Storytelling Tips — Creating the Scene: Keeping to what’s important

While there are several smooth areas inside the storytelling system, which bypass much of the mechanical gears and wheel turning lurches of the D20 system, both systems can benefit from some of the basic guidelines found in short-story and novel writing.

I was just reading the Geist – Sin Eater book this morning, going over some of the sections and working out some rough ideas I have for a couple of source books, and came across the Running With the Sight sidebar on p. 174. where they warn about involving your players in more detail than they need to know, or that is important to the game itself.

The writers of the sidebar brings up a good comparison, in that we are always “aware” of much more information than we need to know. I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now, which is packed with people, while huddled in the corner, lap-top on my knees, coffee precariously balanced on a small stack of notebooks, I am hearing at least four different languages, and a visually assaulted with a storm of movement and colors around me. Yet, with all of this turmoil and distractive sounds, I’m writing this article, and really not paying much attention to any of the various details. The cafe and its patrons, and consumptions, are background noise, and really do not affect me at all, unless I choose to shift my attention.

This is the human experience. Our minds, by the time we are a year-old, have learned to tune-out, ignore or place in the background most of the events assaulting our senses. On another level, however, we are also aware of those areas we are tunning out — for example, if someone came running in right now saying there was a fire in the building, or a man pulled a gun and was attempting to rob the cafe, I’m very sure these events would cut through my normal filters and interrupt my focused attention on this article.

A scanning of the room tells me where walls are, if there are steps, what signs might be on the wall, threats if any, possible threats if any, interesting women, if any… the order of importance is worked out by the individual, but you get my point.

The real point is, that this type of filtering and, observance by hierarchy of importance, is the normal human experience. Which also means that your players will be pulled into a storyline much more effectively by allowing most of the details in the room to slide by, or gloss over them with only the vaguest of description, while focusing on an ‘order of importance’ narrative which holds to the storytelling. Not only is this the best way of writing a novel, a short-story, or storytelling — it is the expected and most natural way for the human mind to engage itself to a storyline.

If you don’t believe me, start telling a story with excruciating detail to one of your players and watch as his eyes roll into the back of his head, as he struggles with consciousness — or simply watch a congressional hearing on C-SPAN.