Work on the Part that Scares You

All of us creative types have things we're naturally good at, and things we've learned to do, and things we aren't that good at (yet). This creates a creative trap: when approaching a project, we often work on the part we understand best — the part that scares us least.

So if you're good at plot, you write the plot first, and then fill in the characters later. If you're good at characters, you write up the characters and then feel your way towards a plot.

In game design, there's a tendency to work on the parts of the game that are "well understood," whether those are combat mechanics, or environment, or story, or whatever.

I worked on a game whose entire success hinged on whether some very advanced AI tech would work. The studio, however, hired a slew of people to build environments and animations.

I understand the impulse. You want to have something to show for it. If you're working on a very advanced, invisible back end, what can you show your investors? So you make some lovely environments. Also, it's relatively easy to hire people who can make lovely environments — compared to people who can make an expert system based on new research.

Of course, if you know what you're doing, it could be a valid decision to work on well-understood parts of the game, if you know in advance that they're going to take a long time to hone. Well-understood doesn't mean simple or fast, it just means you know the processes you're going to use. When we started with combat, it had something to do with how finicky combat is to implement convincingly.

Likewise, if you're a character-based writer and you simply have to inhabit the characters before you can move on to the plot, then it might be crucial to your own creative process that you start with the characters.

But working on the part that you feel comfortable with can become a trap.

By working on the parts that you're comfortable with, you necessarily reduce your options on the part that scares you.

Every creative choice you make on a project takes away some future choices. If I set a project in Germany in 1933, then it is very hard to choose a Mongolian steppe warrior as my main character. If I did set a project in Germany in 1933, and chose a Mongolian steppe warrior as my main character, then I pretty much have to tell a science fiction story.

So if you make a bunch of decisions on the easy stuff, you're restricting your range of choices for the hard stuff. That's bass ackwards. You want as much room as possible when you're doing the hard stuff, since you can probably handle a restricted range of choices on the easy stuff.

In other words, don't paint yourself into a corner on the easy stuff.

What happens if you do paint yourself into a corner on the easy stuff is either (a) you accept a poor solution on the hard stuff, because you don't see any good way to do it; or (b) you rip up a bunch of stuff that was working, because otherwise you can't make the hard stuff work.

In game development, if your game hangs on a fresh new gameplay mechanic, then try to get that working before you put any environments into the game. Spearhead, for example, created a three-on-three science fiction soccer game. The first playable build was pretty much dots chasing another dot around a grey box; but the fun was already there.

In screenplay writing, if you're weak on characters, then consider writing only the faintest of sketchiest of plot outlines, and then really spending some time thinking about what characters could most interestingly inhabit that plot — as opposed to working out a really detailed plot and then trying to shoehorn some characters into it.

Or, if you're good on characters but weak on plot, take some relatively simple characters, and build a fairly detailed, surprising-yet-inevitable plot around them before you move to fleshing them out.

You get several benefits from this. One, you develop your creative muscles. If you are good at situps but bad at pushups, and you do a bunch of pushups, you will have stronger biceps, and now you can do both pushups and situps.

Two, your creative project is strong both in the area you find hard and the area you find easy, instead of just in the area you find easy.

Three, when you're working on stuff that scares you, you will often make more interesting choices than you would if you were working on stuff you understand well. Creativity is usually a dance between structure and improvisation. If you force yourself to improvise, you'll come up with stuff you might not otherwise have thought of.

Four, if you work on the hard stuff first, and utterly fail, you haven't wasted any time on the easy stuff. The finicky AI tech never really worked, and the studio was left with a whole bunch of bespoke environments and animations. If you really hate writing a character based screenplay, then after you've banged some characters around for a few weeks, you might just toss the project and go write some hook-driven action thriller where you can get away with snappy banter in the place of actual characterization. If you really cannot write an interesting plot, then you'll find that out when you attempt to plot out your suspense thriller, and you can chuck it and go write that achingly personal coming of age story.

So: work on the part that scares you first!

What should I ask for?

Q. I just picked up my first "LA" option for a short story I wrote. I'll be getting 2% net if it gets made. Now I've read articles on net versus gross in the industry and my agent ways I should just be happy at this stage of my career that it was picked up...... so of course I signed. However as a writer moving forward is there anything else I should be aware of or ask for that doesn't normally fall within the option contract?

The standard definition of net profits is "you don't see any profits." So whether you get 2% of nothing or 5% of nothing is unimportant. On the other hand as a newbie you're not going to get gross. It's pretty rare for even a veteran writer to get gross participation. If the movie is a hit, you won't get more cash from the movie, but you will get asked to write other people's movies at a much better salary.

