Image source, courtesy of Pixabay
Hello freewriters! My name is ThinkrDotExe, or Thinkr for short. I'm a family man and professional counselor (specializing in EMDR trauma therapy) by day, content creator by night/whenever I have the free time. My most recent undertaking has been The Hunter's Instinct, a serial story series which I originally started posting in HiveGaming but have more recently moved to the Scholar and Scribe community over at @hive-199275 since it is a more fitting home for a serial storytelling experience! It recently came to my attention that the process by which I formulate the story and make decisions about what happens could be a very interesting and engaging exposé on the creative process. So, here we go!
The Premise
When I first began brainstorming for the concept of this storytelling format, I really wanted to create an experience for my readers in which they possessed a meaningful position of influence in the storytelling process. The idea of a choose your own adventure style of storytelling was very attractive to me, because it offered me the ability to invest in an adaptive creative flow that a regular storytelling format could not provide. In this format, I am essentially discovering the story along with my readers, which is so exciting! Now, just because the story is constantly in flux and subject to change does not mean I don't have an idea of what could be happening in the world I am trying to bring to life. The story is based on a video game that has a wealth of lore and characters from which I can draw inspiration. My goal is twofold: bring the world of hunt showdown to life through my writing, and hopefully spotlight and amazing game that doesn't get the attention it deserves! But the decisions that go into creating the story itself don't just stop with a "what would you do" scenario at the end of every chapter...
The Process
Although the choices that I typically create at the end of every chapter aren't randomly generated, many of the events and choices that I make creatively in the process of actually writing the chapter are. After releasing a chapter, I will typically allow for 5 to 6 days of voting where my readers will cast their vote on what should happen next in the comments. When Thursday or Friday comes rolling around, I tally up the votes and begin writing the next chapter based on the majority vote. In the process of writing the events of the chapter, however, I will often make a decision on what happens based on a die roll. For example when I first introduced the character of Turner Abaddon, I rolled the die to determine his gender, his age, his disposition, and whether he was receptive to your deal or not. I also ended up rolling to see whether or not he would try to backstab you, which I will continue to keep a secret for now... 😉
Often times, the decisions are fairly simple. A great example of this is the gender of Turner Abaddon, I decided that if the dye roll was odd if he would be a man, if it was even he'd be a woman. Other die rolls are a bit more complex, such as his disposition and likelihood to reneg on the deal. In this scenario, I would use ranges of numbers, sometimes using different types of dice like the d8 or d10.
Another example was in the last chapter, when I rolled several times to see if any of the shots taken connected with their target (a couple of them nearly did, almost bringing the story to a premature "end" - but just a continuation of a different section of the world).
Once I make the dice roll, that is when I began to write the world around the outcome of chance, further contributing to the "discovering the story" effect I was trying to go for from the outset.
Conclusion
There you have it! It's not much, but it's honest work! Huge thanks to @killerwot for the idea to make this post and peel back the curtain for y'all! If you haven't already, definitely check out the story from the hyperlink I provided at the beginning of the post. It's the first chapter, and has links to all the other chapters at the bottom. Thank you all so much for your time and attention!
What is Scholar and Scribe?
Scholar and Scribe is a community of creative individuals devoted to high-quality creative writing - focusing more on narrative driven stories with a more fictive bent. Many writing communities aren't as welcoming of serial stories, so S&S is naturally kinda niching there, but other creative works like poems, prose, and short stories also find a good home there.
Another primary feature that sets S&S apart is the role of 2nd layer tokens, SCHOLAR and SCRIBE which reward users for curating and posting, respectively. Learn more here.
As always, take care of yourselves and each other, and stay thoughtful!
Your friendly neighborhood dork,
~Thinkr
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