Addressing Notes

“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”
— Aaron Sorkin

A little while ago I wrote about how to give notes well. This here is about how to take notes well – that is, how to address criticisms without messing up your work. This is pitched to writers, but applicable to any creative notes.

Games, films and TV are all industries where are constantly giving and being given notes on how to revise the work – by bosses, by co-workers, if we’re smart by subordinates.

From time to time, you get notes you disagree with. There is always the option to simply blindly execute them, especially if they come from your boss. This post assumes that you want other options.

I’m not going to distinguish between notes you get from your boss and notes you get from other people with less power over you Your boss will give you good notes more often, hopefully, and you may have less of a choice about what to do with them. But the problems are the same no matter who you’re dealing with.

My goal here is to give you information I wish I’d given myself about twenty years ago. If some of this seems obvious, you’re smarter than I was. Am.

I will say that most of this seems obvious to me, too, when I am neither giving nor taking notes. Then it can fly out the window when I’m in the thick of it, only returning after some damage has been done.

Let’s stipulate two contradictory things:

• Giving and taking notes should be two coworkers trying to find a vision for the work that both of them can love. Neither of them should have their ego involved; the work is the important thing.
• No one comes to creativity without an ego.

Therefore, simply ignoring the other person’s feedback, even if they are wrong, is not best practices.

Here are some thoughts.

1. All feedback is legitimate.

It’s important, but difficult, to remember that if someone says they don’t like something, then they don’t like it. You can’t tell them they should like it. That’s like telling someone they should have laughed at a joke.

2. Never take feedback personally.

This is almost impossible to do. Someone is criticizing your baby! It will feel like an attack.

But when you take feedback personally, it’s hard to hear all the feedback. After the first bad thing, I start to think about why that bad thing isn’t so bad, and I have trouble absorbing the second bad thing.

It helps never to refer to the work as “my” thing. Call it “the” thing. Or “the current thing.” It’s not yours any more, it’s just a thing that’s out there, that might be good or bad.

That will also make you seem less defensive if you’re talking about “the” work, and enables you to criticize it yourself, which is often helpful.

Note that the feedback may in real life be meant as a personal attack. Creative businesses are political. You are not making it up, sometimes people do have it in for you. It’s still better not to take things personally. That way, it’s your attacker who will look unprofessional, not you.

3. What they think is wrong may not be the problem.

Okay, so all feedback is legitimate. It doesn’t mean that your note-giver is right about what the problem is. The problem may lie elsewhere, and they are picking at a symptom, not the cause.

In narrative, often someone will say a scene is too long, for example, when what is really the problem is that we do not care about the characters in it and their problems. Shortening the scene will not make the scene work better. It will just go by faster. The solution to the problem lies earlier where I was supposed to set up the characters. This particularly often happens when your note-giver is not an expert in what you do. It also happens when your note-giver looked only at your work, not at the work underlying it, or the payoff to your work. Hopefully you gamed that all out when you did your work. They may not.

4. Find the truth

Assume the person giving you a note is not an idiot.

This should be obvious, right?

But we’re all human. If there is a way to interpret a note so that it seems idiotic, most of us will jump there at least some of the time. I have done this lots of times. It is so, so satisfying to be able to dismiss a criticism because it is just plain dumb.

If the other person is saying something that sounds idiotic, consider that maybe you didn’t understand what’s in their head. Try to figure out what a non-idiotic version of what they’re proposing might be.

If it sounds like they are asking for a new character model, consider that they may be asking to put a hat on the old one. If it sounds like they are asking for a dozen NPCs, consider that they may only be asking for one NPC. If it sounds like they are asking for a bar scene where everyone’s talking, which will be a nightmare for voice recording, consider that maybe they mean the scene to take place in a back room where you can only hear incoherent hubbub.

Then ask if the non-idiotic version is what they’re asking for. Even if you’re wrong, it will help them explain what’s bothering them more clearly.

Note that the person giving you the note may, in fact, be an idiot. There are very few real idiots in games, films or TV. But some people inexorably fail up. But again, it’s going to be more useful to you to assume they are not.

5. Dig for the truth

Unfortunately, I’m going to ask for something even harder to do than finding the truth.

