Wow! As a DM myself, the connections you make to story writing help me understand what my stories can miss out on by accident. It's illuminating to read that the Deep Lore (love that name btw) is mainly used to establish themes, and I like how you show that it's a good idea to construct the factions and plot-important characters of the world around those themes.
In the novel I'm working on, I've noticed that I tend to ruminate a bit too much on names and stuff, as opposed to keeping the plot engine going, but I'm working on that by running some D&D campaigns and getting more of a feel on how to introduce randomness and character agency in my game, which doesn't tend to translate all that well into a novel (for me, at least).
Nevertheless, this is a great post, and I'm taking notes as we speak (well, I type, I guess, lol)!
There's big differences between the kind of work that's valuable for writing fiction and prepping for RPGs, but there's also huge overlaps in more general storytelling skills. One thing that I find really valuable about DMing is the immediate feedback – if I've drifted away from what's interesting about my wrote prose, I won't know that until I'm done and I share my work with a beta reader. If I drift away from what's interesting at the table, I find out right away.
This is going to be super helpful for a writing/RP issue I've been struggling with for a while. I have a co-writing experiment going with a friend, and I've found myself providing a lot of the plot impetus, operating kind of like a DM. But I've been having the hardest time getting her to engage with the plot hooks that I know are waiting out there. Even getting her characters to the right locations to meet relevant NPC's is difficult. The way you've broken down degrees of narrative, from the big picture lore, to the immediate concerns of the people living in that land, is an approach that I think I need to try in order to get my focus (and the interesting bits of plot!) in the right place.
That's a dangerous question, you won't be able to get me to shut up.
I worked with a coauthor for ten years and we wrote novels in the same worlds, doing the worldbuilding together and roleplaying conversations between our characters that eventually made it into the books. Then I lost him, and now I have these half-finished manuscripts sitting under the bed, and I'm trying to prep them for self-publication. There's a trilogy where we wrote the first book together, I wrote the second, and he was to write the third, but he didn't finish it before he died. Now I'm trying to get it done, but struggling a lot with missing his half of the inspiration.
So I started a roleplaying project with a friend of mine who's also a writer, bringing together her world and ours (it's a fantasy multiverse setup) in the hopes of breathing life back into the story. But I'm still feeling out the territory in writing with her, because it's very different. Naturally of course, since she's a different person with different tastes and drives behind her characters. I'm trying to get her characters involved in the rebellion that's happening on my world, but they're very wary. Somehow I need to get them hooked - or else bring the conflict to her world, which may cross some boundaries she wouldn't want crossed since it's her setting. There's lots to figure out.
Absolutely do not shut up, this is a fantastically interesting project!
That is such a tremendous amount of creative space to have shared with someone else; it's really impressive and really touching. I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm really moved by the ways that you've found to maintain and carry forward what the two of you did together.
I also think that going back to a format of collaborative work sounds like a really good way to bring it back to life. It sounds super interesting to go through redefining an existing work for new collaborators.
I definitely think that the things we talked about here will be helpful in hooking her characters! To be completely honest, a lot of my structured thought on this came from a couple years ago when I had to stop and ask myself "why do none of my player characters ever end up caring about these rebellions I try to run?"
What is y'all's actual, like, writing process/structure/format like?
We meet every Saturday evening on a chat program, since we live across the world from each other. We talk about where we're going to go that day, and then whichever of us is more into it, or whoever is handling the setting (her world or ours) writes a paragraph to set the scene. Then the other person answers by writing a character saying and doing something, and it goes on. We write for a few hours and then I copy the results unedited into a Google doc.
I don't know yet if it's going to turn into a book of its own, or if it's going to inform the background of the other books. She has a book she wants to do as well, for a series of her own, and she's using it to get to know/develop an important character in that story. I'm hoping to get more insight into the rebels, because the ending of book two in the trilogy is unfinished and needs more about what they're doing and why.
If we did turn the google doc into a book, I'd have to negotiate with her how we were going to edit. We'd have to tease a narrative structure and character arcs out of the mostly unformed exploration we've done so far. (I love doing that kind of work!) Once we'd grabbed and ordered the specific scenes we wanted, then one of us could do a prose pass on those bits from the Google doc to smooth them out. That would be for POV and flow as well as basic grammar stuff since we're not totally formal with the prose in our chats. After that it could be edited like any other novel.
Really good stuff. As a (very friendly) suggestion, some of these longer articles might get even more engagement broken up into multiple sections, and you get more bang for your buck as the writer too!
Either way I enjoyed it and that first photo of the three ring binder immediately made me want a cup of tea, a rainy day and nothing to do but build worlds!!!
I think around 1500 words is the strongest length re Substack analytics. Seems to be a sweet spot. But many will read longer (like me or I’d not have commented at the end haha) but attention span is the great resource now!
Having such a straight-up target number is honestly so helpful.
I have this instinct my work has been most *valuable* when an article is a very complete thought, but I'm sort of realizing that they're only valuable when they actually get read.
Wow! As a DM myself, the connections you make to story writing help me understand what my stories can miss out on by accident. It's illuminating to read that the Deep Lore (love that name btw) is mainly used to establish themes, and I like how you show that it's a good idea to construct the factions and plot-important characters of the world around those themes.
