Good idea generation practices/tips/techniques?

[Denisowator]

I’ve been working on a game for the past month or so. Mainly focusing on creating the graphics and thinking about the plot (since it’s heavily story based). I have an incredibly solid and powerful premise for it, but I’ve been stuck for way too long, on what the actual gameplay should consist of.

I’ve been talking to my friend over Skype the whole time, and I’ve been getting a lot of incredible story ideas from him. The problem is that I have no idea how to actually combine them and construct a story out of it. I have events here and there that he told me about, as well as stuff I could form the story around. But there’s just nothing in neither of our minds to actually make the “game” enjoyable and playable.

I’m just going to go out on a limb here, and assume that that’s not how things are usually done in game development (sitting around for a month straight, completely empty headed about what the gameplay should be). You see, I have a starting cut-scene which I’m currently working on, and it’s really powerful in terms of conveying emotion and I feel like it’s a perfect start to the game, but there’s nothing after that. It’s just that single cut-scene, and I have no idea how to transition from that, to the rest of the story.

I’m not going to get into exactly what the start of the game consists of (which is also the thing that causes me so many problems). Unless it would help people help me.

I would really love to hear how you go about coming up with story ideas. Do you just sit around doing nothing but thinking, until you come up with something (like I am currently doing)? Do you do something to make your brain start thinking creatively? I really want to know.

Keep in mind that the issue I have is not coming up with ideas, as I have way more than enough for the time being. What I’m struggling with, is making a playable and enjoyable story out of them, that doesn’t feel awkward, too boring, or too exciting. I want the game to be an emotional journey for the player.

UPDATE:
The general story, is based around my friend’s life in recent years. It depicts how much he’s changed and what he experienced in the last 3 years, and also makes up some stuff for the next 2 or so, years.

The whole idea is to make the player go through a number of the same places (with some exceptions), which will change over time, like furniture being different over the years, and seasons (snow in winter, leaf color in autumn, etc.). It is essentially a walking simulator, but with a lot of cutscenes (hopefully). And also get attached to different characters in different ways, by making the characters act in certain ways (being an asshole, being weak and picked on, etc.).

The original start of the game (which now became the middle of the game) was going to be a view of a forest, then the camera would move to the side, revealing my friend standing, with a camera (he always loved photography, and still does) held up. There are also some camera sounds that play before the scene is showed. The reason I was stuck then, is because it was pretty difficult to come up with a way of taking the story forward, without making it awkward.

For example, when I created this thread, this is what it was going to be:
*My friend stands on a hill, after the camera moves to the side.
*My friend would put down the camera, and be called by his boss, telling him his lunch break is over.
*He would then go left, through a small section of the forest, complaining about how hard things have been.
*Then he would just kneel down next to a bunch of logs, and get to work (he used to shave bark off of logs).

Now see how that would be quite difficult, in terms of making a proper story with some gameplay? The overall start was extremely awkward, and kind of boring. I wanted to replace that scene, with something else, while keeping the very first part.

Now I’ve decided to start the game off, 3 years in the past. But the same problem remains, I have no idea what I should do, and no matter how much I think, I can’t come up with anything that isn’t straight up awkward to and boring to watch.

I want the players to get immersed in the story, not watch some dude randomly shave logs in the first few minutes of the game. But I don’t know how to properly do that, despite exchanging plenty of story and design ideas back and forth with my friend.

The game is a 2D side-scroller, in a McPixel-esque pixel art style, and it will make very strong use of realistic lighting, sounds, and dialog.

[TonyLi]

@Denisowator

I want the game to be an emotional journey for the player.

Try to get your hands on Jesse Schell’s Art of Game Design. In the book, he proposes several “lenses,” or ways of looking at game design. Lens #1 is “essential experience,” which is exactly what you’re talking about. He presents techniques to help identify and refine your game’s essential experience.

Also consider mind mapping. You can do it on paper or using software. Mind maps help with two things:

• As you get everything down on paper, it frees up your mind to come up with other ideas.
• When you create a branch, you can narrow your focus temporarily to only that branch without having to keep all the other branches (facets of your game) in mind, freeing you up to be more creative in that specific facet.

Here are some other good articles: Iain Broome, Writing4Success.