Sometimes, people will find something in your work that is glaringly wrong. And (unlike in the previous section) it is indeed wrong.

But it is not the real problem. There is something bigger that’s bugging them, but they can’t put their criticism in words, so they don’t voice it. Maybe they hint at it, but then move on.

This is often a much bigger problem than the thing they picked on. And it will require much more work to fix. So the temptation for you is to ignore it.

Don’t ignore it. Interrogate them. Make sure you understand what the big, vague criticism they had was.

Why? They will come back with the same criticism in three months or in six months. And later, the players or audience will have the same problem. Don’t wait for someone to point out the problem in a Let’s Play. Dig for it.

You are a real writer when you seek out criticism. When someone tells you, “Nah, forget it, it’s fine,” and you say, “No, seriously, what didn’t you like?”

6. What they want you to do about it may be wrong.

All feedback is legitimate, and most criticisms have some truth behind them.

Most solutions proposed to you will be bad. Especially solutions proposed by co-workers from other disciplines, who do not understand what sort of parameters you’re working under. Even solutions proposed by your brilliant boss may be bad, if you spent a week or a month thinking something through, and they glanced at it over lunch.

The worst case, and this is very common, is to get solutions without hearing what the actual problem was.

Naturally, it is very tempting to shoot down these solutions because they break things or don’t work.

But before you even talk about whether the solution is a good idea or not, it is good to try to find out what problem they are trying to solve.

If you understand what the problem that provoked the solution was, you can often come up with a much simpler, more surgical way of solving the problem. Then everyone can be happy. (Though I can’t guarantee they will. Some people need it to be their solution.)

Say they really are asking for a new character model, and you discover they just want the player to be clear that we’re looking at the character many years ago, and sure enough, you can just change their hat.

7. “We’ll take a look at that.”

So you really worked at understanding the criticism, but you’re still convinced that the person giving you feedback is wrong. They’re honing in on something that’s not the real problem, they want something fixed that isn’t broken, they want a change that will break a lot of things that are working.

It can happen. What can you do?

You stall for time.

Say “We’ll take a look at that.”

The most important thing is not to object to the proposed changes in the same meeting you get them. This is difficult when you can game out the changes, and you can already see why they won’t work. In fact you may already have considered this solution, and rejected it for excellent reasons.

It is important not to reveal this, because most people can’t game out the changes. They won’t believe you’ve gamed it out, they’ll think you are just being precious.

It is important to actually, really, truly take a look at it. That gives you the time to consider that the person who gave you the note is not an idiot, to find the truth, to find the problem beneath the problem, etc., like I just suggested.

It gives you time to discover that what you thought was a bad note was a great note. It gives you time for your hackles to come down. It also gives you the opportunity to say, “I tried it, and I couldn’t make it work.”

Because you did try it. Right?

8. If all else fails

A rabbi was hauled in front of the king. “They say you’re brilliant, rabbi. If you’re so smart, teach my monkey here to talk. You have one year. Then I’ll have you executed.”

“One year?” said the rabbi. “It takes eight years to teach a monkey to talk.”

“Fine. Eight years. But then, if it doesn’t talk, I’ll have you executed.”

So the rabbi left cheerfully. One of his disciples said, “Are you mad? In eight years, the king is going to have you executed.” “A lot can happen in eight years,” said the rabbi. “I could die. The king could die. The monkey could learn to talk.”

If it does not look like you have an option to come back with “I tried it, and it didn’t work,” there are still some strategies left. These are low odds, but maybe they will make you feel better. •

Execute the note, and lie in for good reasons to rethink that section of the game or screenplay entirely • Execute the note and lie in wait for good reasons to kill that asset/event/feature/level/scene entirely. • Pray that it is a good note. • 1.

9. Do NOT:
• Do NOT execute the note badly to show how dumb it was. That way lies dishonor and sorrow.
• Do NOT go over the head of the person who hired you. They will resent it forever.

The Last Resort

I am saving for last the most difficult approach to taking feedback, which is to carefully explain why it is wrong, and hope you don’t offend the other person.

There are some people who are willing to trust your creative instincts and your craft. To these people you can explain the problem and try to work out a solution. These people are gold. Marry them if your company does not have a policy against it.

