Writing | How Being a DM Enhanced My Writing Skills and Process
Introduction
I have been absent from this site (and nearly every writing community) for a year, now. While I do wish that I had been a little more open about how I've been spending this time, I don't believe I've wasted it (which is how I typically feel during a hiatus of this degree). Instead, my creative energy has been directed at one thing: D&D.
Back in September-October, 2019, I started a small, 5-Session Paranoia Campaign as a way to get a feel not only for being a Dungeon Master but as a way to ensure I was building a solid "party" of players which would include my fiancée upon her arrival in the United States for a 90-Day stay.
The reason for this was because I'd had an idea for a D&D Campaign for a long time. I had a whole world mapped out in my mind, loosely inspired by Van Helsing and the works of Lovecraft. I wanted to turn that world into a playground for my players. At the time, the world was small and so was my idea. It's simple, I thought, and it'll be a short one.
I was wrong. It has been a long, complex campaign. However, I have learned a lot from it, and I hope that the things I've learned will help other writers (or Dungeon Masters) in their own journey of discovery.
D&D is Discovery Writing
There are two primary methods of writing a novel: Discovery/Pantsing (George R. R. Martin) and Outlining/Planning (Sylvia Plath). Most writers tend to fall somewhere in the middle. I have always been an Outliner. I have often spent more time on an outline and synopsis than writing the actual book. My outline and internal wiki for the Imperfect series is absolutely insane and far longer than any of the versions I have written of the first probably-never-gonna-see-the-light-of-day novel.
I rather foolishly thought that writing a D&D Campaign for some friends would go just as smoothly as writing an outline. I had every session carefully planned out, with separate beats. My original story looked something like this...
Setting
The story takes place on a continent called Aduna. There are many cities in Aduna, along with diverse regions, but the campaign will only take place in one small area: Masca Village. Masca is surrounded by a pinewood forest and, to the north, there is a mountain atop which rests an ancient, abandoned, vampire-infested castle. This is taken almost directly from the Hugh Jackman film Van Helsing, which served as my primary inspiration. Vampires and Werewolves were going to be their very own monster type, as well, instead of being subsets of Undead and Humanoids.
The environment was going to have a steampunk, gothic horror, 1820s-style victorian atmosphere. In preparation for this, I flavored various common items as items that would instead fit this theme. Leather Armor became a Heavy Trenchcoat, Healing Potions became Healing Spirits, special Renaissance Guns were added. I planned it all out long before that first practice Paranoia campaign took place.
Story
The story I planned had a few beats, each intended to last through a few sessions. I had them carefully planned out and thought that I could likely bring the campaign to an end by the time my fiancée would leave after three months. The way I saw it, I had one month for each story beat. This is what those beats were, originally:
The Child-Snatcher
The group of players is forced together when the entire village of Masca goes on lockdown, with them inside of it. If they want to go about their business, they will need to confront a wicked, terrifying monster (an Oni, who takes the form of a goliath).
The Werewolves
After the Oni, Filch, is killed, the players are free to leave the village, only to discover that werewolves roam the forests beyond Masca Village, having grown hungrier and braver as Winter has come to Aduna. Any character who wishes can, of course, attempt to leave on their own, though this would be dangerous. The expectation is that in order to ensure safe passage, the characters will address the werewolf problem.
The Vampire Lord
In the castle looming above Masca Village is a powerful vampire who hears of the party members and their accomplishments. When he investigates for himself, he finds that one of the party members resembles his long-lost love, who refused vampirism and took her own life upon seeing what the vampire (Marius) had become. Marius becomes convinced that this party member is his beloved reincarnated and pursues her. When/if he is refused, he commands his legion of vampires and undead to destroy Masca. The party must unite one last time to save the world.
What Changed
Those storybeats seem simple enough, so what changed? Why is this campaign still going, coming up on its tenth month? Those three beats could have easily been summarized in about 3-4 sessions.
Well, what changed is something I failed to account for: my players. D&D is fun because you aren't telling a story all by yourself, you have a whole table of writers at your disposal, especially if you cast your party well enough (and I believe I've got the best players I could ask for). So while I do have control over the world, I can't very well tell my players no to perfectly reasonable actions and requests.
So, this outliner/planner of a writer turned into a discovery writer before the campaign even started... and that's because I sent a questionnaire to all of my players. I asked them a few different questions about their characters; I asked why they were in Masca, I asked what secrets they had... I had them really flesh out these characters they were going to play.
