A TV show isn’t really what might come to anyone’s mind when they think about AARs. AARs, after all, are works of literature, so when we think about structuring or formatting an AAR, we tend more often than not to lean on other written works for inspiration. There are, admittedly, these new-fangled video AARs that people do these days, but I’ve never been entirely sold on them. A true video AAR, in my mind at least, would be a piece of machinima - which, philosophically speaking, aren’t at the moment too far removed from AARs anyway. One could make a convincing argument that, say, something like RoosterTeeth’s Red vs Blue is theoretically little different from an AAR. If we, as writers, were to turn our AARs into scripts and our screenshots into videos, we’d come up with something quite similar I’m sure, had we the talent and the time. Most of the video AARs that come across my desk aren’t in this mould however, and are more akin to let’s plays than anything else. And, of course, a let’s play is virtually the same as a traditional AAR, just recorded instead of written. I myself however, for better or for worse don’t have much time for these sorts of AARs, weaned as I was on the plot-heavy narrative stories of my youth on TWC. As such, if I’m going to watch someone play a Total War game, I’ll most likely watch an actual let’s play, rather than a video AAR. Not to be disparaging of course towards the hard working (and often very talented) video creators in the Total War scene, both on and off TWC, but I think the genre has some ways to go yet.
But, video AARs aside, why should TV shows come to mind in discussing AARtistry, and why I am going to spend an evening talking about them? At the root of the issue here is the fundamental law that AARs are serialized works. Theoretically of course one could have an AAR that wasn’t serialized, but owing to how the genre has developed on message boards - here and elsewhere - we have settled into a comfortable pattern now, where we publish expansive works of fiction over quite lengthy time periods. We of course do this for a number of reasons.
Firstly, of course, the format and dynamics of message boards necessitates serialized posting. Although TWC is quieter now than it once was, threads will generally have to compete with eachother for prominence within a subforum. Slipping further down the list of threads and off of the first page of viewable threads is damaging for your story’s view count, as fewer people will read it. If one were to post an entire AAR in one go and in one thread, that thread would generate traffic for a while, but new threads would push it down the pecking order, and it would be easily lost and forgotten about. As such, it behoves us to continually bump our threads, to keep them in competition with other stories and to vye for readership at the top of the subforum.
Secondly, and following on from this, is the audience’s attention span. Whilst message boards are not quite as condensed as other platforms like Twitter or Instagram, there are only so many posts that people are going to want or be able to read every day. If you log on to TWC, see someone has posted a 10,000 or 20,000 word story, you’re likely going to think to yourself, ‘well, that’s a little much to digest right now’, and have neither the time nor inclination to read it. As such, serialization makes much more sense, as shorter posts over a longer period of time will be more digestible to the average forum goer, and AARtists have long debated what the optimal length of an update should be. 8,000 is generally considered the maximum limit - usually with the reasoning that this would read more like a chapter in an actual novel -, and a few AARtists have pursued this route, to varying degrees of success. The minimum limit, as can be observed most recently in Alwyn’s New Town, is thought to be around 500 words, mimicking our Tale of the Week contest here. There have of course been AARs published in lower bands, primarily either in the vein of experimental micro-fiction or so-called ‘picture-book AARs’, but to tell any kind of coherent story, 500 words per update seems an ideal lower limit. Most AAR updates run in the region of 1,000-2,000 words however, which is traditionally considered to be the ‘perfect’ length - not too short as to not be able to say anything, but not too long that people will switch off when reading. In writing Osaka, I personally set a goal of 1,000 words and use this as my minimum word count per chapter. Some chapters run a little longer, hitting 1,500 or 2,000 words, but never so long as to be incongruous with the rest of the story. After all, consistency is key in formatting an AAR - especially over a long time period and many updates -, which we will discuss a little here today, and at length more sometime in the future too I’m sure.
Lastly, serialization is important for AARs because - at least in a traditional sense -, it takes quite a long time to play a campaign. Most AARtists - if indeed they are basing their work on a campaign - will usually write and play simultaneously; playing far enough ahead as to have a buffer and to be able to develop the plot in advance of any surprises the game might throw at them. As such, very few authors will finish an entire campaign before they start writing, perhaps because it would be quite easy to lose motivation after the fact, and being able to swap between writing and gaming helps to break up the monotony of the process. It is actually a rather wonderful thing in this sense, that AARtistry has a built in counter to writer’s block, as when one is stuck, they can always hop into the game for inspiration. So, naturally, this forces AARtists to space out their updates, as not only are they having to devote time to writing (and, one hopes, editing screenshots), but also to playing the game itself. This net loss of time is thus transferred into a serialized format, to make up for the fact that they are essentially having to do twice the work as other writers.
