5 Tips on Writing: With Andrea Blythe
Hi! I’m Andrea Blythe, an author, poet, and game writer. My creative journey began with writing and publishing poetry and fiction, which has been published in various journals and anthologies. But it took me way too long to realize that writing and shaping narrative for games was also a creative path I could pursue (despite my long-lasting love for playing games).
Once the realization hit, I immediately began to explore the process of writing for and working in games. I took some amazing classes on game writing through The Narrative Department, began playing more games with an eye to the narrative design implemented across a range of game genres, made connections with fellow game writers and narrative designers, and developed two small game projects on my own. These efforts helped me to land my current freelance work on a couple of indie game projects with One Frog Games and Lost Lake Games, which I’m work on alongside my day job as an editor for a trade magazine.
Hooking Your Audience
Tone is one of the first things I try to get right with an opening, with the aim of creating a sense of mood or feeling that will permeate throughout the whole narrative. Generally, this tone is anchored with a specific character, setting, event, or imagery (depending on the needs of the story) that grounds the audience in the narrative and sets up expectations for the story — while also providing a sense of intrigue that makes the audience curious about what’s to come.
For example, in Stephen King’s novel, The Gunslinger, part of The Dark Tower series, the first sentence reads, “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.” It’s a simple line that immediately sets a tone associated with myth and folklore, presenting characters that feel archetypal. It also immediately specifies the two main characters (protagonist and antagonist) and setting (the desert), while establishing some initial questions as to who these men are and why one is chasing the other. All of this doesn’t necessarily have to be captured in the first sentence (or second). The audience will often offer a bit of a grace period when they’re first getting into a new book, movie, or game. But this tone and specificity should come fairly quickly within the first few pages of a book, minutes of a movie, or hour of a game.
Mastering Plot Development
My process is to build up plot events starting from character, focusing on the main character’s personal journey through the narrative. The specific sequence of events come from the push-pull of the character’s conflict with the world and people around them, particularly the antagonist (which could be a person, an organization, force of nature, or other element). The antagonists, obstacles, and/or side characters should have their own goals and needs, but ideally they should also tie back into the personal journey of the main character, becoming a part of the emotional structure of the story.
A great example of this is The Last of Us, which is wholly centered on Joel’s personal journey, beginning with the loss of his daughter and learning to find a connection to the world again by growing to love a new surrogate daughter. Although the game presents a multitude of plot points and gameplay goals — such as smuggling Ellie out of Boston, surviving the infected, finding a working car, etc. — every event connects to Joel’s emotional journey. The people presented in each of the story beats often act as mirrors to Joel, revealing aspects of himself that he may or may not want to see.
Effective World-Building Strategies
One of the ways I like to approach world building is by considering the social structures that affect the belief systems of the characters, including government, class, religion, law enforcement, education, etc. And I determine which of these structures to focus on based on which ones most directly impact my characters and the scope of the narrative.
If the narrative is about a student in a boarding school, the structures that will impact the characters are tied to that location. The student doesn’t probably won’t have any concern for the politics of a far-away country they’ve never been to (unless it somehow impacts their life in the school), but they do deeply care about their friend groups, their social standing within the school, and the amount of power the teachers and administration have over them.
However, for a narrative about a character traversing across an expansive fantasy world, the scope of the world building is much wider, encompassing a wide array of social structures along with other basic world elements (such how food is sourced and prepared, what kind of textiles are used, how the magic systems function, etc).
Even in such a large world, I try to keep things in scope by focusing on those elements of the world that will actually be relevant to characters and their story. In an epic fantasy novel, the relevant elements are based on the people, locations, and events that the point of view characters interact with. In an open world game, the relevant elements are more likely to be based on the gameplay and the aspects of the world that the player character will be able to interact with (through combat, dialog, trade, etc.).
Techniques for Character Development
When I’m working on a character, I personally need to get a feel for their voice to be able to write them well. This is because a character’s voice (what they say, as well as how they behave) is often affected by how they perceive and present themselves and the world. In turn, this perception is influenced by their social status, personal interests, relationships with others, age, or any number of other factors. Do they live in a stratified society? Where do they rank in that society? Someone from the bottom of that social structure is going to have a very different way of speaking with their peers than with someone who has more power than them.
Does the character have a passion for rock climbing? Or knitting? Or classical music? People tend to talk about, share, and be drawn to the things they love, and so it naturally comes up in their speech — unless there are social reasons for them to keep this passion a secret (in which case, it’s internalized). Who is in this character’s friend group? Are they popular or isolated? Groups often have a shared language that the character takes part in, or they may act in contradiction to the group due to a need to feel unique or feeling excluded.