In the novel I'm working on, I've noticed that I tend to ruminate a bit too much on names and stuff, as opposed to keeping the plot engine going, but I'm working on that by running some D&D campaigns and getting more of a feel on how to introduce randomness and character agency in my game, which doesn't tend to translate all that well into a novel (for me, at least).
Nevertheless, this is a great post, and I'm taking notes as we speak (well, I type, I guess, lol)!
I'm super glad you found this helpful!
There's big differences between the kind of work that's valuable for writing fiction and prepping for RPGs, but there's also huge overlaps in more general storytelling skills. One thing that I find really valuable about DMing is the immediate feedback – if I've drifted away from what's interesting about my wrote prose, I won't know that until I'm done and I share my work with a beta reader. If I drift away from what's interesting at the table, I find out right away.
This is going to be super helpful for a writing/RP issue I've been struggling with for a while. I have a co-writing experiment going with a friend, and I've found myself providing a lot of the plot impetus, operating kind of like a DM. But I've been having the hardest time getting her to engage with the plot hooks that I know are waiting out there. Even getting her characters to the right locations to meet relevant NPC's is difficult. The way you've broken down degrees of narrative, from the big picture lore, to the immediate concerns of the people living in that land, is an approach that I think I need to try in order to get my focus (and the interesting bits of plot!) in the right place.
That's awesome! I'm so glad this was helpful :)
I'm super curious about this co-writing project. Do you feel like talking more about it?
That's a dangerous question, you won't be able to get me to shut up.
I worked with a coauthor for ten years and we wrote novels in the same worlds, doing the worldbuilding together and roleplaying conversations between our characters that eventually made it into the books. Then I lost him, and now I have these half-finished manuscripts sitting under the bed, and I'm trying to prep them for self-publication. There's a trilogy where we wrote the first book together, I wrote the second, and he was to write the third, but he didn't finish it before he died. Now I'm trying to get it done, but struggling a lot with missing his half of the inspiration.
So I started a roleplaying project with a friend of mine who's also a writer, bringing together her world and ours (it's a fantasy multiverse setup) in the hopes of breathing life back into the story. But I'm still feeling out the territory in writing with her, because it's very different. Naturally of course, since she's a different person with different tastes and drives behind her characters. I'm trying to get her characters involved in the rebellion that's happening on my world, but they're very wary. Somehow I need to get them hooked - or else bring the conflict to her world, which may cross some boundaries she wouldn't want crossed since it's her setting. There's lots to figure out.
Absolutely do not shut up, this is a fantastically interesting project!
That is such a tremendous amount of creative space to have shared with someone else; it's really impressive and really touching. I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm really moved by the ways that you've found to maintain and carry forward what the two of you did together.
I also think that going back to a format of collaborative work sounds like a really good way to bring it back to life. It sounds super interesting to go through redefining an existing work for new collaborators.
I definitely think that the things we talked about here will be helpful in hooking her characters! To be completely honest, a lot of my structured thought on this came from a couple years ago when I had to stop and ask myself "why do none of my player characters ever end up caring about these rebellions I try to run?"
What is y'all's actual, like, writing process/structure/format like?
We meet every Saturday evening on a chat program, since we live across the world from each other. We talk about where we're going to go that day, and then whichever of us is more into it, or whoever is handling the setting (her world or ours) writes a paragraph to set the scene. Then the other person answers by writing a character saying and doing something, and it goes on. We write for a few hours and then I copy the results unedited into a Google doc.
I don't know yet if it's going to turn into a book of its own, or if it's going to inform the background of the other books. She has a book she wants to do as well, for a series of her own, and she's using it to get to know/develop an important character in that story. I'm hoping to get more insight into the rebels, because the ending of book two in the trilogy is unfinished and needs more about what they're doing and why.
If we did turn the google doc into a book, I'd have to negotiate with her how we were going to edit. We'd have to tease a narrative structure and character arcs out of the mostly unformed exploration we've done so far. (I love doing that kind of work!) Once we'd grabbed and ordered the specific scenes we wanted, then one of us could do a prose pass on those bits from the Google doc to smooth them out. That would be for POV and flow as well as basic grammar stuff since we're not totally formal with the prose in our chats. After that it could be edited like any other novel.
Really good stuff. As a (very friendly) suggestion, some of these longer articles might get even more engagement broken up into multiple sections, and you get more bang for your buck as the writer too!
Either way I enjoyed it and that first photo of the three ring binder immediately made me want a cup of tea, a rainy day and nothing to do but build worlds!!!
Thank you! That's a super good point. Do you keep a particular target length for your single articles, or is it more of an acquired sense?
I feel exactly the same way with the binder :) I want to disappear into the woods and not come out until every hex on the map is populated .
I think around 1500 words is the strongest length re Substack analytics. Seems to be a sweet spot. But many will read longer (like me or I’d not have commented at the end haha) but attention span is the great resource now!
Having such a straight-up target number is honestly so helpful.
I have this instinct my work has been most *valuable* when an article is a very complete thought, but I'm sort of realizing that they're only valuable when they actually get read.
Haha yes I know that feeling.
Great post. Lots of good information to use. Thank you.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your interest :)