5 Tips on Writing: With CJ O'Heany
Hi! Thanks for stopping by! My name is CJ O’Heany, and I’m a Canadian Game & Narrative designer currently working as the lead game designer for the House of Titans NFT Project on the Cardano blockchain.
I have been writing stories ever since I was young. I have been the ‘Forever-Dungeon-Master’ for various TTRPG groups since I was in high-school and have spearheaded many game projects’ narratives. Additionally, I produce long-form video essays on my YouTube channel discussing my thoughts on design topics for many popular games. If you’re at all interested, check me out: Here
I am a big advocate of games as the ultimate form of storytelling, and I think I have some interesting thoughts on the process! So, thank you again for reading! I hope my answers give you something to ponder!
Hooking Your Audience
The most important part of a hook is not the hook itself, it’s the bait you put on it. If a hook refers to the inciting plot event that kicks off the story, the bait is all the foundation that makes that inciting event feel significant.
The early minutes of a story have a lot of heavy lifting to do. They need to introduce the characters, world, setting, goals, relationships, & conflict, all in a relatively short amount of time. These aspects of the plot are the bait that makes the hook really sink in.
Your bait does not need to be representative of the quote-unquote ‘truths of the world’. They just need to be enough of a foundation for the reader to ground themselves & the characters they will be following. Too many stories just front-load intrapersonal elements of the plot early on and entirely neglect the setting they exist within.
Ideally, your bait should have a unique spin on one of these foundational elements. What makes your setting unique? What makes your characters the right solution to the problem at hand? These are the types of questions to ask yourself when developing this bait. The hook thereafter should be the incident that forces the characters to go out and solve those problems by confronting the challenges in the setting or between each other.
Mastering Plot Development
Simplicity is not a bad thing. I find a lot of stories try their best to add multiple factions, subterfuge, and machinations without building the groundwork for me to even care or know why these revelations should be so important.
Sometimes a reader, viewer, or player just wants the plot that was marketed towards them. Haphazardly tossing half-baked obstacles in the way of the plot leads to derailment from the goal at hand. If you are building towards some high-level revelation that entirely recontextualizes all prior events, make sure that the groundwork for such an event is built. There needs to be room for adequate character building throughout the newly introduced plot elements. This context should also not bring into question the motives or behaviors of affected characters in prior scenes.
When adding these extra layers of plot complexity, it’s good to be simple and up front about it. Don’t shy away from on-the-nose naming conventions, or relatively explicit tropes to get the point across. Furthermore, make sure to base this revelation from the point of view of the characters. This new addition should be something the characters did not know, or chose not to believe. Ideally, something the reader wouldn’t have expected either.
In short: Make your plot structure simple. If you’re adding complexity, do that from the planning stage, and simplify where you can. Be sparing with details, and make sure the information you do share is in the context of the characters receiving that information.
Effective World-Building Strategies
An often neglected part of world-building is the infrastructure of a setting. If your world even remotely resembles earth; trade & commerce are likely essential components to your new society. You can ask yourself questions like: ‘What is this nation’s main export product?’, ‘How does this nation grow & gather food?’, ‘What is the governance of the nation?’, ‘Where does the nation get clean water?’, and ‘Does this city have a sewage system’?
Despite the somewhat unsavory concepts to tackle, they can single-handedly be the conduit for entirely new and multifaceted plot lines. Something simple like a water supply system can be built into a story about corrupt oligarchs poisoning the populous to quell an uprising stemming from the lower-classed society.
Remember, the setting is a character unto itself. It deserves development and should be affected by the events of the plot along with the characters.
Techniques for Character Development
You never know what a person’s true colors are until they are put under immense pressure. You need to know your characters inside and out to build a satisfying character arc. People can say and do things entirely out of their nature, but the real purity test is to challenge them with choices that have stakes and consequences.
These pressures should be tailored to the character you’re working to develop. Each character arc should follow a plot structure focused on a specific trait you wish to challenge. Establish the character as they are. Make them question their own beliefs in increasingly difficult situations. Then culminate this growth by having them confront the trait in question. Oftentimes this is done with a foil or climactic moment.
In essence, the framework is to pressure your characters. Make them squirm. Expose their ugly truths. Then, and only then, let them earn success on their own merits. You would be surprised where the narrative can go if your characters take the wheel.
Crafting Meaningful Decisions
The prompt answers itself; make your choices meaningful. The question being: ‘What is a meaningful choice?’.