So, what can we take from this discussion of serialization, and how then does it all relate to TV shows? Well, obviously most TV shows are serialized as well. Given the nature of the Total War series and the AARs it tends to produce, we might do best to take period dramas as our frame of reference, as these are most like what we might read in an AAR. Whilst I won’t name any specific shows at this point, to save confusion or misrepresentation, a traditional period drama on television will usually have x amount of episodes in y amount of seasons, running for z amount of minutes each. So here we can already begin to see some interesting parallels. Like an AAR update, an episode of a historical drama has to be conscious of its length. Usually, an episode will range from between 30 and 90 minutes in length. In my experience, 45 minutes tends to be the average in Asia, whilst 30 minutes is more normal in Europe and America. Some shows will run shorter, usually 20 minutes, to account for advertising breaks, whilst some might run longer - however, longer dramas of 90 to 120 minutes in length are by and large usually self contained stories - or so-called television-movies. There isn’t much of an analogue to this in AARtistry, but a linked series of BAARs - the long forgotten and truth be told never all that popular ‘Battle After Action Reports’ - could fit this bill, although I personally don’t recall anyone ever attempting such a project. My old AAR Yokai was in some ways intended to be this, but that story was a strange beast indeed, and something we will have to discuss another time.
We can observe here though, a parallel between how long an episode of a period drama runs, and how long an AAR update is. Both have lower and upper limits, and each have their own pros and cons. Furthermore, we can observe something else. In a period drama, episodes are broken down and grouped into seasons, each containing a certain amount of episodes. In the world of television, this is largely related to funding and casting and contracts and a whole bunch of nonsense we as AARtists don’t have to worry about, but there are some useful things we can take from this. As I’m writing Osaka, I am splitting the AAR up into ‘Acts’, as I did in my previous AAR Yokai, and as did my patron Robin in his magnum opus. Why is this then? If we are not constrained by the same limitations as television shows, why then should we break down our AARs into acts or volumes? Whilst some novels take this approach, most by and large do not, and simple chapters usually suffice. Why then should we take our cue from television shows?
This simple and elegant reason is to do with plot structure and character arcs. When writing and producing a season of a TV show, the writers have to be conscious of what they can achieve within the parameters they’ve been allotted. If they have only been funded to produce ten episodes in their season, they have to think thus about what what they can and cannot do in that space of time. Like AARs, television shows need an audience to sustain them, and pleasing that audience and securing good ratings is of chief concern. As such, in a period drama, you will find seasonal arcs. Usually we might see a story arc specific to one particular season, which begins in the first episode of that season, and is resolved in the last. Whilst this might serve the overarching plot of the show - the arc that begins in the first episode of the first season, and ends in the last episode of the last -, it also has a degree of independence to it, and should be constructed so that someone who had never seen any of the previous seasons could understand that specific seasonal arc should they watch it from beginning to end. Having a clear and distinct plot, as well as - crucially - being able to resolve that arc by the season’s end, is key to hitting ratings targets and appeasing the audience. If the season ends without a satisfactory conclusion to the story arc, it will reflect badly on the show, leading to it being poorly reviewed.
Likewise, individual seasons are crucial for developing character arcs. Like plot arcs, character arcs are vital to the development of the show, and seasons afford writers the opportunity to explore and develop their characters - setting up a conflict in the early episodes, and resolving it in the last, allowing for the character to grow within a neatly contained and structured environment. Whilst characters might likewise have overarching arcs that stretch from season to season, seasons themselves serve as effective signposts to delineate and shape this growth, moving them ever closer to a goal, or helping to set up other arcs or subplots in subsequent seasons.
