We're in the home stretch now in this series of articles on Virtual Groundwork. For the past five weeks I've been offering up really core ideas for how to tell a story and I've done that because I believe it's important to think about these things no matter what type of fiction you're creating. Character, setting, plot, and backstory are topics I expect to return to again and again, and I hope these initial five weeks of discussion will be a useful foundation. Next week I'm going to be offering up the first of a two original articles discussing how The Elements of Good StoryTelling can be used in RPGs and CRPGs alike, and then I'll be spending a week talking about the purpose of this column before moving on to other discussions of game design.
Few stories start at the beginning.
As discussed in the first article in this series, The Elements of Good Storytelling , most stories start somewhere in the middle of events, when things have already gotten interesting, just when a crucial turning point approaches. And this means that a whole fictional world of events took place before page one of the story. This extensive backstory crucially affects the events of the play itself, as Hamlet feels bound to revenge a murder that occurred before page one. When writing stories, you need to foster an awareness of the greater timeline, and not just the moment about which you are writing in your story. You give information through narration when you actually write a scene, such as a flashback, that presents backstory events directly, complete with actions and dialogue.