Any authors ever grow bored writing their story hours?

Celtavian · Oct 13, 2003

Do any of the other writers every find themselves becoming bored while writing their story hours?

D&D is a very redundant, combat-oriented game. It's not a total surprise that this is the case, but it wasn't as noticeable to me until I started writing a story hour for a campaign. I feel like I am almost wading through battles just to get to the important parts of the story.

Have any other authors found it necessary to modify the experience system to provide a more story-like quality to their D&D games? For those who use a modified experience system has it become easier to write your story as you would like?

el-remmen · Oct 13, 2003

It is the other way around for me. While non-combat is very important to the story of my "Out of the Frying Pan" campaign - I find writing up the battles to be a whole lot of fun, but that could be because most of the battles further the story somehow - and the role-playing never stops in my game - esp. not during fights where heroic lines are uttered, foolish risks are taken and the environment of the encounter makes for unusual situations in the combat.

My second favorite is writing up the dialogue - I have one player who keeps a very good quote log and I use that to re-construct the PCs tryng to figure things out or argeu about plans or interogate NPCs (or vice-versa).

Joshua Randall · Oct 13, 2003

I find myself wanting to rush through the less interesting parts of the campaign in order to get to what I consider the good stuff. To that end I will gloss over or completely eliminate entire encounters and battles.

Unfortunately I can't really do that in the actual game on which the story is based.

Edit: how is it possible to make so many typos in a three sentence post? Oy.

drnuncheon · Oct 13, 2003

Not so much bored as blocked, really. I try to use a lot of literary tricks to keep myself interested in writing, especially when there's a lot of fighting. Some of the things I've used:

- flashbacks, or having people tell the story after the fact
- writing from the opposition's viewpoint
- skipping the battle and showing the aftermath
- cut from character to character
- trying to emulate a particular author's style
- a different style of writing (like the current segment of my Freeport story hour, in a sort of screenplay format.)

Whatever you do, don't go round-by-round and try to stay completely faithful to the actual events. You'll go nuts and your readers will get bored. Do what film directors do: focus on the moments that reinforce what you're trying to get across, gloss over the rest of them.

gfunk · Oct 13, 2003

drnuncheon said:
Not so much bored as blocked, really.

I agree with this 100%.

I don't feel motivated to write a SH unless I can do it with gusto. I want to look at the end product and be satisfied with my work. Sometimes I like to take a week off or so and think about using some of the literary devices mentioned by drnuncheon.

Kayne · Oct 13, 2003

I tend to compress combat down to detailing what the outcome was and mentioning any really notable occurences during the fights. I know that the group I play with enjoy seeing their characters name getting a mention for anything they have done that is worthy of note.

What I get disheartened about is the lack of comments from readers on our (Mine and Eccles) story Hour (Clearwater Crusaders). Kinda feels like I'm writing all of this up and nobody is reading it. I'd love some feedback.

Silver Moon · Oct 13, 2003

Nope. I've actually been keeping a written log of the games for 21+ years now, which I have always transcribed for the players. The first five years were the hardest, using a typewriter and making xeroxes rather than world processing.

My goal has always been to write down the most interesting or most comical aspects of each game, as they make for the most enjoyment when rereading. I also try to get all of the jokes stated, which makes even the most uninteresting module fun to read. My primary readers are and have always been my players, but I've also enjoyed posting them here. The only changes I've made for the online postings are to include some DM's notes for background context, and dropping references to player's actual names.

spyscribe · Oct 13, 2003

Another "B" word that means writing isn't getting done.

I find myself sometimes getting "bogged down" as I write. When it happens, it's usually due to one of three reasons:

1. Nothing is really happening in the scene. Sure, it might have been vital and exciting at the time, but in the arc of the story, it's not getting me anywhere.

2. There is so much happening in the scene that I need to break it up so that it will read coherently.

3. I'm too tired, hungry, or occupied with other work I have to do to concentrate.

None of these are really the fault of the game session I'm trying to adapt into a story hour, it's just the nature of the beast. When I first started writing up sessions, I worried a lot about combat, and it certainly has its own particular challenges to write in a way that's both exciting and coherent, but the inherent drama of what's going on is a great help.

Almost more difficult I've found are lengthy sections of investigation or negotiations with NPCs which have to reveal exposotion with more finesse than an info-dump but less detail than a transcript. That's when the literary device arsenal comes out full-force.

Oh, and to get back to the original post, I'm not the DM, so I have no idea how the experience is or is not affected.

Lazybones · Oct 14, 2003

I often get bored writing the story hour. Luckily, my job is 1000 times more boring, so usually when things get slow I pop open the story and write a few pages. It gets my mind going again, and helps me focus.

pogre · Oct 14, 2003

Celtavian said:
Have any other authors found it necessary to modify the experience system to provide a more story-like quality to their D&D games? For those who use a modified experience system has it become easier to write your story as you would like?

You know the odd thing is writing a story hour has made my players much more conscious of the story, and how an adventure will play out as a Story. They still are pretty much a low fluff, high action group. If your group enjoys combat after combat I would not change a thing.