Character Development & Storytelling for Games

Description

This is a book of ideas and of choices. Knowing which choices to make is not teachable. It's part of that creative instinct we call talent whose secret voice guides us every time we sit down at the keyboard. All stories are not identical. They are shaped by all those unique facets of the human beings who write them. All any writer can do when he wants to share his knowledge with others is be as open and giving as possible; and hope others can learn from that. You hold in your hands most of what I know about writing for games and much of what I believe and practice no matter what kind of writing I'm doing. It is meant to inform, to instruct, and maybe even inspire. It is as much about game design as it is writing for games. The two are virtually inseparable. The book itself has been designed as a quest. We are all of us on a journey toward a destination for which there is no single road. --Lee Sheldon, Author

CONTENTS:

Introduction: The Prehistoric Campfire
Part 1: The Audience Remains the Same
1. Jung's Universal Consciousness
2. Campbell's The Hero's Journey
Part 2: The Roots of Storytelling
3. Elements of Dramatic Writing
4. Aristotle and Those Other Greeks
5. Beginnings of Modular Storytelling
6. Canterbury Tales
7. Don Quixote de la Mancha
Part 3: The Modern Novel
8. Charles Dickens and Publishing in Parts
Part 4: The Silver Screen
9. Elements of Film Language
10. From The Great Train Robbery to Birth of a Nation
11. Saturday Morning at the Movies (Movie Serials)
Part 5: The Small Screen
12. Daytime Soap Operas
13. Episodic Television
Part 6: The Roots of Gameplay
14. Why Make Games?
15. Why Tell Stories?
16. Elements of Game Language
17. Adventure Games
18. Roleplaying in the Kitchen
Part 7: Respecting Characters
19. Non-Player Characters
20. Major Characters (Villains, Sidekicks, etc.)
21. Extras
22. Character Arcs
23. Revealing Character through Action
24. First-Person vs. Third Person
25. Dialogue
26. Memory
27. Entrances and Exits
Part 8: Storytelling in Games
28. Willing Suspension of Disbelief
29. The Fourth Wall
30. Emotion (Empathy, humor, tears)
31. Consistency of the World
32. Finding a Style that Fits
33. Original Material
34. Adaptations from other Media
35. Arcs
36. Reversals
37. Rewards
38. The Story Up till Now
39. Naturalism
40. Verisimilitude
41. Scope and Scale
Afterword: When Craft Becomes Art