These kinds of questions and more can be used to understand the character’s perception of reality, and therefore how they interact with the world around them. And combining these various aspects together can help to create a multifaceted character.
Crafting Meaningful Decisions
In order to implement meaningful choices, I like to consider the available gameplay systems and the core narrative experience. Knowing the gameplay structures — what actions the player can make, whether the game will have branching dialog, and so on — is important to understanding how the narrative choices can be implemented. Every gameplay structure has its unique set of possibilities and limitations regarding both what is possible on the development side and how much freedom the game offers to the player.
The scope of available choices can vary wildly depending on the kind of game or interactive story being developed.
Something like The Last of Us, for example, provides a linear narrative, but offers choices in the way the player approaches combat, navigates the levels, and interacts with Ellie in small, optional moments of additional story, which provide opportunities to expand upon the relationships between the characters.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead, on the other hand, operates based on the illusion of choice, providing a mostly linear narrative infused with dialog and action choices based on moral decisions and character relationships that evoke a deep emotional meaning and make the player feel like they have more freedom than they actually have.
Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 takes player choice to another level by offering a massive amount of action and dialog choices, allowing the player to approach the narrative in almost any way they please.
While each of these approaches to choice vary wildly, the gameplay systems and narrative design align to create a specific core experience for the player. Understanding these gameplay systems helps me to know what narrative tools I have available to implement meaningful choices.
What are your strengths in writing and narrative design?
I was once told by a mentor of a writing workshop that voice is my superpower — and I take that to mean both capturing character voice through dynamic dialog and infusing the overall narrative with a clear and specific tone. I love finding the right phrasing and specific word choices to evoke the humanity or monstrousness of a character and discovering the proper evocative tone for the narrative, whether it’s fantasy, horror, drama, or other story genre.
At the same time, I’m an editor. So, while I enjoy getting into the grit of language, I am also able to keep the scope of the overall narrative in mind. I enjoy exploring how specific scenes or moments work to shape the plot and emotional structure of the story. And I’m not afraid to pull entire scenes or story sequences, if they are not serving their purpose.
Pro tip*
If you want to ‘narrative hop’, try taking a bit of writing in one format and translating it to another. This will help you understand how the story changes and ease the transition! I am also been called an idea machine which I take as a very high compliment. When ever any of my fellow writers are stuck they call me up and I am able to help them with their writers block or where we go from here. One of my favorite intros to a call is “You are the only one who can help me.” I hope these calls never stop coming in.
Which games or stories have you worked on?
Currently, I’m collaborating on the narrative development for Monochrome Heights, a challenging platforming being created by Patrick Knisely at One Frog Games. The game is a challenging platforming, in which a robot is climbing a tower to face a former friend turned enemy. We’re attempting to build out the emotional structure of the storyline by presenting different perspectives on the past. I have also created two solo games projects. “What Lies Underneath” is a creepy adventure game constructed in Bitsy about a woman returning home after her sister’s death and digging up old memories. “Bluebeard” is an interactive fairy tale about a woman who marries a wealthy man with deadly secrets.
Also, my latest poetry chapbook, called Necessary Poisons, is being published by Interstellar Flight Press on October 7. In this dark poetry collection, a woman troubled by her place in the dark manuscript of her life rediscovers her strength and power.
Exploring Favorites
What an impossible question to answer! So many writers and creators are doing fantastic things with narrative, so I’m always falling in love with new stories. But here are a few of my current favorites.
Currently, my favorite game narrative is Control. The game does fascinating things in the way it explores Jessie’s story through a combination cutscenes, dialogue, internal monologue, and gameplay. The world of the Oldest House and the people and objects within it is wonderfully weird, and I love the way the game experiments with visual style.
Arrival (directed by Denis Villeneuve) is always at the top of my list of favorite movies. The way this film weaves together a non-linear structure to evoke a deeply moving story of love and loss amidst humanity’s first interaction with extraterrestrials is so powerful. I also love the fact that the solution in the end is not violence, but the act of translation and striving for communication.
And I can’t help but wrap up with one of my favorite books, The Fifth Season (from the Broken Earth Trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin. This blew me away with it’s fascinating apocalyptic fantasy world, incredibly deep characters, and beautiful narrative. I love how Jemisin plays with voice, too, exploring and experimenting in ways that ultimately make the narrative stronger.
A Wish for Interactive Audio Stories
When thinking about how to answer this question, I ran through a number of options, but ultimately, I had to consider the format of an interactive audio story and the possibilities that it evokes. So, I’m going to go with Control. It would be interesting to explore that world through the lens of a pair of agents investigating an Altered World Event. The audio format could lend itself to radio messages being sent back and forth during the investigation, audio logs, and interview tapes to build out the story of the investigation and its impact on the agents.
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