A Child’s Fairytale World was a sprint that consisted of one-off features.
Part of the challenge of writing a second book, is I realized I needed to shift gears from a sprint to a marathon. I couldn’t rely on on-off features anymore and instead needed a foundation which supported extended storylines.
I have an article I thought I had finished but had never fleshed out on Long-running series, which analyzes key media franchises for insight.
One of the main ingredients to support extended narratives is to primarily use features that can be reused multiple times and are fresh depending on which other features they are combined with.
To determine if a feature is reusable, one of the best questions I’ve found to ask is “can I revisit and reuse this feature multiple times and will it still feel fresh?”
For example, rescuing damsels in distress is a one-off mechanic. When movies and TV shows use it repeatedly, the audience and critics groan.
However, an inherently one-off mechanic can be reused it the writers are willing to lampshade it and convert it into surreal humor.
The Batman 60s show did this for many features. One of my favorite examples is Batman and Robin scaling a building at nighttime, and then talking to someone who pops their head out of a window. Such an event happening more than once is absurd, but the Batman writers boldly turned it into a staple feature, and I love it.
One of the best analogies for me are the way some games such as hero shooters and Mordheim use static maps. I’m not a big fan of static maps and have repeatedly gravitated toward procedural maps (mostly to my detriment), but occasionally I am impressed by how some games can make maps feel repeatedly fresh just by changing the configuration of objects placed in the map.