where something like the Rock City game kind of falls down is, if you fail at being Batman, now you just don't get to progress. You don't get more Batman because you were a bad Batman. If you fail at being [Zacharias], then you're… He's a failure. That's the whole point of the story. That is, you engaging with it and getting more of it as you build those skills and learn. Right? So, like, whether it's your aliens walking away from you in an alienating way because they're upset, or it's being spotted by the criminals because you're a bad Batman, like, the way in which we participate in the stories has to be fluid in that way, or has to be a rewarding experience in that way, or our buy-in starts to break down.

[Erin] I was laughing when you said that because I remembered the time I tried to play Grand Theft Auto, and there's a tutorial quest where you just get on a skateboard, and I don't drive…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And I'm not good at driving related tasks. I could not finish. Like, it's a thing that they mean for it to take three seconds…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And, like an hour and a half later, I was like, obviously, this game was not meant for me because I can't even get a car…

[Howard] I have decided that my… I should not be stealing automobiles.

[DongWon] I think that comes back to books in that way though, because not… Books unfold… Not all books are for everybody. Right? Like, what makes sense to you and what you have buy-in for and what is an engaging world building character narrative to you will be really different than the next reader. Right? In the same way, that a game about stealing cars is probably not for someone who has never driven a car before. Right? And I think that can be true in fiction as well. And understanding who your reader is is also really important there.

[Erin] All right. I'm going to interrogate you about narrative games and yellow boxes, but first, we're going to press pause.

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[Erin] And now we're back. And so… Un-pause.

[DongWon] How was that load screen for you?

[Erin] Hope you enjoyed it. So [garbled] interested in is I'm like people who don't like narrative games? I must find out why? As somebody who enjoys writing the narratives of games. And I think it's interesting, like, the wanting to tell a story versus how much gamers experience it is fascinating. If you write for games, you know that you're writing the item description that, like, 89 percent of people will just be like, nope. X out. It's like you're writing the dialogue that people are trying to skip in order to get to their next action. But I'm wondering, like, when you say I don't like narrative games, I'm wondering what makes something a narrative game? Is it just how obvious it is in its narrative? Is it an outside category? Like, what does that mean for you?

[Dan] Well, I don't think it comes down to the obvious nature of it, because I, for example, really don't like Hades because it is not presenting me with a story. I mean, that's not the only reason. But it's a story you have to discover. And that's a place where DongWon and I diverge, because I don't like that in games, I enjoy being told this is the story that we have to fulfill, go do it. Here's what this is about, go do it. And the idea that I have to just randomly discover what the story is by talking to people or by reading books that I find laying around the environment always just rubs me the wrong way.

[Howard] Sorry. I'm giggling over here. Railroad Tycoon, The Linear Narrative.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I… No, I totally feel you here. One of the things that I love about games where a lot of the story is in front of you, but there's a lot of open space is that… And no, fair listeners, I'm not going to become a streamer of games… But I will often talk back to the characters on screen and say stuff that is just funny to me and is sort of in universe or not in universe, and I get joy out of that. Even though the story is maybe a little flat, I enjoy fluffing it up a little on my own.

[Erin] And thinking about this as a metaphor for writing, it's interesting, because it's, like, how strong… How, like, is the power of the narrative? Like, how much is the narrative saying, like, a story is happening here?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] How much is it making you discover it? Because there are prose pieces where the story is not, like, a very clear, like, plot point to plot point type of thing.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But it feels a little more like you're kind of wandering through and story is occurring. And it's interesting thinking about, like, how much are we guiding, how much are we controlling our readers? I mean, we're always controlling everything, but how much is that control felt by them versus is it just feels like they're having to put it together for themselves?

