The Campaign Builder's Guild

I love history. I love the intricacy and the depth and the mysteries and the battles and the breakthroughs and everything.

But I was never good at writing history. As a "world-builder," I find that a pretty important skill to have. I'm not just talking about extremely detailed, lengthy entries about certain periods in time, but also smaller summations of grand occurrences. Even timelines; I find them extremely boring from my perspective as creator. Reading them from other worlds is fine because I don't know what's coming... I find it oddly engaging and a good way to provide a quick & simple version of what might be an elaborate history for people just jumping in.

So not only am I bad at writing history, I don't find my own histories all that fun to write. Perhaps I need to approach it from a new angle, I'm not sure. What I ask is have any of you ever had such a problem? How much do you write? What inspires you to write it? Do you have any particular methods?

>>I find them extremely boring from my perspective as creator. Reading them from other worlds is fine because I don't know what's coming... I find it oddly engaging and a good way to provide a quick & simple version of what might be an elaborate history for people just jumping in.

They are boring (although I differ from you a bit- I find fantasy timelines, that are disconnected from any sense of reality or grounding, boring to read, although they can be fun to write).

Especially if you are having difficulty outlining things in a timeline, it's a better idea to tell a story than to have an outline. Do the story first, the timeline second; the timeline and the dates should be subordinate to the story you want to tell--determine what technologies or cities or regions controlled by X you want, then write backwards and determine how they got there. Much harder is starting in year 0 and then building to year 1000, but that works as well.

Think of the outline/timeline as the cliffs notes version for running the game (it is something for the players and GM to reference when things are happening on the fly), and the story as the background for the game-the story should reflect the game's purpose and theme.

Quote from: The_Weave05I love history. I love the intricacy and the depth and the mysteries and the battles and the breakthroughs and everything....
So not only am I bad at writing history, I don't find my own histories all that fun to write. Perhaps I need to approach it from a new angle, I'm not sure.

   History is usually more attractive to the casual reader when told through the eyes of someone they can relate too. This is why there are sections in bookstores devoted to biographies and autobiographies, memoirs and the like.
  If you can develop a character and give them a certain attitude towards a historical event it might be easier to say what you want to say. Its more fun to write a fake journal entry about an historical event then it is to write a brief summation from a completely neutral point of view. So in summation, get into character and write the historical record from their point of view, whether it be a journal entry, a treatise or political propaganda. This is also helpful to flesh out other parts of the history, i.e. (who is this person writing this stuff? Who does he/she know? Why did this material survive and not another bit of material etc.)

Quote from: The_Weave05What I ask is have any of you ever had such a problem?
How much do you write?
What inspires you to write it?
Do you have any particular methods?

Writing detailed histories, unless given personification (see above entry) can be boring. Broader strokes in a sketch outline format are much easier to deal with.
  I write about 2000-5000 words on a good day. Sometimes the inspiration dries up for weeks or even months.
  Im inspired to write mostly from people I talk too and learn from.
  Methods for writing: Write. Write without thinking. Write while thinking. Write something other than you are used too. Write a cookbook. Write a greeting card. Write an obituary or a wanted ad. Write a manual for multi-planar transmogrification.
   And actually a conversation I had with a friend of mine who is struggling with a story he's writing...Don't try to write the whole thing out immediately. Don't get caught up in the details. Write automatically letting the words hit the page naturally. Then set the work aside for a time...a day. A week. Come back to it, and those hard to come by details will suddenly pop into your head. (try it...it really works!)

 

  k. I'm done. Hope some of this advice helps.

One small suggestion is to try, rather than kind having a big history section where you say "I'm going to write all the history now!" just sort of intermingle in with the normal setting material. So, you have a section talking about some really cool city where all the trees that line the streets are possessed by evil spirits, and must be appeased and/or avoided by the citizens on a daily basis... put into that same section some info on how and why the trees got possessed, how long ago it was, and what the city was like before. You have a section about the military tactics of the Sandtusk Warthog-Folk... put into that same section some stuff about how they developed those tactics and some of the significant victories they have won using them - or maybe the defeats they suffered before adopting them.