You might end up with something like this to help with your story:

Or something like this for gameplay:

[GarBenjamin]

@TonyLi

Try to get your hands on Jesse Schell’s Art of Game Design. In the book, he proposes several “lenses,” or ways of looking at game design. Lens #1 is “essential experience,” which is exactly what you’re talking about. He presents techniques to help identify and refine your game’s essential experience.

Also consider mind mapping. You can do it on paper or using software. Mind maps help with two things:

• As you get everything down on paper, it frees up your mind to come up with other ideas.
• When you create a branch, you can narrow your focus temporarily to only that branch without having to keep all the other branches (facets of your game) in mind, freeing you up to be more creative in that specific facet.

Here are some other good articles: Iain Broome, Writing4Success.

You might end up with something like this to help with your story:

Or something like this for gameplay:

+1000 for suggesting mind mapping. One of my favorites for anything & everything… including game dev.

[EternalAmbiguity]

I’m not sure why you’re asking about story ideas when what you seem to need is gameplay ideas. Those are two different things. And I think you’re right that development doesn’t usually work that way. Usually story is one of the last things to get added. I kind of work the same way though–my main stuff is based off of vague story-based ideas I had.

I can’t really recommend anything specific. But I would suggest identifying the “essential experience” as TonyLi puts it. Identify how you want your player to feel during the game. Target gameplay which either provides that feeling or doesn’t get in the way of the story providing it.

For one of my ideas, I had the story idea first. Wasn’t sure what to do about the gameplay. I’d kind of figured it would wind up being a “walking simulator” or something of the sort. However, further thought about my goals for the game made me realize that making it a 3D puzzle adventure game in the vein of something like Myst would serve the narrative best.

I also want to caution you not to put all of your “eggs in one basket,” or put “everything but the kitchen sink” in this. Don’t throw every story idea you come up with simply because it’s “cool.” Make sure it fits the narrative. There are no “game police” who will prevent you from putting different ideas into different games

Additionally, if you post some more specific details, people could probably give more specific suggestions. I did that and got some useful feedback (mainly from TonyLi, unsurprisingly). It showed me that others were more interested in certain ideas I had, which allowed me to focus on those ideas.

So what is this specific cutscene? What is the overarching story?

[Denisowator]

@EternalAmbiguity

I’m not sure why you’re asking about story ideas when what you seem to need is gameplay ideas. Those are two different things. And I think you’re right that development doesn’t usually work that way. Usually story is one of the last things to get added. I kind of work the same way though–my main stuff is based off of vague story-based ideas I had.

I can’t really recommend anything specific. But I would suggest identifying the “essential experience” as TonyLi puts it. Identify how you want your player to feel during the game. Target gameplay which either provides that feeling or doesn’t get in the way of the story providing it.

For one of my ideas, I had the story idea first. Wasn’t sure what to do about the gameplay. I’d kind of figured it would wind up being a “walking simulator” or something of the sort. However, further thought about my goals for the game made me realize that making it a 3D puzzle adventure game in the vein of something like Myst would serve the narrative best.

I also want to caution you not to put all of your “eggs in one basket,” or put “everything but the kitchen sink” in this. Don’t throw every story idea you come up with simply because it’s “cool.” Make sure it fits the narrative. There are no “game police” who will prevent you from putting different ideas into different games

Additionally, if you post some more specific details, people could probably give more specific suggestions. I did that and got some useful feedback (mainly from TonyLi, unsurprisingly). It showed me that others were more interested in certain ideas I had, which allowed me to focus on those ideas.

So what is this specific cutscene? What is the overarching story?

I’ll update the original post with updated info on the game, and the general story (I’ve made some big changes since I made this thread).

Also, I wasn’t asking for story ideas, I was asking for how people come up with them usually.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@Denisowator

I’ll update the original post with updated info on the game, and the general story (I’ve made some big changes since I made this thread).

Also, I wasn’t asking for story ideas, I was asking for how people come up with them usually.

I didn’t mean you were asking for story ideas. I meant you were asking about them–when you already have them, and seemed to need gameplay ideas. Perhaps I misunderstood though.

Reading through your update, I’ll be honest I fail to see anything “exciting” about it. I definitely get not wanting to go into sordid detail about someone’s life, but “show what someone has experienced” sounds kind of boring in the traditional sense.

