Creative Prompt: Living Story Roleplay, Part 1
EXPOSITION: Sometimes coming up with content for a full-length novel is difficult. In contrast, a short story is relatively easy to craft, for it's only comprised of one scenario, one crisis, one resolution, and sometimes only one setting and one character! Novels can involve dozens to hundreds of these, and to top it all off, each crisis must (typically) be of higher stakes than the last to feel satisfying to the readers. So how do you come up with ideas for all those little plot points?
Living Story Roleplay is one technique I use! In this post I'll be going into the first step in this brainstorming process, and also link to a current Living Story Roleplay that I'm working on for an upcoming novel.
HOW TO: Pick a favorite open-world video game, and play through it! Record every detail of your characters' journey: their thoughts and observations about the world around them, the people they meet, the things they do, the motivations they have behind taking on particular quests or tasks... and of course remember to save these writings for you'll be making further use of them in Part 2!
Note, this is typically best done with a game that's of the same genre as your intended story, and it's also best if you avoid any major storylines that comes pre-written by the game (so you don't end up copying it).
This isn't a hard rule though: you can also gain some good ideas from re-imagining major quests into something unintended by the game's makers. For example: instead of killing dragons in Skyrim to absorb their souls for power, you might instead be seeking spirits escaped from Sovngarde who (for one reason or another) are manifesting on Nirn as dragons instead of their former selves. Or instead of raiding the Icecrown Citadel to overthrow the evil Lich King, you might be playing the part of a spy or a new recruit to his army, and are alternately either assassinating the raid bosses or defeating them in a grand tournament to gain the Lich King's favor. This is the magic of roleplay: it all depends on what makes the most sense for your character!
For an example of a Living Story Roleplay I'm currently working on, see the first few chapters of "The Story of Seryth" on my blog: https://www.foxfirefiction.com/2021/04/03/the-story-of-seryth-chapters-1-5/ This one is created using World of Warcraft and will eventually be crafted into a mixed race character from Talmenor. You can see that while I might use places and partial story-arcs from Warcraft for some limited setting references, the character Seryth and his story is rapidly turning into its own thing. More on that process will appear in Part 2!
