Naepic-notes

A Beginner's Guide to Narratives - How to Tell a Story with Your Thing that Does a Thing

Introduction

  • When I joined the seminar team I specifically did so with helping newer authors in mind. So for my first seminar, I thought of no better topic than the 2 questions I get the most: What is a narrative? and Why do I need one? Hopefully, I'll be able to answer these questions here today.
  • So a narrative, by definition narrative is, a story; or a description of the form or style of the story being told

Part 1 - Why is a narrative important to the modern SCP format?

  • This is a fiction site. We write short stories and flash fiction
    • And the backbone to most fiction is the story
  • Without some sort of deeper meaning this would just be a collection of weird stuff we all made up.
    • How much narrative does an article require to work? That varies between articles and narrative. We have narrative driven articles that are 500 words long and we have articles or story arches the size of small novels. It all depends on the piece.

Part 2 - The anomaly.

  • Now I'm not saying the anomaly is not important, cause an interesting anomaly is, but I don't think I'm alone in saying its not the most important.
    • Your anomaly, especially when dealing with "things that do a thing" is simply a MacGuffin.
      • MacGuffin: noun — an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot.
    • It's what drives the whole wiki, the anomalies are our way of tell the stories we create.
      • You can come up with the most interesting anomaly ever but if there's no story to back it up, no ones gonna care. It just needs to be something of importance in the plot that gets characters/the world moving

Part 3 - 7 main parts to a narrative.

  • Plot! Characters! POV! Setting! Theme! Conflict! Symbolism!
  • Plot or the sequence of events in story, is very much the skeleton upon which your story is built
    • So it goes: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution
      • A lot of time exposition can be worked into your conprocs and description, but can also be implemented in other ways
      • Alternatively, you can forgo it for in media res
      • Rising action are events leading to the climax, Climax is the turning point of the story, Falling action is immediate consequences of the climax and bring you to the climax
  • Symbolism
    • Symbolism helps add an extra layer and meaning to your narrative, especially for y'all looking to write those short SCP articles- symbolism can be extremely useful. At the same time, symbolism can’t make up everything. There must be a balance between symbolism and execution.
    • Symbolism can be a good way to give your reader something to hold onto, it can draw connections to real world things and use the reader own knowledge to further your story without needing to spell it out
  • Setting
    • On a macro scale (in most cases) the setting of your article is the SCP universe.
    • These details not only lets your reader know the where and when but using implied knowledge it can fill in the finer details of the environment your story takes place in.
      • One thing these all do is help define our narrative, helps focus the theme, and allows us a glimpse into the environment our characters exist in
  • Point of View
    • The point of view is the who or what that is telling you the story, its your vantage on the situation
    • Now for most cases the point of view of an scp article is a foundation personnel, ising a third person point of view.
      • But things like video/audio logs and interviews, journals and notes, letters and emails, all let you explore other points of view
    • It's interesting to see things happen from different points of view, its a key feature in the "Showing not Telling" aspect of SCPs. It also goes you a chance to explore in the moment as well as the past, a journal or notes can give you a first person view on someones past, or even just further that characters motives
  • Characters
    • This is gonna be your who and some times what that's involved in the story
    • Knowing what your character are and the details that make them is crucial to forming a narrative as they will be a large part of how and why your telling the story. Characters also give the reader someone to relate to, or hate, love, anything. The most important this is they're feeling something and to do that you need to create or use believable characters that give some sort of context to the situation. In short: the characters give you a reason to care about the situation
    • Now the way most scp articles are done there is little room for character exposition, but the actions and words and the tone in which they do them can SHOW who the character is rather than telling. You can use interview, exploration log and the like to get a feeling on how the character acts in a given situation and that can say a lot about the character itself.

Part 4 - Themes

  • The theme of your article is one of, if not the most important aspect of your narrativ. If the plots the skeleton this is you muscles and tendons.
    • Examples include: Love, Death, Good vs Evil, Survival, Power and Corruption, Coming of Age, Heroism and Courage, Individual vs Society, Prejuduce, and War
  • Themes can be as broad or specific as you want; they can be divided into subthemes
  • These are not set thing that are unchanging, nor are these the only themes. Experiment with what works best for your story
    • Love can be the motivation for your Characters. It can influence there actions and give connections to other characters or events
    • Death is something we are all familiar with in one way or another, this could be the fear of immediate death, the effects death has on others, the morning process, the struggles of mortality or immortality, and what comes after death, etc. These are all examples of ways to uses death as a theme.
      • Death is a dime a dozen on the scp wiki, we see it everywhere. The THEME of death is an exploration into the reasons why those deaths mean something
    • so the next one is an easy one we all know. Good vs Evil.
      • This duality can be found literally EVERYWHERE in many shapes and forms and is often used in combination with other themes. Now this can be as simple as right and wrong, questions of morality, a true struggle of good and evil, and the moral grey that the world exists in.Now the foundation as a whole operates in a moral grey area and that theme is often explored in articles. The good vs evil extends to that as well
    • The next theme is going to be survival.
      • Pitting characters against forces or situations that test there ability to survive. Think of All those post apocalyptic stories or an mtf stuck in the woods with a monster, it can be something as straightforward as those or something more subtle, like surviving the struggles of modern life
      • It's an exploration of survival and Put simply, survival works as a theme because it resonates with the reader and reminds them of their own inherent power to adapt and change in order to survive
    • Power and Corruption: This theme can be used to outline corrupt or unjust institutions or ideas, like anti-capitalism or anti-communism, it can focus on an individual drunk on power, or the effect these powerful people or institutions have on everyone else.
    • Individual vs Society: This theme covers an individuals struggles with not fitting in with societal norms. This can go from not being able to fit in, to wanting to differentiate yourself from social expectations
      • This theme is a great way to let your characters shine, show how or why they are different, how it affects them and those around them and how society as a whole views them, and the other way around someone who fits in that wants to break free of the mold society has placed around them
    • War: It's a fairly self-explanatory theme, it covers war and how that affects the people, countries, or organization involved
      • But more importantly war can incorporate other themes, love, death, power and corruption, all the themes we've mentioned can be combined with the theme and setting of war

Part 5 - Implied Narratives

  • This is a balancing act done by many of our favorite short form scips
  • It is when you utilize the readers previous knowledge to fill in gaps in your own narrative. It's the skillful withholding of the whole story
      • It's the reason we don't need an explanation every time someone says memetic or why we don't need an explanation of what O5 Command is
  • Now doing it on a larger scale brings me to my second point, which is the easiest implied narrative in my opinion, History
    • This technique provides context and can be used to fill in crucial gaps in your narrative which helps save space which is important when writing flash fiction and short stories

Part 6 - Conclusion

Thank you all for attending! Hopefully, this seminar has been helpful in advancing your future writing endeavors!