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plutherusI’m looking at some of the lessons to be learned from the writing in Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and how they might apply to novel writing.
For the complete series, see https://plutherus.dreamwidth.org/tag/lifeisstrange
Warning: Contains many many spoilers.
When we last left off, Chloe was in the junkyard, waiting for her drug dealer, Frank. He finally shows up, and he has a job for her. A student at Blackwell owes him a large sum of money and his plan to collect is to hire Chloe to break into his dorm room and steal it. It’s unclear why he thinks he can trust Chloe, the consummate flake, with this job. He just seems to assume she’ll do it. If she balks, he offers her 10%. We see her name is crossed out in his debt book. On my play through, I paid him the $175 I owed him after stealing $200 from a T-shirt vendor who’d been rude to me in the opening scene. If I hadn’t, I suppose the game could have used that as leverage to convince me to take the job. “Do this one job for me, and we’re even.” It would have been good foreshadowing, and setting up a problem (the debt) in Act 1, to which the solution (paying it off with a simple job) is presented in Act 2, tying these together nicely.
Since it’s a game and not a novel, there’s a chance I’ve already solved the problem of the debt, so it gives me another reason: I need the cash if I’m going to run away with Rachel. It’s a less compelling reason, and one without as much set up.
To make it OK, Frank reveals that the student he wants Chloe to steal his money from is Drew, asshole bully she put down (maybe) in the previous chapter. It turns out he’s been selling oxy to the football team. Making him clearly the villain removes any moral qualms. (Of course, nothing is really that morally clear in this game, so there’s more to it as we learn later.)
Of course, I take the job. If there’s an option to just flat out refuse, I didn’t see it. Considering that Chloe has to be on Blackwell for the rest of the scenes in this episode to work, I don’t see how there could be.
So, Chloe finds herself back on Blackwell campus. Again, she wanders through the court and interacts with various people. Evan’s an ass, so when it gives me the option to mock him or be nice to him I chose to mock him. It didn’t seem to make any difference either way. After solving another puzzle involving the sprinkler system, Chloe gets into the boy’s dorm. (“Who thought the sprinkler system would have been the key to getting into the dorm?” she asks the audience in an almost groan-worthy nod to the original game.)
Chloe finds Drew’s room and, as mentioned earlier, he’s not quite the villain he seems at first.
Wandering around Drew’s room you quickly learn how much he needs the money. His dad lost his job (When Nathan’s father bought the company and fired everyone and took the pension plan) and is now homeless. His little brother Mikey (who Chloe may or may not have played the D&D game with earlier) is staying in Drew’s dorm (does the administration know about this? Well, I’m not going to tell them! It’s not even an option, nor should it be. Chloe is no snitch in any incarnation.) There’s hope, at least! It turns out Drew has a full ride scholarship to play football at the University of Oregon. He just needs to survive until fall. Good for him!
After finding, and stealing the money, you’re about to leave when Drew and his brother come into the room. Uh oh! They do a great back-and-forth with the tension. In rapid succession:
You’re caught! (Oh no!)
But he doesn’t care! (Oh yay!)
Because something even worse is going on! (Oh shit!)
Damon, Frank's friend/business partner who you pissed off at the mill in the opening scene is coming down the hall looking for Drew. (So Frank doesn’t dare set foot on Blackwell grounds, but Damon, who any respectable cop would arrest just for looking like Damon, can just walk into the dorm no problem?)
Drew tells you to stay in the room, and make sure Mikey does, too. (Why does everyone keep trusting Chloe?)
Through the door, you can hear Damon demand the money from Drew, and Drew tell him he doesn’t have it. (He’s telling the truth, since it’s in Chloe’s pocket now, but he doesn’t know that.) Damon reacts violently, and it’s pretty horrific listening to it through the door. This is a good way to handle violence if you don’t want to show it - just show the effect it has on the characters involved. No, this isn’t a violation of the “show, don’t tell” rule. It’s choosing *what* to show. You can hear the violence, and we can see from Chloe’s reaction it’s pretty horrible.
