Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about narrative. See, prior developing a severe addiction to tabletop games, becoming a video game developer was one of my goals in life, primarily inspired by games that had excellent, immersive stories. Though my career ultimately led me to the corporate IT world rather than game design, that desire to one day create great interactive experiences of my own never went away, and over the years I’ve continued to do a lot of video game development in my spare time.
Recently, one of my current projects reached a stage where I had a set of mechanics developed that I liked, and I was ready to start doing some more detailed planning around the game’s narrative, how it would interact with the project’s gameplay elements, and how it would inform the building of the actual game world. This immediately led to a problem: when it comes to writing, I’m not much of a planner. Whether I’m writing an article, a short story, or the beginnings of a novel, I generally start with some basic idea I’ve come up with, plop out a bunch of words, then go back and rewrite things until I’ve got an end result that I’m happy with. Sometimes, I might have an initial concept fleshed out somewhat in my mind, or have a general idea of where I want it to go, but I don’t really go through and plan things out prior to putting the first word on paper.
This approach works pretty well for me when it comes to shorter stories and articles, but it tends to break down on longer projects. Unless I have a really solid idea of the points the plot is going to follow in these longer narratives, the resulting story starts to meander and gain a lot of bloat from adding in various ideas that strike me while writing. Since this project was a big one, I really needed to start with a more defined plan rather than winging it like I usually would. In order to take on this unfamiliar task of planning out an epic narrative, I had to really sit and think about the art and science that goes into writing a good narrative rather than just relying on instinct.
Though I was primarily looking at all this through the lens of writing a narrative for a video game as opposed to writing a story for a tabletop adventure or campaign, ultimately, the fundamental principles of writing a good narrative are the same regardless of your medium, and many of these concepts can be put to use when planning out narratives for your own games as a GM.
Rising (and Falling) Tension
If you’ve ever studied creative writing or done research in the past into building a narrative, you’ve probably learned about the importance of tension in a story. Chances are, you’ve also probably seen the use of Star Wars: A New Hope as an example of how tension rises and falls throughout a narrative. In fact, if you were to go and do an image search for “star wars tension curve” right now, you’d find a ton of charts plotting the tension in that film and how it progressed over the course of the movie. The one below is from Extra Credits, who make some excellent content discussing various game design topics.
There’s a reason that the original Star Wars is so commonly used as an example of the concept of rising and falling tension, and it’s the same reason that a film that many thought was going to be a bust early in its production became one of the most iconic films in cinema history: near-perfect pacing and an ideal tension curve. If you look at the graph above, the average tension of the film very steadily increases, keeping the audience engaged until it peaks at the story’s climax with the trench run and subsequent destruction of the Death Star, which resolves the primary conflict in the film. That tension curve, however, isn’t just a diagonal line constantly moving upwards – the tension repeatedly shifts between rising and falling, forming peaks and valleys that form smaller conflicts and obstacles interspersed with low-tension scenes that gives the audience a chance to breath and keeps them from getting strung out by a constant stream of high-tension scenes.
Think back to stories that have stood out to you in the past, and chances are you will find that most of those stories fit the same general pattern of Star Wars’ tension curve. The story begins with low tension (title crawl), then something happens to disrupt the world and introduce the source of conflict (Empire attacking the Tantive IV). The conflict begins to affects the protagonist/s lives (Luke finding rebel droids carrying vital intel on the empire’s superweapon), and eventually causes them to pass a “point of no return” (finding out that the empire has killed the Luke’s family in search of the rebel droids). The protagonist and their allies then proceed through a series of increasingly more difficult obstacles, each with its own climax, conflict, and resolution, until they finally encounter and resolve the primary source of conflict and things begin return to normal.
Why Do We Crave Tension?
There is a reason why so many good stories follow this pattern and why we as people find this structure so appealing: unpredictability. When it comes to stories, most people like not knowing what’s going to happen next. I can’t say I’m familiar enough with psychology to fully explain why it is that most people feel this way, but the gist of it is that unpredictability in entertainment helps to keep us sharp.
