d12 Notions in Poe's "Philosophy of Composition"
- Start by deciding on the effect you intend to evoke, usually at the denouement. It's not a striking event but a striking feeling that makes good stories.
- An evocative effect has an ordinary occurrence and peculiar tone, a peculiar occurrence and ordinary tone, or both a peculiar occurrence and tone.
- The steps of composition are not born of literary frenzy but deliberate and traceable steps.
- A work must be experienced in one sitting to have unity of effect-- this is why poems and short stories are preferable to novels. Long pieces are just strings of short pieces.
- You should only write poems about Beauty-- the effect which elevates the soul.
- Use the best tools available to achieve your intended effect.
- Melancholy is the most legitimate of the poetical tones.
- Refrains are more effective when they are used in varied contexts.
- Every word of The Raven was written to maximize melancholy and beauty.
- The death of a beautiful woman is the most beautiful possible subject of poetry.
- No poet in centuries has though of doing anything original.
- At the end, the effect's undercurrent should become transcendent.
The first part of this series (?) will assess the use of effect in storytelling and its application to roleplaying games.
Tell me this isn't an OSR PC. Art by Harry Clarke |
Poe describes a writer as a deliberate and conscious composer, who sets out a definite structure to their work. Obviously, this is not apt for roleplaying games, where meaningful choices are shared by the players and all outcomes are uncertain. However, I think that GMs who focus on preparing effect can be successful:
d4 Reasons to Focus on Effect
- Preparing only enough material to create a literary effect is efficient, because you will definitely use all your prepared material for each item the players encounter.
- Literary effect is often impressive to players, since it seems deliberate and difficult to contrive without actually being so.
- Aiming for effect focuses you on what makes your creative ideas interesting, and therefore can boost your creative output.
- This method is especially apt to weekly stories: it does not require special inspiration and it keeps each session memorable.
I've noticed that a lot of OSR writers actually summarize room encounters in dungeons by prepping for effect. Instead of a large paragraph of mostly irrelevant details, it is seen as good practice to write a few sentence fragments that evoke the exact occurrence and tone of the encounter. This recognizes that a description is useless if a GM doesn't know what to do with it.
In the next entry to this series, I will try to write a dungeon (or quick adventure or whatever) using the method Poe laid out for The Raven. Obviously, I'll have to make adaptions where he goes into phonetics and meter. I will also probably not restrict myself to only writing about the death of a beautiful woman.
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