A Story Scrapbook
This post is going to be different from some of my more recent ones in that I'm using it as a scratch pad for ideating and expanding on ideas I've had in the past for our Skies Over Aefala campaign. I'll try to keep it clear and easy to follow, since the process can be messy, stilted, and jumping to seemingly random points, but I don't want to polish it too much because I want to capture that creative mess.
There are two primary stories: Cael's/Efiál's and the overarching Skies Over Aefala "plot1."
Much of Cael's story revolves around slice-of-life types of situations, while the Skies Over Aefala story on the whole focuses more on epic fantasy tropes. The meshing of the two creates interesting potential, especially since the story for SOA itself takes place within the span of a single year.
Thus far we have progressed through late Ityx (March) → Grurla (April) → Uros (May) → and are almost through Nudon (June). With over 150 official sessions (and a ton of side scenes from when we had other players), by the time the campaign officially ends, we're going to have a ton of material to sift through. Only a third of the year has passed in-game. That's...sobering.
Chances are, however, that as certain events come to pass, time will "speed up," with the possibility of 3+ months zipping by. All dependent on character choices and how story arcs resolve. Time will tell.
Cael/Efiál is the primary POV, at least for portions, but one of the possibilities about the story that excites me is the notion of memory sharing and what I can do with that. I already have a few performances written, though I'd want to go back at some point and compose the music to replace the pieces used in the interim. Those performances take place at very specific points in the story and act as good climactic points to build toward for each saga or arc.
The idea that objects house memories, too, is an interesting lever to pull. If a single memory is treated as a chapter within a web comic, whether it be the memory of an object or one of Cael's, then I have some stylistic choices to play with. Do 1st-person POV comics exist?2 Perspective would be an interesting challenge. Some scenes could be incredibly dynamic through such an intimate perspective. If done through Cael's POV, that's an option.
But I also like the idea of re-telling the story through various objects. The core cast would remain the same within the scenes, but the telling itself would be different, more of a 3rd-person POV, if the memories of the objects are read. There's also the idea of using the memento book that Cael intends to give Valen as a means of telling the story, or at least portions of it. When it becomes relevant, could start off each chapter with a "cover," which is just a page from the memento book.
Plus, there's the matter of capturing certain exchanges that don't fit into any idea thus far, messages sent through spells that move the story forward in interesting ways. Imagine if there was a way to "magically record" or magically document a recorded conversation. That feels like it should be possible. For public speeches, the "recording" would just be the memory of an object present at the scene, but for more intimate conversations, the sharing would have to be more deliberate, someone saying, "I want to share this with you."
I don't want the telling of the story to be complicated, but I do like complexity, where a landscape shot can relay just as much gravitas as a 3-word journal entry. I enjoy that kind of challenge. While one idea would be to treat real-life readers as Cael's audience for a post-campaign retelling of events, I'm not sure I'd want to be constrained to that as the full medium, as cool as the idea is. Though it'd be interesting to play with different types of media there, too. Have the "present" be text and moments where they share their memories switch over to a more visual format. With how strict I am with timing cues and everything, however, I'm not sure how I'd pull something like that off, especially since the performances aren't read so much as listened to.
That said, with all these disparate ways of possibly telling the story, there needs to be a common thread, and that is likely through the setting. If the story finds itself in a tavern, finding creative ways to evoke the atmosphere through the details for example3.
I'm getting ahead of myself though, because the SOA campaign is, in a way, a different story than Cael's, which begins a few years earlier. There are benefits to starting with the campaign story itself and sharing pieces of Cael's backstory throughout. Their performances, for one, highlight aspects of their backstory, which limits the possibility of redundancy, and their prologue is something I could also go back and flesh out more once the SOA story itself has finished4. Authors, directors, and other storytellers do this all the time. The expectations set by the campaign would also inform the "reader" that, while much of Cael's story contains slice-of-life elements, it does build to a tragedy of sorts. I wouldn't want to make a false promise about where their prologue ends and the campaign begins.
So, how worthwhile are the summaries I've been wanting to catch up on for years?5 Granted, their primary objective wasn't for my ability to tell the story but to try and find connections/foreshadowing, plot ideas for Cael's ongoing struggle against Maryn, and throw my own surprises into the story itself. But for deciding how to tell the story, I would need to dive into the transcripts themselves and extract the most promising objects/scenes. Plus, with my partner and I discussing more as collaborators instead of GM and player, I don't have to allocate as much mental RAM to remembering all the little details in my bid to be prepared for anything he could throw at me....
Hm. Summaries could still be useful, but maybe they're not as pressing as I once thought. At this point, it's probably most important to get started on telling the story the way that I want and commit, even if it's not finished yet.6
1 I use plot here loosely, because while there is a game-end goal, how we approach that is entirely up to us. A "plot" exists in the sense that the antagonists have a goal and are actively pursuing that goal, and the inability to put a stop to that goal could lead to cataclysm.
2 An initial search brings up this Reddit post asking the same thing. Apparently several years ago, a Nightwing comic was also mentioned as an experiment for 1st person POV, though I don't know if there was ever any follow through on it. Maus seems to be another example, perhaps the best example, so I'll probably be picking it up at some point to read it.
3 Creative menu names that illustrate the type of game/produce available in the area, an interesting sculpture or sign, songs a traveling minstrel is singing that night.... There are so many ways to tell the story obliquely and still make it cohesive.
4 The appeal of starting further back is how much set-up occurs and how the tension builds as Cael's story arc unfolds during their most formative years from Awakening (the first Inciting Incident) → Willowdale life → College → the Inciting Incident to the campaign. I could do some fun things with time here, too, since Cael doesn't keep track of years the same way that historians would, and that would be an interesting way to set up chapters. Do I build up to the fall, or do I begin from when they're starting to piece themselves back together? Now that I think about it, "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" make for a perfect parallel in this case. Both are stories worth telling, removed from each other but intertwined in so many ways as well.
5 That's a painful question to ask.
6 After having my partner read this post, he equated my ideas of mixing media for telling the story to a scrapbook, which is an intriguing thought, pages upon pages of little treasures, collectibles, notes, pictures, and more that share a common theme.
Summary of Notable Accomplishments (10.21 - 10.27):
Transcribed the 2nd half of 150, which I may have already mentioned in last week's post
I'm on page 700 of "Shogun" (chapter 41)
I finally beat the Giant on 4 BC in Dead Cells
And it was pretty easy overall to beat the Hand of the King on 5 BC after failing a few times
I, uh, did not know what to expect going through the 5 BC door. I have no idea how I'm going to get through all of the next phase.....
Edited and shared the 21st of Nudon
Reread the five 22nd of Nudon transcripts in preparation for writing Cael's next journal
Still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to tackle the rest of the journals for NaNo. I should decide that soon. 7 journals to go (soon to be 8), lots of rereading, still my other obligations.
I could probably do it, but I fear burning out afterward and not wanting to touch anything else for the rest of the year
Or, who knows, maybe I'd feel so accomplished, I'd be ready to tackle the next creative endeavor!
Built With Science:
Back, chest, arms, shoulders...but not legs because my menstrual cycle decided to kick me to the curb
Been doing a lot of research into screen-less fitness trackers, because the last thing I want is another device vying for my attention 24/7
Still going on ~60-minute long jogs every couple of days or so
My calves burn more than anything
Real Talk:
What are some of your favorite storytelling mediums or genres?
Brownie points for off-the-wall suggestions~
Mmm, now I want brownies....
This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Salad
Comments