Unconventional Perspectives

I have (re?)discovered the joys of writing in-universe propaganda, and I wish to share them with you.

My homebrew mess of a Warhammer 40,000 tabletop RPG game has been on hiatus for a little while now due to various bits of life getting in the way, and it looks, unfortunately, like it’ll be on hiatus for a little longer for the same reasons. It’s a shame, because the Grand Finale is coming up, and I don’t want to do that Grand Finale without all my players being there and being ready to get stuck in. Hence the hiatus: we’ll wait until everyone is good and ready before bringing this chapter of the bizarre story we’ve woven together to a close, and that’s just fine.

Also making these film posters for each mini-arc is great fun. I need to take the time to catch up, I’ve got loads of ideas bubbling for the next few.

But some of my players are available. And while I don’t want to bring out only some of our intrepid band of technicolour heroes, that doesn’t mean they can’t take control of some significantly more disposable characters for a spinoff session or two. But how do I announce such a game? And also, how do I keep my players caught up with the current events of the campaign after such a long break?

I could just write a summary. That, however, would be boring. Time to get my head in-universe.

Radio transmissions have been intercepted. Government propaganda has been spotted, pinned to the crumbling walls of a city at war. And I’ve got plans for an awful lot more, because fully committing myself to a completely different narrative voice is so much fun. I’ve done it before a few times, when inventing fictional books to quote extracts from in my fantasy works, or writing up the future notes of military campaigns that my characters are currently fighting. But these last few have been far more entertaining. Just the act of switching fonts, of appending each radio message with times and dates and sender codes has been great fun. It’s a very literal exercise of getting into a character’s voice: not just describing what they’re doing or saying or thinking but writing in the manner that someone else would write. My personal summary of the events of the last few sessions is going to be efficient, but matter-of-fact. The in-universe summary of the office of the planetary governor, in the form of a public service announcement in the most over-formal and flowery language I could muster, is a much more entertaining read even if it lacks some of the precise details. For those, I’ll have to write some more clandestine briefings up: interrogation notes, confidential mission reports, that sort of thing.

Hell, following on from last week I might record a few of these in audio just for the hell of it. I can do a few accents, and if I can find some nice radio-crackle filters to slap on top…

This is an exercise that I would urge any other writers reading this to try out. Get in the perspective of someone in your story. Write down what they would write down, whether it’s a letter, a radio transmission, a report, whatever – anything but conventional prose. Get in their head and their voice. Convey things directly as they would convey them, not how your POV characters would perceive them. It broadens your perspective, it flexes some writing muscles that I certainly don’t use as often.

And it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun.

Now, I’m off to put together some cargo manifests.