I've been reading much less this year than I expected. It’s funny having a reading expectations, but a part of my self-assigned job here is to write about the books I read. To force the work in analyzing the things in a story that I like and love and loathe and put them in writing here, so they end up in my writing everywhere.
But I haven’t been reading as much this year, thus these essays get a little more interesting to write.
Today I've been looking back. How did words first come to me? Where was the inspiration if not books when I was a kid? I didn't know I wanted to be a writer until I was Twenty-two-ish. Before then it was ancillary, a byproduct of me wanting to make movies and short films. I had to write because no one else would. I couldn’t afford to pay a writer if I wanted to direct a story. I needed to make it myself. What inspired me then? I read but books were never the focus of my life until that turning point in my twenties.
More than the scripts I wrote, the most valuable practice I had writing before I became "a writer" was in my weekly college Dungeons and Dragons sessions.
Makes sense when you read my work, doesn't it?
The thing about running a weekly session for your friends is expectations. Every week must be something new, something fun, and so entertaining that players want to meet up at the same time next Tuesday evening. I was fortunate in that my group were all roommates in the house we lived in. They were a bit more of a trapped audience. But I still put that pressure on myself, week in and week out. "This session has to be great."
I think some of my most creative moments were those, sitting in class on a Monday or Tuesday, with only hours until the next session, that I came up with the whole thing on the spot. A kernel of an idea, nothing more, tossed at the top of a page before it quickly exploded into something much bigger and more full as I developed the idea. "War at a wall?" "Spooky haunted mansion." "Murder mystery at an inn?" All bylines atop a page. No planning beyond them. I said: "yup" and got to writing each one, planning a dungeon or mystery or context for the world that my friends were exploring.
It took maybe three sessions before I realized I was writing a TV show. That’s all DnD was. Weekly sessions, with a rough throughline, but semi monster-of-the-week plotting. Well. If I'm writing a TV show, how do I go about doing that?
I turned to my favorite show of all time, and realize now how much it and all the other shows I watched growing up, ended up in my writing. They’re there just as much, if not more than the books I read now. They're deeper, I think.
The show I took from for my DnD running style was Battlestar Galactica.
Some shows, modern shows mostly, are serialized. They have an overarching story, with a few subplots here and there, but each episode pushes forward the main narrative. This contrasts with episodic TV. The monster-of-the-week shows where all the good guys solve a problem every week and get reset back to where they started from by the end of each episode to do it all again next week. This is how every show outside a soap opera used to be. It was in the early 2000s that serialized formats began to seep into more mainstream shows with a rising popularity.
Battlestar Galactica (BSG from here on out), fell right in that transition period.
there is an overarching story that is the throughline for the whole series, but the show was still somewhat episodic in nature - especially in those first seasons. Mankind must survive their exodus from home, on the run from Cylons hunting them to extinction, BUT hey, let’s spend a lot of effort on a single prison ship’s politics this week. Everybody cool with that?
There's a balance, in TV and in DnD or other tabletop rpg. The overarching tale carries the most weight. That's the bit that satisfies the audience to no end (Breaking Bad) or disappoints forever (Lost). But it’s the individual episodes that make up the majority of the story. They may be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they still better be good. (The prison ep in BSG is a solid "okay" rather than decidedly good, oh well)
I think this permeates through my writing. This episodic with a throughline, is exactly the balance I want to walk with my fantasy stories. Makes sense, they are all in a much more developed and de-dnd-ed (that was fun to say in my head) world. Flame between Ages and Antev's antics are in the same world, different times/places but I don't want to force that down anyone's throats.
Y'all haven't read a novel of mine yet (save for you two: Woody and Grace) but this style permeates a bit through them too. When I outline, I do so in chunks. Acts should each feel good, not like a full episode, but as satisfying as such. They have got to keep you coming back to turn the page to the next chapter.
Storytellers are salespeople. The Tom Sach's quote sits as true in writing as everywhere else: "The reward for good work is more work." You write a story to be so good that it makes people wish to turn up for the next one. That one you write is to make them show up for the next. Ad infinitum until you die or retire or toss the hobby aside for another creative pursuit - where you run it all again. Even if your audience is one, you write so that you want to keep writing. Each story good enough - or bad enough - to make you write the next.
There's less pressure here. A valve untightened when you lean a bit into the episodic side of our trade. Your novel is big enough for a bit of a break and a funny diversion - a different episode in the middle. And your serialized stories don't need to always be pushing on that serial's throughline. Inversely, your episodic tales don't have to be entirely unrelated. They already have a throughline: you, the author.
Advice to self:
Television and Tabletop role playing games are written. Don't limit writing inspiration to the words that you read.
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Love ya!
Max