Dungeons and Dragons makes better writers

I saw this article at suvudu.com last week, but last week was crazy week, so I'm commenting on it now.

It's a short little piece that talks to a few different authors and teachers about how playing D&D in their youth helped develip not only their imaginations and empathy, but also their writing skills. The money quote comes from author Jay Lake, who says:

"Those three years playing D&D at boarding school did more to ground me in storytelling, plot construction, and sheer, raw imaginative throughput than any other single activity of my life. Today I'm a successful fantasy and science fiction novelist with ten novels and over two hundred short stories in print or on the way. I might have gotten to this point by a different path, but it would not have been the same journey,"

That's the same quote IO9 pulled (which is where I saw it first), because it's a great one. For me obviously the line from middle-school gamer to writer is even more direct, since I got my start in writing with pen and paper RPGs. Coming to the fiction side of things after spending close to a decade on the game-writing side of thing presented its own interesting challenges. With game writing, there's always a pressure to keep the plot open and free so that there's plenty of room for the players to create their own stories. In that respect, fiction is quite freeing - you're not only allowed to have a "linear" plot that "railroads" the reader along, it is (in most cases) kind of the point. Writing a novel is like being a game master and a player at the same time! Of course, the extra challenge is that the end result should probably be entertaining for more than just you and your gaming group.

Comments

[Becky]

"Check the bear."

That's all I'm saying.

[Rick Dakan]

Always, always check the bear! That's going in my next book, somehow, some way...