[DongWon] Well, I'm getting on my soapbox for a second here of my obsession with FromSoft games. Right? And so, these are the Dark Souls games, Blood-Borne, Elven Ring, and the reason I love these games so much is they're deeply authored experiences. Like, there's no question that there isn't a very specific point of view behind those blows and that they are creating an experience for the player that has thematics and characters and all the things we expect from story. But you're just getting that story in big cut scenes, where people are talking to each other and there's story being told to you. You're having to discover that story by doing things like reading the item descriptions, by piecing together, like, oh, I thought this boss. This boss was like… Said this one thing that's related to this other boss. Like, you're trying to, like, weave string theory together, the world building and the plot. And I recognize that it's not for everybody, and completely understand why. But what I love about it is I think it gets something… Or gets at something that's really true about all storytelling that we do, which is you have to make room for the audience. Right? And this is a thing I talk about a lot as I'm putting together an actual play show and things like that. One thing I talk about with my players and with the rest of my cast is we need to make room at the table for the audience. There is a fifth seat at the table here, and it's the audience who is here participating in this with us. And it's why I love actual play shows like Dimension 20 or [What's My Number?] or Friends at the Table, because they understand that I am also a participant in this story in an active way. Right? And I think that's true of a book, too. When you write a book, you're writing a book for someone. You have to understand that the reader is there picking it up and interacting with it. Now, their verb is limited to turn the page and continue reading. They have one verb, which is keep reading, don't keep reading. Right? How they feel about that, how they engage with it on a moment to moment basis can change and evolve. But the more you make space for them to make their own interpretations, to engage in a certain way, and to draw their own conclusions from stuff, I think that's where interaction with fiction can be so exciting and so deep and rich.

[Erin] It's funny, thinking about, like, the verbs of games, I'm reminded of… So I used to do writing for Zombies Run, which is a game with only the verb run.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so, years and years and years of narrative, of, like, small scene of, like, people talking and then something has to happen at the end of the scene to force you to run. And to go to the next thing. Which is like… Was really interesting in figuring out what are the ways to continue to get audience buy-in. Because, if you think of tabletop games, some have extraordinarily complex mechanics that will take you…

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] 10 years to figure out. Or, like that boardgame, where you're like, our first eight hour session…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Is going to be figuring out…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] How this boardgame works. And then, eventually, we'll become experts. But thinking about, do you need that level… Like, how much complexity is too much? Like… And that can be true in a game, but also in a narrative. How much just becomes distracting where it becomes about the experience of the narrative as opposed to the narrative itself.

[Howard] When we look at audience buy-in, it's useful to look at improvisational theater, where the audience is literally shouting suggestions at the stage. And if the audience is not engaged, the show falls flat pretty quickly. By the same token, comedy acts on stage in comedy clubs, the audience is buying in by laughing. They make noise. If the audience does not make noise, we say that the comedian is dying. Because that's what that experience is like. And if the audience is making noise, if there laughing all the way through, the comedian is killing. Why is it so violent? Probably because public speaking is the thing we're all scared of the most. And so we tie it to death this way. But the sense of audience buy-in is very, very visible in improvisational theater and in comedy clubs. And if you think about how important the audience participation is to the performers, and then look at what an audience means to you as a writer, that contrast might change the way you think about what you're writing.

[Dan] I've been sitting here trying to think about what narrative is in games I enjoy. And it comes back to a lesson that I have learned for my own writing, which is, how much do I love the characters? How much do I care about what happens to these characters? Because there are plenty of games, and I apologize for continuing to rip on Hades…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Because it's a beloved game that everyone other than me adores.

[DongWon] You're alienating our whole audience.

[Dan] I know. I could not possibly have cared less about any of the characters in that, and so…

[DongWon] [gasp] Dash…

[Dan] I know. And so, playing the game didn't really hold a lot of appeal for me, after the basic gameplay loop, I figured out the narrative side of it didn't work for me. Whereas something like Cyberpunk 2077 and this… So much of this comes down to personal preference… Those characters I fell in love with. And I wanted to spend time with them. And so when I am doing my own writing, I… That's what I keep coming back to is the lesson I learned, which is, I'm asking my readers to spend however many hours it takes to read this book, to invite this character into their brain and spend time with them. It has to be somebody that they love and care about.

[DongWon] Well, it's so interesting, because I played Hades because I love the characters and I played a billion hours of Cyberpunk 2077… I really love that game, I play that game not for the characters but for the world. I find the characters… They're fine, I enjoy engaging with them a lot of time, but mostly, what I want to do is run around that city stealing and driving cars…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And…

[Erin] No!

[DongWon] Getting…

[Dan] Yeah.

[DongWon] In fights with weird criminals. Like, that's the thing that I really… Like, mechanically and vibes-wise, being in that world… To me, Cyberpunk is a game that's all about vibes. Like, the aesthetics of it, the culture of it, all of that are things that I really, really enjoy, and so… I think it's, like, also [garbled] the lesson when I say make room for your audience in terms of crafting your narrative experience, whether that's a game or novel or short story or a film, it's… You also can't predict what part of your story that people are going to attach to. Right? I know people who play Hades and have never read a single piece of the text… They just like the combat. They enjoy the mechanical aspect of the combat. And I know people who have never played an action game in their life that somehow saw credits on Hades, the thing that I, who play a lot of action games, have never been able to do, because they just love the characters so much that they just kept playing this thing and learned a whole set of skills that they never had before in their entire life. And so, watching what your audience will connect to is something you can't necessarily predict. Right? And you can't control for that. You can have guesses, you can have focuses, but that's why you kind of gotta chase your own interests as much as anything else.