From a survival perspective, unpredictability is bad. When unexpected things happen, we are forced to adjust our plans to deal with them, and may have to improvise and make snap decisions off of instinct. Interacting with unpredictability in non-survival situations, such as in narratives and entertainment, trains us in being able to respond to unpredictability – for example, a poorly-timed natural 1 in combat forces a player, and perhaps the whole party, to adapt and recover from an unexpected or disastrous failure.
Unpredictability in narratives also trains our ability to predict how a situation is going to unfold. As we read a book, watch a film, or interact with a game, we might try to guess what’s going to happen next. In a D&D game, the party will often try to piece together clues from the narrative so far to figure out what their next best move is. In both of these situations, we are honing our ability to gather information from a potentially unexpected situation and use that information to make predictions and plan accordingly.
In narratives, tension – that sense of not knowing how things are going to turn out or what’s going to happen next – is really just a form of unpredictability, which is why tension engages audiences and why a well-structured tension curve is so important to crafting a good narrative.
Climbing Peaks
If an audience’s engagement is tied closely to narrative tension, then it stands to reason that the higher the tension in a scene, the greater the audience’s engagement will be. Thus, if tension in a scene is high, the audience will pay more attention to that scene and will be more likely to have that scene stand out to them after the conclusion of that story. This makes the “peaks” of the tension curves extremely important, since the scenes that make up this peak are most likely going to be some of the most memorable moments of the narrative.
As discussed earlier, each individual peak has a stretch of rising action that presents an obstacle or some other form of conflict, culminating in the peak itself where the obstacle is overcome or the conflict resolved, and is then typically followed by a stretch of falling tension where the aftermath of the conflict is revealed. The subsequent “valleys” allow the audience to process the events of the last peak and catch their breath before the next obstacle or conflict.
In addition to balancing the tension needed to engage audiences with low-tension scenes that keep audiences from getting worn out, this sort of curve shape also ensures that the most memorable part of any given conflict occurs at the most important part of the conflict: the resolution. Think about a couple of books, movies, or other stories and try to think of which scene stood out to you the most from each of them. Chances are, that scene will be one of the peaks of the story, most likely the final and biggest peak (the climax). These scenes are the moments where the primary question, the main source of conflict in the narrative, has been decided. Luke uses the Force to fire a shot into the Death Star’s exhaust port before it can destroy Yavin 4; Gollum and the Ring fall into the fires of Mount Doom; Thanos gets the last Infinity Gem, snaps his fingers, and erases half of all life.
There is a reason why the climax of a narrative is usually the most memorable moment for audiences. Not only is the climax one of the “peaks” in the story, but, most of the time, it is also the tallest peak. It is the moment at which tension is at its highest throughout the entire narrative, and thus, the moment where the audience is most engaged. It’s for this reason that there is another important factor to managing tension in a narrative beyond the use of peaks and valleys: the height of a narrative’s peaks and valleys relative to each other.
In most narratives, the most important and memorable scene of the story should be the climax. However, if you have a scene for a less important conflict that has higher tension than the intended climax, then that scene is going to stand out to audiences rather than the climax, and the climax itself will feel underwhelming. On the other end of the spectrum, if the climax is the highest point of tension in the story but happens too early, the obstacles and smaller conflicts that come afterward will feel irrelevant in comparison. Generally, the climax should be the tallest and last peak in the narrative, and the peaks leading up to the climax should trend upwards to build into the climax.
This isn’t to say that every single peak in a narrative should be taller than the last until you reach the climax. Many longer narratives will have a smaller climax of sorts, followed by a drop in the next peak, then ratchet back up to another smaller climax or the main climax which will be higher than the previous “climax.” The key is that the overall direction of narrative tension trends upwards as the story progresses, even if some individual peaks may rise and fall compared to others.
Tabletop campaigns or adventure paths made up of several smaller adventures follow this sort of structure – each adventure builds up to its own climax, with the climax of each adventure typically bigger than the one previous, until it culminates in the climax of the final adventure and of the campaign itself. Series of books, movies, or video games also serve as an example of this, with each entry in the series building up to it’s own climax which all eventually culminates into the climax of the final entry, which also serves as the climax of the series as a whole.