Immediately, we can then see why breaking down our AARs into ‘seasons’ can be helpful. By dividing our chapters into acts or volumes (or whatever term you wish to use), you can use them as tools to shape and structure your story. This, ironically, is even more important for us than for television writers. Whilst a TV show is constrained by budgetary limits, we are not. As such, we have no natural paradigm for structuring our AARs - no set formula or pattern we adopt that can help us achieve our narrative goals. This often leads to AARs quickly becoming unwieldy and running out of control, as AARtists struggle to rein in a rapidly developing story as characters swiftly come to start writing themselves. Here we might turn to Swaeft, who, after finishing his Medieval 2 AAR God’s Justice, wrote:
From the get-go I had a very clear idea what this AAR was supposed to turn into. It would be a story-driven AAR, with the plot more or less ironed out before the prologue was published, with the campaign adding the element of unpredictability and the direct source for Jean's traits. This worked well for the first six or so chapters.
By Chapter 7 I started to notice that the story was going nowhere and was kind of meaningless - hence the titular cry going up at the end of the chapter. It wasn't that it was bad or unplanned, but it was taking too long to get anywhere, and with that level of build up it would be a 3 or 4 years project, not a 6 month (yes, I thought that was possible! ha!) project as originally planned. This was my first mistake. I ignored the signs, and it wasn't until Chapter 15 that I realized I would be doing GRRM a great service by taking even longer than him to finish my story.
So things had to change then.
I had to make a difficult choice - either keep the AAR the way it was and accelerate the story, making it seem disjointed, or change the way the AAR was being written and try to inject the story in at a more appropriate pace. I chose the latter, but I probably didn't do it too well. I did cut short a lot of the less important plot points, but I failed to cut the characters themselves, so people like Sir Anduril, the 'boy, and Stefano had nowhere to go. So writing the new storyline with them always in mind diverted the story from where I wanted it to go, but that was still more or less okay. So now the story was being led by the characters and not the way I had initially planned it to go. I also hadn't actually settled into the new storyline completely, my love for battles and fighting turned the story driven AAR into a part story, part campaign AAR. Although battles can be used to show character growth, it is of my opinion that I did too many battles with too little focus on the characters.
Case in point: Battles and troop movement began to take up the majority of the words in the chapters from Chapter 10-25. As a result the story stagnated.
It became abundantly clear to me by chapter 33 that this was not working at all. I was running out of time to finish this, because whilst I estimated a 40 chapter AAR, it was looking to me more like an AAR with over a 100 chapters, and I neither had the time nor the will to see that through. So things really had to change at this point.
It was also at this point during the 2 month+ break with no updates I seriously considered abandoning this AAR. After all it had devolved into a mess (though an exciting one, I hope!) and character arcs weren't properly done. I was on the fence for quite a while before resolving that I would not revert to my old ways and abandon the AAR. The question then was: How do I save this?
So I had to sit down and write it out on my notes where everyone currently was at and where they could go in to tie up most of the loose ends (because tying up all was impossible to me now).
Swaeft’s thoughts on his writing journey are valuable and interesting in equal measure - hence the rather expansive quote here -, and we should all be very thankful to him for taking the time to record them for us. However, and not to be disparaging towards him, we can observe here some of the problems an AAR can run into when it lacks a structure. Whilst Swaeft uses a slightly different lexicon when it comes to discussing AARs, hopefully it will be easy to see where his and my thoughts align with regards to the problems inherent to a lack of structure. I do obviously want to point out, at this juncture, that I myself am offering no actual criticism of Swaeft’s work (on the contrary, I think he’s a superb writer), but merely instead trying to make sense of his own thoughts on the writing process, and how we can think about it in a new paradigm.
What is important for us first to recognize is that Swaeft here did have a broad overarching plot he wanted to convey; God’s Justice had the traditional beginning, middle and end we so often talk about when we discuss structuring stories. So, like a TV show over multiple seasons, it had an idea of where it wanted to begin, and where eventually it wanted to wrap things up and call it a day, but the problems came in getting from point a to point b, and converting this idea for a plot into an actual AAR. He notes that by Chapter 7, things were beginning to unravel, and that the story was suffering from issues in pacing. Attempts to resolve these issues, by way of over-correcting and injecting more pace into the story, backfired, stunting character growth and leading to a rushed conclusion.
We can view this, then, like a 40 episode TV show that doesn’t have any seasons. Whilst you know what will happen in the first episode and what will happen in the last, you really don’t have a roadmap of how to actually get there. Plots and subplots will deviate and converge at random points, whilst important characters compete for screentime, leading to some vastly outstripping the others in prominence and development. This rather chaotic assemblage of episodes becomes difficult for the writers to control, and even more difficult for the audience to follow. Whilst theoretically possible to do and to do well, by working without any internal structure, you are making your task exponentially harder.
