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Design is the stage. Story is the play. Story is built around desire and the frustration of desire. The stage exists as a place for that desire to be born, to be frustrated, and to be ultimately ac...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24067 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:28:24Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24067 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:28:24Z (about 5 years ago)
Design is the stage. Story is the play. Story is built around desire and the frustration of desire. The stage exists as a place for that desire to be born, to be frustrated, and to be ultimately achieved or denied. Stage dressing without a play in mind, therefore, is apt to be futile. To start the story process, you have to discover or invent a character who wants something and a reason they can't get it. You then have them pursue that desire through your world, overcoming increasingly greater obstacles until their desire is ultimately achieved or they are defeated. How compelling your story is will ultimately depend on how compelling your character is and how much we can sympathize with their desire (sympathize with is not the same things as approve of). In the end, story is design as well, so there is no reason not to take a design approach to story as much as to world building. But you now need to turn you design attention in that direction. Start with a desire. What sort of person has that desire. What sort of obstacles will they face. What will they do to overcome those obstacles? These are the elements of story design.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-08-08T20:55:16Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 3