Creative Tools, Story Forge in particular

Cafe Society
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Have any writers used creative writing tools, software or otherwise? I stumbled across a proposal at kickstarter called Story Forge. It’s a deck of cards designed to fight writer’s block, fill plot holes and generate characters for novelists, screenwriters and game masters. Review here.

I don’t write creatively, so my interest is hypothetical only. I know that there exist creative writing software tools. Past threads on the subject are here and here.

Others have designed brainstorming card sets in the past. They typically involve looking at one card at a time, whereas Story Forge has the user lay out the cards in a pattern, sort of like the Tarot. Examples include the Creative Whack Pack”, “The Observation Deck, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards now in it’s fifth edition, the Once Upon A Time deck and Carolyn Myss’ Archetypes cards.

Once Upon A Time is a game, rated one of the Millennium’s best and most underrated card games by Pyramid magazine in 1999.

Eno’s effort dates to the 1970s: The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt (a British painter…) tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you’re running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind. …

The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, “Don’t forget that you could adopt this attitude,” or “Don’t forget you could adopt that attitude.”

Carolyn Myss’ contains a heaping portion of woo, though there may be some decent advice embedded inside. Considering and more to the point acknowledging the existence of alternatives is a useful exercise, even if those alternatives consist of attitudes or perspectives.

But I haven’t used any of these. Do the writers or RPGers here think they might be helpful?
Disclaimer: I have no personal or monetary connection with any of the listed products, though I am considering becoming a Story Forge supporter.

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So… nobody has ever used a tool or technique to help them write fiction? Ever? The ideas just spring fully formed and armored from your forehead? Interesting.
The surrealists liked to play a number of sardonic creativity games, of which a few are listed here. Also see this amusing text. I flipped through it some years back: it was mostly a set of parlor games. Automatic writing and other unfiltered methods can only get you so far.
Over at Kickstarter, Storyforge is 62% funded with just over 30 days to go. Presumably the creator would prefer to end overfunded by a healthy margin, but that’s still not bad. IMnotsoHO humanity has made great strides in understanding the underlying structure of narrative thanks to the acclaimed compilation website, tvtropes.org. I don’t know whether BJ West used that resource or not, but I opine that there is at least the potential to create more powerful story generation tools, at least relative to past crude or flaky attempts.

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Pretty much, yeah. My brain generates characters, scenes, lore, and more almost constantly when I let it wander. I don’t think I’ve ever been stuck for lack of an idea for more than a few minutes. Ideas are easy; writing is hard.

The notion of using a random idea generator to help write something is actually vaguely creepy to me. I suppose I could see a writer using it to get past a block on some extremely minor point, like the name of a background character, if they get hung up on it for some reason–though it seems to me that getting stuck on something like that is more likely to be a symptom than a cause, so I don’t know how much it would help.

4

Well, the story forge author conceived it as a way of breaking writer’s block, though other applications have been mentioned. The review in the OP was from the game community. Writers of serials (TV, genre, anime, whatever) might find a random story element collider helps them see new aspects to their inherited narrative framework. Veteran participants in Scott McCloud’s[sup]1[/sup] annual 24 hour comics day might like the added challenge.

As a nonwriter, I find this interesting. I guess that’s pretty typical, right? I take it servicable ideas are a dime a dozen. Personally, I prefer nonfiction to fiction: this may be part of the reason as I tend to admire strong themes more than clever writing. Or do I misunderstand?
Yeah, I decided to kick in a few bucks at the kickstarter website.
[sup]1[/sup] I see that the great man has a randomizer of his own: the story machine. Scott McCloud says: “Writers and artists are very habit-driven, so this is one way of breaking those habits (the 24-hour comic is another).” More of his story inventions are here.

5

Back in 2009 during Web Serial Writing Month (aka WeSeWriMo), I wrote daily motivational posts that offered links to a boatload of writing resources. My favorite of these – the tool that I’ve mentioned here a couple of times before, and by now I really should be gaining some kinda kickback from the software’s creator – is Write or Die. As I mentioned then:

Since then, the software has been released in a desktop version, which has more options available. Easily the best $10 I’ve ever spent. I’ve used WoD to write two NaNoWriMos and two WeSeWriMos, which is a total of 160,000 words. Considering I have an almost terminal case of writer’s block (also known as depression) I can’t recommend WoD highly enough.

