Public card / plot challenges

[magistrate]

Hello, all! I wanted to stretch my plotting muscles, so I decided to tackle some seven-sentence stories (or seven-sentence summaries). To jump-start my thinking and give myself a set of creative constraints to work with, I put together a Bingo card for them. I'm amused by it, so I thought I'd share it with everyone.

I used the Demographics/Random Sets generator to put together a situation (taken from the Bingo Generator's list of Polti's 36 classical dramatic situations), a setting (taken from ysabetwordsmith's list of setting tropes), and a complication (taken from ysabetwordsmith's list of dramatic situations). I had the Demographics/Random Sets generator make sure to "Use each option only once per generated set", so that I wouldn't end up with repeats in situation, setting, or complication. Then, after I generated the random sets, I had the sets generator port the values over into the bingo generator.

The Demographics/Random Sets generator is still a bit buggy and clunky, but if you're willing to put up with its occasional misbehavior (like: occasionally buttons don't work; occasionally when you're trying to load a set of values from a comma-separated list, the list will be empty, and you'll have to re-load the list again and delete the duplicate empty list at the end), you can get it to do fun things like this. I've done "universe/worldbuilding prompt/word count goal" bingo cards; you could also do "a person, in a place, with a problem" combinations to kick off your plotting.

Anyway, just wanted to let people know that that was available to play with, and that hopefully I'll be able to continue to tweak and refine it. Here's the card I made, and feel free to play with it in any way you feel like:

Situation: Deliverance Setting: Forbidden Zone Complication: I Told You So	Situation: Revolt Setting: Spy School Complication: Out of Ammo	Situation: Abduction Setting: Bug War Complication: Hopelessly Outnumbered	Situation: Self-sacrifice for kin Setting: Torture Cellar Complication: Keep It Safe from Them	Situation: Daring enterprise Setting: Elevator Complication: Something Went Click
Situation: Self-sacrifice for an ideal Setting: Genius Loci Complication: Are You a God?	Situation: Pursuit Setting: Inside a Computer System Complication: Stranded in a Blizzard	Situation: Obtaining Setting: Underground City Complication: Caught in Bed Together	Situation: Ambition Setting: Abandoned Laboratory Complication: On Fire	Situation: An enemy loved Setting: Hotel California Complication: It Looks Hungry
Situation: Crime pursued by vengeance Setting: Red Light District Complication: Everything Is Spiders	Situation: Involuntary crimes of love Setting: City of Canals Complication: Pinned by a Boulder	Situation: Recovery of a lost one Setting: After the End Complication: Hull Breach	Situation: Conflict with a god Setting: Prehistory Complication: It's a Bomb!	Situation: Remorse Setting: Youth Center Complication: Stumbling in the Dark
Situation: Crimes of love Setting: Golden Age of Piracy Complication: Snake Pit	Situation: Adultery Setting: The War Room Complication: It Happens to a Lot of Guys	Situation: Slaying of kin unrecognized Setting: Last Fertile Region Complication: I Thought You Brought It	Situation: Rivalry of kin Setting: Opium Den Complication: No Parachute	Situation: Enmity of kin Setting: Sapient Ship Complication: Falsely Accused
Situation: Discovery of the dishonour of a loved one Setting: Herland Complication: Knife in the Back	Situation: Supplication Setting: Cardboard Prison Complication: Locked in with Monster	Situation: The enigma Setting: Galactic Sargasso Complication: Only One Spacesuit Left	Situation: Erroneous judgement Setting: Death World Complication: ... 05 ... 04 ... 03 ...	Situation: Fatal imprudence Setting: Bazaar of the Bizarre Complication: Naked in Public

Comments

[craterdweller]

This looks fabulous! I've been wanting to make a bingo card that has multiple characteristics per square. I've tried running the bingo card generator separately multiple times but then had to copy/paste them all together. This might work out a little better so I may play with it some this weekend.

[magistrate]

Yes! I was doing something similar – I kept loading up the Bingo generator with a lot of different lists, then creating a bunch of 2x2 cards and hoping I'd get something with enough variety to make a single story prompt. But I'd keep getting things like three settings prompt and a dramatic situation.

One thing I want to do in the future is add a function that lets you repeat lists and get different values from them in each set. So, for example, if you had a cast of characters and wanted to work on character building and interaction, you could have a "POV character" and a "second character" (or a "character one" and "character two", or "protagonist" and "antagonist", etc.) list with the same characters listed, but the generator would make sure that it selected a different character each time.

I just need to figure out how best to code that into the logic...

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is awesome. I have printed out the card for personal reference.

Some thoughts for future code development:

* Might there be a way to automate the combination function, so that prompts could be stacked like this more easily?

* Yes, I am also keenly interested in the version where you could repeat lists with different values to yield Character A + Character B + Situation, etc.

[magistrate]

As for automating the combination, I don't think there'd be a way to do it from the current Bingo Generator page without completely rewriting the page's logic and parts of its interface. I am planning to add the selector for prompt lists into the Demographics/Random Sets generator, though, so people won't have to copy lists back and forth from page to page. So that should make it easier to generate cards like this.

Okay...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I think I can make that work.

I haven't done much with the Demographics page because it's a bit over my head. I can work something that's already built, or modify it it's simple cut-and-paste, but much beyond that is ... well, look at my icon above that I use for computer related posts.

