Sweet Kate

Writing and GMing* are both creating stories, but I have found them to be very different ways of creating stories. I thought that it would be interesting to my fellow GMs and fellow writers to explain the differences (although this comes with the major caveat that writing styles vary a lot, and GMing styles also vary a lot, so your experience may be entirely different).

Perhaps the biggest difference between writing and GMing is that GMing is inherently collaborative. When I write a story, I am the sole creator. I control the characters, the setting, and the plot. I am also not a collaborative writer. I have tried collaborative writing, and I'm quite bad at it. I don't like sharing my stories. But of course in a role playing game, the point is to create a collaborative narrative. The GM directs the narrative (to a varying degree depending on the group and the GM), but it is everyone's story. For the steampunk RPG that I'm currently running, I have to hold the story loosely because it isn't just my story; it's everyone's story. 

And because it's everyone's story, the players may take things an entirely different direction than what you, as the GM, intended. For instance, in a recent session the players entirely avoided combat. I had not planned on this. I had plot points that hinged on combat. But the players decided that they really didn't want combat and had several exceptionally good dice rolls, so I just more or less winged it and they never found those particular plot points. In a story, I could have had someone fail to see a trap or decide to confront the villains, but in an RPG the players can sometimes avoid plot points or take things an entirely different direction. 

This brings me to another, related point. When you GM a story, you are at the mercy of the dice. Sometimes players fail when you expect them to succeed, and sometimes they succeed when you expect them to fail. I had one session in which the players needed a vital piece of information from the barkeeper. This was supposed to be an easy roll, and yet one after another, they all failed it. I had a moment of not knowing what on earth to do, because I had no backup plan, before quickly bringing in another NPC. And that barkeeper who was supposed to be helpful is now a tough and acerbic barkeeper, which wasn't my intention at all. And on the other hand, as I mentioned above, the players had several exceptionally good dice rolls and managed to sneak past the Russians (twice) and then disable all the (difficult) traps, and I didn't think it would happen at all (I did manage to improvise an overheard conversation with the necessary information). 

Additionally, when GMing you have to be careful not to throw tantalizing hints or clues at the players unless you are prepared for the players to go haring after them. The players don't have the same sense of what is important to the story, and they may not react how you expect them to react. For instance, I had a beautiful idea for one of my scenarios. I thought that the villain would taunt the players by telling them that their boss, someone who they trust, wasn't being entirely honest and that they should ask what happened to the group before. I liked this, but I wanted it to be a throwaway line. In a story, it could be a throwaway line and the brave heroine could respond that they implicitly trusted their boss. But I cut the line from the game because I didn't know how the players would react. They might laugh at this clear and obvious plan to distract them, or they might find it something interesting to spend three sessions looking into, and I didn't really want to spend three sessions on it. 

Perhaps it comes down to control. When I'm writing a story, I have complete control. I can throw in tantalizing hints or foreshadowing, I can have the characters miss something extremely obvious, I can choreograph a fight so that they defeat a monstrous enemy or are nearly killed by a stupid mistake when fighting a small enemy. But when I'm GMing, I have to consider the players and their reactions and the arbitrary nature of dice, so that the players may ignore a plot point or interpret something entirely differently or roll poorly or roll very well, and it all affects the story. Because when I'm GMing it isn't entirely my story anymore, but something that the players (and the dice) also contribute to and shape. 



*I am currently GMing (that is, Game Mastering or running) an RPG (role playing game). It is an over-the-top steampunk action adventure in a fantasy setting with elves, dwarves, vampires, and Lovecraft monsters using the Victoriana system. 

 I've been reading the occasional linguistic blog, and I stumbled across a lovely little book on the history of various punctuation marks. Shady Characters: the secret life of punctuation, symbols, & other typographical marks is a charming, light read. Houston follows the history of various marks, sometimes through previous shapes and as far back as Ancient Greece. It is both easy to read and entertaining. Houston also peppers the text with amusing footnotes. In the chapter Titled The Asterisk and the Dagger the first footnote reads "in honor of their role as footnote reference marks, I plan to fill this chapter with numerous lengthy and entirely tangential footnotes so as to take full advantage."

On top of that, the typesetting is lovely. Whenever Houston talks about a particular punctuation mark, the mark itself is in red text. This greatly enhances the readability, and just makes for a more visually interesting book. 

I did find some chapters on more modern marks, like the interrobang, to be less interesting, but overall this is quite worth the time.

If you have even a passing interest in punctuation or typography, I think you'd enjoy this book.

I thought about doing NaNo this year, or at least an abbreviated version in which I tried to write every day. But then I got really sick at the beginning of November, and then had a whole bunch of job searching things come up.

But in honor of NaNo, I'm writing a quick little fluff piece involving a secret government organization,* a government conspiracy, and the End of the World. It's supposed to be an action / thriller, but it is currently mostly dialogue. I'm also zipping along quite well. I've been averaging 300-600 words on the days that I can carve out to write, which for me is phenomenally good. Generally a good day for me is 150+ words. 

So far this month I've written about 3,600 words, which is really only about two days for those of you seriously doing NaNo, but I'm still proud of it.


*currently called the NCS, unless I can think of something better. I hope I can, because the letters currently don't stand for anything. 

Let me start by saying that my RPG group is awesome. They are the sort of people that you want to play RPGs with (unless you want a serious game, because our group doesn't really do serious). They are nice people who have fun and are pretty much the opposite of every horror story that you hear. (I feel so bad for women who say that they were forced to play a certain sort of character, or that their (female) character was a target for romance or violence that other (male) characters weren't, or that the group was just generally misogynistic.) This is particularly significant because there are currently five other players plus the GM (Game Master aka the person running the RPG), and all are men. I'm the only woman in the room, and I'm the only one playing a female character.*

Overall, I would say that my experience playing as a woman has been quite good. Other players take my opinion into account and generally assume that I'm a competent player with a competent character. Reading other women gamers' experiences make this sound like the fluffy unicorn of player groups, because I'm also the GM's wife** and I bring baked goods most weeks. Basically, my group has been pretty awesome at accepting me as a player and being alright with the fact that Joel is the current GM. 

