What fiction writers can learn from Dungeons & Dragons ‹ Literary Hub

In the late 1980s, a friend and I knew there was something called Dungeons & Dragons. And we also knew it was for us. But in our small town in upstate New York, there were no book stores, and the World Wide Web was still years away. We had a set of dice, so we used scraps we collected from related books and video games to create rules and settings that would help tell the story we wanted to tell. Article continues after ad It was a tedious process, but it worked. On countless weekends and summer nights, we let our fictional characters act out amazing journeys, high-stakes intrigues, and absurd adventures. Tabletop role-playing games had been around for about 15 years at this point, but we felt we were tapping into something mythical and new. That’s exactly what we were doing. D&D owes its existence to a unique combination of ancient legends and folklore, fantasy literature, tactical wargaming, and improvisational theater. Fifty years later, this game is more popular than ever, but what keeps it new is players coming together with their friends to make this game their own. No wonder so many writers have emerged from this melting pot of unrehearsed storytelling. Holly Black, John Darnielle, Lev Grossman, and more discuss their early encounters with the game and how it influenced their later work. These days, notable authors such as Renee Gladman and Brian Evenson create original RPGs and adventure modules. I’m particularly interested in D&D as a folk practice for creating visionary and ephemeral narratives. And I believe fiction writers can learn a lot from that practice. I think of tabletop RPG rules as a vessel for carrying the ingenuity of childhood play into other parts of life. There are as many ways to play a tabletop RPG as there are tables at which such games are played. But regardless of their chosen style, most players seem to have something in common. It is gratitude for unexpected events. Whether working with published modules or creating your own adventures, game referees can help players navigate dangerous settings, outwit enemies, confront factions, and more. You may plan your assignments. Article continues after ad. Predict everything that can happen during play. Randomly determined events and encounters change the context of the originally envisioned scenario. Small details established in previous sessions may prove to have unexpected significance. And most importantly, the players will come up with ideas that the referee never expected. Is that the giant snake you thought our heroes had to fight to get into the evil sorcerer’s tower? Now, one of the players uses the magic rope they found last week to cross the snake bed. Dodge and open the door at the top of the stairs, releasing the snake into the wizard’s study instead. You can feel it in the air around the table at that moment. It’s the crackle of excitement as we all discover in real time how the story will unfold. But how can you achieve such excitement in the solitary process of writing a novel?Here are some approaches. Allowing for the unexpected Some writers like to outline every aspect of their story in detail before starting a draft. I’ve tried to be one of those writers, but I always fail. Once I start a draft, I can’t help but make changes, often scrapping entire sections of my outline to accommodate ideas that only occur to me once I’m fully immersed in the language and flow of the story. I’ve come to accept this tension between advance planning and the spontaneous destruction of plans as a positive, even important, part of my process. So instead of trying to plan everything in advance, leave room for chance and play. My contours became more and more porous, giving me more room for restructuring. In particularly desperate moments, you might even resort to randomly chosen words from the dictionary to introduce the sense of oracle provided by the game’s dice and random tables. This is another technique borrowed from RPG tools. In addition to (or instead of) an outline, write yourself a long list of words related to the story you want to write. Images, emotions, themes, anything that gets the wheels turning. Then, refer back to the list from time to time as you write, randomly combining entries to see new context or new twists on ideas. Sometimes it feels like opening a secret door that you just found out is there. Article continues after ad Collaborate with yourself Your story may exist outside of you, but it doesn’t exist without you. Respecting that will means respecting the part of the brain where stories reside. This process can lead to richer and more engaging characters. Because characters are often the recipients of the control you give them over the story. When running a tabletop RPG, the referee typically takes on the role of explaining the world and its inhabitants, while the players take on the role of the protagonist. Novelists must play the role of both narrator and protagonist, and are under the spell of knowing too much. But once we understand the characters well enough, knowing their backstories, loves, fears, and desires, they may seem to act on their own. The characters themselves can also surprise us with surprises and embrace contradictions. By giving them room to act and to oppose our plans for them, we can reveal new aspects of who they are, and also take the story from being predictable and boring. It can be saved. It’s a way of working with ourselves. The common dream of tabletop RPGs has served as a bridge between play and literature. When running a tabletop RPG, great moments often come from putting your character in a difficult situation where you don’t know the best solution. You can do the same thing with fiction. In my new book, The Naming Song, one of the main characters, a doppelgänger of the main character’s sister, finds herself in a moment of emotional and physical crisis near the end of the book. When I wrote the story leading up to this turning point, I was writing the characters into the corner. I didn’t know how or if she would escape. The choice she ultimately made, and the toll it took on her and the other characters, struck the story like a lightning bolt. It’s now one of the most important parts of the novel, but I didn’t know it was coming until it had already happened. Don’t forget play In a 1983 interview with the Paris Review, Julio Cortázar spoke about the importance of play in his work. “When kids play, they’re having fun, but they’re taking it very seriously…It’s the same with literature. It’s a game, but it’s a game you can bet your life on.” Article Advertisement Followed by Table Talk, which considers the rules of RPGs as a kind of vessel for carrying the ingenuity of childhood play into other parts of our lives. There are countless ways to access that spirit of serious play in our fiction, sometimes in the very structures we choose. Formal games such as those developed by Cortázar in his book Hopscotch are one example. More recent game-like works include Peng Shepherd’s All This and More, a novel that features branching paths for readers to choose, and GennaRose Nethercott’s Lianna Fled the Examples include Cranberry Bog. For me, the shared dream of tabletop RPGs served as a bridge between play and literature, between the promise of endless adventure and the endless demands of storytelling as a craft or profession. As a result, writing may not feel solitary. I can almost hear the exclamations of my friends, and feel myself joining theirs, as this story presents us with new aspects of its multifaceted wonders. __________________________________ The Name Song by Jedediah Berry is available from Tor Books, a publication of Macmillan, Inc. Article continues after ad