Pacing
Though tension in a narrative is important, there is another dimension that comes into play: pacing. Often, these two terms are mistakenly conflated, but there are some subtle differences between the two. As we discussed earlier, tension is ultimately a representation of unpredictability in a narrative. When tension is high, the situation is dire for the protagonists. The outcome seems extremely uncertain. We don’t know if the protagonists will come out on top and/or what it will cost them to achieve victory.
Pacing is different. Pacing simply refers to the speed of the scene itself. In many genres, high-tension scenes are usually fast action or fight scenes, and low-tension scenes are usually slower scenes, which is likely what leads to these two terms frequently being conflated, but in reality, a scene can be written with any combination of tension and pace. Well-written narratives vary tension and pace between scenes, making each scene seem fresh and avoiding overwhelming or boring the audience by having too many fast or slow scenes in a row. These narratives have plenty of slow, high-tension scenes and fast, low-tension scenes in addition to the more common fast, high-tension and slow, low-tension scenes.
Naruto does a very good job of varying pace and tension, particularly in Part 2/Shippūden. Many of Naruto’s fights alter between sequences of combat and clashes of ideology as he attempts to extend an olive branch to his opponents.
(Spoilers follow)
Perhaps the two best examples of this are Naruto’s battle with Nagato/Pain and his final showdown with Sasuke. Against Nagato, Naruto overwhelms each of the Pains one-by-one. Thoughout the battle, as Naruto fights each of the Pains, there are pauses in the action, such as Nagato attempting to get Naruto to agree to his way of thinking, or Hinata confessing her feelings for Naruto. Usually, each of these slower moments is then followed by the battle resuming with greater fierceness as before – Nagato destroying Konoha in his attempts to drive Naruto to anger and hatred, or Naruto losing himself to the Nine-Tails and going on a rampage after seeing Hinata struck down.
In the end, when he goes to confront Nagato himself, no physical blows are exchanged, and the pair instead come to find mutual understanding as fellow disciples of the same teacher. The tension in this last confrontation is no less than it was during the battle prior, but it is a completely different type of conflict as the two discuss the parallels between them and how, despite their similarities, they came to believe in completely different ideologies.
The final battle against Sasuke takes this variety to an even further extreme. Initially, the battle primarily alters between land-shattering combat and memories of the pair’s friendship and shared past. As the fight goes on, however both Naruto and Sasuke are exhausted and have resorted to slow, clumsy hand-to-hand combat, each physically struggling to gather the strength to get up or to attempt another blow. Things speed up again with one last Chidori/Rasengan clash, then finally at long last the two have a heart-to-heart conversation once both are collapsed and completely incapable of moving or continuing the fight.
Throughout this entire sequence, even though the pace shifts all over the place, the overall tension constantly increases throughout until Sasuke, like Obito before him, finally sees all of the allies that Naruto keeps with him in his heart, including himself, and concedes defeat.
(Spoilers end)
Theme
Most strong narratives, in addition to having a well-thought-out balance of tension and pacing, have one or two themes that are prominent throughout the story. Usually, these themes end up being central to the resolution of the main conflict of the story, but will also pop up in side arcs or in moments away from the main protagonists as a sort of parallel to the heroes’ journey.
Lord of the Rings, for example, places great emphasis on courage, particularly on courage coming from unlikely sources. The courage of the oft-overlooked hobbits is crucial to the destruction of the Ring – Frodo fights off the Ring’s influence for nearly the entire journey when even great heroes and legendary figures such as Boromir and Galadriel could not, and Sam’s bravery lets him drive off Shelob against all odds, keeping the Ring from falling into enemy hands, and later rescue Frodo from Cirith Ungol. Away from the primary journey of Frodo and Sam, unlikely heroes show the same courage in many battles against Sauron’s armies, perhaps the best example being Eowyn slaying the Witch-King of Angmar against all odds.
