The Storytelling Engine
Here’s the process I use to keep the eager, efficient part sitting still long enough to tell a story. This is the heart of “How do I keep people interested?” because in this framing, that question is really “How do I stop the shortcut-seeking part of a listener from deciding it’s wasting its time?”
Plot Hooks / The Want / The Question
A plot hook is the thing that gets the audience wanting more. With a friend, the hook is usually easy: tell them you had an experience, but only a teaser. “I had a terrible night.” “I just got back from a huge trip.” “Did I tell you about x?” The hook is the tool you use to establish the Want.
Once you have the Want, you have fuel for the engine. They want to know more. And it helps to think of the question that the want is about under the surface. Audiences want two things, at least. The more efficient part of our brains want the punchline, the ending: it wants to know what happens in the end. The experiential parts want to know what it was like. The trick is that when you answer the part that wants to know what happens, you end up depriving the experiential part that wants to know what it was like, because its harder to keep the efficient part to stay focused when it already knows the answer.
Referring to the definition I typed earlier:
A story is a way of transmitting experience to an audience who wants to know something about that experience.
The Journey
So, you set up an expectation that you will them about the thing they’re interested in AND you are also NOT going to tell them until you have brought them along the journey to get there. Its a promise that you have to keep if you don’t want a dissatisfied audience, but its not enough to just keep it in the end. You need to keep the efficient part trusting you. So, along the journey, you need to show that they are getting closer to the answer. Or that they are getting farther. Which direction you go is not the main thing: the main thing is that there is movement. A lot to say on this, but for another time.
For my direct communicators: Think of it as direct communication-of-experience achieved by indirect means, whose purpose is to hold the shortcut-seeking part still long enough that the other person can feel what it was like to be there.
Answer to the Question
The payoff. The punchline. The ending. It only lands if the question was properly planted at the start.
Game Mastering
In order for people to pay attention to the game, you need the same functions to keep them interested.
The Game Hook & The Spotlight
This is the part I think about more than any other piece of a game’s structure. It’s the engine that lets the whole thing run reliably. The spotlight is what the game is about, and it starts long before session one. It starts when you pitch the game. “This game will be about x.” That pitch is you constructing a Question / Want / Hook at the very beginning of your relationship with your players.
If the game is about a group of adventurers who are uncovering the secrets of the ancient evil worm… then the game hook is that. This question is a really open ended one for a big campaign, but it gives you a lot of information about what the players need in order to play. What you are doing here is giving the people info on what they can expect, and what promise you are making as far as expectations are concerned. Players are giving you their time and attention. You have to deliver on that if you want the game to be satisfying.
There is a flip-side to that exchange.
The Spotlight
You do not have to tell a story that you do not want to tell.
At this point, the game master has many expectations placed upon them, but the players do as well. Players are expected to play characters who would logically be part of this story, and the spotlight is where the time and energy of the game goes because that was the agreement which happened in the game hook. Its a good idea to spell this out:
you should play a character who will work towards uncovering the secrets of the evil worm and believes that working with this group is the best way to achieve that goal
In other words, you give the players the parameters to which to build their character and shape their experience so that they have the creative freedom to determine their motivations but know what it is that they need to aim at so that the game can stay on track. And if a player begins to leave the spotlight with their character, then you can point it out to them because if they leave the light, the character might continue on, but the story no longer follows them. (They become an NPC under the GM’s control, and are welcome to make a new character)
Its the same way that the GM does not advertise a sci-fi game and then proceed to run a fantasy goblin dungeon crawler: its a good way to lose players and disappoint people.
the remaining I will save for part two, or perhaps make this one longer, haven’t figured that one out yet