When I got their answers back, each of my players had fleshed out the world to a far more vast degree than I could have ever imagined. New, unexpected, horrible villains came to light. Darker forces were at play--forces far more evil than Marius in his grand castle or Filch kidnapping and consuming children.
I took their backstories and made them fit into my universe. I merged them with the ideas I already had, I started fleshing out the world to a greater degree than I'd ever expected. I added mystery and intrigue. I added a singular evil entity that tied it all together. After doing all of that, one thing became quite clear: I was not going to wrap up this campaign in three months. There was a lot of story to be had.
How is D&D Discovery Writing?
Discovery Writing is essentially reactionary writing, which I think is a better way of putting it. You react to your own writing (or, in the case of D&D, you react to the writing of your players). You may have a vague understanding of where everything is going, but how you get there is going to be a vast, empty space (and that destination might even change over the course of your writing).
A D&D Campaign is broken up into Sessions where a few things will take place based on the actions of your characters and the way the world and non-player characters respond to them. between each session, you as a Dungeon Master have a chance to take into account your notes from the previous session and write out notes on what will most likely happen in the next, allowing you to prepare yourself in advance for the actions of your players.
The period between sessions is a chance to do some discovery writing as well as some planning. It is discovery writing because you are writing something as a reaction to the events of the previous session. It is then planning because you are attempting to outline the events of the next session, even though your players will likely turn these plans on their head.
Then, when the day or night of the next session arrives, you do more discovery writing by responding to everything your players say and do. I don't plan every conversation my players are going to have. I have a general expectation of what they are going to do, where they're going to go, and who they're going to talk to, but they often surprise me several times in a single session. At the end of the day, you've done several hours of discovery writing and should have quite a few notes to refer to in preparation for the next session.
In the end, I have essentially spent nearly ten months doing a kind of writing I never thought I would do, enjoy, or even be good at. It has greatly improved my skills as a writer and I feel more than ready to take on my upcoming writing challenges. Not everyone can run a campaign like mine, though, so I want to share what I've learned. I hope that this experience I've gleaned over the past several months will help someone out there.
Writing Tips I've Gleaned from Being a Dungeon Master
There are many things I have taken away from being a Dungeon Master for my Mists of Aduna campaign, particularly as it relates to discovery writing. I am going to focus on the most important tidbits I've extracted during my time as a Dungeon Master, however. Those are:
- It's okay to be vague.
- Discovery writing is NOT lazy.
- Your atmosphere helps significantly when writing (personally).
- Listen to your characters, not your plans.
- An outline isn't always a list, it's a summary.
I'll go over each of these points one by one. Note that they aren't listed in terms of what I think is most important, critical, or helpful. I've also learned a lot more from this than just these five points, these are simply my biggest takeaways that I think can be helpful to everyone else.
It's Okay to be Vague
Do not describe everything. Your readers (or players) have imaginations of their own and they will fill in the gaps. When you tell them they're in a tavern, they know that there are tables and chairs in the tavern. They know there's a bar and they know there's a bartender. It's your job to fill in the other gaps and to point out things that are out of the ordinary.
For example, if there isn't a bartender, that's something you'll want to point out. If there's no one behind the bar, that's something your players will immediately consider to be strange. One of them is likely to inquire about the bartender and why there's no one taking drink orders. But if you don't point out that there isn't a bartender in the tavern, they're going to expect that there's one there, whether you say there's one or not.
It's also okay to be vague because this gives you room to add things to your scene later. If I say that there are commoners playing a game for coin at a table by the fireplace, that's enough to pique someone's interest. If they have questions like what game or what do the people at the table look like, that's my chance to add more descriptions. However, if those details don't matter to those players, then there was no sense in giving them.
In writing, this can be applied by giving a general description of the scene, and then determining what each character would fixate on. All of the characters in your story will see things differently. One of them may just want to find the broodiest and most isolated booth and take a seat. Another may want to check out the games being played and join in. Both of them will enter the same tavern, but different characters are going to care about different attributes. They'll see the same tavern differently, as my players do.
By giving a vague description, you actually give room for character growth and development. What each character sees, looks for, and determines as important is going to help flesh that character out and give them more depth.