Plotting Plot Points
Having considered the fundamental concepts of narrative tension and pacing, I felt I was ready to start placing some of the building blocks for the narrative of my own project. I had some of the initial concept fleshed out in my mind already, which helped give me a place to start from, particularly with characters and theme, and also gave me a couple of major plot points that I already knew I wanted to include.
I knew that the story would primarily focus around the struggle between opposing gods – the protagonist, a goddess of light and life, against the god of darkness and death. In addition, the two deities were related, both the children of the world’s god of creation. The god of death had not always been a foe to the goddess – at one time, they were close siblings, but the god of death was ultimately neglected and mistreated due to their father’s distrust of his dark powers, leading the god of death to succumb to anger and corruption.
Clover Studios’ Okami was one of the biggest inspirations for this project, and I already knew that Okami’s primary theme of renewal would also be prominent in this game as the goddess fights to free the world from her brother’s darkness. In addition to that, responsibility and redemption were two other themes I identified as central to the story. The goddess feels responsible for her younger brother’s actions, both because she was the one who initially mentored him and because she feels some responsibility for her father’s actions. She also wishes to redeem herself after failing to stop her brother from falling down the path of darkness, and hopes to redeem her brother from his foul misdeeds.
Having these three themes – renewal, responsibility, and redemption – I decided that I wanted the game to be broken into three arcs, each focusing on one of these three themes, and that each theme would built upon the themes from the previous arcs. In the beginning, the goddess is disheartened by her failure to stop her brother’s fall to darkness and, believing she cannot bring herself to defeat him, is focused solely on trying to mend the damage he has created in the world without confronting him directly. In the second arc, she begins to take responsibility for her family’s actions and realizes that it will fall to her to stop her brother’s madness. In the final arc, she has resolved herself to stopping her brother and is determined to bring him down to save the world and redeem both her family and her brother’s memory.
Considering all of these things, I already had a couple of major plot points that would be needed in the narrative. Each of the arcs would need its own climax, with the climax of the final arc also serving as the climax of the narrative as a whole. Also, the beginning of the story would need to establish the goddess and her family, her brother’s fall, and the chaos it has caused in the world. Knowing this, my next steps when it came to planning was to “fill in the dots,” so to speak, and identify the remaining plot points needed to create the remaining peaks and valleys of the game’s tension curve. The curve would build up to an arc climax, fall, then build up again even further to the climax of the next arc, culminating in the final battle at the end of the third arc. This meant that I would need a couple of peaks in each arc building up to the next climax, as well as the corresponding valleys for each of these peaks.
I knew that the god of death would have various evil spirits under his control, and this ultimately became the source of conflict for many of these smaller peaks as the goddess fought off the various demons responsible for spreading chaos among the world, working her way up until she is strong enough to take on her brother. The climaxes of the first two arcs would feature boss fights against the champions of the demon army, each of whom would have their own plans and agenda that would become clear throughout that arc. Once I had a rough idea of my major plot points, I wrote them down on Post-It notes and started sticking them to the wall to create a rough outline of narrative tension in the game, leaving space in between each set of notes so that I could fill it in later with the scenes that would come in between. I now had a rough tension curve and knew what the most important scenes in the narrative would be.
From a GM’ing perspective, following this approach up to this point would leave you with a pretty good skeleton to work off of for an adventure or campaign. Filling out the scenes that come in between the major points is actually counterproductive at a certain point for a tabletop campaign, since the actions the PCs are going to take are unknown. By limiting your planning to the important plot points, it becomes easier to handle things when the party goes off the rails – when the unexpected happens, all you have to do is find a way to work the party back towards the next plot point or find a way to work that next plot point into the new path the party has taken.
Bonus: Filling Out the Curve
Though I don’t think you need much more of a framework than this from a tabletop perspective, as an added bonus for those of you interested in narrative writing for video games or for more traditional forms of media, here is what I finally ended up with once I filled in the curve with additional Post-Its representing various scenes between the major plot points:
Unfortunately, the picture was taken a bit too far away to make the actual scenes written on the Post-Its legible (not that my handwriting is that legible in the first place), but the actual names of the scenes written on each Post-It isn’t that important for the sake of this example. The important thing about this structure is the curve formed by the scenes and the color of the Post-Its.
