Last week, I brought up how a movie script’s log line is very similar to a storyworld’s premise. They’re both short (one- or two-sentence) summaries of what the story(world) is about. I hypothesized that, just as a log line forms the foundation of a script’s synopsis, a premise could be expanded into a storyworld’s overview… and then wondered what such an overview would look like.
Since then, I’ve put together what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call a “storyworld overview template” and it looks something like this:
- Genre and Premise: First we present the one-sentence summary of the storyworld, with a note as to its genre.
- Setting: Here we expand on the setting named in the premise, touching on enough specifics to intrigue the reader, but not so many as to bog the section down in details. This is probably a paragraph or two — or even three, if the setting is different enough from the real world to warrant the extra attention.
- Characters: Once we’ve established the setting, we show several types of characters who are the active participants (i.e., the heroes and villains) in the world. Again, these are broad-stroke archetypes, but with a finer point on them then we used in the premise. Characters should be compelling: exciting, aspirational figures that the audience wants to learn about — or, if it’s an interactive project, they are roles the audience wants to play.
- Conflict: When we describe the storyworld’s conflict in the premise, it’s often little more than a theme: “Fight for survival,” or “Oppose the forces of tyranny,” or “discover a new way of life.” When we do so in this section, we start filling in the details of the conflict and focusing on specific aspects of it. “Oppose the forces of tyranny” becomes “sabotage the blood-lords’ bone factories, assassinate the shadow operatives, and pilot razor-gliders into the blazing guns of the dark one’s armada.”
- Stories: This section turns abstract settings, characters, and conflicts into concrete story ideas. I’m seeing 4-6 one-sentence concepts, fleshed out enough to show the that the storyworld supports a range of different story types.
Once we’ve filled in these blanks, we should have a roughly one-page overview of the storyworld, ideally with enough details to show how it’s new and different, but not so many details that the audience is overwhelmed. Remember: this document is just an overview, not the storyworld bible itself.
Hmmm… This seems like a great time to do an example… Looks like I’ve got a topic for my next post.
