Planning A Story Spatially

Today was something of an experiment – I was trying out a different way of planning today. More of a spatial approach this time around. I drew a map, marked places on it and thought of sending the characters and building events around those places. It worked out in my head and today’s hour was spent playing with the story, another project. I don’t think I’m going to tackle it quite yet, and tomorrow we’ll be back on the regularly scheduled programming of the two other projects. (Possibly a full hour of the tomb-robber, we will see.). 

I basically wanted to tinker with that plans, while it was my system. I’m not making a third project to juggle with the other two I have running at the moment, but it is something I’m going to work with the maps and stuff and maybe do a little light planning while I get the drafts of the other stories ready. I might make it the second project I wrote.

The first chapter turned out…okay, I guess. It’s serviceable, not its nothing to write home about and nothing that I thought stood out all that much to be perfectly honest. It needs expanding. On the maps I sketched, I just put little chapter numbers underneath the places I thought they should visit and I’m working a list, in which I flesh those places out a bit, give me an idea of the stuff that might happen in each place – character development, something that drives the plot and what have you. 

I know approximately what I’m doing with the setting – it’s an interesting setting, sort of a raw primordial feel to it. It was inspired in part by the Shadowlands, from Commander Keen 4, which still utterly fascinate me. I think an explanation is in order, if you don’t know what that is. Commander Keen 4 is a computer game I played a lot as a kid (and again as an adult, once I discovered the magic that is Dos Box), in which the titular hero goes to save eight kidnapped Council members, after he learns they’re in distress. 

They’ve been taken and hidden in these mysterious Shadowlands, full of caverns, mysterious villages, ruins, a lake. It utterly fascinates me, this setting. The game doesn’t really go all that much into it, but I loved it. Just the mood, the mystery hanging over the whole thing. What happened here anyway?

Who built these ruins? What were they for? Why did these people leave? Where did the monsters come from? Granted, these are questions that were probably never answered, but I still found it fun to think about. This setting has elements of Keen 4 and was drawn from the Shadowlands, and I just basically tried to answer the questions, while building a lengthy, complex journey for these characters to take. 

It’ll be longer, I think, than the other two projects. But, if the planning goes right, then it should be pretty straightforward to write. Just stick to the roadmap. But like I said, that’s a project for another day. I have enough on my plate with my two active projects to rotate between. Tomorrow, we’ll see what I work on. It probably won’t be this. I’d like to play more with the whole planning phase of this project first and I may write up some character sketches. I have a rough idea of the characters, who they are, what they’re doing and approximately where their development will lead. 

The main is especially interesting, but I won’t get into him here. 

I think that will do it for today’s entry. Thanks for reading.