The color of each scenes represents the pace and relative tension of the scene. Magenta indicates a fast, high-tension scene; blue a fast, low-tension scene; yellow a slow, high-tension scene; and green a slow, low-tension scene. You’ll notice that the same color is never repeated twice in a row – this is done to keep things varied and avoid any stretches that might overwhelm or bore the audience. You’ll also notice that the curve generally alternates between stretches of high-tension (magenta/yellow) and low-tension (blue/green) scenes, which is a representation of the typical peaks and valleys seen on a tension curve. The stretches of high-tension scenes is the rising action leading up to a peak, then is followed by a stretch of low-tension scenes in the subsequent valley.
You might notice that there are a couple of stretches of high-tension scenes that last longer than most of the others, or where there is two stretches of high-tension scenes broken up only by one or two low-tension scenes rather than a proper valley. These are major peaks, usually representing an arc climax or other significant turning point in the narrative. The buildup to the second/third peaks of the chart, for example, consists of four high-tension scenes, a single low-tension scene, then another four high-tension scenes. This is both the hook of the narrative and the end of act 1 in the traditional three-act structure (the “point of no return”), where the god of death falls to corruption, overpowers the goddess and their father, and unleashes darkness on the world, setting the stage for the adventure to come.
Similarly, in the middle of the second and third “rows” of the chart, there are two stretches of five high-tension scenes that end in a peak higher than most, if not all, of the other peaks in that row. These are the climaxes for the first two arcs, where the player takes on one of the demon champions. Notice that the peaks leading up to each of these climaxes are generally ramping up the tension higher and higher than each peak before, ensuring things are building towards each arc climax, then the peak of the climax itself is followed by a large drop in tension that gives the player a chance to slow down and revel in their victory before starting to ramp up into the next arc.
In the final row, you’ll notice a long stretch of successive peaks with short valleys as the final arc builds into the climax of the game. In particular, towards the end of this row, there is a stretch of ten high-tension scenes, only broken up by the occasional low-tension scene. The peak of this stretch is the climax/final boss. After the climactic battle, tension immediately plummets with the game’s longest stretch of low-tension scenes. In narrative terms, this is the denouement, where the world returns to normal and the characters (and player) celebrate their victory. There is a single high-tension scene thrown in at the end of this, but that is just a “bonus” after-credits scene of sorts that teases the potential for a future adventure – the main narrative itself really concludes at the end of that low-tension stretch.
This chart has stayed up on my wall since, which lets me look up to refer to it as I write the rough draft of the game’s script. By referring to it as I write each scene, I can make sure that the scenes I am writing have the correct pace and right level of tension to fit the desired tension curve. If the pace or tension in a scene doesn’t feel right compared to what I had planned, I can either edit/rewrite it to get closer to the desired pace and tension, or add/remove/rearrange scenes to better fit the flow of the narrative.
That’s about the extent of the planning I did – at this point, I went ahead and got started with writing the rough draft of the script using this chart and the character/location concepts I had already come up with. Just to reiterate – this is probably more planning than you would want to do as a GM writing an adventure or campaign – for those sorts of things, I would just focus on the peaks/valleys and only fill in at most the in-between scenes that I needed for the next session (unless, of course, you’re writing an adventure for publication). For more standard forms of narrative, though, I’m happy with how this structure has turned out so far, and will likely use it again in the future for other video game development projects.
That about wraps it up for this discussion of narrative structure. Hopefully this planning method is of some use to you the next time you are planning a campaign or adventure. In the future, I may write an additional couple of articles expanding this and focusing deeper on how to use this sort of system to plan and write a narrative for a tabletop game. Until then, when planning out narratives for your adventures, always keep in mind the importance of tension and pacing, and try to focus on planning major plot points to fit your desired pace and level of tension before delving into all the scenes and encounters that fit in-between.