Discovery Writing is NOT Lazy
The reason I've always been an outliner/planner is because I've personally viewed discovery/pantser writing as lazy and uninspired. I had this silly notion in my head that it just meant you got to sit down in front of the computer and writing a bunch of sentences until it all worked out in the end, usually because someone came along and did the hard work for you afterward by pointing out all of the plot holes and flaws in your story. THEN you could go back and fix it.
This is not the case and is a terribly way to look at discovery writing.
Not only is discovery writing not lazy, it's actually quite difficult. You have to have such a solid understanding of your story's direction and of the personalities of your characters in order to be a discovery writer. You have to really know your world and its inhabitants. That isn't lazy at all.
With discovery writing, you don't just sit down with a blank page and write (at least, not if you want to be good at it). Instead, you sit down with a blank page and a set of notes about your setting and your characters. You know where you're going. You know what your story is about. However, the parts in-between all of that... that's the discovery writing. You don't have every line, beat, and scene outlined. You discover that along the way.
To give you an idea of what discovery writing actually is and how it isn't lazy, here is a scene from a recent session of mine. First, I'll give you my "outline", or the paragraph I wrote to summarize what the players would experience. Then, I'll tell you what my players did.
The storage room appears to be normal, with a few rows of shelves on the left and right-hand side. Bolkos [the tavern's owner] will know that the access to the sewers below the tavern can be found in a trapdoor at the far end of the room.
However, when the characters start walking, the room will seem to stretch endlessly. No matter how much walking they do, they never get closer to the trapdoor and they always turn around to see the wall of the storage room and the other party members.
I had another paragraph that basically defined the rules of how various interactions with the room would work to help myself emphasize the bizarreness of this experience. I didn't actually know what my players would have their characters try, but I wanted to define the playground. The solution to this little puzzle was to have the individual who was actually experiencing the dream (though they did not know it was all a dream at the time) lead the way forward. When he took charge and tried to walk down the hallway, it behaved normally and everyone was able to follow, reaching the trap door.
This is a good example of discovery writing. Were I writing a novel instead of a D&D Campaign, I would have written this same thing. I flesh out the rules of the room and the way the puzzle works, then I stick my characters into this sandbox and see how they figure it out. In the case of this puzzle and these characters, they tried all sorts of things! They walked sideways, they walked backwards, they threw things down the hall to see if they made it to the end... they tried a great number of things before they finally tried having the dreamer lead the way (a person who, as I had notated in a few previous sessions, rarely entered the room first and usually preferred to take up the rear).
That is ultimately what made the scene great: the characters. I understood that Joggor (the dreamer) was the sort of person who typically let others take the lead. Had a different character who normally led the way first been the dreamer, then this puzzle would have been pointless, as there's a good chance they might not have even known there was a puzzle to deal with. The right person would have just walked down the hallway and led the charge.
Instead, I turned this puzzle into a character moment. Through the process of discovery on the part of my players, I forced the character who typically took up the rear or followed someone else to lead the charge. And, by allowing this to be a bit of discovery writing, we explored the way different characters approach and consider puzzles. It took a long time for someone to finally say "let's stop throwing things and really think about where we are and what's going on". The thought of having Joggor lead the way didn't even make it into the top five approaches to the challenge.
And that is why I have become fond of mixing Discovery with Planning. I planned a puzzle and the characters turned the discovery of solving that puzzle into a moment of character development, without even realizing it. In novel writing, this would play out quite similarly. My characters, with each of their different, unique personalities, would approach the puzzle differently. They'd try various things before one of them realized that, maybe, the person who never really leads the way needed to do so, just this once.
So I would summarize own understanding of great discovery writing like this: you define the sandbox in which characters play and then you write about what those characters do in that sandbox.
Your Atmosphere Helps Significantly When Writing (Personally)
This one is, as noted in the header, more of a personal preference and may not apply to everyone. I have always been someone who prefers to listen to music in the background while I write. I will find tracks that match my scene and put them on a loop while I write the scene to help myself get into the zone. If I hear a track I really like, I'll add it to a list and make a note to myself about what scene(s) I think will work best with it.
However, in being a Dungeon Master for D&D, I have found that there is more to creating an atmosphere than just music. There are two specific things I am adding to my repertoire: sound effects and lighting.