Ideally I'd like to see the Demographics Generator offer a handful of the most common points -- sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. -- so that it would be easier to just toggle things on or off. Leave the new-category option for people who need to customize, but make it simpler to use as a quickie.

[carriemac]

This is really neat! One of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Thanks for all the work you did on this. :)

[elizabeth_rice]

This is really cool and I've wanted something similar for weeks. Can I customise my own cards?

[magistrate]

Yep! You should be able to put in whatever values you want, using the bingo and demographics generators linked up above.

[vexed_wench]

This looks great! Thanks so much for all of your hard work.

[lea_hazel]

Oh, that card is magnificent.

It just occurred to me that I might be able to use the bingo system and some quick javascript to help me plot/outline a novella. It's a format I'm not really versed in, and this might be just the thing to unbog me.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Give it a try, bingo cards are good for breaking creative blocks.

Also, I recommend the book The Fiction Writer's Silent Partner which has lists of things like settings, character types, plot complications, etc. It's meant to be used for brainstorming before a story, or browsed when you're stuck.

[magistrate]

I keep thinking about developing a system where people can select plot forms (such as the seven-step try/fail loop, or the Hero's Journey, or the "three crises and a resolution" schema) and then get a randomized list of archetypal plot events ("betrayal", "eucatastrophe", etc.) filled in for those, to get the general outline of a novel or short story and use it as a jumping-off point or a creative challenge. Every time I start thinking about it, though, I get caught up in how complex the system would have to be, and I wonder if I'd ever have time.

Still, it's a fun idea. And things like this are pretty cool when it comes to jumpstarting creative work.

If you do end up expanding this with some interesting JS, I hope you'll share!

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If it's just a set of steps, rather than boxes with a combination of things (like setting, character, plot), then why is it more complicated than a bingo card? It should be possible to lay out just a row of boxes, and use any of the standard lists to fill them. That way if you wanted settings the character visits in order, or characters they meet along the way, or the timeline of crisis points, the same strip of boxes could yield that depending on what list you plugged in. And we already have lists for plot, setting, character, and theme.

Though I admit it would be rather awesome to have a graphic option that would actually lay out the seven boxes along a peak line, or a time line that could be printed out as a chain. Hrm, a more complicated version would be if you could select how many steps in the chain you wanted, like we have 3x3 or 5x5 bingo cards now.

[magistrate]

I think it's mostly because I get started thinking about suitability of plot points, both in regards to position in story and in regards to each other. So, if you wanted to have an escalating arc of tension, controlling for that is nontrivial. If you want to write something that's generally noir, you'll want to break out plot events by genre. And which plot events really build on each other is difficult to determine programmatically. Even if you had general "act one complications," "act two complications", "act three complications", each list showing an escalation in average impact... well, not all plots have a three-act structure. (And not all plots escalate like that.)

Obviously, in a just-for-fun setting, this all matters less; playing with constraints, apparent contradictions, and counterintuitive things stretches the creative muscles and can be a lot of fun. And you do see that sort of fun, quirky randomness in things like the card up above. But when I start thinking about things systematically – and I do see plots and overall story structure as a systematic thing – I want to see more interaction between the individual elements.

It would be pretty easy to set up lists in the demographics generator which pulled setting, character, and situation values and stuck them into the various plot forms – you can pretty much set that up in the generators as they are now. But for a more sophisticated plot arc generator, there's a lot of meta thinking that I'm not sure how I'd model in programming terms.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I think it's mostly because I get started thinking about suitability of plot points, both in regards to position in story and in regards to each other. So, if you wanted to have an escalating arc of tension, controlling for that is nontrivial. <<

Okay, I see where you're coming from there.

For me, part of the fun to random generation is precisely that it makes freaky things which challenge me to devise a way in which they could work. Take your Plot Challenges sample. Some of the boxes obviously stacked well, like "Situation: Deliverance, Setting: Forbidden Zone, Complication: I Told You So." Others demand more creativity such as "Situation: Involuntary crimes of love, Setting: City of Canals, Complication: Pinned by a Boulder."

So I would be okay with a plotline that didn't make sense at first and needed to be justified in the story.

I think it would be helpful to have a row option (7 steps, 9 steps, whatever) that we could use with the prompt lists we have now -- especially for folks who are good enough to make stacked boxes and import them into the bingo generator. Then if you have ideas or time later to make a more refined plot generator, I'm sure authors would be thrilled to have the expanded option.

Re: Hmm...

[lea_hazel]

I think if you assigned a numeric value representing level of peril, it would then at least allow you to control the scope/stakes of the plot. Where 1 is "marital dispute" and 7 is "apocalypse" for example. You would then be able to select the number of steps in your plot, as well as the level of danger suitable for e.g. a domestic drama vs. an adventure tale.

Re: Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Oh, that's a good idea! One of the shitty pieces of writing advice is "always do the worst." First time I got that in an assignment, and then of course the next step was "And now make it even worse," I raised my hand and said, "Excuse me, I destroyed the universe in Step 1." So yeah, scope is crucial.

Re: Hmm...

[hyperfocused]

I'm still laughing at destroying the universe in the first step. Absolutely perfect. Or should I say perfectly awful?;)

Re: Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Heh. Yeah. I am quite a sadist. That is far from the only time I've destroyed the universe, or done other kinds of mass destruction.

One of my current series, Tripping into the Future, begins with using time travel as a weapon of mass destruction.