For everyone else, make sure it’s a hill worth dying on.

It is a good idea to propose another solution, so it doesn’t look like you’re just carping. It is also a good idea to get the other person to riff with you on your proposed solution. The more you can get someone to work on it with you, the more they may feel it is their solution.

Good luck!

A few observations about a joke

 Mel Brooks tells a joke:  

Moishe and Mendel meet on the street. Mendel says, "I heard about the fire. It's terrible!"

Moishe says, "Shhhh! Thursday!"

This one is a "thinker." You have to figure out what he means by "Thursday."

I've noticed that in all Jewish humor, someone is being made a fool of, or refusing to be made a fool of. ("Taste. My. Soup.") In this case, the insurance company.

Why Thursday, though? "Tomorrow" is not funny, because it's not enough of a thinker. The joke hangs on the friction of the listener putting together what just happened.

"Friday" and "Monday" don't work, because they are special days of the week. They mean something, and that would be distracting.

But why not "Tuesday" or "Wednesday"? The joke would work, but wouldn't be as funny. "Thursday" is funny. Why? 

Is it that the "Th" sound is funny? But it's not as funny as "k" or "f." 

If I ever meet God, I'll be sure and ask Him.

How to Give Notes

I have given notes well and I have given notes badly. I like to think the notes themselves are usually pretty good. But when I give notes the right way, people are happier with them, and when they're happier, they are also more likely to do something with them. When I give notes the wrong way, I've got in hot water, sometimes.

Here are a few observations I've made about when I give them well.

1.    Clarify what you're giving notes on

It is not always clear what people want you to comment on. Do they want to hear about structural problems? Or are they pretty convinced their structure is good, and they really just want to see if any of the dialog sounds off? For that matter, are they really asking for notes, or are they really asking for praise? It's important to know why they want your notes. 

When I give notes badly, I have sometimes given notes that are, in principle, really good. There might be a structural flaw in a script, for example, or a scene does not work because the characters don't really want anything from each other, and they're just talking for the sake of talking. 

If a film script is a week from shooting, it is not helpful, usually, to point out structural flaws. There's nothing the writer can do with that information. If a game cinematic has been approved by a slew of brass, then the writer may not dare do a complete overhaul of the scene. Find out how far along whatever it is you're giving notes on. In principle, yes, if a piece is fundamentally broken, then the writer ought to fix it. But there may be production or political reasons why all the writer can do is put lipstick on it. Best to know that before you deliver your trenchant critique.

For that matter, you definitely want to know if they're looking for criticism at all, or just praise. An experienced writer with a professional attitude always wants honest criticism. Friends may not. Professionals who are not writers may not. They may be working in other disciplines; you may be working for them. They may even tell you, jokingly, that they want to hear the worst. The joke is the tip-off that they do not want to hear the worst.

In general, assume other people will take harsh notes as a personal attack, unless you know them well enough to know they for sure will not.

2.  The sandwich

Just as it is easier to eat shit if it is surrounded by bread, it is easier to swallow criticisms if they are preceded and followed by praise. There are always a couple of things you can praise, even in the most broken bit of writing. If you are having trouble finding them, look harder. Hell, you're a writer. Make something up. It will not diminish the value of the notes that come in between the compliments. 

3.  Questions are less painful than statements

Which of the following are going to feel less like a slap in the face?

Is Jojo in love with Elena?
It's not clear if Jojo is in love with Elena or not.

We have nothing to root for in the third act.
What are we rooting for in the third act?

The opening drags.
Could the opening be shorter or snappier?

Each pair of sentences says the same thing. But the questions allow the writer to try to answer them. The writer in the first case can just say "Yes, Jojo is in love with Elena." But if they're at all alert they'll understand that they need to clear that up. But they got to defend their own work, even if only in their own head. So the criticism stings less. 

Likewise, "could the opening be shorter or snappier?" allows the writer to answer, "yeah, sure" without having to feel bad about what they wrote. After all, anything can be shorter or snappier. But it still conveys the need for a shorter, snappier opening. 

If the writer tries to answer "what are we rooting for?" and can't, then they will have to make the question their own. You won't be rubbing them the wrong way if it's their question, will you?