What then, if Swaeft had planned his story using a structure analogous to television seasons? To break down those 40 chapters into four 10 chapter acts? There is of course no way to know whether or not it might have helped him personally, but in theory, we can see that this might have rectified some of the problems he faced.
As this blog is essentially a ‘behind the scenes’ for my own AAR Osaka, let’s turn to see how I have structured my story - taking my cue from television seasons -, and how I have attempted to mitigate these common problems AARtists so often face.
When planning Osaka, I originally outlined four acts. Based obviously on the historical siege of Osaka in 1614-1615, I opted for a beginning act set prior to the siege, covering the summer of 1614, as a way to introduce and flesh out the cast before the actual battle; a second act showing the initial phase of the Osaka campaign in the winter of 1614; a third act set in the downtime that followed in the new year; and a fourth and final act in the summer of 1615 that saw the end of the conflict. After planning further, I eventually added in another act in the autumn of 1614 - what will now be the second act -, as I felt I wouldn’t be able to cover everything I wanted to cover prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the first act alone.
Now, as I am writing as I publish, at the time of writing this blog I’m still working on the first act, and have only laid out some very brief bullet points of what I want to happen in the subsequent four acts. I have a rough idea of the direction in which I want the character arcs of several major characters to develop and where I would like them to end, but by all means not all of them (I am naturally helped of course by the fact that I am by and large following history, so much of this work is already done for me). However, as this entry is more to do with internal act structure, we will leave more long form planning to another day.
Within my first act then, I vacillated for quite some time about how long I wanted the act to be. As I mentioned above, I had already settled on a rough guideline of 1,000 words per chapter, so using this, I can begin to see how much I can do with regard to character and plot development over an act. I originally thought about doing 20 chapters, which would be roughly 20,000 words, yet after planning my character arcs, I realised 20 chapters weren’t going to be enough. This stretched to 30, and finally to 40, which I have now settled on - although I am considering bumping this up to a potential maximum of 50 if required.
How and why then do we get to 40 chapters? 40,000 words is quite a lot, especially for what is essentially an introductory setting of the stage. However, it is thinking in these terms which is actually quite damaging. What I realised is that if I consider my first act just to be a preamble that introduces the cast and sets the scene, then I’m not writing a very invigorating or stimulating story for the audience. If this act was a season in a TV show, it would end awfully, in the most anti-climactic of ways. Nothing would have been achieved, no one would have developed, and the audience would have no reason to keep watching the following seasons.
Better instead to think of an act as a season in a TV show; a self-contained story that serves the overarching plot, with a neat beginning and end, where characters have their own arcs and subplots which resolve by the end. So, when planning the first act, I settled on its theme and the overall story I wanted it to tell (if you hadn’t gathered by reading the title of the act, it has something to do with bells!), as well as how I wanted some of the main cast to develop. Obviously not all of the characters introduced in the first act are going to develop at equal pace, or get the same amount of ‘screentime’. So whilst some characters will be advancing the main plot of the act, others will be going on their own character arcs. As such, when planning an act, you have to be conscious of both of these things: firstly, how your main plot will develop, and secondly how your character arcs will develop - as well of course as how they will dovetail, set up further character arcs and feed back into the overarching plot.
So, whilst I have the main plot arc for the first act (which will flow naturally into the second act), I also have to maximize the time and space I’ve allotted myself to develop my characters, setting them realistic goals to achieve and conflicts for them to overcome. I essentially chose to have four subplots - Yukimura and Oume dealing with their exile on Mount Koya; Kimura Shigenari becoming embroiled in the politicking of Osaka; Ina dealing with her family crisis in Shinano; and two yet to be introduced characters who will be off on a journey to somewhere I’m not going to spoil. Each of these subplots all relate to the central story the act is trying to tell, but each is independent. However, not all of these involve ‘active’ character arcs.
What we have to bear in mind here is the difference between active and passive character development. A character arc is a deliberate and structured process that sees you take a character from a certain state to a new one. Not all character development is done through character arcs, and its okay to have characters develop passively across an act whilst you focus more specifically on actively developing a character through a specific subplot. This way, you don’t risk overburdening your readers with too much or too rapid development, whilst also making it so that you can resolve what you need to resolve within an act, and setting the stage for your passive characters to become active characters in the subsequent acts.