>>History is usually more attractive to the casual reader when told through the eyes of someone they can relate too. This is why there are sections in bookstores devoted to biographies and autobiographies, memoirs and the like.
If you can develop a character and give them a certain attitude towards a historical event it might be easier to say what you want to say. Its more fun to write a fake journal entry about an historical event then it is to write a brief summation from a completely neutral point of view. So in summation, get into character and write the historical record from their point of view, whether it be a journal entry, a treatise or political propaganda. This is also helpful to flesh out other parts of the history, i.e. (who is this person writing this stuff? Who does he/she know? Why did this material survive and not another bit of material etc.)

Very good advice!

Thanks everyone! I'm going to take your advice, Sarisa, and go for a more personal-point-of-view approach to writing history. That is a great idea I had not considered.

Light Dragon, I think I found that my issue was actually starting a timeline, as in, starting from the very beginning. I always feel like I want to add more detail, but I also think it's more realistic to have multiple interpretations to how it all started that vary from culture to culture. The issue with that is that I, as the creator, usually have a creation myth already in mind when I start the setting. I don't always have the details fleshed out (which I never intend to fully flesh out), but I find it harder to accommodate other beliefs into the system afterwards. Maybe I get too specific when it comes to those things... After the mythos part of the timeline, I can generally get the ball rolling pretty easily.

But you are absolutely right: I find it so much easier to write a story than mathematically work out dates and events in order. My only issue is sometimes I put that off too long and it comes back to bite me when I realize I can't remember which event happened first.

Kindling, an excellent suggestion. I think I have a tendency to avoid putting in things that don't have an answer in the "here and now." I have a habit to want to explain everything in terms of relevance to the present and never bothering to go that far back to explain it. I'll work on looking into expanding upon that.

For added fun (although added work, too) you could have two characters write about the same event, only both of them are biased and neither has all the pieces of the puzzle. Thus they end up painting fairly different pictures, and it's up to the readers to compare the records and draw their own conclusions.

Quote from: GhostmanFor added fun (although added work, too) you could have two characters write about the same event, only both of them are biased and neither has all the pieces of the puzzle. Thus they end up painting fairly different pictures, and it's up to the readers to compare the records and draw their own conclusions.

 That makes for an interesting adventure hook as well, especially if the two characters are in the same room describing the event to the PCs. Tricky to DM but if delivered right your PCs will love you for it.

Quote from: GhostmanFor added fun (although added work, too) you could have two characters write about the same event, only both of them are biased and neither has all the pieces of the puzzle. Thus they end up painting fairly different pictures, and it's up to the readers to compare the records and draw their own conclusions.

So, Myst? :)

Keep your main timeline in one spot.  AS you add pieces of history, add detailes from the new pieces into the main timeline.   The history of your world will grow with the histories you write that way.And by having a master timeline, you minimize inconsistencies.

This comes from keeping detailed notes in a large timeline.

I also find it easy to simply write a story, and mention things off-hand that feel relevant to the current conflict-- later, I go back, compile all the things I mentioned, and make sure they don't conflict. If they do, then I edit them or toss them out so that they are coherent. I also favor... pockets, of conflicts for my own material. I may not talk much about a large war, but I will focus on some of the microcosms where events are taking place on a miniature scale in comparison.

I, personally, have a tendency to add or change things as I go, so it's usually easier for me to write sections and incidents focused on very specific and short moments of time. Knowing when World War "X" started is usually something I find important. Detailing every single reason why it started? Not so much. Also ask yourself for whom this timeline is for. If it is for yourself and your own notes, then it only needs to be as detailed as you need it to be. If it's for others, then question how much use it is to them. If they are reading/playing/watching events that have only a little to do with a major timeline, then it may be overkill to slather it full of random bits of information.

And don't feel bad leaving open spaces in your timeline for you to play around with in the future. Sometimes those quiet moments only exist because the world only *almost* was destroyed during that time.

The simplest answer is to just try something different, like Sarisa said. If you can't figure it out, put it aside. I've been in the middle of writing school papers when I suddenly realized how to write one particular line that was bothering me.