October 08, 2000
Storytellers Anonymous
I picked up Stephen King's new non-fiction book last week. I admit, I don't monitor new book releases super closely, but I usually know when King has released something, largely because I watch for that, as I've been one of his readers for years. This one slipped in right under my radar. I didn't know anything about it until I passed it at Barnes and Noble. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. One of my favorite authors wrote a book about writing? I'm so there. What I'm discovering, largely, is that he approaches writing very much like I do. Not surprising, considering how much of his work I've read and more particularly, at what point in my life I've read it.
I've spent most of today curled up in my bed reading. Not hard to do, it's a cold, drizzly afternoon more suited to November than early October. And as I curled up, reading Stephen King's often amusing insights on writing and thinking about yesterday's events, I pulled together some knowledge about myself, clarifying something I always knew.
I'm a storyteller. An absolute addict to that process, not to put too fine a point on it. That's why I spend so much time on MUSHes. That's why I game. That's why I write. That's why this journal has been still for the past month or so. None of my personal stories have felt worth the telling. The entries I did before my unofficial, almost-hiatus were very dissatisfying to me. They felt like rote 'well I have to write something' entries. Maybe they felt that way to you. Maybe they didn't.
Interactive storytelling is the absolute pinnacle for me. As a player or as the storyteller (or Weaver, or GM, or whatever you want to call it), or even as a collaborative writer, getting together with other people to tell a story is the best thing on earth. Or one of, at the very least. When it all comes together, like yesterday, there's nothing else like it.
Individual storytelling, like my writing, is also a wonderful feeling when it's good, but it comes a little harder for me. It requires a little more discipline, for one thing. I don't get the immediate audience reaction, for another. Acting and interactive storytelling both fill a very definite need in me, although acting is almost somewhere between storytelling and writing in terms of how it feels and how it works.
Yesterday is a great example. I finally ran a session of my Changeling game again. I realized, to my horror, the last time we played was in July. I didn't especially feel like running the game yesterday -- or, more accurately, didn't feel like doing the preparation work necessary to tell the story I wanted to tell. But I did it, and was determined to set a mood and tell the story. Alex and Jason and Dawn picked up on that determination, I think. For the first time ever, I did things like darken the room and light candles. There was even a touch of live action roleplay, as I set up a 'shrine' and had the players come look at and handle the items on it (which where actually pieces of paper describing the items). I've done so much build up with this storyline, feeding out background information in little bits, getting incredibly frustrated because the players were getting restive. "Nothing's happening," they told me. "We're not doing anything." And they really weren't, because I was laying groundwork. I got frustrated. I doubted myself. I whined to Brand constantly, "It's going to be such a good story, but I can't manage to snag them into it!"
Yesterday I made contact. With the increased mood, I delivered a whammy, and in my not-so-modest opinion, did the best damn job storytelling I've ever done. Speaking of Stephen King, I'm reminded of something he wrote in his other non-fiction book, Danse Macabre. He talked about gore in horror movies, and how, if the audience doesn't care about the characters, you can throw oceans of blood at them and they will remain unmoved. If the audience is deeply involved with the characters, however, even a few drops of blood can be devastating. Unless I'm misremembering, I haven't killed off anyone in this campaign -- oh wait. I did kill off one character, but he was more along the lines of your typical RPG monster, i.e., you have to kill him to get past him. So that was exciting from a game standpoint, but it didn't mean much in terms of story impact. Yesterday, however, four characters that had become important to the main characters died.
All of us, storyteller and players together, created a scene which brought home just exactly what the impending war will mean to their characters. In terms of roleplaying games, it was the best possible situation. They took the ideas I threw out, and twisted and turned them and made the situation even more powerful than I had planned. It gave them a very very personal reason to want to stop the war, in addition to the more abstract reasons, like 'war is unhealthy for children and other living things'. By the end of the game, we were all hyped on the storyline and emotionally wrung out. I was on a high that lasted until I finally fell asleep at around five this morning.
You can't beat that. That is the reason why I get so distracted from my 'real life' concerns. That's why my house is a disaster area. That's why my work area is cluttered with books on writing and research for whatever world I'm trying to create in my head and express to someone else. That's why I stay in a job most would consider dead-end, because it doesn't interfere with my internal landscape. I'm like the absent-minded inventor who doesn't notice his house is starting to burn because he's so focused on the blueprints in front of him. I don't say these things as an excuse. Like all addicts, I've lost a sense of balance. I need to work on regaining that. However, as far as addictions go, I think mine's fairly harmless in the long run. It's not going to kill me or bankrupt me (unless you count buying books of all sorts, of course), and might even be good for me (I'm getting published because of it!). Nonetheless...
"Hi, my name's Lisa, and I'm a storyteller."
Posted by Lisa at October 8, 2000 04:45 PM