But on the other hand, so did my idea on its own. My idea was to have the player talk extensively with a single NPC in the game world. But that’s just not strong enough of an idea to hold up a whole game (though it’s planned to be short) on its own.

So I built a framework around it. The player is dropped into a world. The player encounters the NPC. The NPC and player work together to escape the world. They do that through solving puzzles. And in the course of traversing the world and solving the puzzles, the player interacts with the NPC.

The fundamental idea is still the same. The meat of the content is still the same (hours of conversations). But there’s enough around it to carry it.

Is there any fundamental difference between Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1? Between Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3? Between Oblivion and Skyrim? The framework around an idea is typically what gets more attention than the basic idea itself (run around and shoot guys or run around climbing buildings and stabbing guys or run around and do whatever).

There are probably lots of ways you could start the story. You could start with an event in the future, some dramatic action the character took. Then go into the past to explain how the character got to that point. Or you could start in the past and have the character occasionally narrate things out-of-character, vaguely referencing future events.

In the end, I would try to design the beginning to align with the rest of the game. Don’t give it some dramatic intro if it’s a simple slice-of-life story. Don’t give it a slice-of-life intro if it’s a dramatic story (coughBioshock Infinitecough). Make it align with how the rest of your game is.

As is typical, my long-winded comments didn’t address all of yours. I don’t have any set way that I come up with story ideas. I just think about the game, think about what I’m trying to convey, and think about how to convey that. It’s probably a bad thing, but I don’t really have a more “prescriptive” formula than that.

[Kiwasi]

Do you need gameplay at all? Sounds like your idea might be better suited to a short film or similar.

[Aiursrage2k]

Well maybe you could have locked areas. For example you cant get into your house and cant find your key, so you go ask your mother for the key, turns out she gave it to stan, and stan left it on pizza box which he threw on the roof. Climb on the roof get the key unlock the door, cutscene.

[Billy4184]

I’m not sure you have a premise for the game, let alone a story. Little of what you wrote really acts as an anchor for the game. This might just be my opinion, but I think there are too many indie games that are ‘melancholy simulators’ which depict a sort of wandering loneliness without an overarching point of any kind. I’m not really sure where this comes from, whether it’s the personal experience of lonely devs or some postmodern art concept, but I think overall there are a lot of games that suffer from lack of direction. And some of what you wrote sounds similar to that.

If I’m writing a story, I usually begin with a scene in my head that’s linked to a particular emotion, that is the main theme of the story. But as soon as that is established, the story must have structure. There must be a conflict and a resolution. A beginning, a middle and an end. An event that sets the scene (the conflict) a slow build-up of tension, and a climactic resolution. It might be something as explicit as your friend having a fistfight with his boss, or as subtle as depicting your friend fighting against an undesired self-image, but the conflict, the drama has to be there, as well as the resolution (victory or tragedy).

How you set up those attributes is up to you, and how you add the gameplay into it imo is more a question of simply finding ways to assign the game mechanics to specific points or events in that storyline, but the important thing in terms of the story is that it advances down that line from beginning to end, and does not meander around and get lost.

[Denisowator]

@EternalAmbiguity

I didn’t mean you were asking for story ideas. I meant you were asking about them–when you already have them, and seemed to need gameplay ideas. Perhaps I misunderstood though.

Reading through your update, I’ll be honest I fail to see anything “exciting” about it. I definitely get not wanting to go into sordid detail about someone’s life, but “show what someone has experienced” sounds kind of boring in the traditional sense.

But on the other hand, so did my idea on its own. My idea was to have the player talk extensively with a single NPC in the game world. But that’s just not strong enough of an idea to hold up a whole game (though it’s planned to be short) on its own.

So I built a framework around it. The player is dropped into a world. The player encounters the NPC. The NPC and player work together to escape the world. They do that through solving puzzles. And in the course of traversing the world and solving the puzzles, the player interacts with the NPC.

The fundamental idea is still the same. The meat of the content is still the same (hours of conversations). But there’s enough around it to carry it.

Is there any fundamental difference between Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1? Between Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3? Between Oblivion and Skyrim? The framework around an idea is typically what gets more attention than the basic idea itself (run around and shoot guys or run around climbing buildings and stabbing guys or run around and do whatever).

There are probably lots of ways you could start the story. You could start with an event in the future, some dramatic action the character took. Then go into the past to explain how the character got to that point. Or you could start in the past and have the character occasionally narrate things out-of-character, vaguely referencing future events.

