10 x 10 Challenge #18: Being Brief

Something I talked about in an earlier post was cutting back the size of my 10 x 10 Challenge play reports. I felt that on reflection they were much larger than they needed to be, and that long-winded posts describing every aspect of gameplay may be "a little dry".

So, when I sat down to play today I tried to keep this in mind; and tried to cut back on my note taking. Not that this was entirely successful, as I still ended up with nearly one and a half sides of A4 scribblings. Old habits are hard to break it seems.. Hard, but not impossible. I truly believe that there is little that you cannot achieve if you set your mind to it.

Which is exactly what I did. I sat down with my notes, and asked myself "what am I trying to say here?"

A lot as it transpires, and not all of it particularly relevant. So I worked through them and picked out the key details; cutting things back to the bare bones. I was a little concerned that this edit may have been a little too extensive, as it left me with little more than a couple of sentences describing each round; but less can be more.

The edit had cut out all of the guff; like how many re-rolls I paid for, and what order I activated the avatars in. Giving my writing a certain focus that if I am to be critical of myself, I often find that it lacks. Don't get me wrong, I think that drifting off on tangents is all a part of the creative process; but being focused is not without its perks.

In this instance that focus has allowed me to build a framework; that easily identifies to me the notes that I need to take when I'm at the gaming table. This has the benefit of freeing up a LOT of time that would have been wasted on taking down information I had no real use for. Time that can now be used to both game and to blog.