 bigger isn't always better. So let's talk about scope and scale. Scope is the effect your story has on the world your story takes place in. Now that effect can be small or non-existent or it can be universe-altering. Generally scope isn't something people think about when they're telling a story. They've got an idea and that idea is played out in a particular way. They don't care about their scope. But when you're writing science fiction or fantasy or even horror, it can be very important to understand the scope of your story in order to tell that story better. Now take Star Wars. That entire film series has an incredibly epic scope. The first movie has a giant space station that's able to destroy entire planets. There's an empire that's taken over the entire galaxy and a resistance that's trying to fight back. But it's slowly being destroyed. And the movie opens on a space battle, a grand set piece meant to demonstrate exactly all of the major plot points, the empire, the resistance, the magic force powers. Everything is introduced in one scene. And then it takes this giant scope and it brings it back down to a smaller story. Because next thing you know, you're on Tatooine and you're following the story of a moisture farmer's nephew who just wants to hang out with his friends. So what does that work as part of the story? I mean, shouldn't the story be focused in on the huge important galactic events going on? No. You see, making a connection with a character, not a story, not a story element, is the easiest way to get a reader interested in your story. So the scope doesn't matter so much as how well you connect them to a character. And if you do that, people will internalize the story. They'll remember it going on and on and on. It won't just be a movie they watch or a story they read. And then they completely forget about it 20 minutes later. Now that initial scene, the big set piece, it does introduce you to a couple of characters that end up getting more development later. You've got Darth Vader, you've got Princess Leia, you've got the droids as well, which are somewhat secondary characters. But all of these are only secondary characters to the main character of the piece who isn't even introduced in the first scene, Luke Skywalker. And Luke Skywalker is the main character of the entire first three movies. But here's the thing, if we were introduced to him as Luke Skywalker, hero of the resistance, we wouldn't really connect with the character. I mean, as much as we all want to, we, most of us, not save the world in the past. But we all know what it's like to be a whiny asshole with parents who want us to do our chores. The main lesson you want to take from that is that if your story has an epic scope, you want to ground it in characters that the audience can identify with. There's a lot of SCP articles that concern themselves with the end of the world. And not all of those have characters that you can connect with. Some of them are forgettable, some of them are not, some of them are pretty memorable. And despite glaring flaws, some of them still work as stories. That doesn't mean the lessons of character and scope aren't important, because SCP writers have a bad tendency to want to go as big as possible, as quickly as possible. They start with a classic monster that can kill you, and if it gets out, the world might end. And that can work. But essentially what you're doing is you're setting up barriers between yourself and the reader. Even the progenitor of cosmic horror, HP Lovecraft, when he created a horror story, even if it involved eldritch abominations or, you know, a town with a cult going on that we barely understand, he grounded it in character because the stories were told in first person. Shadow over Innsmouth, at the mountains of madness, these are all told in first person. So not only do you get the character's view of what's going on, you also get a sense of what the character is thinking, what the character is feeling. So even though they are these terrible and grand and scope things going on, just outside the periphery, your character still connects with the reader. Now you don't always have this luxury. And if you're writing an SCP document, you pretty much can't do this at all, at least more than once. So sometimes it's a good idea to bring your scope and your stakes into control. Make it smaller, make your story more compact. And this is especially true of anyone who hasn't gotten an article to stick on the wiki yet. If you're new to writing, don't go big immediately. It's a strong urge. You're going to want to feel to do that because you're going to read stuff that's big, or you're going to read stuff that's, you know, dangerous and you're going to think to yourself, that's the way to succeed. It doesn't matter. Scope, danger, they don't make the story better. In fact, they make them harder to tell properly. If properly told, that story is just as good as a story with no danger and an incredibly small scope, a personal story, a fight between two neighbors or an argument between two lovers. Those stories can be just as compelling, just as interesting and just as memorable as a giant 60 foot tall monster that's trying to destroy the world. So don't do the 60 foot tall monster first. Get your feet underneath you with smaller stories. In fact, that's usually my primary piece of advice to new writers for the SCP wiki. Try to write an article with no danger. Nobody goes crazy. Nobody is even close to being in danger. There's not like danger on the horizon. And once you can do that successfully and get an article to stay on the wiki, then start raising your bar. Make your stories bigger and bigger and bigger if that's what you want to do. You don't have to do that. And as I said earlier, it doesn't change the quality of your work. It's just whatever kind of story you want to tell. If this is the kind of story you want to tell, fine, but don't make it the first story you tell. I'd like to give a special thanks to my patrons. Without them, this content would not exist. If you want to support me on Patreon, go to patreon.com forward slash decimarian and join these fine people and make this content happen. And if you like this content, hit the subscribe button and the notification bell next to that so you're alerted as soon as new content comes out. Thank you very much for watching. Also, I'm pretty sure I have pneumonia.