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Story sense

Reading, plot and other people's shoes.

A lot of us did more reading in Chrono Trigger than in English class. Thousands of lines of dialogue, characters with reasons, plot twists you did not see coming. That is reading, just with better music.

Role-playing games also ask you to be someone else for forty hours, and players often slip into a mix of themselves and the hero.

Train it on purpose

1. Read every line for one game. No mashing through text.
2. When a character does something you hate, work out why they did it.
3. After the credits, try to tell someone the story in two minutes. It is harder than it sounds.

Off the couch

Reading people's motives is the same skill as reading characters. So is telling a good story at the pub, writing a decent email, and understanding why your partner is upset about a thing that does not look like the thing. Being able to see it from their side is the difference between an argument and a conversation.

Sources

1. Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.