Structure in writing LARPS and Interactive Theatre

One of the major faults of most, if not all, LARP organizers I have ever met is the lack of technique in the writing. I am guilty of this as well. I think it can be remedied with limited effort, if the proper resources are produced and distributed. The reasons for this is that we are not professionals, for the most part, and we have very few professionals to show us the way in the industry.

Technique comes in a variety of flavours. Character creation, meta-arc design, background designs, scene writing, prop creation, prop use...

Before I continue, let me make one point clear: technique feels formulaic, and many of you will hate it at first. Don't avoid it for that reason. Once you've mastered it enough, you can grow out of technique when necessary. I know the example is overused, but Picasso mastered realism and basic techniques long before his masterworks in Cubism were realized.

In this post, I will address technique in scene preparation.

Inner and outer turning points

The authoring of any scene must begin with its outer or inner turning points. The outer turning point is the major change that the scene throws on the character. It must either propel the characters further in their goal, or move them back a step, and it must be significant for the scene to be meaningful.

Examples: If the play is a street war against a megacorporation in a dystopia, finding out that the director's wife has been cheating on him in secret, or that the Head of Security has embezzled money from his boss and created a separate security force working only for him, would be outer turning points moving the characters forward. Receiving a phonecall from a character's wife in tears because the megacorporation has announced that they will cut the funding to redirect the money on "defense against terrorism" sets them back.

The inner turning point is the effect that the outer turning point will have in the characters' heads (and the mind of their actor/players). This is mostly out of your control, but usually pretty easy to foresee. Thus, it is your job to try and predict how the scene will affect your players, and to predict their possible reactions as a result.

Examples: If the director's wife mentioned above has been cheating on him, she can be blackmailed. This is a unique opportunity to get access to high-level information, and can be the ray of hope the characters have been praying for since the beginning of the chronicle. When the character gets a call from his wife, he realizes that it is a push from MegaCorps for him to stop his activities, and a reminder that they can get to his wife, too, and not just to him. A panicked wife will make for a panicked character, and that is inner conflict you want to create.

Introduction and Conclusion

Once you have defined the scene's outer and inner turning points, it is time to set up the introduction of the scene, and the most probable conclusions on paper.

The introduction of a scene is very important. In many scenes, it is ideal to be a little melodramatic about scene introductions, to show the participants that something is happening. The introduction for some scenes is very obvious, like for the call from the panicked wife above. Some others are much more difficult to pin down.

Making the players stumble on the scene works in a number of occasions, as it can throw them completely off-guard. Say your characters are raiding a hotel for some reason and one of them is performing camera surveillance downstairs or in a truck. Gunshots begin, and most people in this dystopia have the well-established reflex to lock their doors and stay inside their room. One woman, however, runs out with only a bedsheet around her body and runs away from a room just one floor above the shooting, running for the stairs.

The surveillance man looks at the woman for a moment, and suddenly realize that this is MegaCorps' director's wife running mostly naked through the hotel. She is definitely not supposed to be there. She escapes using a helicopter. One way or another, the characters will go find out who rented the room, and find her illegitimate lover's name. He is middle management of MegaCorps' Human Nutrience Division.

See how dramatic that was, compared to the age-old call from a contact who gives a player this information in exchange for a "future service"? The introduction sends the actors/players a shockwave, and the scene just got very juicy.

Another note about the introduction is that the characters must have a good reason to be there and get into the scene. They must have a goal, and not follow through simply because the actors portraying them realize that the play's organizer obviously wants them there.

Once you've written your introduction, and planned the most probable outcomes of the scene, you are ready to write the whole thing.

In conclusion

Remember, when you write, that everything in the scene has only 2 purposes: your inner and outer turning points. Everything in the scene must push those two turning points forward, from the introduction to the conclusions. This includes dialogues, props, non-player character actions, music...

Great scenes that deviate from this technique exist, obviously, but most often, the deviations from the technique that will enhance a scene will be visible on a case-by-case basis, when you will have mastered the technique enough. Using a technique does not tie you to it, and your brain's higher functions are developpped enough to enhance a scene beyond this when you have to.

Selling your event

There are multiple ways to sell an event. Most of all, I recommend using any and all networking resources at your disposal to hype your event. This networking is very dependent on your personal contacts and social skills, so it is very hard for me to write about.

The presentation of your event, however, can be helped.

The first thing you need to work on is knowing your audience. Think about the people you want playing your event and about what type of roles they enjoy. If all they want is to play is a game of modern-day heroes killing zombies with diamond-tipped chainsaws, don’t try and force a psychological drama play on them. It is not going to work. If you cannot find enough players that would fit your event, think about redefining the event in question.

The most common sorts of publicity for this kind of event are posters and websites. Websites will usually also contain information for your established players, but that is cause for another discussion.
The first thing that will grab your player’s eye is the graphic design. If you can get a talented artist to cook up something nice, use it. Make sure the theme of the event is well represented by the design. If you cannot find a talented artist to do it for you, go with a simpler design rather than use a bad one that draws too much attention to itself.

The next thing the audience will notice is the title and the introduction text. In a poster, 3 short lines is the maximum you should put to detail the setting. In a website, you can use the standard 6-line introduction used in most current-day novels. The best guide I ever found to write those introduction lines is available on Will Greenway’s website, The Ring Realms. I could never tell this as well as he does, so I suggest you just follow the link to his own description and examples. Will Greenway is awesome. http://www.ringrealms.com/rrmainindex.php?PAGE=inspiration&SUBPAGE=dfictech_07

At the bottom of the poster or website, you need to put the date, time and location of the event, and your contact information. Make sure that it is easy to read, but mostly out of the way. It’s not there to sell your event: just to inform potential participants who were sold by the rest of your publicity.