Storytelling: Story premise (long)

JSwing · 2002-01-08T18:09:17

Note: I''m sort of responding to Sunandshadow''s challenge. I decided to avoid heavy literary theory and study some books on basic storytelling. This isn''t from any single work, and I''m only covering one topic in this post. All of the writing books I looked at agreed that a story needs a premise. The premise is the big picture, what the story is fundamentally about. Different books described the premise in different terms, but they all agreed that it should be very simple, a sentence or less. The premise doesn''t focus on the plot events, and generally doesn''t reference any of the people, places, or settings. The premise for Romeo and Juliet would be something like ''great love defies even death'' and would not be ''two teens fall in love and die''. Another example, my interpretation of the premise for Fallout I is "The survival of the community depends on the efforts of the individual". Vault13 needs someone to fetch a water chip, Shady Sands needs someone to kill predators, the ghoul town needs someone to repair ... (I forget, the power plant?), and the whole region needs someone to stop the Master. The particular needs vary with each community, but the premise is fairly consistent throughout the game. Side note: the Master is an individual supported by an army of sterile mutant clones. This makes a solid villain since it inverts the premise of the individual supporting the community. The premise should be presented to the reader at the very beginning of the story. The story should provide the dramatic issue unambiguously. The resolution/fulfillment can be either explicit, symbolic, or indirect. For example, Fallout explicitly tells the player that the vault needs a water chip. Planescape, on the other hand, provides the issue of knowing oneself explicitly, but hints only at the fulfillment: confronting one''s mortality. The player wakes in a morgue. The nameless one quickly learns he is immortal and that it''s unusual. It isn''t until late in the game that the player understands where the quest to know himself will lead, but the elements are present at the very beginning. If the premise isn''t established in the beginning, then the story is weakened. Either the player will start making up his own, or they will expect no story at all. When the story is finally introduced, the player is jarred. Worse, the player will not recognize significant events as such prior to encountering the premise. The premise sets up the goals and conflicts. Individual plot pieces come after and are designed around the premise, providing opportunities for the protagonist to move towards fulfillment. If Romeo and Juliet has the premise ''love defies even death'' then the plot can be expected to provide obstacles for love to defy; the obstacles increasing in difficulty up to death at the end. Significant characters should also be designed around the premise. From Planescape again: Morte the *skull* is mistaken for a mimir, *a repository of knowledge*; the bulk of the dialogue with the gith npc concerns *knowing*; the brothel of intellectual lusts where they trade stories and knowledge, and the npc who agrees to join the party because she wants to *travel in order to learn*; NPCs (the tiefling, the fire mage, the gith again) tie directly back to the nameless one''s history. This is not coincidence. The need for a premise seems apply to all popular fiction. Movies, books, plays, it all fits. The books I read left out complex literary works, so it might not fit _War and Peace_. And some writers intentionally break this and other conventions, so it wouldn''t apply there either (Faulkner''s _Sound and Fury_, for example). Premise in games, my thoughts A fixed storyline with a definite beginning and one or more endings would have stronger writing from working with a premise. The books suggested that all of the conflicts should stem from or connect to the premise. Some suggested planning everything from the premise as a base, another suggested writing everything out and then trimming out anything not related to the premise. I don''t think this is necessary for video games. Video games have a great tradition for breadth. Games include all sorts of side trips, easter eggs, eye candy, etc. I think all of the critical plot events should be related to the premise, but there is still plenty of room for extra pieces. It''s all part of providing a larger space for the player to explore, which is an entertaining end in itself. Some of this depends on game specifics. The premise should be presented at the beginning of a story. But a video game can have several different beginnings. In addition to the start of gameplay, a game might have an intro movie, a tutorial/training area, or a character creation section. I think where the premise gets illuminated would depend on how these elements are assembled in your game, but at the beginning of gameplay would be the latest. For story writing, a single simple premise is advocated. And it''s obvious that it is possible to make a great game with a single simple premise. But video games are an interactive medium. Does this provide greater possibilities? Is it feasible to have multiple or even variable premises? How about a story whose premise changes depending on the actions a player takes? Or a series of smaller stories featuring the same player character? Example: A story starts out in a marketplace. A thief grabs a purse and a cop chases the thief into an alley, catching him. If I was writing this as prose I would use different words for different premises. A story about a stagnant society on the verge of collapse would emphasize the effect of the thief as a disruption and the cop as a harsh retribution for disturbing the status quo. A story about the corruption of an individual would focus on the transition from a happy marketplace to a grungy alleyway. These word choice decisions require knowing the premise ahead of time. Which means the premise cannot be the causal result of the action as it unfolds. On the other hand, video games have a little slack built in while the player learns how to interact with the game world. Example: Player is the aforementioned cop. In the first (training) bit, the player captures the thief. The thief has $100 of stolen money on him. The player has the choice of what to do with the thief and what to do with the money. - If the player kills the thief then the story premise is about cops taking the law into their own hands and other vigilante behavior. -If the player keeps some or all of the money then it''s about corruption of the individual, with different specifics whether the thief is let go, killed, or arrested. -If the player follows all the rules, then the conflict is over individual duty to a flawed system, illustrated by an inefficient or faulty law system. Depending on how the player behaves, a story arc is set up. Different NPCs are generated for each since they have to support the different conflict in each story. As long as the player doesn''t recognize the decision point it might possible to get away with it. Would it be possible to build a set of stories that are linked in this way? Where the choices made while playing one story set up the premise of the next. Or would a change in premise be too distracting? This seems to be one of those fundamental game vs story things. Are there other ways around it? Well this has gone on for long enough and I''m out of steam. What does everyone else think? JSwing

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by JSwing December 31, 2001 10:14 PM

10 comments, last by JSwing 22 years, 11 months ago

JSwing

Author

122

January 08, 2002 11:36 AM

I agree about the Blade Runner game. There are 2 or 3 different endings, each of which provides a very different interpretation of the story.

The other thing they did right was that the decision points are integrated seamlessly into the storyline. If you didn''t know that there were multiple endings ahead of time, you might miss it.

So it is possible to integrate multiple premises into a single game storyline. Terrific! Thanks for the example.

Now to see is if it can be done without pre-scripting everything in between the beginning and conclusion(s).

JSwing

Tacit

122

January 08, 2002 06:09 PM

Slambot - I was referring to the book/movie, sorry for the confusion!

JSwing - I think I''ve discovered a way, but I''m having the technical ramifications assessed by some programmer friends.

I do believe it is possible, and it''s the basis a design which I''ve completed for a ''mod'' project.

R.

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Storytelling: Story premise (long)

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Storytelling: Story premise (long)

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