In the end, I would try to design the beginning to align with the rest of the game. Don’t give it some dramatic intro if it’s a simple slice-of-life story. Don’t give it a slice-of-life intro if it’s a dramatic story (coughBioshock Infinitecough). Make it align with how the rest of your game is.

As is typical, my long-winded comments didn’t address all of yours. I don’t have any set way that I come up with story ideas. I just think about the game, think about what I’m trying to convey, and think about how to convey that. It’s probably a bad thing, but I don’t really have a more “prescriptive” formula than that.

This actually addressed more than I expected. And I see now that I was in fact trying to come up with a really dramatic beginning, which is clearly what caused me to not be able to think of anything. Because I was only trying to think of very dramatic things (the beginning I listed not being one of them).

I was in fact asking about story ideas, because as I said, I changed some stuff and now the “beginning” of the game is no longer the beginning.

Reading through your update, I’ll be honest I fail to see anything "exciting"about it.

That’s exactly what I think, and that’s also the problem I’m having. I just can’t think of anything that is remotely exciting. Whether it’s an entire story, or a single cutscene.

“Show what someone has experienced” does sound boring, but that’s just because the reader (you) doesn’t know what exactly that person experienced. And there’s a lot that happened in my friend’s life that sounds it like it’s straight out of an adventure movie. I’m just not stating what it is, because I don’t want my ideas stolen.

I’ve put the second half of this reply, as a reply to Billy4184. Since I forgot to make a new reply when talking about the story specifically.

[EternalAmbiguity]

@Denisowator

And it’s not just going through my friens’s life, it includes stuff like hallucinations, different worlds, and environmental hints that tell different sub stories that will be hinted at in the main story.

Okay, this sounds a lot more interesting, to be quite honest. Just pulling something out of a hat here…your friend in some obvious, other alien world. Maybe he has his camera and he’s taking pictures. Perhaps he takes a picture of the hallucination. Digital camera or no? If not, maybe it could be a Polaroid, so the picture comes out. If digital, show the image–without the hallucination.

Then your friend gets a call. As he pulls out his phone and starts to talk, the “other world” starts to crumble around him and turns into our world. Then continue from there.

Just an idea.

[Denisowator]

@Billy4184

I’m not sure you have a premise for the game, let alone a story. Little of what you wrote really acts as an anchor for the game. This might just be my opinion, but I think there are too many indie games that are ‘melancholy simulators’ which depict a sort of wandering loneliness without an overarching point of any kind. I’m not really sure where this comes from, whether it’s the personal experience of lonely devs or some postmodern art concept, but I think overall there are a lot of games that suffer from lack of direction. And some of what you wrote sounds similar to that.

If I’m writing a story, I usually begin with a scene in my head that’s linked to a particular emotion, that is the main theme of the story. But as soon as that is established, the story must have structure. There must be a conflict and a resolution. A beginning, a middle and an end. An event that sets the scene (the conflict) a slow build-up of tension, and a climactic resolution. It might be something as explicit as your friend having a fistfight with his boss, or as subtle as depicting your friend fighting against an undesired self-image, but the conflict, the drama has to be there, as well as the resolution (victory or tragedy).

How you set up those attributes is up to you, and how you add the gameplay into it imo is more a question of simply finding ways to assign the game mechanics to specific points or events in that storyline, but the important thing in terms of the story is that it advances down that line from beginning to end, and does not meander around and get lost.

There is a huge ton of detail I’m putting into the general idea, and I feel like because it’s a story about someone’s life, there doesn’t need to (and really shouldn’t) be an arching story over the whole game.

As I also said, the whole game is supposed to be an emotional journey for the player, therefore there shouldn’t really be a general idea, since the gameplay is very minimal.

The reason I’m not saying everything that it includes, use because I don’t want to risk someone stealing the concept for it. (You never know when it might happen).

But I will say that the story is split up into 5 acts, and each act has a very deep meaning and emotion behind itself, and the events in each act are all based around that meaning and emotion.

And it’s not just going through my friend’s life, it also includes stuff like hallucinations, different worlds, and environmental hints that tell different sub stories that will be hinted at in the main story.

