Writer For Hire/Or Cool Project

[Don't know if this is a 'jobs offered' or 'jobs wanted' forum, but anyhoo]:

I'd love to write on a games project:

I've written for Rolling Stone Magazine, The Guardian, Mail & Guardian, Daily Maverick, Finweek, City Press, Rapport, Moneyweb, Noseweek; Brainstorm Magazine; ITWeb and MarkLives. I've also owned a couple of ad agencies and done loads of creative work at those agencies.

I know that doesn't exactly make me Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman (yet - I'm working on that), but I've had masses of writing experience - in long, short and flash form. I've also done loads of fiction work.

I reckon I'm very good with character development, story ideas, narrative, dialoge. Major bonus - I'm a strong believer of the Nabokov method of creating brilliant characters, putting them in trees, and throwing rocks at them.

Comments

  • Awesome! I think one of the things that is a unique problem with indies is that most often we don't have a writer, so games are created in a way that doesn't need them. And unlike sound, which can be integrated later, it's hard to add story later. Which means it's a little difficult to look at a prototype and offer some story. Not impossible though.

    What might be a good idea, is to prototype your own game with a story or character narrative etc which might get someone else inspired to work with you :)
    Thanked by 1Kobusvdwalt9
  • edited
    Hi @CharlieAckAckAck,

    As a game developer I will try to not bake a story into the game code. So working with writers who firstly are good at telling a story and secondly can use tools like Twine to make their story and characters available for easy import into the game code is always a plus.

    Twine also has its own interactive interface, so you can test the story if there are branches and share it with others for input before it is included in the game.

    Obviously the story and characters are more important than the technology used to integrate them into the game, so the writers imagination and ability is very important. Also there needs to be a common understanding/agreement on the theme and the direction that the story/art/code needs to take, which is usually where things start falling apart in a team context...

    There used to be cool story telling compos here on the site. I'll have to check to see if it is still ongoing or if it has been parked for a bit. I used to love those. Writers show-cased their work in a forum visible to the other skill sets (developers/artists/sound people) which opened up potential collaborations.

    So as with graphics artists, I am always interested in working with writers *if* they think my mechanical prototype is interesting and supports a story idea they might have and I as the developer also likes the artist/writers direction.

    I do always find it hard to work out how the remuneration will work though.

    I have paid a local artist for code assets before (without a formal contract) and also verbally agreed on a profit share on another project, even though that project hasn't turned a profit and we both ended up only spending time - well worth it imho... :) How would one bill for writing a story, universe, characters?

    Anyways, just my 2 cents ;)

    K
    Thanked by 1dammit
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