Game Fiction Day Two: How to Fit your Story to the Theme of the Game

If I gave you a list of well-known movies, I bet that you’ll quickly identify what the theme of the movie is. For example, we know Indiana Jones is pulp, we completely “get” that Army of Darkness is a comedy, and we understand that X-Men III was supposed to be an action movie where Phoenix was…well…The Phoenix. Looking a bit deeper, we can tie specific elements of those creative properties to see secondary themes based on what the movie is about. For example, we know that Indiana Jones is about Indy playing “the hero,” to triumph over the forces of darkness.

Games, on the other hand, may not necessarily be that intuitive. If you think about what a game actually is, it’s really a set of rules that you either manipulate, avoid, or navigate through. In more times than I can count, the games I’ve been involved with have been designed to target as many audiences as possible. In other words, they are designed so that the player designs the theme so it fits with his (or her) style of play. You decide what kind of a game you want to play: action? mystery? political? With that layer of personal involvement, the theme in many games is really driven by the player not by the creator.

Writing game fiction to fit the theme of a game is very challenging because you have to understand not what falls within the boundaries of the theme, but what doesn’t. To get what I’m talking about here, let’s look at one of my favorite player vs. player video games: Soul Caliber III. Having played this game a hundred times or more I know in my deepest heart of health points, that this is an action game, an “I-can-release-some-stress-in-a-5-minute-death-match-fighting-game.” Now say that I want to write a story based on Sophitia, a character who guards a Greek temple and has a small sword and shield. I have the character’s backstory from different elements in the game, but is it enough? How am I going to write a story about a character so that it fits the Soul Caliber theme?
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Writing a Story Based on a Game? Day One: Who are You Writing For?

This week is going to be pretty intense for me; I am rounding the corner on a novella based on the game called “Altheia.” Unfortunately, mapping out the story took a lot longer than I thought, so I’m a bit strapped for time. So for most of this week, I’m going to focus on my process for writing a story based on a game because it’s top-of-mind and something I hope you find interesting to read.

Really, this process could probably apply to any “shared world” setting like Battlestar Galactica or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but my methodology for writing game fiction tends to be more mechanical because it has to be by its very nature. For this particular story, I’m writing fiction for a game that doesn’t have a mass market setting. Because of that, my entire piece has to fit primly within the “rules” of the setting in order to give players a sense of whether or not they’re interested in picking up the game. In this way, gaming fiction has to be written for potential buyers of the game.

Publishers often offer stories written within a unique gaming world because they’re hoping to attract readers interested in a particular genre (games are almost ALWAYS genre-based), collectors who might follow a specific writer’s career, and gamers who love their game. Publishers aren’t stupid, though, because their concern is that the story has to fall within the constraints of their property, so they often hire writers who they can trust. So here, the game fiction has to be written for the publisher.

Whether you write for gamers or publishers, the true “end goal” of any story is to write a good story that readers will enjoy. In this way, the third audience for your gaming fiction is the person who is reading it. For gaming fiction, that person may or may not be a gamer, and writers have to keep that in mind in order to market to the slipstream audience.

Gamers, readers, and publishers are the audience of gaming fiction. If the original game was created by a big name in the industry, or is part of a mass market line like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Everquest, then you might have to add in two, additional audiences to the mix. As a writer of game fiction, you have to be a chameleon to satisfy your audience – all three, four or five of them.

Game Setting Fiction: The Ins and Outs of Writing Gaming-Related Stories

One of the interesting things about gaming is the idea that their settings can be turned into some awesome pieces of fictional work. A lot of my own fiction started in gaming (or “licensed settings”) because at the time it was a lower risk for the publishers to use unknown writers. That certainly isn’t the case anymore, as big name authors are writing some interesting settings. This accomplishes two things, really, in the publisher’s mind. One, a more well-known setting allows publishers to potentially sell books to a built-in fan base and two, the publisher could sell more books to the author’s fan base.

Game fiction, however, has some pretty interesting aspects that you may or may not have considered before. On Flames Rising, I wrote a blog post about this phenomenon entitled, “Game Fiction: Why it Works (And Why it Doesn’t).” Here’s a brief snippet from that blog post about game fiction writing:

The reason why this (how to write gaming fiction) can be a challenge for a lot of writers is that fiction – good fiction – tells a story. Gaming fiction doesn’t always accomplish this because it’s written for a different purpose, and often by the same writers who write the game. Sometimes, this can be a real detriment to the game simply because not all game writers can write fiction. Even the publishers sometimes make it harder to write because they’ll say things like: “Hey, I want you to use this ritual and describe what it does!” or “Can you create a character with this level of experience?”

