10th
Listening for Clues
Joe had a great comment in class last night. Let me paraphrase him: “When we’re listening, we’re listening for clues.”
Setting up your whos, whats and wheres at the beginning of a scene is important, sure, because it grounds the scene and gets the players on the same page. But that’s not what a scene is about. If you had to summarize a story, you wouldn’t say “It was about two guys fishing on a lake.” Otherwise, you’d be asked “Yeah, but what was it about?”
You have a story; it just hasn’t been written yet. The clues to unearthing this story are: what are your motives, what is your relationship to your partner, and how are you feeling. All the other details in the scene (your status, the location, how big your moustache is) are in support of your motives, your relationship and how you’re feeling.
We did some scenes where at a given point, one player has to say “that’s important”. The reason why I like that phrase is because it places an obligation on the players to make something important, and it signals to both players what it is that’s important. The something important is almost always a player’s motive.
—bj
