Fell Runner: Cultural Keyholes

first, let me say: I don’t make a commission off of the story engine stuff. this isn’t an ad. it’s not sponsored. this is straight up an integrated part of my process.

Last week, when I had my chat with Miroki of The Story Engine deck, we gave a few examples of some of the work I used the various Story Engine decks, expansions, and other accoutrements on. We didn’t have the room, really, for me to talk about how I do all of that in sheer detail, but I do love to talk about it, because every writer loves to talk about writers block and how to get out of it and around it, etc. (In fact, it got brought up again at the talk in York yesterday!)

It turns out, when I got back to London and tried to work my way back into Fell Runner, the next novella on the docket, that I was stuck. Still stuck, that is.

I turned to the cards.

First, I used the Deck of Worlds to get a handle on why this character was going to do the run she was doing. I still hadn’t figured that out, and since it’s the whole point of the book, I kinda needed to. The Deck of Worlds cards have a nifty stack in them called “advent” cards, which are the thing happening in the world that your characters have to react to. A couple of those gave me some clarity, along with a bit of a “what if” I’d had on my own about the character herself, a turn about on my own expectations for what role she would play in the story.

(I am being deliberately vague here.)

Then, a couple days later, when I was ready to start getting some actual words down, I decided to follow what I did with Fate’s Bane. Instead of jumping in (listen, it’s only procrastination if it doesn’t add to the project), I played with the cultural keyholes expansion. (I also made some pulls from the lore fragments expansion, but I haven’t used those yet. There’s still time. They were pretty important in developing the folk tale aspects of Fate’s Bane, though.)

From there, I spent time answering each question, one at a time, pages on pages in the notebook. In the answering, I’d come up with new reasons this was important to the MC or the town, and new complications to the story would present themselves and connect to each other, weaving a tighter web across each fragment I’ve been holding. Now, the story feels like something with heft. Something that will tell me where it wants to go instead of something I have to drag from one place to another.

It’s a relief.

There are still other things to do on it. I’m taking a class on novellas that starts tonight, and I’m curious about what I’ll learn. The teacher is framing it around journeys of a sort, which is what drew me in the first place.

If you’d like to have a go at the cards and jog something out of a current project or grab some inspiration to start something new, here is a card I’ve pulled just for you:

If you’re a subscriber, don’t forget that the Story Engine crew have given you a discount until the end of October. If you’re not a subscriber, you should still go check them out—they’ve got a PDF sale on right now, all print-and-play decks 60% off.

If it sparks something, let me know!

Stay sharp,

C. L.