Actually if you look through the 2009 WeSeWriMo forum you’ll find descriptions of all the tools and motivational resources during my daily posts throughout the 31-day marathon.

(The cat in the avatar over there is where I get my screenname here, btw – Choie.)

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It’s been my experience, and it’s what I’ve heard from most of the authors who have commented on the matter–which is pretty much every published author who has ever been interviewed or had a Q&A with their fans. Someone always asks, “Where do you get your ideas?” Their answers vary in the details, but most seem to boil down to “I look around and think about stuff”. Ideas come from the the tag-end of an argument you overheard, or someone sitting on a bench and staring at a crowd, or an oddly shaped stain on the coat of a guy sitting across from you on the train.

Ideas are everywhere. The real work is in expressing them in meaningful and interesting ways. It’s sitting there for hours, typing away, then going back and doing it again because you thought of a better way to say it, or came up with a better idea. Then doing it again when someone actually reads it and offers criticism. The actual process of writing is hard work.

Which brings me to writer’s block. My view is likely quite unpopular with many writers, but I would contend that the overwhelming majority of cases of writer’s block are not caused by lack of ideas, but by not wanting to write. I don’t mean permanently, just that for a while, the writer would really rather be doing something else. Maybe they’re tired, or cranky, or worried about something. Maybe they’ve discovered they don’t really like what they’re writing that much, but aren’t quite willing to let it go, because they’ve already put work into it. So, they find something to get stuck on. As long as they think about what they’re stuck on, they can feel like they’re working on writing, without actually doing the writing.

I’m as guilty as anyone of that, and for a rather odd reason. I have trouble writing things to completion. You see, as long as I haven’t finished a story, it’s alive. It can go anywhere. The ideas are like butterflies flitting around a garden in my mind, and I can sit and watch them and admire their beauty. Writing them down is like netting the butterflies and pinning them to a display board. They may still be beautiful…but they’re dead. Static. An actualization of limited beauty at the cost of potential greater beauty.

So…I procrastinate. I sit there in my garden, picking the butterflies I want to collect, without actually picking up the net–or letting them escape after I catch them. I have to force myself to go through with it, and console myself with whatever enjoyment my poor, dead ideas may bring to others, who would never have gotten to see them in the garden. And I have to do that knowing that it may be for nothing, that others may not find them beautiful at all, and killing them was a waste. I’m not so conceited as to think every idea I enjoy would appeal to anyone else.

(Of course…it doesn’t help that I’m fundamentally rather lazy, either.)

I only know two ways to overcome writer’s block that stems from an unwillingness to write. One is to motivate the writer to get on with it, either by changing the condition that made them unwilling–which may involve anything from a power nap to threatening them with a deadline–or knocking down the excuse they’re using for not writing. I can see where writing tools could be used to do those things, but I suspect they would lose their effectiveness over time; they might be most useful as a temporary support while you force yourself to make writing habitual.

It’s not that clever writing is difficult; it’s that writing at all is difficult. Even writing perfectly straightforward nonfiction is work, and requires creative thought as well as careful research.

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I came up with a deck of cards similar to Story Forge and the other decks. I use it occasionally, for the same reasons given - overcoming writing block*, inspiration, having a theme to work from, coming up with a basic plot. I’ve also used it to make decisions if I have two or three ideas - pick out the appropriate cards then pick one out of a hat. I don’t use it very often any more. (I can link to the write up I have about it on my LJ, but it’s probably not that interesting)

  • Balance, I disagree on you about writer’s block. Most of the time when I’m blocked, it’s because I have no idea what should come next or how to get to the next point. Often I’ll just skip ahead, but at some point you have to go back and fill in that section. I also get blocked when I’m dealing with a ‘boring’ section or for the reasons you’ve given, but I don’t consider those writing block.

Choie, I can’t use Write or Die, personally. I find it’s too much pressure. I also, for some unknown reason, generally have difficulty writing directly to the screen, at least for creative stuff.

