Creating Moments

Everybody loves a good story, right?  Stories are part of the human existence. Imagine for a moment, the first storytellers.  We don’t know exactly who they were, but I’m guessing that among the earliest was some semi-upright guy, or girl, standing in front of a fire, in a cave, with all of the young people of his or her tribe gathered around the fire.  For the sake of simplicity, we’ll go with the male pronoun.  We’ll even name him Grokk just for the hell of it.  I’ve always wanted to name someone Grokk.  If you’d like, feel free to mentally fill-in the feminine pronouns.  You can call your storyteller Grokka.  I don’t really care.

Grokk was probably telling stories of a great hunt or a fantastic storm or some other event that the tribe considered important enough to pass down to the next generation.  He probably used some sort of pigment or sharp implement to draw visual aids on the cave wall as he went.  I’m guessing, since I wasn’t there, that he sketched some of the most significant scenes in the story.  He probably sketched out the scenes that he most wanted his audience to take with them and probably to pass down to their children, like some sort of prehistoric Pictionary.  Our Grokk was probably the tribe’s designated storyteller because he was good at getting his point across to his audience.  Remember, there was some dangerous shit out there.  That sinkhole down by the lake didn’t have a railing or caution tape.  The den of the giant bear that the hunters couldn’t kill wasn’t marked with a bright yellow sign.  These kids had to remember these stories in order to stay alive.  Storytelling, and storylistening, was serious business.

Now imagine yourself around that campfire.  Go ahead.  It won’t hurt…

—

The cave is dark and damp, but the fire is warm.  You can feel heat off the tongues of flame that lick up toward the ceiling of the cave.  It’s raining outside tonight.  Tiny rivulets of water trickle into the cave toward the fire, but your tribe picked this place for shelter because most of the weather was kept outside.  The acrid smoke stings your nostrils slightly, but most of it rises and somehow the cave doesn’t fill up with the smoke.  Your Uncle Grokk is supposed to tell a story tonight and you can’t wait.  Uncle Grokk used to be the smartest hunter in the tribe.  He could read the tracks of an animal and know the type of animal and even the size and weight of the animal.  He could tell how old the tracks were.  He was still really smart, but he didn’t hunt anymore.  He had a run-in with the bear over in the next valley and couldn’t run anymore.  He could still tell a great story.

Uncle Grokk rises slowly and steps towards the wall of the cave.  He unrolls an old animal skin containing a number of small bones and some small bowls filled with colors.  Uncle Grokk doesn’t just tell a story, he paints it.

“Tonight,” says Uncle Grokk, pausing slightly, “I will tell you the story of the Great Bear of the Valley.”

There is a collective gasp from the boys around you.  Many of the younger boys haven’t heard this story yet.  Uncle Grokk doesn’t like to talk about the day he stopped hunting.  You’ve heard it before though, but that’s okay, it scares you every time.

—

Go ahead, fill in the story.  You can do it.  What happened to Grokk?  Imagine the boys around you and their reactions to each part of the story you… I mean Grokk… are telling.  Think about the moment when Grokk first saw the bear.  Imagine how big it was.  What did Grokk think when he realized he couldn’t out run the bear.  How does his voice change as he tells of the attack?  Picture the boys leaning forward as Grokk draws the monster on the cave wall.  It is reared up, much taller than the drawing of Hunter Grokk right next to it.  It’s claws are huge.  Grokk draws in teeth.  He turns and the room grows silent as he describes the claw descending toward him.  The scars across his abdomen shine in the light of the fire.  He portrays the bear as he mimics the swipes of its claws. His shadow on the cave wall actually looks bear-like as he hunches, advancing on poor wounded Grokk.

—

Wait.

What just happened?

There.

Right there.

It was, if you were really into it, a moment.  Every good story has them.  Each word of a story, each frame of a movie, every pixel of a narrative video game builds towards one, then… it happens.  Then, the story starts building towards the next one until… BOOM.  Moment.

Have you ever come out of a theater after a scary movie and had something happen that brought one of the movie’s moments a little closer to home than was comfortable?  You know, the scene where the killer is stalking one of his victims in a thunderstorm and the thunder crashes, the victim turns and the next flash of lightning reveals the killer right behind her.  Then, when you come out of the movie, it’s raining.  The thunder booms.  The hairs stand up on your neck because you expect to see the killer right behind you.

Now take a look at one of those moments.  It can be from a novel, a short story, a movie, a video game, whatever.

