Writing Every Day 14: Callbacks

As a part of my job, I get to read manuscripts written by plenty of talented authors. While reading a revision to an upcoming novel, I noticed how the author cleverly worked a callback to one of the opening scenes into the novel's climax. Callbacks can be satisfying to the reader; a callback gives the story a pleasant symmetry, showing how the characters have grown from an early situation and use that experience to overcome a challenge.

I feel that callbacks have a place in a campaign or an adventure. At least, they can if we identify them and work them into the narrative. Using them can be complicated, though.

Due to the length of an ongoing campaign and the time between sessions, subtle callbacks might be overlooked unless there is some heavy parallel to a previous situation. For instance, if a PC failed to pick a lock early in the campaign and is presented with another one in the finale, the players probably won't draw any connection between the two. First, lock picking by itself isn't that significant of an action. Second, the PC may have attempted to pick any number of locks, with any number of failures and successes, in the interim. To turn that kind of an action into a satisfying callback, there should be symmetry between the situations.

If we use the lock picking example, perhaps early in the campaign the PC attempted to rescue a hostage behind a locked door in some sort of death trap, and the PC failed. That's the kind of moment I would make a mental note of, or write down in my campaign document (If you don't have a campaign document, you should, especially for longer campaigns. That's probably another post I'll make this week). Then, near the finale of the adventure or campaign, I would put forward a similar challenge: a death trap, a locked door, a hostage that needs rescuing. This time the stakes would be higher. The door has a better lock. The trap is faster and fiercer. The hostage or hostages are more important to the PC.

Since the situation shares so much with the earlier encounter, the player is much more likely to remember it. This kind of callback works best if the PC failed in their earlier attempt and had the time to level up and gain skills. It creates that satisfying symmetry we're looking for, and it also gives the player and PC a chance at redemption for an earlier failure.

I don't try to contrive the set up to these situations, but I capitalize on them when there's an opportunity. By that I mean I won't force the lock picking attempt to fail, but if it does I'll be scrambling to figure out a way to make that situation relevant to my story's conclusion. NPCs are perhaps the simplest expression of this theory. If an NPC beats a PC in any way, socially, physically, or whatever, then you can be sure the NPC will return later in the story's arc. In the interim I have plenty of time to detail out the orc, street thug, or hitman in question, presenting a juicy target to the player who he, she, or it overwhelmed.

I won't pretend to be an expert on the concept, but these kinds of callbacks make my job as a GM much more satisfying. I like the look on a player's face when they're confronted with a challenge from the early days of a character's life. I like the classic storytelling that these kinds of scenes can evoke. For a better explanation of the concept, I suggest checking out Dan Harmon's Story Circle concepts, or for those who want an in-depth look at the theory something like Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Both of them have a much deeper understanding of the concepts behind this kind of storytelling, and though they approach it from different perspectives both are worth every moment of your time.

--EDIT--
A quick addendum on the above. My example only encompasses a single PC in what would be a larger group. Over the course of your game, you can pick out these kinds of moments and stagger them for all of your players, creating a series of callbacks building up to the final confrontation with whatever villain you have. You can certainly double up such situations in a single session, but I'd advise against dumping them all into the final session. Instead, give your players their own moments to shine up until that moment. If, and this happens rarely, there's a situation where all the PCs can experience a shared callback, save that for the final session before your falling action (another topic for a later time).