WoW Lessons Pt. 2

"What we are is the sum of a thousand lies, what we know is hardly nothing at all..."-Rise Against, The Strength to Go On

I was thinking more about the storytelling that's being done in the World of Warcraft expansion, and I realized that there's another interesting facet to what they're doing. Basically--everyone's character is doing the same quests. On the surface, it should be very difficult for players to buy that their character is special at all, because they know that every other character is getting the exact same storyline played out for them. This may be why quests until this expansion pack were fairly bland--it's easy for you to believe that everyone has to kill x amount of wolves so Farmer Brown's cows can survive. It's more difficult to believe that the greatest villain the world has ever seen is taking a personal interest in every single adventurer that comes close to his lair.

And yet it works.

I think that's a testament to the oft-maligned imaginations of videogame players, many of whom, by the way, are adults. Somehow, we've all managed to either suspend our disbelief or construct a narrative in which our character is one of maybe a few thousand very special people, which is still pretty cool. It's a surprising phenomenon, and one I'd like to get some more information on. Maybe I'll e-mail the people over at the Daedalus Project and see if I can get them to do a survey on it.

More WoW Lessons

"She said I don't hate you boy, I just want to save you while there's still something left to save..."-Rise Against, Savior

Alright, so as you may or may not know, the expansion pack to World of Warcraft launched last Thursday. If you were wondering where I've been all week--now you know.

One of the more interesting (and enjoyable) things I've found about the new expansion is that it's much, much more story based than the last. One of the things that makes Blizzard as a company so strong is that they have some of the greatest IP (intellectual property) around. Their universes are very well-developed and full of great characters and wonderful narratives.

These have been largely absent from World of Warcraft until now. Perhaps the developers were focused on gameplay, or perhaps they just didn't know how to implement storytelling in a MMORPG, but they seem to have gotten a much better handle on it with this latest expansion (and, to be fair, with some of the final free content updates in the last expansion as well).

To be blunt, I've found that they're following some of my recently discovered keys to drawing someone into a story--they're making your character seem as if he or she is special, "chosen" somehow. Most of this is done with flavor text--the things the NPCs (non-player characters---the characters played by the game) say to you. They tell you they've heard of your exploits in Outland (the landmass you spent most of your time in during the last expansion) and have been awaiting a hero like you to help them out of a jam, or, in one case, the arch-villain of the expansion pack shows up out of nowhere and pins your character down, inspecting you to see if you're fit to serve him, then letting you go and telling his cronies that you're not ripe yet...you'll be plucked later.

It's very refreshing in an MMO, and I'm thrilled to see it for a couple of reasons: one, it means more great stories experienced by more people, which is what I'm all about, and two, maybe, just maybe, it will mean videogame companies employing more writers---and steady, paying jobs for writers are always a good thing.

Limitations of Fantasy

"We were fated to pretend..."-MGMT, Time to Pretend

Alright, so I post often about all the great things that fantasy stories are uniquely suited to do. As a writer of fantasy, I feel like it's my duty to defend my genre, especially since I've seen it slammed over and over again by more literary-minded folks.

But it's worth taking the time to recognize the limitations of the genre as well, and as I was reading The Golden Compass last week, I came across one: fantasy narratives are forced to spend a great deal of time describing the worlds they take place in.

I've been over some of the ways this particular facet of fantasy can be useful. It's great for telling stories that revolve around discovery and growth, because the most natural way of describing a world is for one or more characters to learn about it as the narrative progresses. But it has limitations as well--one of which is that there are really only so many ways to squeeze in world-building details.

Inevitably, you're going to wind up using some of the same tricks that other authors have before you. And if your reader has read enough fantasy, they'll start to recognize some of them. That's never a good thing, even if most readers will forgive you (I mean, if they've read enough to recognize the tricks, they must love the genre) and may be one reason why some people I speak to think of fantasy as full of cliches. Read the wrong three novels in a row and you may get the same trick three times in a row--an unfortunate coincidence that might turn you off of fantasy for life.

So! In recognition of this deadly danger, I intend to compile a list of different ways of revealing world-building information, as well as different twists that can be put on it. Help from the peanut gallery is encouraged.

Walking Among Giants

"For God and Country..."-The Smashing Pumpkins, For God and Country

Alright, apologies for promising to post yesterday and then failing to. In my defense, however, I didn't have any free time from 9AM until 9PM, at which point I had an hour before my next obligation and then bedtime. At any rate, here's the post I promised for yesterday:

I was acutely aware on election night of witnessing an important moment in history. There have been two other experiences in my life during which I've felt that way. The first were the Columbine shootings, which happened in a town in my county when I was in the sixth grade. The second was 9/11.

Needless to say, I felt a little more upbeat Tuesday night, so that was one key difference between the experiences, but the other was that my experience of the event was centered around two people. When I watched both McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech, I felt for the first time in my life as if I was standing in the presence of giants.

I'm not going to go into whether that was justified or not. My point is that that feeling is an important one for a writer to experience and remember, especially if he or she writes SF/F.

Not every character in a great story can be a giant, and even most giants don't start out that way. One of the viewpoints I have always found most interesting and productive in fantasy is that of the character who is not the hero--the brother of the hero, the childhood friend of the hero. Flick to Shea Ohmsford, Sam to Frodo, Mat and Perrin to Rand al'Thor.

This is because in real life there are very few heroes, very few giants. I think for most of us it's easier and more useful to imagine what we would do with ourselves in the presence of giants than what we would do if we were giants ourselves--it just seems a more realistic scenario.

Something to keep in mind as we head into the next four years--measure your reactions to life as it unfolds around you, and realize which role you're playing in the drama of life. It will give your writing the taste of reality and make it that much better.

Election Day

"Oh, why'd you have to go away from home, me love?"-Sean Kingston, Me Love

Just a reminder to go vote today. I think Election Day should be like Christmas. We should all get up and vote, then spend the rest of the day eating turkey or something and waiting for the election results to come in.

I mean, come on--as readers and writers of sci-fi/fantasy, we know ten thousand different worlds that could exist without the democratic process and personally, I wouldn't want to live in any of them.

In other news, original post coming tomorrow! Yaaay!

Oh for a School Like This One...

"I am Tarzan from jungle, you can be my friend..."-Toy Box, Tarzan and Jane

And he's stealing second!

Okay, apologies for stealing two blog posts in a row. Really, I promise to start being more creative soon. Hopefully.

But Nathan Bradsford just posted a blog post that almost made me cry with its message. In it, he lays out how he would create an MFA program. He also happens to hit just about every major problem I have with the way I've been taught Creative Writing and make me yearn for a school that actually taught how to write, instead of how to create art.

*sigh* Maybe someday. In the meantime I maintain that the best education available is through a) reading and b) working in/around publishing. The rest is talent and dedication, and you don't get either of those from a school.