Writing your worst nightmare

One of the most difficult parts of writing is to split or gut, to lay out emotions out there in the open for everyone to see. In an effort to do so, I thought up one of my worst nightmares and wrote it down. If this were to happen, I am pretty sure my mind would break completely.

I have even kept my name and my fiancee's name in there, since it is a retelling of my personal nightmare, and not fiction per se.
Context: imagine reading this as a preface to a novel.

On January 14th, 2014, the author of this novel received my letter of acceptance for the publishing of his work.

Overtaken by emotion, His tears of joy flowing to the point he could barely see the sidewalk his feet landed upon, he ran towards the school his fiancee taught at.

His fiancee had already left work, so he saw her walk towards - 

Then a car cut her life short.

He did not hear the drunk drivers' ramblings as he raced past his murderous car, towards his fallen lover. He was stopped by the sight of her fractured skull. Pascale McDuff-Rousseau was no more. I imagine the following hours were a haze, a wailing of screams and cries of hopelessness where no one could reach to him.

There is one thing we know he heard, though.

When the doctor came out to confirm his fiancee's death to Alexandre, I believe his exact words were: “I am sorry, we could not save the mother or the child.”

On that very moment, Alexandre's mind fractured. The news that he was to have a son, a heir to hold with pride, now a lifeless husk marked as medical waste, was beyond his means to cope.

The following work is a testament to a mind now gone. In honour of this bygone man, we published his entire work without alteration. Not even his typos, though they be few and far between, have been touched.

We owed it to this man to show him our respect the only way we truly could. Heal well, Alexandre, heal well.

The world is holding on for you, waiting for the day that you will return. 

May there be such a day.

Jonathan Davies,
Editor for New York Times Press

It is very difficult, perhaps impossible to write engaging stories without spilling out your emotions. I know I tend to write in a very Cartesian manner, to keep my shell intact. This is an attempt to liberate myself from this shell.

How to make your participants care about your event

If you are a writer for a LARP or Interactive Theatre, you have probably tried dozens of different scenarios to try and reach your players, and get them interested in your plots. Some have failed, while others have succeeded. You might not have realized why yet.

Here is a wake-up call.

People care about people. They will also care about characters. Plots, concepts, organizations, objects and just about everything else only exist to serve the characters. Do not waste your time creating evil organizations; spend your time creating characters who run evil organizations. If you want to showcase a concept, do it as a relation to a character, and not in a vacuum.

A Stargate matters because it affects the life of O’Neil and Carter, not the other way around. Beating back evil organizations matter  because those organizations are run by, and affect very real characters in your setting. Gear matters because it enhances characters. Abilities work in the same way.

The reason behind this is very simple:

As a race, humans have survived only because we care about people more than we do about things and concepts. If trees had mattered to us more than people, all humans who experienced winters would have died off. If animals had mattered more to us than humans, our ancestors would have starved to death millennia ago.

We are genetically programmed to care about people. Everything that matters does so solely in that it affects people.

If you want your participants to care, base your events around characters, whether those portrayed by the participants themselves, those portrayed by your actors or, hopefully, both.