One BIG secret of storytelling is to actually have a story to tell. It’s not that you can’t fabricate something without direct experience — you can make it up.
But what if you could make it up and at the same time draw from direct experience?
That’s the idea behind the storytelling training device I call Direct Experience. What you do is, you go into a Diablo 2 Resurrected game and you tell what happened.
This can manifest on several different levels.
The “Duh” Effect:
This is a player who has barely scratched the surface of the game and has not yet taken the viewpoint of a writer describing an event.
I went into a game and they attacked me and I died several times just trying to get back my body and finally I gave up and went into a new game where I got my body back, and then I left the game I guess because it kept saying there was a problem with the internet. That’s all that happened.
The “Slightly Experienced Writer” Effect:
At this point, the game is observed and some details of gameplay are preserved in the storyline, but the actual experience of “being there” has not, as yet, become active.
I pushed the “Play” button and entered into the world of Diablo, a lush and green world punctuated by stabs of granite and impassable stone wall barriers.
Fear is everywhere, and there are spiky creatures that rush toward me, spitting sharp quills that take a chunk of life out of me every time I’m hit with one.
Suddenly from out of the rock grouping there came a smashing crowd of spear-thrusting maidens, cold and implacable, formidable and terrifying.
The “Got It” Writer:
Now the writer is inside the game, seeing the action and feeling the wind and rain, smelling the florals and greens, and slogging through, as you say, “the mud”.
The morning wind was cold and bitter, and the wind came howling through the trees, drowning out the barks, whines and whimpers of my four wolves, ready to take on the world’s worst and darkest enemies.
The sun slashed through the cluster of trees to the North, and that’s where I headed, with my ravens flying overhead and my vine crawling and burrowing under the rough earth.
The crackle of fire gave me the clue I needed to avoid the usual ambush, and we quickly pacified the area. I took the opportunity to drink two pots, a life and a mana.
The life pot gave me quick and fresh energy, and I leapt onto my feet, ready to go on to our final destination for the day — Anduriel’s Lair, deep beneath the monastery, in the dark and hidden passages of stone and clay in which unspeakable things crawled and sniffed and attacked anything that moved, anything that could be eaten.
Darkness approached, and I hurried my pets toward the monastery gate before we lost the advantage of the quickly fading bright vespers light, the onset of the darkness lit only by the stars in the dome above, the abode of horrible flying creatures that darted and ducked and swept past us to their targets, the skellies and zons. Something evil jumped out of the trees, and I finished it off with a blast of my arctic cold, a spell I always keep at the ready.
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So prepare yourself for a treat this weekend, a writer’s paradise, and if you miss it, be sure to watch it in archives.
I plan to give you a quest to follow. You’ll return from the visited world and write down your experiences, but HOW you write them down will make all the difference between success and failure, and failure is not an option.
You WILL learn to write, and you’ll do it like a snap, with my WRITER’S BLOCK BUSTER, which uses direct experience and carefully crafted author-reporting.
It’s not just writing down what happened.
What about how you FEEL about what’s happening or what happened, depending on whether you tell the story in the present or past — both of them work, but you can’t jump around, you need to make a choice here, just as you did when you decided between first person and third person, meaning “I” as opposed to “he” or “she” or “undecided”, and there are many more viewpoints besides first and third person, from which to share a story.
Then There’s Publication:
Sure, what’s the use of telling a story to nobody? So you’re expected to publish the story online somewhere so we can all get together and critique your work.
What, you think critique doesn’t help?
Clearly you’ve never attended an art school, writer’s school or gym class, if you don’t clearly understand that the only way you get better at something is by hearing how you screwed it up and could have done it better.
Actually, that’s part of your training to let go of your ego. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Actually, if you’re that delicate, you’d be well-advised to stay out of the house entirely.
If you’re ready for the ego-test of a lifetime, get to the workshop today, 6:30 am Pacific Time!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby