I build a world before I make my story or my characters. By world, I mean the universe, its laws, beings, planets, stars, etc..That way, I have a viable setting for my characters to interact in. One of the biggest problems I have with Harry Potter is that it seems to be built on a universe that makes absolutely no sense. No limitations on magic, basic laws governing magic laid by no one in particular, no origin of magic, no explination of magic....ETC ETC ETC ETC..

To me, your World is your Primary character, you need to have a believable one before going deeper. Whether it be earth-like or fantasy based full of orcs and trolls. Then, as your characters fill your world, you can actually see their lives play out in a believable manner as they interact with the world. Therein lies the plot! :P

Further re KidAero...

Quote: Original post by KidAero
I build a world before I make my story or my characters. By world, I mean the universe, its laws, beings, planets, stars, etc..That way, I have a viable setting for my characters to interact in...Then, as your characters fill your world, you can actually see their lives play out in a believable manner as they interact with the world. Therein lies the plot! :P

Current production at my studio is a sequel based on an alternative history. I didn't write the storyline to the first release - the alternative history was already in place before I came on board. My first task was to develop not only characters, but "series characters" who could develop through Chapter 2 and further into a third game release.

The bonus of this is that I already have the parameters of the alternative history (plot), and I can "assist" character development knowing what lies in the future.

I think good storytelling is good storytelling - regardless of the medium. Be it games, movies, TV, comics or short stories; they all need significant development if you want to tell a good story.

There's an easilly overlooked aspect to storytelling, and that's the audience. Keep them in mind the whole time, and your focus will be much more defined. To that end, I'd have to say that character is first and foremost.

"Story" comes from "character", and "narrative" comes from "story". Initially there's usually some kind of loose premise, like a new take on a fantasy RPG world that you want to develop, which is a great place to begin. But to tell the story of that new world, you need a character. It's that character the audience are going to identify with (hopefully), and live through in this brave new world, so without that central character, the audience becomes nothing more than a spectator.

If you begin with a detailed story and then add your main character, that character will most likely change the story as they develop, so a lot of your effort will be misdirected. Writing a character biography is a great way to get to know your character, and you'll see potential story strands you'd never even thought of developing right in front of you as you write it.

Write a character bio before you do much of anything else - tell yourself a story about their upbringing, their family, where they live, what they like, what they hate, who their firends are, how they became an assassin, what made them marry the Orc princess: everything right up until the point at which the game/story begins. The audience will most likely never know any of this stuff, but when you come to write the dialogue and place this character in story situations, their actions will be guided by their personality (with consistency), and their voice (speech paterns, the kind of language they use, they way they respond to other characters) will be theirs, and not yours. This is the reason George Lucas was able to make three prequels to Star Wars - right from the beginning, before he wrote the script to A New Hope, Darth Vader had a character biography detailing everything that happened to him up until he boarded Princess Leia's ship.

Too many computer and videogames are sorely lacking in proper character development, and even though the audience (and gamers are an audience) might not be entire conscious of what's wrong, they won't respond or enjoy it as well as they could have.

Character - Story - Narrative.

Hope this helps :D

Well, I think one has to keep in mind that making the current plot and characters work is more important than being true to any sort of history for the world or the characters. These details and worldbuilding details do not entertain readers in and of themselves, they are there to support the main story and as such should be the first thing to change when things aren't fitting together.

Personally, I believe that as the story progresses, so do the characters. Most of the time it's good to know the intial characters of the stories, and sometimes to have something in mind later for the story, but as you continue working on it, the characters become more and more individual.