I just finished writing the first 5 books for the Wildebyte Arcades and also the necessary revisions for most of them. This led to a sudden insight that will help me going forward, and I hope it helps you.
The Problem
I noticed that my first draft of each story was very … “same-y”. Yes, I placed the story inside a new game, with some new characters, locations and rules. But those turned out to be mostly superficial changes. At its core, I wrote the characters as if they were humans walking around a real environment.
It just wasn’t satisfying or realistic. We’re inside a game! It’s supposed to be different! Characters should be following code, the world should have weird rules, it’s the whole point behind this series in particular.
For example, one of the games in which I placed a story was an “endless jumper”. Think of Doodle Jump or Jelly Jump. You need to bounce on platforms, going higher and higher, until you die by falling off-screen. (In some of these, you need to tilt the screen to move side to side. In others you have to tap to switch direction or jump at a specific moment.)
My initial first chapter just had Wildebyte fall inside the game … and then start jumping that long distance back to the top. I was like “great, what a thematic scene for a jumper! Good start!”
I slept on it and realized my mistake the next morning. If I hadn’t told you this was set inside a video game, you probably wouldn’t have known from that first chapter. Because jumping exists in the real world. Climbing a mountain to get higher is just like the real world.
This situation kept happening with all my stories. I’d start my revisions with fresh eyes and immediately see that all my game rules and game logic were way too superficial. Remove a few paragraphs here and there, and the story could have happened in the actual real world.
The Solution
And the solution for each book? Make the core rules of the story more extreme.
Each story became much better and more unique by identifying the core rules of that game, and then pretending those were the law of the land and nothing else was possible.
An endless jumper? Well, how about we …
- Create characters who can only jump?
- And, conversely, characters who can only fall?
Now we already have tons of potential obstacles that would never occur in any other story world. (You can’t just turn off gravity in the real world, while most humans will be able to jump without needing extensive training or experience :p)
How about we start the game severely limited in our movement? Wildebyte can’t even jump yet! They have to earn that skill and can only move horizontally at the start.
How about we fill the world with buttons, and the only way to make anything happen is to jump on such a button?
As usual, limitations are more interesting than powers. Forcing yourself to write action scenes or plot threads within such extreme confines creates more creative stories.
And because these rules must be followed from start to finish, they actually matter. They aren’t superficial anymore. They are crucial to the story, because those extreme rules are the only way this world functions.
If characters can only move in one odd way, then you simply can’t write boring sentences like “they walked towards them” or “they climbed for hours to reach the next level”
If characters can only do anything by jumping on buttons, then you simply can’t write boring sentences like “they cast a spell to solve the problem” or “they yelled a command to their underlings and that was that”
Moreover, this leads to way more funny or interesting situations. Again, climbing a mountain the regular way is boring. Having to climb a mountain by playing according to a specific game’s strict rules … becomes much more interesting.
The General Lesson
Once I realized this, I added an extra step to my preparation for each Wildebyte book. (And retroactively added this to the first 5 stories while revising.)
From now on, each story has 5 “world rules”. These are the core game rules that make this game unique. The DNA of this game type, if you want.
Usually, a game can be described by only 2 or 3. For example, even a somewhat complex match-3 game like Candy Crush is defined by:
- All you can do is make two things swap places. After X turns of doing that, the game ends.
- When you create 3, 4 or 5 in a row, they are removed and score you points.
- Things fall down if there’s empty space below them.
Which also leaves me one or two rules to invent myself, according to whatever the game or story needs.
And that is all I have.
Whenever I’m about to write a scene, I check if it fits the rules. Often, it doesn’t.
I might—on auto-pilot—write that characters are walking somewhere. But they can’t! All you can do in this game is swap! This forces me to write a really unique approach to the scene in which all movement happens by swapping places, something that’s probably never been done before.
Similarly, I might write an action scene with somebody falling out of a tree. But they can’t! In this world, you only fall down if there’s empty space below you! So I need to write a more creative scene following the beating heart of this game.
When I’m done with this, all these unique rules, characters, and changes are embedded into the story. They’re not superficial anymore. They’ve changed the entire possibility space of plots that could happen.
And, more often than not, they helped me come up with way funnier scenes that truly feel like they happen inside a video game.
So that’s the general lesson I’ve learned.
- Pick a few core rules about your world, characters or story.
- Take them to an extreme, sticking to them like your life depends on it, not adding any exceptions or anything else.
- And your story will have no choice but end up something unique, with more funny, interesting or distinct content.
Will some people dismiss these stories as too wacky because of this? Maybe. But I’m more afraid of writing boring cookie-cutter stories that don’t really interest anybody, than taking ideas to their risky limits and seeing what happens.
Hopefully you can see this improvement in later Wildebyte books (coming next year) and agree that it is an improvement!
Tiamo Pastoor