Meaningful choices are user-selected options that give a measurably different outcomes to another available option. These are often the branches for non-linear plot structures, NPC attitudes, or optional quests. However, a meaningful choice is not limited to just be a dialogue option. Gameplay choices like interacting with NPCs, or engaging in time-sensitive activities can also be meaningful if they provide an additional function to the plot.
However, don’t overuse meaningful choices. It’s equally frustrating for multiple dialogue options to result in the same outcome, as it is for seemingly innocuous decisions to have cataclysmic repercussions. There is a time and place for plot-changing choices, but those should be signified appropriately.
What are your strengths in writing and narrative design?
I am often drawn to world-building and character-writing. I find the idea of exploring how characters with vastly different backgrounds, living in entirely unique settings, would behave on a day-to-day basis. My background in game design in both digital and TTRPGs has given me a great foundation for crafting worlds and characters specifically for interactive fiction. Many writing frameworks for books and/or film just don’t translate well into a player-focused narrative structure. Especially if that narrative is non-linear, or there are multiple branching side-quests that take attention away from a more structured plot line.
I also love tying gameplay to tone, theme, and mood. Nothing can compare to when the mechanics, audio, and narrative are working harmoniously, creating an unforgettable moment of resonance.
Exploring Favorites
Hands down, my favorite piece of fiction is NieR: Automata. I think the game is as close to perfection as you could possibly ask for. It justifies itself as a game and uses its, albeit, on-the-nose philosophical references to talk about the meaning of life, nihilism, and existentialism. I have tried for ages to condense my thoughts on the game down to a bite-sized chunk, but it proved almost impossible. This culminated in my producing a video-essay called ‘NieR: Automata is [A] game that…’ which tried, and failed to finish the titular sentence.
In as short as I can be; NieR: Automata was one of those games that hit me at the right time, with the right themes, and opened my eyes to how unique and engaging game narratives can be.
Which games or stories have you worked on?
With my history of running TTRPG games in various systems, I have a good amount of experience in both on-the-fly character writing and immersive world-building. One of my favorite stories was prior to Riot Games’ Arcane series releasing, I had been working on a Runeterra (The League of Legends’ Setting) D&D Campaign set in Piltover & Zaun. I had poured through countless forums, wikis, and character lore to piece together the best interpretation of the setting as I could at the time. Then, when Arcane did release, my players were surprised how accurately my campaign mapped onto the canon events of the show.
Furthermore, during my capstone year of the Honors Bachelor of Game Design program at Sheridan College, I spearheaded the creative direction and writing of our project called: “The Nine Tales”. The game follows the story of a Fox granted immortality on the condition that it could understand the human heart. The game was meant to have 9 chapters, each relating to a specific method of dealing with grief and loss that the Fox would learn from. However, the project only managed to produce a single chapter, which received a perfect narrative score from Toronto’s Level Up Expo’s panel of industry judges.
A Wish for Interactive Audio Stories
While I think it does a phenomenal job on its own merits, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a game that could have such an amazing impact in an audio-only environment. The protagonist, Senua has traumatic schizophrenia and is constantly bombarded by the many, many voices in her head. These voices, called furies, edge her forward, cast doubt upon her actions, or give conflicting and contradictory advice. They’re not a reliable guide, but are a great measure of the feelings Senua may be having at the moment. The audio design Ninja Theory implemented even has the furies’ audio circling the player, emanating from all angles.
The original game was a descent into madness, with the plot shown through Senua’s perspective. Her mental illness makes her an unreliable narrator, which can only be exaggerated and improved by focusing purely on the audio design. An audio story for this game could follow a very similar trajectory to the product we have today. I imagine it would have a narrator explaining the literal events of what Senua perceives and the goal she has in mind. Then, the furies would interject, providing additional details that may or may not be true. It would be up to the player to then determine the course of action based on the information at hand and their own intuition. This would cut out the combat challenges present in the base game, but I always felt that these mechanics were ill-suited for the narrative Hellblade was trying to convey.
Register for our Free Writing Workshop now!
If you are interested in creating your own interactive audio story, you can apply for our free webinar! It will introduce you to our interactive story game engine, TWIST, and teach you how to use it to create interactive audio stories.
Interested in contributing to our blog series?
If you would also like to publish a blog post on our website and share your own story with interested readers, simply fill out the contact form.
