The Write Way and the Wrong Way

A couple of terms and clarifications. First, I'm speaking here of original fiction; tie-in fiction, when based on RPGs, can violate some of these rules. I stress some.

Second, in Dungeons & Dragons, an ongoing series of games/adventures, in which the same group of characters progresses through their stories, explores the world, and gains levels of experience is called a "campaign." Some other games use different terms--in the World of Darkness games, it's called a "chronicle," for instance--but since D&D is still my primary example, and since I need a specific term, I'll be going with campaign. Just so you know.

I'm certain that people can point to successful books that violated some of these prohibitions. Like most "rules" of writing, they're more guidelines; almost anything in writing is forgivable if done well enough. Still, I'd say they hold true about 99.999E percent of the time. And they're absolutely true for beginning writers. You have to master the rules before you can know when to break 'em; trust me, I learned that the hard way.

The GoldenPlatinum Rule

Nobody wants to read your campaign. Nobody. No matter who you are. It will not work as a novel.

"But Ari, didn't you just say that lots of books were based on the author's gaming experiences? Didn't you say that one of your own upcoming books was based on your gaming?"

Well, yes. Based on. Not translated verbatim. No matter how cool the plot and characters might be in a given campaign, they will not translate directly to fiction. You can absolutely base a novel around them, but again, the key word here is base. You're not novelizing the campaign. You're writing a novel based on the same ideas that inspired the campaign. They'll share some characters, some scenes, maybe even some specific lines, but they ultimately must be two different interpretations of the same idea, not one as a direct copy of the other.

Think of it as basing a novel on a rough movie script, rather than on the finished movie (after it's gone through a dozen rewrites and alterations by the director).

Random Chance

D&D games, even those that are tightly scripted to the point of "railroading" (I defined that in my previous column), contain elements of chance. Characters can die due to an unfortunate whim of the dice. Some combat encounters occur, not because of the plot, but because either a random table said so, or because the DM (the guy running the game) just decided that, hey, this would be a cool place for a fight.

But games don't have to follow the rules of drama and storytelling; books, for the most part, do. Not because any higher authority demands it, but because the story itself is less satisfying if they don't. It can be tempting to throw in random action scenes, especially when writing a story based on your gaming experiences. Don't. Even in the most action-packed sword & sorcery tale, conflict must have a purpose. Maybe it advances the plot. Maybe it showcases something about a hero or villain. Maybe it sets the mood. But it must accomplish something other than just being there.

And of course, in a game, if a character dies at an inopportune time, the player creates a new one to take his place. The game might lose a subplot or two, but it overall proceeds apace. I don't think I need to tell you that random shuffling of characters in written fiction, without strong purpose, is a Bad ThingTM. Again, whether it's for plot advancement, emotional resonance, or even pure shock value, killing a character in a book must be done with planning and forethought--and it certainly cannot result in another character just effortlessly sliding in to take the dead one's place.

(I realize that some of this may seem blatantly obvious, but it's important enough that I think it's worth addressing. So if it's something you already knew, well, consider this free emotional validation.)

And speaking of characters...

Character "Design"

I think almost everyone into fantasy has heard at least the basic character clichés of D&D. A group of random strangers, of various races, meet up in a tavern and decide to go adventuring.

Yeah. Don't do this. (Heck, don't do this often in the game, let alone in your fiction.)

In gaming, a given character only has to satisfy one person: the gamer playing that character. Oh, the DM might have some rules or suggestions--no elves in this campaign--but for the most part, it's up to the player.

Characters in written fiction have to satisfy the reader, and they have to satisfy the needs of the plot and setting. In a game, there's no reason not to have an adventuring party with two elves, a dwarf, a half-lizard, and one lonely human.

Fantasy novels can certainly have non-human characters as well, but there should be a reason for it. Don't include an elf and a dwarf just because your campaign had them (or because Tolkien included them). They need to have a reason to be there. At the very least, they need to act non-human. If your elf character acts just like your human characters, except for having pointy ears and a height advantage, there's literally no point in him being an elf. (And indeed, at least some of the readers are going to pick up on that.)

If there's no plot-related reason for a character to be non-human, and he doesn't act any differently, think long and hard about whether he needs to be non-human.

(Of course, if there are no humans in your story, that changes thing. But even then, the rule applies; just replace "human" in the above with whatever the dominant race happens to be.)

The same applies, albeit to a lesser extent, to the skill sets of your characters, if you're dealing with multiple protagonists. In D&D and similar games, there's definite encouragement to build parties with characters of complementary abilities. "Oh, we've already got a fighter, a wizard, a rogue, and a paladin, but we could use a cleric." It's an artificial balance that can make for better gameplay, but it doesn't serve the characters in a written story. In fact, it's artificial enough that it tends to read as forced.

Now, the tricky part is, even in writing, you do want your characters to serve different purposes--not just dramatically but, yes, in terms of their abilities as well. So you do have to do some of that balancing act. But with fiction, you want to consider personality and place in the plot first, and other abilities second. And it's fine to have more overlap, since your characters don't have players behind them yearning for their turn in the spotlight. Ultimately, any such "balance" needs to develop naturally, based on the character concepts and the needs of the plot, not forced to fit some arbitrary checklist.

