Back in the day, which was in fact many days back, I was a Dungeon Master, or a DM if you're hip. Our games comprised four to six guys sitting around a table, eating chips and drinking soda. Back then, the girls at our school weren't into D&D, or us. We played on a semi-regular basis. In our group, we had a thief, a magic-user and a dwarf, and there was usually a warrior and/or a cleric in there as well. As for me, I was none of the above. I was the effin' DM.
If you have never played Dungeons and Dragons or don't know much about it, let me fill you in. This is a game that takes place almost entirely in your imagination. You pretend to be a wizard or an elf or whatever, and you go on an adventure in your mind. It's kind of like role playing video games, only much cheaper.
My job as the DM was to create the worlds that these adventurers would explore. I would invent a whole landscape and draw up maps on graph paper, and then I would fill these maps out with legends that corresponded to possible encounters and other information. What monsters lurked there? What kinds of treasure? What traps required a roll of the ten-sided die? Which monsters required a 13 or higher on the D-20? This was all stuff that I had to figure out ahead of time and plot out, including all of the variables.
If there was ever a better boot camp to becoming a writer, I'm not sure what it would be. When I write stories in whatever form, one of my "primary objectives" (to employ the parlance of Robocop) is to put my characters into situations that are ripe with conflict. This is true whether it's a screenplay, a book or a song. Did you ever see the movie about the two people who got along splendidly and nothing bad ever happened to them? No? What about the blues song about the guy who is perfectly happy about everything in his life? Still no? That's because it probably doesn't exist, and if it does, I think it's fair to say that it most likely sucks.
Oh, and incidentally, Robocop is the Christ story. Seriously. Murphy even holds his arms out to his side as he's getting shot, only to be reborn as the savior to all of New Detroit. (I'm talking about the original Paul Verhoven version, who has even said as much in interviews. I've never seen the newer one.)
Conflict is the lifeblood of drama. There's no link there. The underline is just for emphasis, because it's that fucking important. (Please note that the swear word in the previous sentence is also there for emphasis.)
Don't get me wrong. In real life, I am one hundred percent in favor of avoiding both of those things whenever possible -- but when I'm writing, I am basically thinking about how I can apply extreme pressure to a sympathetic character in order to see how they react. What situations will help to reveal a deeper side to this character than we thought we knew? How can I make these characters face the things that they most fear and produce a little bit of wisdom from the experience? In characters, it is the gap between who we thought they are and who they grow into or reveal themselves to be that makes them interesting. On some level, that's what all stories are about: vicariously experiencing a series of interrelated conflicts that offer some insight about what it means to be human, including our remarkable ability to adapt to changing environments.
In fact, I would posit that roughly 99% of stories in the western world are fundamentally about one person who is subjected to a series of cause-and-effect challenges in order to compel change either externally or internally. In other words, the person or the world that he or she inhabits is now somehow different because of the events that previously transpired. If not, then we might ask what was the point of going on this journey with them? Conflict creates drama, which leads to growth and change. We engage with stories so that we ourselves might grow through the experience.
I guess my point is that being a Dungeon Master did not lead me into a life of satanic rituals, celibacy and battle axes on my living room wall. Rather, this experience taught me a great deal about how to be a writer, and I am thankful for it, even if we never finished most of the campaigns that I designed.