[Howard] I… Dan, I remember a comment you made on the Borderlands games years ago, which was, yeah, this is cute games, and one of them is really fun, the one where you run around shooting things and exploring the world. And then there's the game of comparing red arrows and green arrows on your gear, and I don't like that game at all.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] And…

[DongWon] 100 percent.

[Howard] And I love that principle, that there can be a thing that we just love that is inextricably fused to a thing we despise, and are we going to play anyway? Are we going to continue to consume or are we going to look for something that doesn't have the up down arrows game in it?

[DongWon] This is me and Destiny's death grip on my brain, but… Yeah.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] I think one of the reasons I really love games and game writing is because there are all these different levers you can be pushing in any narrative.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You can be pushing the character lever, you can be pushing the world lever, you can be pushing the what are the actions lever, which is often a plot lever. But it's like in games, they're all sort of… They are more discrete. They feel more discrete from each other. Like, in a prose narrative, you can really weave in… Like, the world is happening, what the characters, with the action is all at once. But the way that games are designed, like, someone makes the world and then they sort of put characters in it who have their own set of actions. And they can't 100 percent control how you use those actions and that character to experience the world. And because of that, there are intersections that will happen that they will never be able to anticipate as public… Emergent gameplay is here. Somebody is having a gameplay experience you did not intend.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But they were able to find those connections in interesting different ways. And I think it's nice when we think about our stories to think about how are all the levers that we're pulling different? And, like, how… If we separate out the way that were talking about lenses, it's sort of a version of doing that, of thinking about what are all the different lenses, what are all the different levers, and how are we combining them in really interesting ways to make stories?

[DongWon] And also just letting… Learning to realize that you don't have full control over the audience experience. Right? And that they are going to bring their own lenses, they're going to bring their own verbs, the going to bring their own ways of interacting with the story to that experience. And once it's out of your hands, you don't get to tell people you're reading this wrong. Right? Or you can try. Sure. But, like, you're going to get…

[Howard] Feel free to say that. It's probably not going to work out the way…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And so I think one of the things that I found really exciting about this topic of gaming, not just because I clearly love games, as do we all, but because it is this thing that I think is really, really hard for people who create prose to wrap their heads around, is learning to… Not just, like, ease off of the control, but actively invite in the reader into making this experience with us. And I think learning how to do that is a thing that can really take your fiction from being exciting to truly connecting with a huge fan base.

[Erin] And with that, we're at the end of this game session. And we are going to move to the homework.

[Erin] And for the homework, I'm going to challenge you a little. There are probably folks who are listening to this who are like, I only… Last game I played was tag. But I would like you to think about… Take a project that you're working on and imagine that someone is making a game of it. And figure out what would that game be. What would be the actions that the characters would be doing? What would be the parts of the world that the game would be focused on? And just write out sort of, like, a here's the game of my amazing work of art. If you need help with this, you can look at things that are games that were made from things like Lord of the Rings game. Just read a description of it, see if anything comes to you. And then as you're writing that out, is there anything you've discovered about your story that was unexpected?

[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

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Writing Excuses 13-4: Protagonists Who Aren't Sympathetic

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 02:13:57 GMT

Posted by: mbarker

Writing Excuses 13-4: Protagonists Who Aren't Sympathetic

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2018/01/28/13-4-protagonists-who-arent-sympathetic/

Key points: Non-sympathetic protagonists, aka antiheroes, come in two flavors, classic and pop! Classic or literary antiheroes don't protag. They don't move the story along, even though they are where a protagonist should be. Pop is an evil person who still does good. Why write an unlikable character? Well, one reason is a reverse character arc, where the character goes down, then redeems himself and comes back up. It does make readers uncomfortable! Sometimes it's a signal that the character is becoming an antagonist. Sometimes we do it to mimic reality -- some people aren't very likable! To make it work, hang a lantern on it, give the reader subtle hints that it is okay to dislike this character. Modern antiheroes? The Punisher, or other bad guys with a heart of gold. We like them because we wish we could forget the limits and just do it. Hulk smash! Also, the pop culture antihero has dramatic tension -- they aren't likable, but they are proactive and competent. Built-in tension! Or maybe they are likable and proactive, but not competent. Again, built-in tension. You may not like them, but when the aliens show up, they are the hero you need.
( Motorcycle jackets and long hair... )