I like to ask for the right of first refusal (ROFR) to write sequels, prequels and spin-offs, as well as TV pilots. Sometimes that turns into ROFR provided that I get a credit on the script. (No one can guarantee I get a credit because it's arbitrated by the Guild.)

If they're optioning your story or novel, you can often ask for ROFR to write the initial script. Very likely they will take it away from you after the first draft, but you'll get a screenwriting credit on the movie because when you adapted the script you brought in the plot and the characters. If you don't write the first draft, the most you'd get would be a "Based on a short story by" credit.

When I'm optioning a script, I like to ask for a production bonus based on the budget of the film. The WGC, but not the WGA, has this in the standard contract. Bear in mind the minimum scale percentage is a floor, not a cap, so you can negotiate more, if they really want the script. The nice thing about a percentage is that the producer can't really plead poverty. "But our budget is tiny." "No problem, then I get 2.5% of tiny."

Bear in mind anything that looks like "Writer will be consulted" bla bla bla is meaningless and unenforceable. "What do you think." "It sucks because this this and this." "Thanks, you've been consulted." Likewise anything that looks like "Writer will be considered." "What do you think about Joe?" "That guy? F*&& him." You've been considered.

Remember, you can insist on any contractual term, so long as you're willing to walk away. I've heard that Sylvester Stallone turned down $200,000 for the script to Rocky, because they wouldn't agree for him to star in it. He was broke at the time. Later, someone else bought the script for scale, but with him to star in it.

You could probably tell that story about a thousand other guys who never sold their script to anyone because they insisted on starring in it.

By the same token, if you're not willing to walk away, it's hard to get anything. You don't get the contract you deserve, you get the contract you negotiate.

99% of the time it's better to have an agent negotiate for you. But you don't want to leave the negotiating to the agent. You want them to be the face of the negotiation, but ultimately you have to tell them what your dealbreakers are and how hard to haggle, and how upset you'll be if they don't make a deal.

Clams. Don't use them.

As a public service, here are the two boards from the Workaholics writer's room of comedy phrases that need to be retired, started season 2. pic.twitter.com/DHZqhqU5D5

— John Quaintance (@John_Quaintance) November 18, 2016

It's Never "Just" a Joke

We had an interesting office conversation today, about the late comedian/troll Andy Kaufman, which then drifted into whether sexist and racist jokes are okay. I don't appreciate them. One of the women in the office said she enjoys them because "it's just a joke."

But why do we tell jokes? Jokes are meant to make us uncomfortable in some way. We laugh when something goes wrong. A joke is always a setup that is derailed.

There are absurdist jokes, of course, that are just all about the derail:

"I went to a restaurant that serves breakfast anytime. So I asked for French toast in the Renaissance." -- Stephen Wright

Our expectations are foiled, and we laugh out of the cognitive dissonance.

But most jokes are at someone's expense. "Tragedy," as Mel Brooks said, "is, I stub my toe. Comedy is, you die." For example:

My lover's been bugging me for the key to my apartment… finally I said, 'No, I'll let you out when I'm ready.' -- Heidi Foss

To dissect my friend Heidi's joke a bit, the setup is the assumed attempt on the part of the lover to have a closer relationship. The derail is that the lover is actually imprisoned. Note that the joke works because it's sort of horrifying. ("When I'm ready" is a nice touch because it mirrors the familiar conversation: 'I'm not ready' for a closer relationship.)

Stereotype jokes are at the expense of a whole group of people:

Q. How many Harvard students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Just one. He stands on the ladder, and the whole world revolves around him.

The point of the joke is that Harvard students are conceited. Here's another:

Two blondes were talking. "Last year," one said, "I slept with two Brazilian guys."
"Oh my God!" said the other. "How many is a 'brazilian'"?

The point of the joke is that blonde women are stupid. Oh, and slutty.

So why do I think it's not okay to tell racist or sexist jokes? Because the point of a joke about a stereotype is that it's only funny if the listener believes that the stereotype is, in some way, true. Change one word in the joke:

Q. How many Columbia students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Just one. He stands on the ladder, and the whole world revolves around him.

That joke isn't funny, because almost no one thinks that Columbia students are particularly conceited.

Two Canadians were talking. "Last year," one said, "I slept with two Brazilian guys."
"Oh my God!" said the other. "How many is a 'brazilian'"?

What? Huh? Not funny. No one thinks Canadians are particularly dumb.

Now, jokes at the expense of Harvard students aren't particularly awful. Harvard students are on top of the academic heap. So the joke is sort of "telling truth to power." But jokes at the expense of blondes are not completely innocent. If I tell a blonde joke, I'm saying that, to some extent, the intelligence of women with blonde hair is suspect.

"But it's just a joke." Well, nothing is "just" a joke. If people didn't already suspect blondes of being dumb, the joke wouldn't land.

