Writers Workshop Challenge 1.6: “Origin Stories”

Hey gamers! Welcome back to your next GSWW challenge. 

Last week, you all wrote bios about the characters that you’ve created and played in various games. It was great to get to know all of you a little bit better. Congratulations to our new user Xannytoes, who wrote the winning article for this week about his character, Emperor Xannytoes. 

We’re going to be focusing on characters again this week. But this time, we’ll be taking a look at your favorite video game characters. 

Just like there are iconic movie characters, there are iconic game characters. There are some names that all of us know: Link, Master Chief, Lara Croft, Commander Shepard, GLaDOS (they don’t all have to be heroes). 

But we also have characters that are near and dear to our hearts. My personal favorite is Sheogorath, the mad Daedric prince featured in The Elder Scrolls series. With a personality more befitting Alice in Wonderland, he and his antics (like giving you a staff with a weird new effect each time you use it) are pretty darn memorable.

But behind every awesome character, there’s a team of people who created them. Every character we’ve ever loved is the result of careful construction – from a rough sketch on to design, costume, animation, scripted dialogue, voice acting. All of it is engineered to manufacture a memorable character. 

Every good character has an origin story. Share that story with us. 

This week, we want you to write an article where you talk about how your favorite game character came to life. Do a little research. Find the rough sketches, the initial pitches. Find out who did the design and the voice acting. Then build a story for your character. Tell us how that character came into being, from conception to in-game appearance. What was their purpose and backstory in the game? Why did the developers make the choices they did? 

There’s a lot of content to cover, but it probably won’t be enough to slap some words down about it. That wouldn’t do your character and their creation justice, would it? 

It’s enough to write an article, sure. But we want you to be great writers, and great writers don’t stop at just enough. So as you’re writing, we want you to try and include a little something extra for your readers to help tell the origin story of your character. You can use the text editor when you’re writing your article (that’s the little bar with the buttons) to add links, images, tweets, and all kinds of neat stuff to your work. 

We call that neat stuff visual landmarks. 

Visual landmarks are things like headers, images, pullquotes, embedded videos or social media posts, bulleted lists, etc. They help break up your text so it doesn’t become overwhelming for your reader, and also helps round out your article with just a little extra content to keep your audience interested. 

In your article, try inserting some visual landmarks that relate to your favorite character in some way – screenshots, sketches, video clips, pieces of dialogue, quotes from the developers about the character, etc. 

We want to read the origin story of your chosen character, but we also want to get a good look at them. 

Mission Objectives

• Articles must be at least 150 words.
• Use visual landmarks such as images, videos, quotes, etc. 
• Be as informative and as creative as possible.
• Fill out all parts of your Bonus Points tab.
• TAG YOUR POST’S BONUS POINTS TAB WITH THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE TAG: GSWW 1.6

Remember to invite your friends to join our GSWW challenges!

And follow our tag, #GSWW on Twitter, Facebook, etc. for updates, hints, and questions.

Again, this week’s tag is: GSWW 1.6

(We can’t keep track of your piece if your tag isn’t there!)

The winner of this challenge will be announced during our live Twitch.tv GSWW stream. During these streams, I (your loyal weekend editor) will sit down with you all to workshop, promote, and feature some of your articles.

Remember to tune in for the workshop stream Wednesday, March 11 at 9 PM EST. To watch, click here. And stay tuned to the GSWW website for any updates or announcements.

Good luck, gamers. And happy writing!