Complications Ensue: The Crafty Writing Blog

Executives have been trying to get rid of writers ever since moving pictures were a thing. Samuel Goldwyn allegedly threw a writer out of hi...

I'm watching GODZILLA MINUS ONE. You might think it is a movie about a giant undersea monster with nuclear abilities. But it is actually...

I’ve talked about how to use feedback: listen to the criticism, be wary of solutions other people offer. Until your game comes out, fan fee...

At some point, you may be called upon to propose a title for a game. This generally won’t happen on a AAA game, where the title is the provi...

We're looking for a principal writer for an online shooter. You *must* know from online PvP games. Also, be legally able to work in Mon...

Here are some terms I've heard thrown around while we were talking about game narrative. Some are entirely idiosyncratic to me and my cr...

 We saw the Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Fascinating to watch how his style changed -- how he found it, an...

(This is an adaptation of a talk I've given a few times, at companies I've worked for, and at the East Coast Game Convention. I wrot...

There is a lovely scene in The Witcher  tv series, Season 3 episode 4, where Geralt and Yennefer get back together after some time. They hav...

 I've been hearing a lot of about the use of AI -- large language models, or LLMs -- like ChatGPT -- in writing. For example, game writi...

Human beings are perfectly capable of absorbing stories non-linearly. Very often we meet a person and only later find out about their past. ...

There's backstory that's in the game, and backstory that is in the game bible. I am all for backstory that makes its way into the ga...

One of the folks I'm working with here in Hangzhou started playing the Rocky Horror Show soundtrack on the taxi's speakers (which is...

Many years ago, I was asked to fly down to Cape Town as the Head Writer on a strange sf tv show called CHARLIE JADE, along with two fellow C...

 We're working on an opening sequence. I proposed a couple of short scenes. Other folks came back with scenes that I felt were long and ...

Looks like my talk on how to give and take creative criticism from last year's ECGC is up on YouTube. Has been since August. Who knew?

My father, Howard Epstein, passed away this afternoon, peacefully, after a long struggle with Parkinson's.  A boy from Queens, NY, Dad s...

In animation there's an effect called the "uncanny valley." We have no trouble with a cartoon character. But an animated chara...

I'm writing a graphic novel, a new medium for me. Like a novel, time in a graphic novel is infinitely stretchable and compressible. And ...

I chatted with someone who's sidling into the video game industry on the strength of her superpowers in other media. She said she doesn&...

I'm a regular customer of Charles Stross's Laundry Files series, and I've read Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon a few times each. Oh...

This is just a short note to remind the actors among you that when people like me are looking for actors, and don't find a reel online, ...

I continue my conversation with Rhianna Pratchett:  Complicity Alex: We were talking about what stories games do that you can't do as w...