Again, the player has the choice of intervening, possibly giving Damon the money, or of staying in the room and keeping Drew’s little brother safe. I chose the latter when I played, figuring Chloe would opt to protect the innocent over… getting her ass kicked? Immediately after you make the decision to stay in the room, you hear one more crunch and then Damon gloating. “Good luck running on that knee now. Good-bye football.”
Good-bye football. It’s a great line to really hit home just how devastating this is, after you learned his football scholarship was (past tense now) the only thing that held hope for his future.
While you were wandering around the courtyard, Frank was texting you telling you to hurry up. Apparently, he wanted you to get the money from Drew before Damon got there. He’d mentioned having issues with Damon and disapproving of some of what he did. I guess this is the kind of thing he disapproved of and why he wanted you to get the money so bad - he was trying to avoid this kind of violence. That’s an inference for the player to make, and you can leave such things up to your readers to decide, but I’d recommend not overdoing it. Some players are going to be scratching their heads at this, and others complaining that his whole plan doesn’t make any sense. Personally, in a case like this I would have at some point later had Frank say something like “That’s exactly what I was trying to avoid.” Perhaps even followed with, “Now you know why I wanted you to hurry.”
He really shouldn’t have trusted Chloe to do it. I wonder if I hadn't spent so much time wandering the courtyard and talking to everyone I could have gotten there in time? Probably not. I’m guessing the assault is one of those fixed moments.
Which leads to another interesting thing that is true for a novel, but pointed out even more so in a game like this. Sometimes, it just takes just very small changes to completely change the story. Drew’s storyline is one good example - does he keep his football scholarship or not? Does Damon break his knee or not? Most of the plot is unaffected, so it’s just a few words here and there that would need to be altered, but the perception in the reader’s mind could be vastly different.
Even more so, imagine the difference between Chloe and Rachel being “just” friends or being romantically involved. Almost all of their actions are the same either way. Throw in the kiss or not and change a few lines of dialog one way or the other and you’ve got a very different story. You can leave out most of the details and the reader (or viewer) will fill in the rest based on what you do say.
It’s an especially useful trick in a game, where the plot has to continue to work regardless of what choices the player makes, but it’s also a good thing to keep in mind if you want to completely change the emotional impact of a subplot in a novel.
For the complete series, see https://plutherus.dreamwidth.org/tag/lifeisstrange
Warning: Contains many many spoilers.
When we last left off, Chloe was in the junkyard, waiting for her drug dealer, Frank. He finally shows up, and he has a job for her. A student at Blackwell owes him a large sum of money and his plan to collect is to hire Chloe to break into his dorm room and steal it. It’s unclear why he thinks he can trust Chloe, the consummate flake, with this job. He just seems to assume she’ll do it. If she balks, he offers her 10%. We see her name is crossed out in his debt book. On my play through, I paid him the $175 I owed him after stealing $200 from a T-shirt vendor who’d been rude to me in the opening scene. If I hadn’t, I suppose the game could have used that as leverage to convince me to take the job. “Do this one job for me, and we’re even.” It would have been good foreshadowing, and setting up a problem (the debt) in Act 1, to which the solution (paying it off with a simple job) is presented in Act 2, tying these together nicely.
Since it’s a game and not a novel, there’s a chance I’ve already solved the problem of the debt, so it gives me another reason: I need the cash if I’m going to run away with Rachel. It’s a less compelling reason, and one without as much set up.
To make it OK, Frank reveals that the student he wants Chloe to steal his money from is Drew, asshole bully she put down (maybe) in the previous chapter. It turns out he’s been selling oxy to the football team. Making him clearly the villain removes any moral qualms. (Of course, nothing is really that morally clear in this game, so there’s more to it as we learn later.)
Of course, I take the job. If there’s an option to just flat out refuse, I didn’t see it. Considering that Chloe has to be on Blackwell for the rest of the scenes in this episode to work, I don’t see how there could be.
So, Chloe finds herself back on Blackwell campus. Again, she wanders through the court and interacts with various people. Evan’s an ass, so when it gives me the option to mock him or be nice to him I chose to mock him. It didn’t seem to make any difference either way. After solving another puzzle involving the sprinkler system, Chloe gets into the boy’s dorm. (“Who thought the sprinkler system would have been the key to getting into the dorm?” she asks the audience in an almost groan-worthy nod to the original game.)
