Many games do it, scattering notes and memos throughout the story to fill in the backstory of the world, the hidden lore for who care to find it.

Now, my question is, how can you write a comprehensive story/convey needed information while making sure it's not too long/wordy?

Note: The style is a diary page. Or a memo.

Those are games. They're devices that the game use to interact the player. Games aren't stories.

If stories did this in actual stories, it wouldn't be to infodump. It would be because it was necessary.

Ninja'd but since its in O.Lit (I didn't think this was for his game):

When I try to do this kind of story, I'd always have to fully flesh out the character first. Know him inside and out, how he'd react and how he'd write it out. He'd be exploring your created world in his eyes, so bias will be needed. To convey a story this way, is difficult. I doubt you can turn it concise if needed if his emotions are compromised. Your character may need to not write at all, or write an entry in only three of four sentences. Sometimes wordy 'diary pages' help flesh out not just the world but the character too.

I'm not saying its for his game. I'm saying that he's implying that just because games do it, the style can be replicated in novels. If all notes in novels did was infodump, it wouldn't be a good use of the form. Found notes are treated as Found Notes in fiction, not plot coupons you can just insert to move something along.

I was reading a William Gibson novel to prepare for error's comp (in case you don't know, he's all about cyberpunk). In his novels, the characters exchange forum posts and emails all the time and the text to reflect this is always in another font. This works because the communication is strictly one way. The forum posts are not dynamic and the protagonist moves through a lot of timezones. It gives her the ability to introspect and think to herself with each paragraph in the emails she reads. And there are alot of them.

So yes, they can work. But not like games.

What I imply was that, in games like Diablo, you have memos here and there to give information about the world.

So, my question is, what style of writing should I use in order to deliver the information via diary pages with the most bang for your words?

Edit: And Error: I need this to write a story for my game. Actual computer game.

And Hewitt, that forum posts style is intriguing. I may use it someday >: D

If you want small infodumps, I've read books that had little #s after some sentences where the character would go in more detail about that certain subject at the bottom of the page. Here's a page of the book for example:



This actually greatly increased the enjoyability of the book for me. It's an option for ye

This is called an epistolary story, which was originally telling a story using letters but has recently expanded out to radio, newspaper clippings, blogs, and email. It's basically pulling a story together using nothing but found documents in order to show differing points of view on the events of a story as they happen. The most famous example would probably be Bram Stoker's Dracula.

If you're talking about the writing style within documents, it depends on what type of document you're trying to replicate. For a diary page specifically, you write like a diary, meaning colloquial accounts of recent events that the character thought was important. Usually when people write diaries, they go off on tangents between subjects. (I personally have a tendency to focus on certain small details, but not everyone does that.) They also usually involve thoughts on events and what might happen next, since the whole point of a diary is to document things as they happen. Writing style has more to do with the character, since different personalities gravitate towards different modes of writing. The most important thing is that diaries are generally nearsighted and have a very narrow point of view. Characters aren't going to know about everything going on in the world; they're more concerned with how events affect them on a personal level.

I'd suggest reading diaries to get a feel for them, but a lot of the more recent ones are either completely fictional or written with an audience in mind and aren't really the "purest" sense of diaries. But there is Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata Filipović's Zlata's Diary, which are diaries kept during the Holocaust and the Bosnian War, respectively.

If you're specifically asking because you want to make a game, your documents don't have to--and shouldn't--carry the entirety of the story. They should supplement it by adding details and should, most importantly, be short. Story should be driven by the actions of the main character, not by the stuff he/she finds. People don't want to read huge amounts of text if they don't know it'll be important. It should just be bits and bobs to flesh out the world or its history or characters or how things gradually went to shit, depending on the story.

Quote from Xate

And Hewitt, that forum posts style is intriguing. I may use it someday >: D

Look up a creepypasta called "Candle Cove" and you'll see how it works.



Anyways, I PM'd this to Xate after he asked for advice so I figured I'll paste a part of it here for everyone else to see:


If there is not alot of room for words, go and play Slender or watch an LP. Watch what the notes say when you pick them up. Sometimes they're no bigger than a line or 2 and yet its clear that this thing you're being hunted by is supernatural as fuck. The trick is that the game lets you make up the story in your head for you, without the need for an infodump. Even if you've never heard of Slenderman until that point you would get the gist of what he is.

Don't try to focus on infodumping the entire story. Your goal should be: to write something that would allow the player to tell the story in their own head. I think that's something alot of people don't understand these days; I've seen alot of amateur horror games and the text they find is looooooooong. A game is an interaction. The player is suppose to find things out on their own so your notes should be cookie crumbs instead of cookie pieces broken down.

Another good source of inspiration is Fallout 3. Throughout that game, there are 'terminals' scattered everywhere. Finding them makes some sense to the madness you are often pitted against. And more often than not, they don't show the whole thing but rather give you a chance to speculate and piece it together which might be more interesting than you can ever hope to tell. There are also notes and holodisk entries that tell singular tales in themselves.

But here's the thing: 70% of the time, the story of these terminals are never resolved. It really leaves the rest to the imagination of the player and that's what makes the wasteland so damn scary. The backstory context is that sometime before the climax of these events, the bombs fell on America and fucked everything up.

All Terminal Entries: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_terminal_entries
All Notes: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Fallout_3_notes

Notable ones:

Tom McMullin talks about a horrific experience with some workers and replacement robots - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Supply_plant_terminal_entries

Reid Underwood talks about acquiring a laser pistol from the future bad guys of the story - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Reid_Underwood's_terminal

Entries from a Detention Camp which show snippets of various personnel talking about the implied brutality of the place and the problems they face - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Turtledove_Detention_Camp_terminal_entries

A series of notes detailing a search party for the leader's sister. It does NOT end well and in the game you never find what happened to the sister - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Search_party_log

Diary of some guy who's looking for a friend, ends up encountering some horrific shit - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Jaime's_personal_journal

Terminal Entries from a Vault where its guests were unknowingly being pumped with suggestive subliminal noise that slowly turned them into rabid monsters - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_92_terminal_entries

Audio entries from the same vault in the perspective of the doctor who knew nothing about it - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Professor_Malleus_audio_logs