[EternalAmbiguity]

Just to point out–most of the time, the people who would steal an idea are the ones too lazy to actually make it. While the ones with the aptitude to make it typically have enough self-confidence to not want to use other peoples’ ideas.

I strongly doubt you really have to worry about someone stealing your ideas (though there’s nothing wrong with keeping them close to your chest).

[Denisowator]

@EternalAmbiguity

Okay, this sounds a lot more interesting, to be quite honest. Just pulling something out of a hat here…your friend in some obvious, other alien world. Maybe he has his camera and he’s taking pictures. Perhaps he takes a picture of the hallucination. Digital camera or no? If not, maybe it could be a Polaroid, so the picture comes out. If digital, show the image–without the hallucination.

Then your friend gets a call. As he pulls out his phone and starts to talk, the “other world” starts to crumble around him and turns into our world. Then continue from there.

Just an idea.

This is actually not too far off from what i already had in mind. Aside from the taking photo of the hallucination part, what I was going to do is make a phone return him to our world, but he would continually go back to the other world either at random times, or at a set time, regularly. Originally the “other world” was essentially going to be a continuing nightmare, as the story progresses. And the phone would pretty much be someone calling him while he’s asleep. But eventually, the nightmare world would start to fade into our world, causing the hallucinations.

There is much left undecided in terms of exactly what the other world would represent. Whether it’s just depicting to the player, the slowly crumbling sanity of my friend, or whether it is going to be an actual world (with real entities), but only accessible in the dream state).

I will also say, that the whole story, revolves strongly around clinical depression (depression as in the emotion, not a disease or condition like a lot of very unintelligent people state it as), and the five stages of grief (hence the 5 acts that the game is split into).

My friend isn’t actually depressed (although I am). But we both decided it would be a good premise for the story, since without something as strong as depression, there wouldn’t really be a big point to the whole story, and all the events in his life being made into a game.

[Billy4184]

@Denisowator

There is a huge ton of detail I’m putting into the general idea, and I feel like because it’s a story about someone’s life, there doesn’t need to (and really shouldn’t) be an arching story over the whole game.

I’m not really sure that this is a very good point of view, real life tends to be very boring compared to anything worthy of being turned into a story.

Just think about it like this: what happened in your life today (rhetorical question)? Chances are that whatever it was held a lot of significance to you. Now, chances are that everyone else you met today had a similar sort of experience. Yet do you really want to know anything about what happened to them today? Do they want to know about what happened to you?

The fact is that very little of what occurs in an individual experience is worth anything as a universal message, which is what a story has to be. In the absence of any more information, I’m going to take a stab and say that probably a lot of the significance of the story for you has to do with the fact that you know the person involved personally, therefore anything even slightly out of the ordinary means a lot to you. Yet I would be very doubtful as to whether there was a lot involved that an audience to your game/movie would find appealing.

That’s why narrative structure and dramatisation is important, it’s a way to give the audience what they really want - a well-constructed emotional ride, not the story of your (or someone else’s) life.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the reason why you can’t think of a good story - you’re just experiencing the emotion of something relatively ordinary that just happened to happen close to you (like a bolt of lightning that you don’t normally care about that suddenly lands ten feet away from you).

Anyway, I could be totally wrong, but without knowing any more about it that’s my reading so far.

[Denisowator]

@Billy4184

I’m not really sure that this is a very good point of view, real life tends to be very boring compared to anything worthy of being turned into a story.

Just think about it like this: what happened in your life today (rhetorical question)? Chances are that whatever it was held a lot of significance to you. Now, chances are that everyone else you met today had a similar sort of experience. Yet do you really want to know anything about what happened to them today? Do they want to know about what happened to you?

The fact is that very little of what occurs in an individual experience is worth anything as a universal message, which is what a story has to be. In the absence of any more information, I’m going to take a stab and say that probably a lot of the significance of the story for you has to do with the fact that you know the person involved personally, therefore anything even slightly out of the ordinary means a lot to you. Yet I would be very doubtful as to whether there was a lot involved that an audience to your game/movie would find appealing.

That’s why narrative structure and dramatisation is important, it’s a way to give the audience what they really want - a well-constructed emotional ride, not the story of your (or someone else’s) life.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the reason why you can’t think of a good story - you’re just experiencing the emotion of something relatively ordinary that just happened to happen close to you (like a bolt of lightning that you don’t normally care about that suddenly lands ten feet away from you).