[Brandon] All right. Let's wrap this one up. I have some homework for you. I want you to take a slightly different spin on this. I want you to write a protagonist or a hero that the reader is supposed to like and does like. Right? You're going to make them likable. But you're going to try to create dramatic tension by having them… By having the reader not want this protagonist to succeed. So, generally, the reader's going to have information that the protagonist doesn't, or they're going to see things more clearly than the protagonist does. So you want the hero to fail. He or she is trying something, and you like them, but you still want them to not succeed. See if you can do that. It's very difficult. It's an interesting thought experiment. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

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Writing Excuses 11.24: Stakes!

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 11:16:00 GMT

Posted by: mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.24: Stakes!

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/06/12/11-24-stakes/

Key Points: Raise the stakes does not mean make it more world shattering. What are stakes? Things that keep your characters from walking away from conflicts. What keeps people fighting when they have conflicting goals? What is important enough to keep them in the game? Often, the difference between a hero and a villian is the magnitude and type of stakes they are fighting over. To raise the stakes, don't add more villians or explosions, make it more personal for the main character. The destruction of the galaxy? Who cares? Saving the life of a friend? We're with y'a! Make it personal, and make the audience care. Get into the character's head and show us why it matters, what motivates them. Be aware, we can empathize with a villian, or with thieves in a heist. Consider likability, competency, and proactivity! Build engagement with character sliders. Don't forget selflessness and sacrifice as ways to build empathy. The Cornwell trick? Establish two sets of stakes, put them in conflict, and let the main character sacrifice personal gain for greater good. Revenge stories and other selfish tales often use the B plot to get readers engaged. Or proactivity, especially with something that just won't quit getting in the way.

( Rare? Medium well? No, no, stake him... )

[Brandon] All right. Let's go ahead and do a writing prompt. Mary, you have a writing prompt for us.
[Mary] Yeah. So I've been doing this thing where I write a story in 15 minutes for charity. I start it based on three things. An object, a character, and a genre. So. Listener. Look to your left. That is your object.
[Chuckles]
[Mary] Look at the bookshelf. The first book you see, that is your genre. And your character is your best friend. Now write a story for 15 minutes.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

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Writing Excuses 11.3: Layering the Elemental Genres

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 11:47:00 GMT

Posted by: mbarker.livejournal.com

Writing Excuses 11.3: Layering the Elemental Genres

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/01/17/11-03-layering-the-elemental-genres/

Key points: Borrow elemental genres (ideas, emotions) from other stories and inject them into your stories as subplots, character arcs, or mashups. Layer your elemental genres to create sequels that are the same, but different. Let each character's arc be a different elemental genre. You can use design elements, set dressing, to keep the story together, and mix-and-match elemental genres underneath that to tell different stories. Check your underpinnings -- what is the feeling you like? Drill down into the elemental genre behind the design elements. Turn your wall into a trench, or darkness, or... with a great unknown hidden behind it.

( Is there icing in between the layers? )
[Brandon] We're going to leave you with some homework. Mary's got the homework for us, and it relates to the homework we gave you last time.
[Mary] All right. So last time we asked you to identify the major driving emotion of the story that you are interested in working on. What I want you to do now is I want you to think of a contrasting emotion. So essentially what you're doing is you're creating a foil plot, a foil emotion for your primary emotion. Because this is going to allow you to showcase ever... Or do a contrast between the darkness of one and the happy emotions of the other. So think about not the design elements, but think about the emotional elements and think about... You don't have to worry about our proprietary vocabulary yet. I just want you to identify the emotion that you want to elicit in yourself if you were hacking your brain.
[Brandon] Now by this point, we will have all 11 of the ideas we've come up with put on our website and we will post them such... We will put them in a place that they are easy to find each week, if you want to come glance over them again. As you can tell from this episode, we're still getting used to this terminology ourselves.
[Chuckles]
[Brandon] Hopefully, across the course of the year, we'll all start really using the same terminology. This is the purpose...
[Howard] I'm going to put a stake in the ground and say that by the end of the season, we will have altered some of the terminology and changed the list, because it just makes more sense.
[Mary] Yep. You guys will probably be better versed in it that we will, because we just talked about it once.
[Brandon] All right. Well, this has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

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