I’m thrilled you stopped by.

You know, what I find really funny is that good writing is exactly the same as good game design whether your doing it professionally or for your table.

That said, the real trick with recycling a part of your work, either a character, storyline, scene or event, is that whatever audience your writing for can’t recognize it as a repeat. If it’s at the gaming table that can mean being derivative without looking derivative, or it can mean stealing jewels from earlier games that weren’t explored to your liking. (Man, that character the players talked too had a much deeper and more rich background than they ever discovered. I gotta use that shit again elsewhere.) Actually, I could probably write a whole post just on the subject of recycling without getting caught. Hmmm….

Wanted to say that as a game master (a lot of which is like writing, right?) this is an issue I used to struggle with ALL the time. Not only doing stuff I’ve done before but, God Forbid, doing stuff that someone ELSE has done before. It took me a while to realize it, but the final conclusion I came to is that I am not some God among men. Everything that has ever been written has already been done in some form or another. Every character has been done, every plot has been written, every setting has been used. Some moreso than others granted, but I will never write anything that will even remotely be able to be called original, that’s not a hacked up version of the works of ten other authors (who have probably done it better). So if I’m doomed to copy someone, why NOT copy myself? Why worry about who has written before us at all? If we want to write about two star-crossed lovers from feuding families, or re-write the story we wrote last week with a new name and face, why the hell not? It’s not like it’s any less original than anything else we could ever write. All we can do is do the best we can with the tools we have, and if someone enjoys it, it doesn’t make a difference how many thousands of times it’s been done before.

I think sometimes you just come up with a good idea for a story, an idea so great that you’ve already had it once before.

I like the idea of taking characters on practice runs. Some people that I thought would be fascinating turn out to be rather dull once you actually start to put them through their paces.

I’ll tell you a secret. Sometimes I take characters out on practice runs. I take them out on a date or drop them into a nonsensical fight or put them on the bus going somewhere. Stuff that’ll never help the story they’re going to be in directly but it helps me.

I have a bunch of the Adventures of Marlowe, I daresay that’s the voice I hear when I read. That voice probably has something to do with the crush.

That’s my $0.02 anyway.

Outline actually gives you practice without having to, y’know, do the whole damn thing over and over again.

– c.

Do you have any of the old radio shows?