Anyway, I could be totally wrong, but without knowing any more about it that’s my reading so far.

Read over my recent replies to EternalAmbiguity, they detail a lot of what the story consists of.

And I actually never knew my friend, until like a year ago. So everything that is going to be in the game, is as new information to me, as it would be to anyone else.

[Billy4184]

@Denisowator

Read over my recent replies to EternalAmbiguity, they detail a lot of what the story consists of.

And I actually never knew my friend, until like a year ago. So everything that is going to be in the game, is as new information to me, as it would be to anyone else.

It still seems to be lacking direction imo. A lot of the stuff seems to imply a sense of melodrama that has not been built up.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not trying to criticize your theme. I’m just saying that I know from experience as a beginner writing stories that relate to my own life, that just because something means a lot to you doesn’t mean that anyone else will find it remotely interesting unless you dramatize it a lot, far beyond the point of realism. It’s one of the lessons you have to learn about what it is that an audience wants from you.

Anyway, my suggestion would be to try to write a short story - a few pages at most - about any part of the experience of your friend. Practice squeezing out all of the drama you possibly can, and trying to give the story a clear dramatic structure.

[Denisowator]

@Billy4184

It still seems to be lacking direction imo. A lot of the stuff seems to imply a sense of melodrama that has not been built up.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not trying to criticize your theme. I’m just saying that I know from experience as a beginner writing stories that relate to my own life, that just because something means a lot to you doesn’t mean that anyone else will find it remotely interesting unless you dramatize it a lot, far beyond the point of realism. It’s one of the lessons you have to learn about what it is that an audience wants from you.

Anyway, my suggestion would be to try to write a short story - a few pages at most - about any part of the experience of your friend. Practice squeezing out all of the drama you possibly can, and trying to give the story a clear dramatic structure.

I think the biggest reason for your opinion, is that I only told you like 10% of what the game is going to be. The thing with these story based games, is you never know what they’re going to be like, unless you know every single scene, how it plays out, and what it contains.

And there are a lot of games that are not at all dramatic, and can be classified as “walking simulators”. But they’re great games, because of how strongly they relay the emotions and story onto the player.

I’m not aiming at all for it to be melodramatic, or dramatic in the slightest. I’m aiming for the game to be slowly paced, and calm. The original was actually going to be an action platformer, with stuff like upgrades, boss fights, etc. The reason I decided to make it an emotional story, is because my friend said it would be good to make a game that helps people who are depressed. It’s supposed to send a powerful message against suicide.

[Billy4184]

@Denisowator

I think the biggest reason for your opinion, is that I only told you like 10% of what the game is going to be. The thing with these story based games, is you never know what they’re going to be like, unless you know every single scene, how it plays out, and what it contains.

And there are a lot of games that are not at all dramatic, and can be classified as “walking simulators”. But they’re great games, because of how strongly they relay the emotions and story onto the player.

I’m not aiming at all for it to be melodramatic. I’m aiming for the game to be slowly paced, and calm. The original was actually going to be an action platformer, with stuff like upgrades, boss fights, etc. The reason I decided to make it an emotional story, is because my friend said it would be good to make a game that helps people who are depressed. It’s supposed to send a powerful message against suicide.

It may be just too much of my own opinion coming through, but I have the impression that a lot of the substance of your narrative is a question of your own perception of it, in a way that doesn’t come through to me. Just be sure to always try to look at things from the point of view of your average audience member.

I’d suggest looking at similar stories, whether in books or games, and trying to deconstruct the technique. There are a lot of different kinds of storytelling, but there’s rarely (or never) a story that does not require any technique.

Good luck!

[Denisowator]

@Billy4184

It may be just too much of my own opinion coming through, but I have the impression that a lot of the substance of your narrative is a question of your own perception of it, in a way that doesn’t come through to me. Just be sure to always try to look at things from the point of view of your average audience member.

I’d suggest looking at similar stories, whether in books or games, and trying to deconstruct the technique. There are a lot of different kinds of storytelling, but there’s rarely (or never) a story that does not require any technique.

Good luck!

Thank you.

And I understand what you mean now. But be assured I’m not going into this blind. I do have many things in mind, like making a conflict build up and such. There will be drama, it just won’t be very… dramatic.