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Oh, true blocking certainly happens, and it’s probably most common in the transition situations–figuring out how to get from one idea to the next–that you mention. I’ll also say that it’s more likely to be a legitimate block in someone who has already managed to develop the habit of writing. By that, I don’t mean just published writers and the like; I mean anyone who writes on a regular basis and makes writing commitments that they keep, even if only to themselves. Most of the complaints of writer’s block I’ve seen over the years didn’t come from writers like that, though–they came from people who “had a great idea”, but just couldn’t seem to actually write it down.

In essence, I think that a lot of people who claim writer’s block aren’t really writers, and they tend to drown out the writers who are legitimately blocked. Perhaps that’s cynical of me, and maybe it’s even changing, but it’s been my observation over the years.

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:slight_smile: Perhaps you just talk to more so-called writers than I do.

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In high school I checked a book out of the library that was basically this card idea but …as a book.

This seems like the kind of thing an Aunt would get for their nephew who wants to be write someday. Not REALLY something a writer would use.

11

I’ve tried tools from time to time, but they didn’t do anything I already knew how to do before. I keep notes on novels, but only so I don’t lose track of the names of places and people. I also don’t know of any authors who use tools like this.

This doesn’t mean they can be useful, especially in the beginning. But in order to succeed, you have to internalize so many things that the tools will either not help or only slow you down.

For instance, every time I write a line of dialog, I need to think:

How does this advance the plot?
What does this reveal about the character?
Is this consistent with the character?
How will a reader react to the line?
How will the reader react to the fact the character said it?
What should another character say in return, if anything?
What is the other character’s reaction?
Is that consistent with how the other character behaves?
Is it a strong line of dialog?

There are probably many more. You have to reach the point where all the relevant questions re so internalized that you know the answers without thinking.

12

Chiming in with everyone that I don’t need ANY HELP coming up with more random shit to write about.

I have folders and files on my computer, papers and more files in my cabinets, and scribbled-upon napkins from god-only-knows how many places FULL of random shit that I have thought of, and would like to write about.

I manage to work on my ideas as a super-part-time thing - less than an hour a day at the moment. (I’m in graduate school and working full time and a volunteer costumer and makeup artist for local theatres, and I enjoy all of those things - I also have no burning desire at the moment to be a published writer.) I have wrangled some of them into short stories, and some into outlines or concepts for larger works, and even fewer into chapters or novella-length ‘finished’ products. That process IS a hassle, but I have never seen any product (other than a ghost-writer) offer to take my “really cool idea about space aliens” and turn it into a coherent and enjoyable whole without my input.

Believe you me, my writing problems do not come in any way from a dearth of ideas. Shit, I think sometimes I’d write BETTER if I had fewer ideas that I fall in love with, and could spend more time on developing some of the older ones, rather than frantically recording my new ideas so I don’t lose them as time passes.

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Well, an hour a day can give you a novel in less than a year – if you work on it every day.

A hour a day = 365 hours.
Assume you’re typing for 20 minutes of that hours at 20 wpm: 3652020 = 146,000 words.

A first novel these days is about 90,000 words.

The trick is to do it every day.

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It seems that writers are afflicted by a variety of choke points, and that Story Forge addresses but a narrow set of them, possibly not the most common ones. Thanks to all for the reflections. It seems that for many crafting a solid paragraph or three is harder than generating a story idea-- and getting started, settling your thoughts, might be hardest of all.

I find the deck interesting though, if nothing more than its winnowing down of story elements and encouraging their juxtaposition and combination. Admittedly this 3x5 method has been known for a while but a more generic approach might be helpful. Then there’s the matter of filling in parts of your story, maybe in a way you haven’t done before.

Holey moley – that’s one heck of a list!

Creative writers confident in their skills and seeking a challenge might combine a Story Forge layout with Write or Die and see what they can generate over say 2-6 hours. Again, while surrealist writing gimmicks essentially went nowhere, the 24 hour comic concept is still in use, so I can point at least one creative writing tool that has been proven helpful. And choie compiled a list of 36. Ok, most are links to websites, but still…