Now, there are stereotypes that are hurtful, and stereotypes nobody really minds:

Q. How many New Yorkers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. None of your fucking business!

Most New Yorkers will laugh at that joke, because they'd agree that New Yorkers are brusque.

Q. How many Zen Buddhists does it take to screw in a lighbulb.
A. Three.

What? Oh. Zen Buddhists are inscrutable. Right.

But then we get into jokes based on not so innocent stereotypes. For example, jokes about how money-grubbing [Hittites] are. [Hittites] don't find them funny, because we don't see ourselves in them. Also, the stereotype of [Hittites] as being stingy is part of a whole package of anti-Semitism that, in the middle of the last century, ended up in mass homicidal violence.

Similarly, jokes about how lazy [Sumerians] are, or how dishonest [Assyrians] are, are part of a whole package of racism that ends up with unarmed [Sumerians] being shot by cops, and candidates accusing [Assyrians] of being rapists and murderers that ought to be kept out of the country.

The point is: when you tell a joke based on a nasty stereotype, whether intentionally or not, you are saying the stereotype is, in some way, true. Nothing is ever "just" a joke. By making a joke, the teller is saying that the stereotype is in some way true.

And by laughing at it, you are agreeing.

In fact, the whole reason for these jokes is so that the teller can put down a group of people and get away with it; and the listener can buy into the putdown and get away with it. But in this case somebody's not telling truth to power; they're telling lies, and they're punching down.

Of course, it's impossible to dissect racist or sexist humor without sounding terribly unfunny, like you "don't get the joke":

Q. How many militant feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. THAT'S NOT FUNNY.

But jokes have power. We wouldn't tell jokes if they didn't. Jokes are how we allow ourselves to communicate truths that can't be communicated openly. That's why traditionally the court jester is the only person who's allowed to confront the King; he's allowed that privilege because his jokes are deniable. That's why, in dictatorships, you can go to prison for telling a joke at the expense of the dictator. That's why some cartoons making fun of Mohammed triggered riots.

Jokes based on false stereotypes have the parallel power that they can communicate a lie that no one dares communicate openly any more. The reason some white people tell jokes about lazy [Sumerians] is because they don't dare say things like, "Well, everyone knows how lazy [Sumerians] are." But turn it into a joke, and "it's just a joke," and you get away with it. And they are all the more hurtful because the target is supposed to laugh them off. So the target has no recourse, unless they're witty enough to craft a good comeback.

And that's why it's never "just" a joke.

Some Quick and Dirty Thoughts about Richard Rouse III...

...'s talk about Dynamic Stories at MIGS. These are my notes as I wrote them up for my Compulsion Games teammates... The complete powerpoint is on Richard's site

Dynamic Story = Story that is not the same every time you play the game.

Why good? Replayability. Especially these days when players stream, it’s boring if all the streams are of the same stuff.

Types of dynamic story:

a. Explorable story space

What we’re doing in WHF and what most AAA games do these days: bits of narrative that you discover wandering around. Hopefully there’s enough that few players discover all of it.

Doesn’t have to mean environmental narrative. Her Story allows you discover bits of video through a text parser. You never actually go anywhere.

b. Open ended story

Give the player enough bits of a story that s/he can find his/her own meaning in it, but not so much that you force the player into your interpretation. One player may come away with a very different experience than another.

c. Reacting to player actions

Branching story trees. Generally, game devs stay away from branching trees because they get crazy fast. Trust me on this one. 31 endings on Stories: The Path of Destinies. (Which, hey! Won Best Indie and Best PC Game at the Canadian Video Game Awards last night.)

So often you get a series of choices, but really it’s just one choice repeated: Mass Effect's Paragon/Renegade. Bioshock's Harvest/Rescue.

Or, choices, but only some of which change the story, and then only change a little bit of the story: Walking Dead.

d. Shifting story elements

Procedurally generated story. In Richard’s game, The Church in the Darkness, you are there to rescue someone from a cult. Sometimes the cult is a suicide Jim-Jones-style cult. However, sometimes, it’s just a bunch of hippies who want to be left alone. The Blade Runner game changed who was a replicant from playthrough to playthrough. In both examples, the payoff is you Actually Have to Pay Attention to the story around you. If it turns out that in the story they're just nice hippies, or humans, you're not supposed to go shooting them.

e. Character Simulation

The Sims. The Civilization franchise. Characters have personalities and react to your actions according to them. Faction-based systems: characters will react differently to your dwarf rogue depending on how they feel about dwarves and/or rogues, and how nice you’ve been to their friends.

The player here is choosing what story s/he wants to be part of.

f. Drama Management

Here Richard’s talking about games like Façade that try to make a story out of whatever it is you are doing. Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system turns an NPC into your nemesis if he’s killed you before.

