Why Break Up A Story?

In the modern publishing world we don't often think of longer pieces of writing being broken up into sections, but not so long ago it used to be fairly common place. Writers would publish novels as serials, including some of the greats like Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and others. So why return to this format?

Writing in serials serves to leave great stopping points for suspense. When you write in chapters, it certainly makes for some interesting breaks, but the reader is always able to just continue reading and let the suspense dissipate. However, when the writer controls when you see the next action, you as a reader are forced to wait. It's similar to how a TV series with an overarching plot can force you to wait when the series finale occurs. Even if the show goes for six seasons and tells one story, you get these miniature story arcs that resolve naturally and lend themselves to a bigger story.

I chose to experiment with this format as an internet project because I had not seen it done before. I wanted to see how it affected my own writing, having a commitment each week to continue a story, and to work out some of the problems and advantages of such a format. The biggest problem I'm facing now is keeping readers rooted in the details, who is who, what they look like, and where they are. As I continue on, this is something I will have to work on. But one of the advantages I'm having is that even I am not positive where I'll go from one week to the other.

So how it will work, we'll see, but I'm still having fun and so I'm still writing on.

How do you write another persons character?

The introduction of Xylia today marks a challenge in writing. Using another persons character in a story. I'm sure the same issues arise when doing tributes to a character like Sherlock Holmes or other well known and often used characters, but it's particularly challenging when you're taking a D&D persona of a friend.

So how do you do it? First, since the characters I'm taking from the campaign I ran were experienced from my perspective as a DM, so as far as how the character acts in a party, it's a bit easier to understand how the character acts. But in writing the character, I also have to be able to channel the personality which is a bit more tricky, because that means I have to assume I know how my friend was thinking when she played and made the character.

That's where my belief that a writer cannot write themselves out of a story comes in. Or in this case, a person cannot distance themselves from their character. Xylia has a lot of traits that are evident in my friend, especially in her appearance which I took great liberties with. Personality wise though, the character is also drawing upon parts of my friends personality.

So the hard part really is fitting them into the story, which works well as a true chaotic neutral entity in what is developing as a lawful good, lawful neutral, and neutral party. The little bit of chaos will do everyone good.

The Backstory

If you haven't checked out the extra pages at the story, I suggest you do so to get a bigger sense of the world of Brittania. Actually come to think of it, I'll have to do some geography as well, but I've added information on the characters, backstory, and the gods to the main page.

So you may be wondering then, where did Brittania come from? How do you come up with an entire world?

Like many ideas, Brittania came from a failed campaign. I was trying to plan a 4th edition campaign to learn the rules and see if a campaign could be run entirely online. The campaign never got started, probably because you can't run a campaign online, but I had an encounter built that had some interesting battles and a good cliff hanger. I can't obviously reveal what that is, since the characters will be playing through it, but you should be pleased by it.

But the problem with an encounter is that it doesn't make a plot, so that's where some planning was necessary. I've always loved the idea of Utopia and Dystopia, but it wasn't an idea that I had seen in D&D much. So about a year after creating that encounter, I decided to experiment in running my very first campaign after having a campaign I was playing in fall apart. I brought on the players from the previous campaign, and then some new people who were unfamiliar with the game. So I made them level one, and decided to only use the base rule book.

This made creating the world easy. Humans would be the main race since Humans reproduce fast and are good farmers. I decided to mix up the histories of the Elves and Dwarves to give a reason for the two races to tick each other off. I can't go into too much more detail on the world since it'll all be revealed, but fleshing out the world was pretty easy with no major conflicts to worry about. I decided to also create a mysterious "Mainland" which would allow me to expand the campaign if necessary, and allow a little more war and misery that D&D players are used to.

As for the gods, it became a game of make up names for the common needed gods, and create a backstory of war between law and chaos. I liked having the nature of the gods be a little mysterious, and you can see a little of that mystery in their back stories. I also enjoy having gods who interact with mortals, so I ensured that evidence of their work can be seen in the world, and used the war to create a reason for them to not be causing massive change to the world.

As for the rest, I'll discuss it as the story unwinds. But I wanted to give you guys just a little background of how Brittania came to be.

~David

Why?

Today marks the beginning of a strange new journey, possibly into madness, but at the least into something new. A web-story. Drawing inspiration from web-comics, the essence of this story is to write something that can be fun, serious, and which gives the readers a chance to contribute.

I'm not sure how this will go, or what it all means, but I do know that it's happening now, and more is definitely to come.