I’m a professional writer. I have been for about eight years now. I write a lot of nonfiction for clients, but as of now, I have four completed first drafts, dozens of short stories, and so many half-finished book drafts I have essentially lost count. I’ve ghostwritten books for clients and edited at least fifteen novels for friends.
Despite this, I still struggle with story setup. How am I supposed to arrange everything? How do I get from Point A to Point Z, and how do I hit all the important points in between?
This has always eluded me. I get frozen by fear in worrying about how to do it, let alone do it well.
And then…Storium.
I was invited to my first Storium game by my totally awesome friend, Michael Woods. It’s a steampunk Atlantis adventure, and it’s completely amazing, you have no idea. I haven’t had this much fun on the internet in a long time…and that’s keeping in mind that I’m basically a Twitter addict.
From there, we naturally started a bunch of games, and I even started my own. I’ve made some great friends through Storium, and I am still having a blast.
But it’s had much bigger benefits than just being insanely fun and getting me some amazing new friends—it’s clarified the writing process.
Don’t get me wrong, writing is still crazy, but there’s something incredible about the Storium layout.
You (if you’re the narrator) open the scene with as little or much detail as you want, you set out challenges, and then the players (who each have their own character for the game) take turns, facing the challenges with either strong or weak outcomes (depending on the cards they play).
It might sound ridiculous, but this is exactly what I needed. I needed help figuring out how to structure each scene, and seeing—really, truly grasping—how one scene flows into the next; how the individual scenes work together to make a whole story.
Plus, talk about awesome character development. Rather than writing with a bunch of characters who you’ve made up, you get to work with the creations of your friends, and their weird characters, and the things they throw into the game that really make you think.
As writers, we’re always looking for ways to practice writing, think creatively, solve story problems, create compelling characters, come up with cool situations, get feedback on our work, AND have some semblance of a social life…and like magic, Storium fills every single one of those needs.
TL;DR—Storium will make you a better writer. Period. It’s also pretty much my favourite thing right now.
Besides, is there a more fun way to make sure you meet your “Write Every Day” goal?
No. No, there is not.
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When I started writing this, it was just a random Evernote file wherein I professed my love for Storium. However, since they launched their Kickstarter Campaign today, I decided this was a good time to share with the world why I love Storium so very much. I am contributing, and if you want to experience some of the epic that is Storium, I encourage you to support them, too.
