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Guest Author: Tim Akers on Making Storytelling a Game
One of the questions that authors get asked a lot is if they’re a “plotter” or a “pantser.” The question being asked is if the writer spends a lot of time with an outline, plotting each stage of their book, or if they kind of write by the seat of their pants.
The fact is that most published writers probably answer “both”, not because one of these methods is more appealing to them than the other, but simply because the business of publishing is punishingly difficult. Unless you’re George Martin or his ilk, the structure of the publishing industry requires that you do a little of both.
Every book that I’ve sold has been outlined to within an inch of its life, with various drafts of the outline going through revisions based on feedback from my agent and editor, before a final outline is approved. Then, once the actual writing commences, notes often come down the pipe that necessitate changes to that outline, and those changes have to be made by the seat of your pants because the deadline is looming. My most recent book, The Pagan Night, was massively revised right at the end, with chapters moving around and characters getting shuffled. There’s no way I could have done those while staying true to the outline.
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The method that I’ve learned to use to overcome the difficulties of this kind of last minute revision comes from my lifetime of gaming. When designing an adventure for my gaming group, I don’t lay out a series of events or scenes or traps that the party will move through sequentially. That kind of structure rarely survives contact with the players. Instead, I create an environment filled with narrative tension, populated with groups and characters acting in opposition, and then I let the players sort it out on their own. This usually requires some kind of initial hook, but once the plot is moving it’s fairly easy to keep it going without any outside interference. The players build their own alliances, decide which group they’re going to back, and deal with the consequences of those actions.
I think of this as the plot trinity: Three groups who are acting in opposition toward a similar goal. Rather than placing groups in direct opposition, I usually create a space of overlapping tension. Group A opposes group B, B opposes C, C opposes A. The area in the middle of this triangle of opposition is a place of ambiguous loyalty, ideal for storytelling.
I apply this to writing all the time. On a broad scale, these three groups can be large institutions, either nation-states, religious groups or political affiliations. As you scale the story down the relationship between characters maintains that trinity while spinning off new trinities of their own. The church opposes the king, the king is fighting with the disgruntled nobility, and the nobility is struggling to wrest control of the common folks from the church. Then you take these motivations and drop them down a level. For example, within the church there will certainly be disagreements that both feed those higher-level motivations and are likewise influenced by them. Two of the groups will be a direct result of the previous motivations, opposition to the king and the struggle with the nobility for the common folk. But the third group will be something else, say, a reformation minded contingent who believes the church shouldn’t be involved in such worldly affairs at all. Each layer of this trinity influences the layers above and below, so at any point in the narrative it’s possible to trace the loyalties and actions of a character or group and align them with the larger (or smaller) picture.
In a game setting, this means that the characters will always have allies and opponents, sometimes from unexpected directions. They align themselves with the church, only to find their plans betrayed by the reformer, or aided by a nobleman who wants the church’s power to increase in the capital, to draw the king’s attention away from his own misdeeds in the country. It’s very easy to keep spinning plot lines out of this kind of system without disrupting the flow of the game.
When outlining a book, I always establish a few layers of plot trinities first, then outline within those parameters. This allows me to do a little seat of the pants writing, discovering what a character wants to do while still keeping my eye on those lines of narrative influence. When my editor asks for some more opposition in a particular section, or wants to adjust the pacing or structure, I can fall back on my trinity to provide the necessary material. Also, as long as the characters are acting within their motivations, scenes can be lifted whole and moved around the book.
This gives me a lot of freedom at every level of writing. Whether I’m outlining, brainstorming a new series, blocking out a fight scene or revising a manuscript that I’ve been tinkering with for years, having a plot trinity in place lets me make the necessary adjustments without disrupting the story. If I need a new character, I can create one from the opposition groups that already exist. If I need to consolidate plot lines, it’s just a matter of collapsing plot groups into their supporting layers.
The final thing to note is that this structure works best when it’s completely invisible. The reader (or player) should never be entirely sure of the motivations of the other characters. Betrayal is best when handed out by an ally (who was secretly opposed all along). Help is most revealing when it comes from an apparent enemy. And the most satisfying villain is the one whose motivations we understand, even empathize with, at the risk of our own righteousness. Don’t force a story into the world. The world is complex. Let it tell its own stories, and learn to follow along.
Tim Akers is the author of The Pagan Night, available now from Titan Books.