Story Writing Basics

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Depending on certain games, story may or may not be the most important thing. In RPG's, story tends to be an (extremely) important aspect of them. But even the smallest games with the simplest gameplay will still have a story to them. There's protagonists and antagonists, heroes and villains, resolution and conflict. The following is a list of things to take into consideration when writing a story.

The Seven Basic Plots

There's an infinite amount of possible stories you can write for a game. But among them are seven categories that story plots tend to fall under. Stories can follow one or multiple of these at a time. Understanding them, what they are, and what they can do for your game will help build an understanding on how you want to write your story.


Overcoming the Monster


Wikipedia Definition: The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force (often evil) which threatens the protagonist and/or protagonist's homeland.

In Games: In games, this has now transformed into something more like "Overcoming the Antagonist". The "monster" doesn't have to be an actual monster but an antagonist and/or source of conflict. This can be the villain or baddie that the hero and his/her party has been chasing since the start of the game or a giant evil and/or disaster that they must prevent or halt.

Video Game Examples:

Chrono Trigger: Crono and co. versus Lavos.
Final Fantasy VII: Cloud and co. fighting against Sephiroth.
Kingdom Hearts: Sora and co. fighting against Ansem.

Rags to Riches


Wikipedia Definition: The poor protagonist acquires power, wealth, and/or a mate, loses it all and gains it back, growing as a person as a result.

In Games: This is often the main goal for shop sims, farming sims, management sims, you see the pattern, but it can also apply to certain characters, too, whose sole goal is to get away from their currently unfavorable life state to obtain a better one.

Video Game Examples:

Harvest Moon: Starting with a run-down farm and building it back up.
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale: Running a shop to break free out of debt and learning the trade of being a merchant.
Moonlighter: A shopkeeper in the middle of a nowhere town trying to make a living.

The Quest


Wikipedia Definition: The protagonist and companions set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location. They face temptations and other obstacles along the way.

In Games: In games, this doesn't change much from the usual story definition. From seeking the four crystals to finding a legendary artifact or whatever, you see these stories all the time in games, and especially in RPG's. An objective is given to the player by the game and that object needs to be cleared. That's as simple as it gets for a quest, or "the quest".

Video Game Examples:

Final Fantasy V: Collect the four crystals, the legendary weapons, etc.
Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning and co. were turned into l'Cie, with objectives to fulfill with their lives.
Super Mario RPG: Mario and co. aim to save Princess Toadstool but later discovering that they have to also repair the Star Road by finding the Seven Stars.

Voyage and Return


Wikipedia Definition: The protagonist goes to a strange land and, after overcoming the threats it poses to them, they return with experience.

In Games: In some games, this could be about exploration and the adventures the protagonists goes through. In others, it could be about survival and making it through until the protagonist is capable of escaping. In traditional RPG's, this tends to be a supporting plot as some of them tend to have world-wide traversal.

Video Game Examples:

Bravely Default: The main cast travels to many worlds and even parallel universes, for the sake of returning everything back to normal towards the end.
Nier: Automata: 2B and 9S travel to relatively unknown machine world.
Secret of Mana 3: The six playable characters travel across various parts of their world, facing various challenges before eventually returning home.

Comedy


Wikipedia Definition: Light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion. Booker stresses that comedy is more than humor. It refers to a pattern where the conflict becomes more and more confusing, but is at last made plain in a single clarifying event. The majority of romance films fall into this category.

In Games: In games, you see these as misadventures, possibly happening with joke characters, or with a joke plot in general due to how ridiculous it is (but makes sense in-universe).

Video Game Examples:

Disgaea: The whole plot is full of nonsense. Funny nonsense.
Hyperdimension Neptunia: The series is about anthropomorphic video game consoles reliving the console wars.
Earthbound: The game is raw satire in video game form.

Tragedy


Wikipedia Definition: The protagonist's character flaw or great mistake which is their undoing. Their unfortunate end evokes pity at their folly and the fall of a fundamentally good character.

In Games: Happens in game stories as they would in regular stories. Though the tragedy does not have to be a character flaw, but rather, something that happens to the character(s). This could range from a character's death to the destruction of a hero's hometown, what have you.

Video Game Examples:

Final Fantasy X: The whole thing is about a ruined world.
Persona 3: A huge focus of the game is on death, the wrongs of the world, and accepting it.
Final Fantasy XV: It's a tragedy how Final Fantasy Versus XVIII had to become this.

Rebirth


Wikipedia Definition: An event forces the main character to change their ways and often become a better person.

In Games: Just like the last few story plots, rebirth is another one where it can happen in games as they would in regular stories. In recent trends, this is often seen in an antagonist more than a protagonist, but it can very well happen to the protagonist, too.

Video Game Examples:

Final Fantasy IV: Cecil, the Dark Knight protagonist, is reborn as a Paladin.
Undertale: A lot of the monsters in the game hate humans, but decide they aren't so bad after all.
Persona 4: The majority of the main cast tend to have issues with themselves, where, after confronting their true selves in the form of shadows, learn to accept who they are and turn it for the better.

The Importance of a Good Antagonist

A misconception with writing a good story is that the focus is on the hero, and therefore, the most important character in the story is the hero. However, this could not be further from the truth as the biggest driving force for the story is actually the antagonist. Designing a good antagonist should be one of the first things you do.

Why is the antagonist so important?

That's because the antagonist is the source of most (and in some cases, all) of the conflict found in the story. Without the antagonist, there is no quest for the hero to set off on, no journey for the party, and no chaos found in the world if the antagonist reaches that scale. Here's a number of a things that antagonist can affect:

Worldbuilding
The antagonist can be responsible for shaping the current state of the world by either throwing it into chaos, changing the status quo, or driving the story's world to action.
Unity
The antagonist can very easily be the root cause of why a hero's party forms and binds together and/or be the very reason the hero's party splits apart.
Pace
The actions of the antagonist can determine the pace at which the story goes at. The hero and his/her party is almost always a reactive force to the antagonist's actions, meaning that depending on how and what the antagonist does, the party will have to react to it in tandem.
Growth
The antagonist is often the driving force to make the hero grow. The hero must acquire a certain level of strength, find a way to overcome the antagonist, and become a stronger person either physically, mentally, and/or emotionally.