Roll of the Dice

Okay, when I was a teenager, I was a semi-avid RPGer. It was usually just a way to pass time with a group of friends. Anyway, this morning, I was reading yet another immaturely written fan fiction. Drove me nuts because there was obviously no thought put into this story at all. It pretty much read as a "then this happened, then this happened and this and this". There was no how, or why and the things that the author was claiming happened had no basis, I want to say in reality, but I can't as really, it IS fan fiction. Anyway, the author of the fiction seemed more like a sheep than an actual creative writer. I'm not trying to rip on this person, hence why I haven't named the author and truthfully, there are a lot of young writers out there that are interested in the craft and everyone has to start somewhere. None of us can get better without encouragement and experience.

It just drives me nuts when writers read so much or so little other fan fiction that if they see something repeated a few times, they accept it as canon, when it is usually fanon and they figure to make their story "true" they have to throw in all these extras that they don't understand or take the time to research. forthelongestday hit upon this a rant about Bella/Jasper (Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series) fictions and the things that we hate about them. It was almost exactly my pet peeves about that pairing.

Well, anyway, while I was contemplating on this, I had this funny idea about writing a fiction. Truthfully, I think if I didn't give it a lot of thought, it would end up as cliched as the majority of the stories out there. And then I thought, I really shouldn't think about it. I want to write a story by the roll of the dice. (Here's where the gaming experience comes into play.) Let's take a Twilight story for example. My pairing would be Bella/ Jasper. I'd pick a point and start from there, with every choice, decision, crossroad, let's decide what happens with the roll of a dice. Even just a plain 6 sided dice can be utilized.

Hmm, I'll start at just after Bella's ill fated birthday party and well, Edward is leaving. So now, the family has a choice, do they stay or do they go. Assign yes and no to the dice, for instant all the even numbers are yes, all the odd numbers will be no. I roll and yes, the family decides to leave. Okay, works so far. But I really want Jasper and Bella together. So, let's check again, Jasper feels remorseful, so he has a choice, roll again, does he sneak back now? Dice says no so he'll come back later. And of course, he needs to make some decisions about how to deal with his life and the Cullens. Does he go back to killing humans? Here's where I get realistic people. 1- we know from the books that he has a hard time dealing with dying people's emotions. 2- he isn't enraged so why would he fall off the wagon. 3- maybe he slips because the stress is too much. 4- he runs into another vampire just starting to feed and the temptation is too much to end it quickly. And so on and so forth. I roll the dice and get my answer.

I think I really like this idea. I could have so much fun with it and assigning all those numbers for possible plot points really forces me to explore some creativity. Yeah, one of these days I might just go for it...