I’ve mentioned before that one of the advantages of writing a duel is that you have total control over the “randomized” aspect of the game. Cards and combos that are useless, impractical or very difficult to play in real life become perfectly viable here. And with fifteen thousand cards and counting there’s plenty to choose from.

However, you should be mindful of the cards you use. Let me give you an example:

Read More

Last time we touched the topic of writing elaborate duels to make them more interesting and entertaining for your readers. Now, while I provided an example of two turns, I feel the need to clarify you don’t have to have your characters dumping the entire contents of their hands on the very first turn. Depending on the flow of the duel and number of turns, you can have both characters starting “slow”, escalating their plays and trading “blows” until the duel reaches its climax.

Read More

We have already talked about not inserting certain information in the middle of your story, such as life points and number of cards in hand, as it comes off as jarring and breaks the flow of the narrative. We have also talked about toning down your characters explaining every effect and play they make and letting the narrative do the job. Now, let's talk about what makes for a good duel.

Read More

Last time we talked about how duels should follow the same rules of storytelling as the rest of your story. Starting with not putting life point counters, monsters’ stats, etc. between paragraphs, as they are jarring and break the flow of the narrative.

Now, let’s talk about the action itself. Here are four examples from four different stories, which I’m not going to name because it’s not relevant to this post.

Read More

Crossover stories with Yu-Gi-Oh! pop up on this site from time to time, and while the quality of said stories varies, they all share the same issue in my eyes: they do not treat duels as part of the story proper.

"The hay does that even mean?"

Easy. I believe duels should be subject to the same rules of storytelling than the rest of the story. First and foremost, indicating the players’ life points like this,

TWILIGHT: 4000 LP

SPIKE: 2500 LP

Read More