The minute you dictate mechanical elements into a piece of game fiction it adds a layer of complexity that isn’t always successful. Writing RPGs or any other type of game takes a mixture of technical and research writing skills. In many ways, it’s always a good idea to write the flavor text last, because even if you’re the same writer who’s working on the game mechanics portion as the game fiction, there’s a definite shift in thinking that needs to occur in your mind.

As more and more video games are going the route of gaming fiction, the points I covered are fairly important to keep in mind. Mechanical elements to creative writing can bog it down and create unnecessary noise to cloud the true goal of what any piece of fiction should do — tell a story.

An Easy Way to Estimate How Many Words You Can Write

One of the questions that a lot of new freelancers ask me is, “How do I figure out how many words I can write?” Several freelancing contracts will address the concept of “word count,” because it’s easier to pay rates by the word than by the project. From a business standpoint, you might often hear authors, freelancers and editors setting rates based on “cents per word.” A publisher might offer anything from 1/2 a cent plus royalties to 6 cents a word on the high end.

Before the contract is signed, there might be a period of negotiation for when the project is due. Here’s where things can get pretty sticky, especially if you have a day job. Many freelancing contracts are 20,000 words. While this may seem like a daunting figure, 20k words is equivalent to one-fifth of a novel or 40 pages in MS Word.

Test Yourself

One page in a typical word processing software program is equivalent to 500 words. The easiest way to estimate what you can write is to do two timed tests. The first test would be to pick a topic you feel you know everything about and write one page. When you’re satisfied with your draft, check the time. Now you have an ideal estimate for writing 500 words that you can use as a foundation for your assignments.

The second test would be based on the other extreme; choose a subject you know absolutely nothing about. The goal of this test is to include the time it takes to research your topic. For example, say you were going to write a one-page article about free MMORPGs. If you were doing your research online to gather links, calculate how much time it takes for you to review sites like Kingdom of Loathing, Game Ogre’s List of MMORPGs, or the Free MMORPG list. Then, write your one-page article as you normally would and determine how much effort it took you. This combined time turns into the upper end of your word count range, and will help guide you for those assignments you’re not 100% sure how to budget your time on.

Tying Word Count to Work

Remember, that the keys to estimating word count is really three-fold. One, it serves as a negotiating tool for you to determine how much you’d like to get paid. Two, it helps you manage your time better and three, it creates a layer of professionalism that you will need to be successful.

Some freelance writers, like Marc A Vezina are forthcoming about what they can and cannot do. Others, like myself, prefer to keep some of that information off-screen. However you choose to bring your word count estimate to market, remember that the more realistic you are, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Gary Gygax, the Passing of a Legend

If you haven’t heard by now, Gary Gygax passed away. Gygax’s obituary gives a brief overview of his career in the gaming industry. The father of GenCon, of modern gaming, of the industry I’ve been working with, his passing does not go quietly into the night.

A host of gaming sites and communities offered online memoriams like this one from Wizards of the Coast. An Order of the Stick edition featured a personal thank you, as well as a slew of other webcomics including Questionable Content (check out the chalkboard), Penny Arcade and others. Affecting artists, gamers, industry folk, and fans, our community has even agreed to roll the die and game in honor of his memory. GaryCon across the Globe encourages us to dust off our old D&D sets and play.

In an industry where stigmas abound, I’m unsure how many folk that are not familiar with the hobby understand just how much of an impact this one man left on the entertainment industry. Without his influence all forms of modern gaming as we know it would not be the same. MMORPGs, video games, card games, board games and RPGs are evolutions of the classic dungeon crawl that he and Dave Arneson co-created.

By far, though, the biggest impact on me is the people I’ve met over the years. No other creative industry has been as welcoming and as encouraging as the gaming industry, perhaps because deep down inside we all have a gamer geek inside of us that simply loves to play. In my opinion, trying to get from Point A to Point B to reach Goal X has inhibited our ability to be kind to one another simply because we are that busy. Not so at the conventions and events I’ve attended, and definitely not so at GenCon.

Every year of GenCon has its ups and downs, but I have some amazing stories to tell of people reaching out to other people to simply do “good things.” Gary Gygax enabled all of that to happen, and I’m a better person for being part of this community. I think Bill Walton, who runs The Escapist, a gaming advocacy site, summed up his feelings best by writing about the Gygaxian Butterfly Effect listing the slew of people he never would have met if it wasn’t for Gary. I can definitely add my voice to that choir.

So this Saturday, I’ll be rolling the die along with the rest of them and counting my blessings. May all your rolls be successes, and may you slay your dragons well. Rest in peace, Gary. Your memory will live on in every character we generate.

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