Unfortunately I’m on site at the moment and
cannot play out the next lot of events on Day 5 of the All Things Zombie campaign
so I thought I’d do something a bit different.
Recently I started thinking about how to improve
my writing style, so I read a couple of books on how to write better stories
and novels. This is the first of a two part summary on what I’ve learned so far.
One of those books has a section on the
difference between writing a story and writing a report and that got me thinking.
My All Things Zombie Day 2 journal was written over four sessions and during
those sessions I changed the way it was written quite a lot. As a result, it
suffered from being disjointed and inconsistent. I know now if I am going to
improve my future All Things Zombie journal entries I need to put more thought
into the way I’m going to write them.
The Pathfinder journals I’d previously
written are half way between a story and a report. The battles themselves are
documented in a matter of fact way, technical and tactical, very report like.
The journal entries between the battle reports are more like a story. I’m happy
with they way they turned out as I think that format works quite well for a
D&D style campaign journal.
But for a horror RPG, which is more about
survival than heroics, I believe a journal with more emphasis on story and
feelings rather than a report of the facts, will be more atmospheric and tense,
more in line with the genre.
That got me to thinking about perspective.
If I am going to improve the form of my journals, the place to start is to pick
a perspective and try to stick to it. There are two main types of perspective,
first and third.
First Person Perspective. Written directly from the perspective
of the main character of the story. It uses the “I” narrator. For example, “I
saw this”, “I did that”. Only what the main character sees or does is reported.
Third Person Perspective. Written from the perspective
that the writer can go anywhere and can report anything. It uses the “he/she/it”
narrator. The writer can get inside the head of those in the story and describe
how they are feeling as well as what they are seeing and doing. For example, “She
saw that”, “He feels that”. There are three main sub-categories of third person
perspective:
·
Omniscient Third Person
Perspective: The
writer may go anywhere and get into the head of any character. This is the most
god like of all the third person perspective. The writer knows everything.
·
Limited Third Person
Perspective.
The writer may still go anywhere but now may enter the head of a limited number
of characters. This style has retained most of the flexibility of the omniscient
style but this style provides for greater focus. The story will be concentrated
on a relatively small number of characters and their endeavours.
·
Sole Third Person Perspective. The writer may still go
anywhere but is restrained to getting into the head of only one character. This
works well where the story is predominantly focused on one character or where the
characters in the story tend to stay together.
First person perspective feels too
restrictive for my All Things Zombie campaign. I want to be able to describe events
outside of the direct visibility of the main character and what to write about
what the main character is feeling. If I used this perspective, the story will
end up being very one dimensional and all too focused on the main character. I
want something a little broader, with more flexibility and with the ability to describe
the feelings of the main character as well as what he and others see and do.
The campaign is very personal with many of
the characters being people I know. Amanda, my missus, Dave, her brother,
Steve, a friend and Officer Girle, who was unfortunately killed on Day 2, are
all real people. I don’t think I can effectively write what they are feeling on
their behalf. I also think that I need to keep the story relatively fast paced
and dealing with the feelings of multiple characters will slow the story down.
I’ve decided to use Sole Third Person Perspective. This will enable me to directly
write about the feelings of the main protagonist, ie me, without trying to directly
write about what others are thinking. I can still ‘show’ what they are thinking
but I’ll do that through the characters actions rather than through their thoughts.
In the next summary, I’ll conclude with
some of the techniques that I’ve read about and how I’m going to apply them.
DEW
