Starting a new project today, about which I’m pretty excited.  More details to come over the next few weeks.  Today I’m thinking about characters and objectives and overall story arcs for a sequence of related adventures.

What does each character want?  What happened to each hero in the past that makes him part of the team now, and bought into the team’s shared goal?  At what margins might the characters’ goals diverge, incentivizing slacking, desertion or treachery?  What do the badguys want, and what drives the conflict between the heroes and the villains?  What is the time lock on the story arc, the thing that is inevitable and imminent and requires resolution of the main plots before it happens, or all is lost?  What are the stakes — in what sense will the world come to an end if the heroes fail to achieve their shared objective?  How do we find about the world and the context — who is our POV character, and how much does he know initially?

Stay tuned.

Follow