Don’t have one in mind?  I’ll choose one for you.  I’m just that helpful.

Take a look at this scene from Cujo (1983).  It builds to one of those moments.  Go.  Watch it.

What did you notice?  How did this scene get us to a moment?  Did you notice the first thing we see, framed by the opening in the shed door, as the scene opens?  It’s a tractor.  Now, a tractor isn’t inherently scary.  We’re not talking about a demon-possessed tractor.  It’s just a simple, stationary tractor.  A familiar farm prop.  Could the shot have opened on the car pulling into the yard?  Sure.  But that tractor is a detail that tells you some things about this location, mainly: It is in the country, probably fairly isolated.  As the little Ford Pinto rolls into the shot and the camera begins to pan around, we get more details.  There is a farmhouse.  The windows are open, so there is probably no air conditioning.  The condition indicates that the owner is probably either not wealthy, not concerned with appearances, or both.  We don’t see the owner.  We don’t see any people.  This absence of a detail is also a detail.  We see abandoned cars.  The one that caught my eye was the Ford station wagon near the barn.  Maybe because it is the car my family owned while I was growing up, right down to the faux wood-paneled sides.  But more than that.  Maybe it caught my eye because it, out of all the cars in the scene, looks to be drivable.  The windows are cracked open, as if to keep the interior cool in case the owner needed to use it during the day.  While the camera is panning around, we get more details.  The engine in the Pinto doesn’t sound healthy.  Sure enough, it eventually shuts down.  We also see the child struggle with his seat belt.  This detail is extremely important.  If the seat belt would have released easily, his name might as well have been Purina instead of Tad.

“It’s not a monster.  It’s just a doggie.” – Donna, Cujo

The dog attack is fast.  We don’t even see him approach the car.  Still, we get details.  He is dirty.  Muddy.  Unkempt.  His huge paws leave thick smears of dirt all over the windows of the little Pinto.  We think, or at least I think, uh oh… they’re not gonna be able to see out of those windows when they need to know where that dog is.  After the dog jumps off the hood of the Pinto, we get our moment.  I’ve never been able to look at a large dog sitting quietly on someone’s front porch in quite the same way (I say this as a dog owner and dog lover).  This giant dog, who was just consumed with murderous, frenzied rage, is sitting on the porch, panting.  His soft growling is more menacing than any loud bark.  We see the dirt and mud matted in his fur.  We also see the pus from the bite near his nose.  We see that his eyes are running with mucous.  This dog is not a trained killer.  He is just sick.  He is crazed with disease.  This moment has the power to change our view of something as innocent and ubiquitous as a dog relaxing on someone’s porch.

I had one of those moments yesterday.  It wasn’t inspired by this movie.  It wasn’t inspired by any movie.  It was video game induced.

If you’ve been reading here for long, you know that I’m a fanboy.  I totally geek out over movies, games, etc. that are well done.  One of those games, perhaps my favorite video game for the XBox 360, is the original Bioshock.  I’ve written about it before.  Most recently, I mentioned the setting.  Well, I’m mentioning it again.  It is just so well done.

My wife and I were walking our dog on the beach yesterday when I decided I had to use the restroom.  I quickly climbed the steps to a nearby arcade, up on stilts, attached to a local fishing pier.  I went into the darkness of the arcade and stopped.  As my eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, punctuated by flashing lights, I became aware of a loud, mechanical voice booming from a machine directly ahead of me.  I don’t remember what it said, but I know what my ears heard.  What I heard was, “CIRCUS OF VALUES!”  Now, I know that wasn’t what was said, but it was definitely what I heard.  My mind had transposed the soundtrack from a small moment of a video game and placed it into a similar situation.  Was it a deja vu?  I’m not sure.  I just know that those details from that video game were effective in setting my mind up for the disorientation of the scenes that surround them.  That is the power of good storytelling.

Have you ever had a similar experience?  Is there some detail from a scene that instantly transports you into that scene whenever you experience it, even in the real world?  If so, tell me about it in the comments.  On the flip side, if you’ve ever GM’ed a role-playing game, tell me how you used details to build moments to bring the players into the scene.  Let’s hear it, people!

EDIT: I have to link to an excellent post related to the subject that I read today over at Kate Haggard’s Saucy Scrivener blog.  She talks about the video game Left 4 Dead 2 and some of the details that bring the game to life and create memorable moments within the game.