In the recent thread by sunandshadow to create a manga, I started to wonder how many people consider the thematic imperative of the characters and world building ideas they create. If you don't know, a character's thematic imperative is that character's purpose within the story and the role they are ment to fufill. It is very useful to decide a character thematic imperative when writing your character profiles and coming up with characters and ways to your story. What do other writers find? Do you consider the characters thematic imperative when creating a character?

I think the fact that most writers don't explains the plot of a lot of the RPG's that come out.

When talking to other writers I've found that half of writers don't analyze their writing at all, or only at the shallowest level of word choice and sentence structure, and maybe beginning/middle/end. Of the rest, most are aware that their stories have themes: a very few intentionally try to avoid putting themes in their writing out of a fundamental misunderstanding of what theme is (considering it preachy or childish), many consider theme an unconscious aspect of the writing process which can be strengthened in editing (which works fairly well), and then finally some actively consider theme when planning out their writing or during the actual writing.

I would answer, but my order for the dictionary of the convoluted words, has not yet been fulfilled.

I'm not much of a writer, but I am presently planning a story-line for a hobby game idea for next year.

At this preliminary stage, I'm only really concerned with the character's function with respect to the game design - whether a character purpose is as a hero, villain, helper, donor (i.e. someone who gives the hero a useful item), comic relief etc. Given the nature of my game the story is more there to support and enhance the game mechanics, so it's more important that a character is designated "fifth level end-boss" rather than a more story based analysis of their function.

Of course I'm pretty new at the whole game writing thing before - this will be the first game story I'll be writing in quite some time - so I might not have fully understood what you mean by "thematic imperative".

Outside the manga thread, I start with the thematic imperative.

For characters and stories related to games, I start with the interactive imperative: designing characters and story such that there is something to play. The interactive imperative is quite easily satisfied, since if you want to make an action game, and your character is a fighter, then the imperative is already met. But when you may drift away from it when you work on the story.

What would you label the imperative if you start with world building or elements in the world building? Suppose you start with "I want a story with characters using guns." What imperative is that?

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I would answer, but my order for the dictionary of the convoluted words, has not yet been fulfilled

Thematic Imperative is the character's purpose within the story and the role they play in developing the plot. Every character in a work should be there for a reason that contributes directly or indirectly to main the plot. For instance Jacob could be the love interest of a major character called Ellie. Jacob might be a minor player in the overall plot but important in Ellie Jacob relationship plot subplot, and the role he is ment to fufill is to provide the emotional suport and indecision for Ellie leading up to the climax. When she must decided whether to stay with Jacob or go with Tyson to confront his nemisis.

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I would answer, but my order for the dictionary of the convoluted words, has not yet been fulfilled

Thematic Imperative is the character's purpose within the story and the role they play in developing the plot. Every character in a work should be there for a reason that contributes directly or indirectly to main the plot.

For instance Jacob could be the love interest of a major character called Ellie. Jacob is a minor player in the overall plot but important in the Ellie Jacob relationship subplot. The role he is meant to fulfill is to provide the emotional indecision and confusion for Ellie leading up to the climax. When she must decided whether to stay with Jacob or go with the main character Tyson to confront his nemesis.

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What would you label the imperative if you start with world building or elements in the world building? Suppose you start with "I want a story with characters using guns." What imperative is that?

"I want a story with character using guns" I wouldn't say is an imperative it is a world building idea.

I would apply an imperative to other aspects of the world building. Like let’s say that in your game with guns you want the player to control a gang and have a base of some kind. I would take a look at the games theme and what imperative I want the base to fulfill when decided what that base should be. Making a half demolished abandoned building, high rise tower, fortified outpost, or bar with a network of hidden tunnels beneath. All of those will have different implications in terms of story and game play. And some only sense in the right theme. It wouldn’t make sense for a small group of displaced refugee struggling to survive on the fringes of society to have High rise tower, or fortified outpost as their base of operations.

Think of how a character or world building idea contributes to the theme can be useful way of deciding what to cut out of game to keep the project manageable. It might be cool to have a few missions where you gang raids a secret government lab producing genetically engineered monsters but if that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the plot and contribute to the over all story line then should it really be there?

if i understood you correctly, you mean, that it has to be obvious, what drives the characters, to do what they do. which is ok, for a story, that wants to explain everything. but that is a Checkovian or Maupassantian view. which are genious, good and noble. and surpassed. by Borghese, Kish, Amado, Isaac Babel, Doeblin etc. (and Kafka as the forerunner).

basically, you are trying to push in our throats a view, how the stories should be written (to be "modern"?), using concepts that have been surpassed half a century ago. as much as i respect Arisotelian epigons, i will not concede to them the fact, that the world did move on in the past two millienia.

Quote: Original post by Borkhan
if i understood you correctly, you mean, that it has to be obvious, what drives the characters, to do what they do.

I believe it's more along the lines of having a clear idea of what purpose a particular character fulfills within the world and story you are crafting - the reason for which a given character is included, and how thier inclusion helps to shape the overall story.

This need not neccesarily then be explicitly spelled out as you suggest but rather is a useful tool for the author, as by keeping the thematic imperative in mind you are able to ensure that the character does not act inappropriately for whatever role they are assigned, and is being used in the intended fasion to shape the development of the plot. Rather than it neccesarily being obvious to the reader of your final product it's something you would keep in mind whilst actually writing, although if well used an intelligent reader should certainly be able to figure it out.

Quote: Original post by Kazgoroth
I believe it's more along the lines of having a clear idea of what purpose a particular character fulfills within the world and story you are crafting - the reason for which a given character is included, and how thier inclusion helps to shape the overall story.

This need not neccesarily then be explicitly spelled out as you suggest but rather is a useful tool for the author, as by keeping the thematic imperative in mind you are able to ensure that the character does not act inappropriately for whatever role they are assigned, and is being used in the intended fasion to shape the development of the plot. Rather than it neccesarily being obvious to the reader of your final product it's something you would keep in mind whilst actually writing, although if well used an intelligent reader should certainly be able to figure it out.

What I meant was, that after Borges, the story writing is not the same. Even "Horla" of Maupassaint is vague, but what about "The Great Wall of China" by Kafka, for example? Not to talk Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Immortal, The Aleph? The way is see it, storytelling has developed into the Borgesian era, where the magic reality or "documentary novel" are predominant. My response was more in the line, that the people who write scripts for games, and constantly complain, that there is nothing new under the sun, should contemplate how to use this progress in storytelling too. Everybody is using the Aristotelian premise, when writing "original" concepts. Why nobody tackles a script in the footsteps/style/approach of Borges, Babel, Kish? Or Melville, Emily Broente or Lewis Carrol if they need old examples? That would be original approach. And not six players searching for thematic imperative....