Complications Ensue: The Crafty Writing Blog

For some time, I avoided playing escape rooms. Being trapped in a room with a limited time to escape seemed stressful, and I'm really go...

We're working on lore for Fragpunk, and as we refine the lore pieces, one thing I keep asking the writers for is translucency. My book (...

Look at all the stuff you get in my new book! Coming April 28 -- you can preorder now!    

 Wow, it's been a little while since I posted last. And it's looking to be a busy Spring. SOUTH OF MIDNIGHT dropped! It looks great:...

(Spoilers for Shogun ) Episode 7 of Shogun  sees the wily central Japanese character Toronaga surrounded, defended only by a weakened garris...

We went to Life and Trust in New York. It's a wild Martha Graham-esque dance performance taking place simultaneously on five floors of ...

A civilian friend sent me  an opinion piece about video games  from the New York Times. It covers the move to live, free-to-play games over ...

As I discussed in my first book (and maybe my second?) I think that the best way to develop a story, any story, is to tell it over and over...

  Odysseus is a comic hero: It's Odysseus's fault he doesn't go straight home, because he just HAS to tell Polyphemus his name A...

 Another interesting thing about immersive, experiental theatre:  it is local. So much of the world is now global. There is no proper city i...

  I'm listening to Reality Escape Pod , a podcast about escape rooms. They interview Elan Lee , who co-invented Exploding Kittens, the c...

 I am coming around to the notion that immersive experiences are the Wild West frontier of narrative. Video games have been telling stories ...

  Here is a fine list of clams , that is, turns of phrase that were once clever and now, not so much. (Not sure if "not so much" c...

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...