And yes, what this means is that there's some learned instinct, some trial and error, involved. Ultimately, what it boils down to is this: If, when describing your protagonists to someone else, they sound like a D&D adventuring party, something probably needs to change.

Character Purpose

In a D&D adventure, the characters' goals might not be any more complex than "Clear this underground catacomb of monsters and come back with their treasure." That is not a story plot--not even a short story, let alone a novel. It can be a hook for getting your character involved in a story--simple greed worked for Conan often enough--but there has to be more to it than that--again, see Conan. You cannot, cannot, cannot just describe a delve into some fearsome dungeon and a sequence of combats therein, and expect to wind up with a story.

Your book must either have a solid plot, or your characters must have specific goals--or both, of course--and most of the conflicts or events that occur need to forward said plot or goals (or at least provide drama by thwarting said goals). Combat for the sake of combat, dungeon-delving as lifestyle, simply aren't sufficient on their own.

In D&D, it's enough (at least in some groups) to know that Bob is a low-powered wizard who's taken up adventuring to get rich and rid the community of monsters. In a book, that ain't gonna cut it.

Character Focus

In an RPG, unless the group has made some rather unusual agreements in advance, it's incumbent on the DM to make sure that every character is equally important, and gets an equal amount of "screen time." This is, after all, a game played among friends; everyone deserves an equal chance to shine.

In fiction, you must focus more than that. I'm not saying you can't have a pretty broad cast of main characters--I think Tolkien proved that--but you, as a writer, need to focus on the ones most important to the book in question. Every member of the Fellowship was vital to the story, but I think everyone would agree that Frodo was more of a "main character" than Legolas. Chewbacca is less "main" than Han or Leia, who are both arguably less "main" than Luke.

Failure to focus makes a story disjointed. It can make it harder on the reader to follow, and harder on the writer to actually tell a solid tale.

Description and Pacing

My comment above about action scenes serving a purpose? I'm swinging back to that for a minute, from a different angle. (Yay! I'm a comet!) In D&D and other RPGs, it's possible for a given game session to consist of multiple combat encounters in swift succession. Do not try to emulate this when writing fiction based on your gaming. Not only can that sort of action grow boring when written by even the greatest author, but it doesn't serve you well in terms of plotting and pacing. Again, every fight (or other action sequence) in a novel should serve some storytelling purpose; it cannot be there "just because." And frankly, in almost any dramatic medium, a big battle with real danger is more interesting than a bunch of tiny fights hazardous only due to attrition.

These are also issues in the midst of any specific action scene. In D&D and similar games, combat is broken up into "rounds," wherein each combatant goes once. Real battle is, of course, far more chaotic and haphazard than that, and that's something you have to convey. If your fight scenes are written as an orderly exchange of blows, it's going to read as woefully artificial. Similarly, just because the game covers every individual strike/dodge/parry/riposte/sidestep/etc. doesn't mean your descriptions need to. In fact, they shouldn't. Describe the particularly important or exciting maneuvers, and use more general descriptors for everything else. It can be tempting to want to cover every single action--I've fallen into that trap myself--but you need to avoid it. Too much focus on the details renders even the most exciting scene into an incomprehensible mess, a bore, or both.

And speaking of description... Do not use anything in your writing that draws specifically on game terms or tropes. I don't just mean avoid specific terms, I mean don't describe the combat exactly as it occurred in-game. In D&D, characters have a specific set of powers--a selection of spells, for instance, or combat maneuvers--and they can use each one a set number of times. If you try to adhere strictly to those rules, it becomes obvious very quickly--and also obviously artificial. Have your characters react based on the opportunities their enemies grant them, and on the general level of skill or proficiency you've established for them, not on any sort of "rules structure" where they can only cast a given spell X times per day. (But see below.)

Also, just because your character in D&D can take a dozen swords to the chest without slowing down, or having any lasting repercussions, doesn't mean that it's a good idea to write characters quite like that. In fiction, wounds should be, well, woundy, not just an excuse to tick off hit points.

Other Tropes

Finally, there are a lot of tropes that, though not necessarily introduced by D&D and other RPGs, has certainly been popularized by them. There's nothing wrong with including those, but give it some real thought before you do so.

Pantheons: Not every fantasy world has to be polytheistic. There are plenty of other religious models to consider.

Magic items: D&D includes a huge quantity of magic items, from enchanted swords to crystal balls to portable holes. These are, of course, quite common in fantasy--I used them myself in The Conqueror's Shadow--but think long and hard before just throwing them in there because you think they're expected. Use them because they fit the story (they serve a definite purpose in The Conqueror's Shadow, for instance)--and never let the items surpass the characters in importance. Also, figure out what sort of impact they're going to have. In D&D, they're fairly common, but what would that do to a culture? Fiction requires much more sense of consequence than the average campaign.

Other races: I talked above about when and when not to use non-human characters, but do you need those races at all? Does the presence of elves actually make your setting better? Do you need to have orcs and goblins and kobolds, or are the villains okay with just one? Again, I'm not saying not to use these races; just be sure you have reasons beyond "Well, they were in the game." It could be plot-related, it could be so you can explore different "evil cultures," but it must be something.

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And again, I've gone on much longer than I expected, so I'll wrap it up for now. I think, next week, if I may ask your indulgence, I'm going to get away from analysis and advice both, and go a little bit into anecdote territory.