Sound effects, I've found, really help emphasize the noise that is happening around you. A battle between two or more armies will be loud and cacophonous. It won't sound like a single intense track. It'll sound like people dying and screaming. It'll sound like structures collapsing and machine guns firing off round after round. It is a lot. By only having music, I was robbing myself of really putting myself into the true atmosphere of my scenes. When I have the sounds of intense battles going around, I become more anxious and so do my players, which assists in emphasizing the intensity of the scene. That anxiety translates to the characters they play and the scenes I describe. It does more than music ever could for putting me right into the middle of the scene.
Next, lighting! I have always had a tendency to write in a dimly lit (if lit at all) room. But that doesn't really capture what it's actually like in my scene. I've had Philips hue lights for two years... why haven't I been using them? I can change the colors of my atmosphere at will! With the touch of the button, I can be surrounded by the warm glow of a fire or blinded by sun reflecting off of a snowy landscape. These things matter. Anything that can put you into your scene matters. Anything that can keep you grounded in your scene matters.
If you're able to go to locations that are very similar to your scenes while you write, I definitely recommend doing that. If you can't, however, I highly recommend that you surround yourself with an atmosphere that reminds you of the scene. Expose yourself to the sights, sounds, feelings, and even smells (when convenient) of your scene.
Listen to Your Characters, Not Your Plans
I have a tendency to think of my characters and my plans separately, then mash them together. Oftentimes, this results in forcing character motivations that seem and feel... unnatural. It leads to betrayals that don't make sense, goals that don't actually align with what a character's goals should be, and a general lack of predictability, which is very unsatisfying. Your readers should know your characters well enough that they can predict and understand their actions. There should be very few instance in which a character's decision is up in the air and no one is certain what they'll choose (and moments like that should be rare and significant, not thrown away).
I learned this from my players, probably more than anything else. Over the course of our campaign, I have come to predict the way their characters will likely behave. I take notes on their behaviors. It helps that I have some amazing roleplayers, writers, storytellers, and creative minds at my table, as they are able to maintain consistency in their characters. I understand the goals, desires, and personalities of the characters played by each player and so I can motivate them and steer them in the right direction.
This doesn't mean that I know exactly what's going to happen in every session. As I have indicated throughout this post, my players still surprise me nearly every session. However, when they do surprise me, it is still within the confines of what I understand of their characters. It is extremely rare for someone to do something out-of-character (and, when they do, they get punished for it).
What I have truly taken away from this is that if I am forcing a character in my story to do something against their will simply for the sake of my own plans... maybe I just need a different character in that role, or maybe I need to change my own plans. Instead of forcing a character idea I have into the ill-shaped mold of my story, I need to focus more on what that character's actions would actually be. If that character wouldn't do what I want, something needs to be adjusted in my story.
An Outline Isn't Always a List, It's a Summary
Every single one of my outlines in the past has been a list, numbered with digits, roman numerals, and bullets. Each point in the list has a single sentence summarizing part of the scene. I go into grueling detail--detail so grueling, in fact, that it takes away the fun of writing almost entirely. Yeah, I have a few scenes that I really look forward to and really look forward to writing. But then I have scenes that just feel like all I'm doing is fleshing out a couple of bullet points.
Through being a Dungeon Master, I have learned a new method of outlining--a better method of outlining. Instead of numbered lists, I summarize different aspects of my scenes, such as the storage room scene I described above. One or two paragraphs set the premise of that moment. I might add a couple of bullet points below that stating important things that really need to happen right there, but ultimately it's just a summary of what is expected to take place.
I have started outlining a short story using this method and let me tell you, it is going much more smoothly than my previous outlining. I'm summarizing different beats with a paragraph or two. Now I'm not looking forward to just one really fun scene, I'm looking forward to every scene because I've given myself a lot of room to play with my characters.
Conclusion
Normally, when I'm absent from my writing platforms for this long, I come back with shame and regret. I feel as though I've been wasting time on projects that don't matter. This time, however, I've actually gleaned something from my hiatus! I have learned a lot about the writing process and have greatly expanded my own knowledge. I have readied myself to tackle the challenges ahead. I hope that this post was as helpful to you as these past ten months have been to me.
My D&D Campaign is coming to an end in the coming months. The campaign is heading toward its inevitable wrap-up. Once it's over, I plan to focus my intentions on writing full-speed. I've already started outlining a short story, as was mentioned earlier in this post. Not only that, but it's a short story set in the world of Imperfect!
As tempting as it is, I will refrain from other life updates. Things are really crazy for me, right now. I barely post anything at all, these days (on any platform). I might do a life update post soon, but at the moment, it's all a bit too much to summarize.