So, in this model, the characters who I am actively developing in the first act of Osaka are only Yukimura and Oume, who have to contend with specific conflicts in Act One. Kimura, Ina and the other two characters all develop, but are not actively being developed - so whilst you learn more about them and whilst they might subtly change, the first act is merely setting the stage for them to be actively developed in later acts. Now, Yukimura, as the central protagonist, gets active character development in every act, and he will have a specific, active character arc in every one - which is what I would recommend for your hero. However, his Act One arc, whilst it begins and concludes within the first 40 chapters, forms part of a broader, but still specific three-part character arc that takes place over the first three acts, and then as part of an overarching character arc that takes him from the beginning of the story through to the end. Oume, on the other hand, becomes a passively developed character in Act Two - as other characters get their own arcs instead - and only returns to be actively developed again in Act Three.
It is important here to emphasize that there is a massive difference between not being actively developed and not being in the story. Just because a character isn’t being actively developed, it doesn’t mean that they are in any way sidelined or not included. By the same token of course, it means that simply being in the story doesn’t mean you have to develop someone either. Let us take Kimura, for example. Kimura is central to the plot of Act One and is a key protagonist and the main PoV character in Osaka Castle at this time. He is the eyes and ears of the audience, who observe and learn about the world through him, whilst also being instrumental in moving the plot forward, affecting all the other characters. But he is not being actively developed as a character; in other words, I do not want his character to undergo any actual change within this act. But that doesn’t mean he is any less important, or that he should show up any less frequently than a character being actively developed. Oume on the other hand, whilst being actively developed and being a character who will undergo a tangible change, gets less ‘screentime’ than Kimura, and has much less involvement in moving the overall plot forward in Act One.
Beyond this understanding of active and passive development, we can observe also how we can reconcile character arcs with acts, as well as how specific character arcs can be built into broader narratives. The inspiration for this kind of structuring, as you might have guessed, is TV. To move away from period dramas for a moment and to something we can probably all identify with, let’s take the TV show Friends. Running across 10 seasons, we can view the characters of Ross and Rachel as being involved in an overarching subplot that is, essentially, their relationship (which I would personally argue is the plot of the show). Yet if we examine Friends, its character development and plot structure, we can see that their relationship is progressed through different ‘active’ arcs largely specific to seasons, with ‘passive’ downtime in between. Season 1 is largely about Ross’s unrequited feelings and how he deals with Rachel coming back into his life again - she however is largely passive in her development here, only being actively developed towards the end of the season, in order to segue into her Season 2 arc. This specific arc resolves when he begins to date Julie, and then a new arc begins in Season 2 that eventually resolves with them dating. Season 3 has the famous ‘We Were on a Break’ arc, whilst Season 4 deals with the Emily arc. However, by Season 6, Ross and Rachel are being more passively developed, whilst Monica and Chandler get active development. This changes with the baby arc in Season 8, but becomes subdued again in Season 9, before finally coming to a climax in Season 10.
Whilst Friends plays somewhat fast and loose with its seasonal arcs, we can observe a method of managing character arcs, which we can then directly apply to AAR writing. Ross and Rachel have an overarching plot arc/shared character arc that sees them go from friends to lovers, with a lot of ups and downs along the way. However this overarching arc is a composite of lots of smaller arcs, largely contained to specific seasons and serving to demarcate specific points in their character development. In other words, it is not one long meandering journey, but lots of mini journeys that eventually form a whole.
When we write AARs, as Swaeft notes above, we think about the beginning and end, how we will start at point a and end at point b, but we often assume that this is one singular process, when in actuality it’s better envisaged as a collection of smaller, but linked processes - each with its own beginning and end, and its own point a to point b. The AAR itself then, taken as a whole, is not the journey from point a to point b, but instead the journey from point a to point z, hitting every other letter in between on the way. And, like seasons in a TV show, breaking up an AAR into acts can help us to better hit those points, when and where we need to, without things spiralling out of control.
Anyway, I hope this was a useful (or at least vaguely interesting) insight into my own creative process, and the different ways we can (should?) look at AARtistry and the art of crafting a story. Whilst this entry has dealt a little with narrative and structure, TV can be inspirational in other ways, and next time hopefully we can explore what we can learn from television in terms of formatting and visually presenting an AAR, and some of the strategies I’m trying to employ with Osaka that emulate them.
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The Sick Baby Jester
Re: Osaka · Ch.7 (updating every Friday!)
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Originally Posted by Nicholas Rush
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