Could you help me out for a second? Stand right here, in the middle of the circle. Great. Now, hold this goat skull and close your eyes while I fondle this weird-looking dagger and talk about the magic of rituals.
Ha! Just kidding. The dagger is actually rubber. The skull’s real, but it’s a rental, so please be careful with it. I’m such a kidder! But I do want to talk about rituals and how they can add depth to your storyworld.
When I speak of “rituals” I mean any recurring scenario or sequence that’s a part of your storyworld. This could be…
- a literal ritual (such as the swearing in of a new member of the Nights Watch in Game of Thrones),
- a more metaphorical ritual (such as James Bond checking out this movie’s gadgets in Q’s lab),
- a running gag (such as pulling the mask off the monster at the end of every episode of Scooby Doo), or
- any other sequence of events that keeps showing up (such as the arrival of the first-year students at Hogwarts — complete with the Sorting Hat, or the TV show forensics team sweeping the crime scene for DNA).
Rituals help establish order and set up audience expectations. They tell us about the setting (hey, there are cool gadgets here!) and, once we’ve seen it performed once, it creates expectations for the next time (I wonder what gadget he’ll get this time?).
Unique rituals are important elements of a storyworld’s setting. As such, they might be cool, but if they aren’t helping you create stories, they’re not pulling their weight. A good ritual should be able to do one or more of the following:
- Add Tension: Rituals set expectations for both the audience and characters. When we as the audience have a different expectation than the characters, that leads to tension. During the Reaping at the beginning of Hunger Games, for example, the characters have certain expectations about who’s going to be thrown into the arena. But the readers, who’ve read the back of the book, have a different idea, which leads to suspense. Likewise, there’s bound to be tension if we have no idea how the ritual is going to turn out — even if the characters do.
- Reveal Character: Different people react differently to the same ritual, and how they react tells us a lot about them. Think of Harry Potter under the sorting hat, choosing his house. Or Katniss at the Reaping (sorry, no spoilers). These rituals forced them to make decisions, and those decisions drove the story forward.
- Reveal Conflict: Sometimes rituals are a good time and place for a conflict to be revealed and resolved (think of any wedding scene in any movie or TV series). The ritual itself may highlight an established conflict (as the Nights Watch swears to oppose those on the other side of the Wall) or foreshadow a conflict to come (“I’ll bet James Bond will have to burn something with a laser before the movie’s over”).
Does every ritual have to check all these boxes? Not necessarily. Sometimes a cigar-lighting procedure is just a recurring cigar-lighting procedure. But if there’s a chance to turn it into something richer, consider doing so. Your future self will thank you.