Wot I Thought

The Holy Grail of game narrative is emergent narrative. Emergent gameplay is when you design systems the players can use in ways the developers did not plan for, e.g. rocket jumping.

Most of the dynamic storytelling methods listed are not emergent. The Shadow of Mordor people like to claim that SoM’s nemesis stories are emergent, but someone had to write and record all the nasty things the orcs say to you when you come back from the dead, or they do.

On Stories: TpoD I pitched the idea of a sort of Collectible Card Game or faction-based narrative. I.e. NPCs have a basic reaction to you, which changes according to what you do with other NPCs. So if you kill someone’s brother, they will no longer sell you a sword, but they might fight you. If you marry their brother, they might tell you where some loot is.

This is not emergent narrative, either. It feels more like it, because you discover the story branches according to your own wanderings through the game. But someone has to write each branch of each NPC’s story tree.

(In the end we just went with a straight ahead story tree for Stories: TpoD. Nothing wrong with a story tree, they’re just hard to write so every path feels like a good story, in which the seeds of the ending are in the beginning. And they’re a lot of work.)

To make really emergent narrative, you’d have to create narrative building blocks that players can arrange in different ways.

Say you have one building block: dude’s getting a divorce.
Second building block: dude’s sleeping with someone who’s not his wife.

Both of these are narratively fraught events, but they have a different meaning, and tell a different story depending on their arrangement.

If you see:

dude sleeping around -> getting a divorce

Then the player probably interpolates the story “he cheated, so his spouse is dumping him.”

But if you see:

dude getting a divorce -> sleeps around

Then you might interpolate, “finally free of his toxic marriage, dude is seeing other people.”

This method is probably hella difficult to pull off, and I’m not sure I’d want to do it in a game. But then:

Q. Knock knock.
A. Who’s there?
Q. Control freak. Now you say, “Control freak who?”


So there you have it. We’re doing a lot of environmental narrative, and some open ended story telling, but the other techniques will have to wait for some future game.

We Happy Few Update - Trumpocalypse Edition

What I did in the past week, in between frantically checking and rechecking fivethirtyeight.com, was write up the playthrough for She Who Must Not Be Named. Last week was the rethink. This week I wrote it up, and I’ve started in on the scenes, including one with our Hammer [Films] Villain. There’s a fair amount of carnage; we’ll have to redo some minutes of animation. But the story will be better for it – more jeopardy, and more aligning of player objective with player character objective.

Also did the same for our Mad Scotsman, although his story is holding up a bit better. We can probably keep most of our animation, but some of the dialog in those cutscenes will change.

Meanwhile, Lisa is creating gobs of environmental narrative for all sorts of places. Environmental narrative comprises the letters and diaries and signs and objects that you might find here and there that tells you what has been happening in the place you're lurking about. It creates the worldiness of the world.

All of which means more recording sessions, of course. I’m looking forward to it!

We Happy Few - Update

I needed eleven lines from our Mad Scotsman for some revisions we’re making to a scene in the Train Station. But an actor’s minimum call is an hour. So I’ve been writing barks for him – 225 of them. That should round out the hour, eh?

I’ve been working on rethinking the playthrough for She Who Must Not Be Named. G had an issue that she did not seem to be in enough jeopardy; and that the player character’s motivations didn’t line up enough with the player’s own motivations. So I’ve been reworking the story logic and the characters involved. This will involved a fair amount of carnage – animations we have to throw out – but it will result in a more powerful story and better integration between gameplay and story.

And, I’ve done a pass on the journal text. You are reading your journal, right?

Rest of the team posted here...

Learning to write stylish English? Read Raymond Chandler.

I used to teach the English side of the SAT for the Princeton Review, an SAT prep company. I had the advanced class, which was about 50% Korean immigrants who were still learning idiomatic English.

I told them the best thing they could do to improve their English was read Raymond Chandler. He's the guy who wrote The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. You know, the Humphrey Bogart movies. (Or, at least, the movies I remember as starring Humphrey Bogart, even when it was actually Robert Mitchum.)

See, you don't need great literature to learn English. In fact it's not idea. First, great literature is taxing on your brain. Second and more importantly, it's all about nuance. When you don't already know the nuances, you're apt to muddy your learning. What you need is stylish writing.  Raymond Chandler had style to burn:

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."

"The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back."

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."

"She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air."

“In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

That last one is indeed his plotting style. Don't read Chandler for an airtight plot. Read Chandler for how to turn short old words into magic; for how to give your sentences rhythms that have the sway and slash of poetry without reminding you that you're reading words on a page. Read Chandler because his books are very hard to put down.