I can't help but wish, though, that someone else would play a female character so that I wouldn't have the weight of playing the only female character in the group. It makes it a little more difficult to play an interesting character and not try to represent all women with one character. It's like how Black Widow is the only female Avenger in the first Avengers movie, and even though she is a really awesome character, she still is only one character and can't show a range of options (whereas for male characters we see Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and Hawkeye).

And there is the odd moment when someone says something and I do a double take. Or there are the occasional assumptions that all NPCs (non-player characters) are male. (Joel does a pretty good job balancing NPCs about fifty-fifty, so that helps.) For instance, at one point on our first run when we were sneaking into a warehouse, one of the players said (partly joking) that my character, Jefferson, should flirt with the guards. The player seemed to be assuming that the guards were male (not all of them were), that they were interested in flirting with a woman (unknown), and that Jefferson would be the appropriate one to flirt with them. Actually, if the player had thought about it, the opposite is true. Jefferson is not a flirty character and she has very few dice for social interactions, while other characters roll handfuls of dice for just about any social situation. Thankfully, that sort of thing seems to have died down.

I've definitely had a good experience playing RPGs so far, and I think my group is pretty great. There are just some things that I notice that are generally blind spots for the group (like assuming PCs are female).
 

 

*I have played a male character, once. It was interesting. I did feel that I got a few weird looks, but overall our group seemed fine with it.

**There was also the session where it directly involved my character, Jefferson, and involved a lot of set up beforehand. Granted, it mostly involved Jefferson getting shot at (a lot) and then we started the session by her frantically calling the others for help because she was penned in by snipers, and Joel said that he's perfectly willing to work out something similar for anyone else who wants to have their character shot at . . . but this is still the sort of thing that would not be ok in a lot of groups because my husband is the GM.

I am currently not writing. That is, I'm not writing stories. I'm trying to catch up on the journaling that I meant to do in England,  but didn't quite have the time / energy / ability (due to hand pain) to write. I'm writing by hand, because since I started that way I feel that I should finish it. Nothing spectacular, but it is nice to nail down my thoughts. 

 I finished the first, rough draft of the latest story. It is a hefty (for me) 10,000 words, a steampunk fairy tale of sorts. I think it's rather good, but now I'm at a bit of loose ends as to what to do next.

I really should be editing things, but I'm having a hard time learning how to do that. I'm fumbling around trying to learn how much to trust myself and how much to listen to my various beta readers. I thought I could do this without too much trouble because I've edited papers, but the shape of a paper is very different from the shape of a story (which can seem even more individual). 

But I am writing, and I'm managing to get in a good, solid amount of writing. Three or four hours a week isn't much, but it's a whole lot more than nothing, and I have a 10,000 word story to show for it.

I've been writing more lately. Since the start of the year, I've been managing to find time to write about two or three days most weeks. This isn't nearly as much as I would like, but I keep reminding myself that it's much better than nothing, which is what I was averaging before. Two or three hours a week has put me at a quite respectable point of having a novella outlined and being about 4,000 words into a story (it is steampunk, which I haven't done much, and a re-telling of a fairy tale because nearly everything I write is a re-telling of a fairy tale).

I think that this week I probably won't get any writing done, though, because Life has got in the way. Last week I found out that I have a job test scheduled with a local government agency. I find this stressful and icky, and it's made worse because it is 100% of how they are ranking job applicants (this is super lousy and stupid and I don't know why, and makes it more stressful). Today I found out that another government agency has a likely job opening, but I have to apply before Friday, which requires a typing certificate. It is annoyingly difficult to find a place that will issue a typing certificate, but I managed and so I'm taking care of that tomorrow. And then a staffing agency called and wants to interview me this week, so there goes my Wednesday.

Not to mention that my hand pain is flaring up.

Right now I'm feeling frustrated and stressed, and I didn't manage to get any writing done today. But I'm trying to be kind to myself, and remember that while I didn't get any writing done, I did send out a story to brave the world, I worked on a job application, and I found a place to get a typing certificate.

Some weeks the writing just doesn't happen, and I'm working on being kind to myself and realizing that it's ok, especially if it's due to stress and job interviews.  

I have a hard time naming characters when I write stories. The other day, I had a brilliant idea just as I was drifting off to sleep, so I quickly scrawled it on a scrap of paper. But the next day something niggled at me. The name seemed vaguely familiar. I Googled it, and found that, in fact, "James Tiptree" was a pen name for a reasonably well known author. Back to the drawing board.

 Today I found out that Joel didn't make it to the interview stage for a job that we were really hoping he'd have a chance at (it was a long shot, but it's still lame) and I didn't get a job that I interviewed for last week and thought I had a really good chance at. It's really depressing. 

 Joel is sick with something nasty. I would guess that it's food poisoning, except that the only thing he has eaten in the last 24 hours that was either unusual or something I didn't eat was a banana, and a banana doesn't seem like the sort of thing once can get food poisoning from, and he has a fever.

I'm generally pretty good with sick people. It brings out my mothering, so I fuss and heat up soup and offer to buy ginger ale and such. I have learned, though, that I'm bad with vomit, as Joel was throwing up earlier and it made me feel close to throwing up (yet another reason I don't really want to have kids - I also gagged a whole lot when dealing with a litterbox, so I can guess that I'm not the best with cleaning up those sort of things).

Hopefully Joel feels better soon. He's miserable and there's nothing I can do to help. *sigh*