March Insight | Writing Netherrealms
In 2016, I attended a week-long workshop organized by Chris Oatley, called the Storytelling Summit. I’d written a draft for Netherrealms before that, but after I came back, I rewrote the story again to incorporate what I’d learned.
To do that, I use a software called Scrivener. It allows me to rearrange story beats and look at the story in different views (from cards to one long text) so I can get a feel for the story both at a macro and a detail level. It’s such powerful software!
The most useful parts of the Summit were Brian McDonald’s lectures, for me. He emphasised that stories can be broken down into basic structures. Netherrealms’ base is really simple. It comes down to:
1. There once was…
2. And every day…
3. Until one day…
4. And then…
5. And then…
6. Until finally…
7. And ever since that day…
Try it out on some stories. You’ll find that it works on most (Western) fairytales, movies, books and so forth!