The PDF for the SE shows “Billie Cuthbertson” as the main character… Sounds like people are talking about other characters… Am I missing something?
Ah, I see. That helps… So how did they determine the genre? Pull one out of a hat? Very interesting to watch, btw. For those who do this sort of exercise, once all the blanks are filled in, would you go back and review and revise the answers to make them more homogeneous?
Well, I’d say, there are no rules. This is just an exercise and a group exercise at that. So if you were doing this on your own you would do whatever you want. The beauty of the group exercise is that you’re forced to make things work that you never would’ve thought of because everybody’s throwing different things at the Story which creates a beautiful mess (as long as they are story points that are correct for the storyform). IMHO
As for going back and making it homogenous… if I were actually writing this, then… well, “homogeneity” wouldn’t be my actual goal. I would go back and change choices that I thought could be improved.
(You actually hear me do this in the podcast.)
The other thing that I notice during these exercises is that certain choices are “forgotten”. They are added to the storyform, but nothing specific seems to be built off of them. I would go back and change those, or at least reconsider them.
This really isn’t that different from any story, though. You put up a bunch of ideas, keep the ones you like, and adjust the ones you think can be better.
Sure would be cool if there was a quick way to generate random storyforms with gists for us PC Dramatica users… There is a Gist list tool out there, but it generates the whole list rather than random selections.
Oh, well, I need to stop complaining and get back to writing. I seem to have a bucket load of excuses for not doing what I know I should be doing.