Chloe finds Drew’s room and, as mentioned earlier, he’s not quite the villain he seems at first.
Wandering around Drew’s room you quickly learn how much he needs the money. His dad lost his job (When Nathan’s father bought the company and fired everyone and took the pension plan) and is now homeless. His little brother Mikey (who Chloe may or may not have played the D&D game with earlier) is staying in Drew’s dorm (does the administration know about this? Well, I’m not going to tell them! It’s not even an option, nor should it be. Chloe is no snitch in any incarnation.) There’s hope, at least! It turns out Drew has a full ride scholarship to play football at the University of Oregon. He just needs to survive until fall. Good for him!
After finding, and stealing the money, you’re about to leave when Drew and his brother come into the room. Uh oh! They do a great back-and-forth with the tension. In rapid succession:
You’re caught! (Oh no!)
But he doesn’t care! (Oh yay!)
Because something even worse is going on! (Oh shit!)
Damon, Frank's friend/business partner who you pissed off at the mill in the opening scene is coming down the hall looking for Drew. (So Frank doesn’t dare set foot on Blackwell grounds, but Damon, who any respectable cop would arrest just for looking like Damon, can just walk into the dorm no problem?)
Drew tells you to stay in the room, and make sure Mikey does, too. (Why does everyone keep trusting Chloe?)
Through the door, you can hear Damon demand the money from Drew, and Drew tell him he doesn’t have it. (He’s telling the truth, since it’s in Chloe’s pocket now, but he doesn’t know that.) Damon reacts violently, and it’s pretty horrific listening to it through the door. This is a good way to handle violence if you don’t want to show it - just show the effect it has on the characters involved. No, this isn’t a violation of the “show, don’t tell” rule. It’s choosing *what* to show. You can hear the violence, and we can see from Chloe’s reaction it’s pretty horrible.
Again, the player has the choice of intervening, possibly giving Damon the money, or of staying in the room and keeping Drew’s little brother safe. I chose the latter when I played, figuring Chloe would opt to protect the innocent over… getting her ass kicked? Immediately after you make the decision to stay in the room, you hear one more crunch and then Damon gloating. “Good luck running on that knee now. Good-bye football.”
Good-bye football. It’s a great line to really hit home just how devastating this is, after you learned his football scholarship was (past tense now) the only thing that held hope for his future.
While you were wandering around the courtyard, Frank was texting you telling you to hurry up. Apparently, he wanted you to get the money from Drew before Damon got there. He’d mentioned having issues with Damon and disapproving of some of what he did. I guess this is the kind of thing he disapproved of and why he wanted you to get the money so bad - he was trying to avoid this kind of violence. That’s an inference for the player to make, and you can leave such things up to your readers to decide, but I’d recommend not overdoing it. Some players are going to be scratching their heads at this, and others complaining that his whole plan doesn’t make any sense. Personally, in a case like this I would have at some point later had Frank say something like “That’s exactly what I was trying to avoid.” Perhaps even followed with, “Now you know why I wanted you to hurry.”
He really shouldn’t have trusted Chloe to do it. I wonder if I hadn't spent so much time wandering the courtyard and talking to everyone I could have gotten there in time? Probably not. I’m guessing the assault is one of those fixed moments.
Which leads to another interesting thing that is true for a novel, but pointed out even more so in a game like this. Sometimes, it just takes just very small changes to completely change the story. Drew’s storyline is one good example - does he keep his football scholarship or not? Does Damon break his knee or not? Most of the plot is unaffected, so it’s just a few words here and there that would need to be altered, but the perception in the reader’s mind could be vastly different.
Even more so, imagine the difference between Chloe and Rachel being “just” friends or being romantically involved. Almost all of their actions are the same either way. Throw in the kiss or not and change a few lines of dialog one way or the other and you’ve got a very different story. You can leave out most of the details and the reader (or viewer) will fill in the rest based on what you do say.
It’s an especially useful trick in a game, where the plot has to continue to work regardless of what choices the player makes, but it’s also a good thing to keep in mind if you want to completely change the emotional impact of a subplot in a novel.
