Planting Story Seeds Part 2: Windows

In part 1 of this series on creating stories for storyworlds, I wrote about choosing the right combination of story and platform. Today I’d like to look closer at the story itself, and how the storyworld can shine through it.

When is a story more than just a story? When it provides the audience with a glimpse at the rest of the storyworld.

Metaphor time!

In the kingdom of the storyworld, each story is a building. It’s self-contained, with the standard requisite floor, ceiling, and walls. But if you look out the window, you can see other buildings and other parts of the kingdom. You don’t need to understand the things you see (“Why does that building have a mustache?”), but if you do (perhaps because you’ve already visited there), it gives you a greater understanding of the house you’re in.

In this metaphor, a “window” is any reference to things outside the immediate story.

Star Wars did this this with its casual mentions of the “clone wars” and the “Kessel run.” The TV show Lost built an obsessive fanbase by packing each episode with windows. Comic books, with their tightly interwoven continuities, do this all the time. (I remember reading a Spider-man comic in which it was snowing in August. It was irrelevant to the plot, but interesting, and an editor’s note told me it was all explained in the latest issue of The Avengers.)

Storyworld windows serve four major functions:

• Immersion: Glimpses of the world beyond the story help suspend disbelief. Characters have lives outside the story — places they’re from, people they know, things they’re planning to do when the story is over. These little details make the elements of the story feel more solid and real.

• Intrigue: The audience should be curious about what they see out the window. What’s a “clone war” or a Kessel? What was the Dharma Initiative trying to achieve? Why is it snowing in August? The answers to these questions don’t matter to the story, but asking them can keep the audience engaged long after the story is done.

• Story Hooks: Everything you see out the window is another potential story. Thirty years later, we can tell the story of the Clone Wars in a TV series. We can detail the objectives of the Dharma Initiative in an alternate reality game. We tell the story of the snow-blowing super-villain in next month’s issue of The Avengers.

• Reward the Inquisitive: Of course, it’s possible that the questions posed by windows have already been answered, and your true fans — the ones who read the wiki, post on message boards, and follow you on Twitter — know those answers. This knowledge doesn’t weaken the story (knowing the “clone wars” doesn’t take away from the scene in Obi-Wan’s sand hut), but ideally adds depth and meaning to what’s already there. For that person, a throw-away detail (“I hate snakes!”) has deeper resonance because she’s aware of the greater context (“His mom was mugged by a snake in that short-story I read!”).
  

Okay, one last bit of window metaphor before I find some other dead horse to beat: Windows are cool, but you can’t build a house out of them. The story comes first. Tell a good story, then worry about the view into the neighbor’s backyard afterward.