4.  Positive statements are less painful than negative ones. 

Anything can be phrased positively or negatively. Compare:

Glenda is too wordy.
Glenda needs to be more laconic.

The twist at the end of Act 2 is unconvincing. 
The twist at the end of Act 2 could be more convincing.

The scene kind of drifts off at the end.
The scene needs to build tension until the end. 


Again, there is not a lot of sky between the meaning of the negative and positive versions of the statements. They say the same things. But the negatives are static and absolute. They say, "your material sucks." That stings.

The positives are dynamic and relative. "Your material could be better." Well, of course it could be better. Anything can be better. So that doesn't hurt too much. 

You would think that writers would see through the artifice of phrasing everything as a positive. But writers are human. No one likes to hear bad things about their babies. But they are usually willing to hear how their babies could be better.

5.  Personal statements are less painful than general ones; feelings are less painful than facts

When you talk about your own reaction, you are on very solid ground. If you found something confusing, who can say you didn't? But if you say something is objectively confusing, where do you get off saying that? Are you God? 

If you don't like a character, no one can argue that you should have liked them. But if you say a character is not likeable, well, the writer probably likes them, so you're wrong.

Truthfully, you can only speak to how things seem to you. Any general statement has an element of hubris. 

This is not in the "voice" of the game.
This doesn't sound to me like it's in the "voice" of the game.

The scene has no dramatic "push and pull."
I am not feeling the dramatic "push and pull" of the scene.

Johnny isn't lovable.
I don't love Johnny. 

Again, almost identical meanings, but the general statements hurt more than the personal ones. For silly, irrational, human reasons; but then, we are all silly, irrational humans, aren't we?

(Except for you, I mean. You're great.)

6.    Solutions -- should you offer them?

If your critique is "this character needs to be more laconic," then it's obvious what the writer needs to do. If it's "I don't know who I'm rooting for here," then it may not be obvious, and you may want to offer a fix.

This is tricky. If you see a flaw in some writing, odds are you can think of a way to fix it. However, the moment you offer a solution, then the argument is no longer about whether your critique is right or not; it's about whether your solution is good. (There is always an argument when it comes to critiques, usually in the receiving writer's head.)

Ideally, don't offer a solution until you are sure that the writer has absorbed and accepted the critique. Then you can say, "I did have an idea how to resolve this," or, better, "I have a little idea how you can easily fix this surgically," and they can ask for it or not. 

On the other hand there is a danger that if you don't offer a solution, it may feel like you are just trying to insult the work. At a minimum, it might be wise to make clear that you think the issue can be resolved. And one way or another, all issues can be resolved, if people are willing to make enough changes. 

If you can offer multiple solutions, then it feels less like you are telling the writer what to do, and more like you're just throwing out ideas that they're free to pillage or not. 

7.  I thought I was dealing with professionals. Do professionals really need all this handling?

Not always. Once you've been working with someone long enough, you may find they just want you to cut to the chase. I've worked with writers who felt comfortable telling me, "Here's why I hate that," and I thought that was great.

But it's a good idea not to assume that's the protocol. It's a good idea to phrase critiques carefully, as questions, as personal observations, as positive statements. There is very little downside to doing it. You can communicate exactly the same ideas; they just go down smoother. And as Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." 

8.  Is it any different giving notes to fellow devs, to your staff, or to your boss?

Well, your staff is a whole lot less likely to fire you. But I think the above applies to any situation where you're asked to give notes. You can offend a boss; you can oppress your staff; you can rub fellow devs the wrong way. Anything you can do to make the notes go down smoother will be better for them, better for you, and better for the work you're criticizing. 

Don't you think?

Why Wandavision is like The L Word; and the Goods

Once upon a time there was a tv show called The L Word. It featured sexy lesbians sexing other sexy lesbians. So it had two guaranteed audiences:  lesbians, and guys who like to watch lesbians. (Which audience is bigger is left as an exercise.)

This neatly freed up the writers of the show to write pretty much anything they thought was interesting, as long as there was some sexy sexing going on. And so they made the characters really keenly observed, flawed, slightly terrible people. Which made the show worth watching by anyone.

I feel like Marvel is getting to the same place. They've made, and they are constantly making, big boomy movies in which Avengers make things go boom. 

But they are also making smaller stories, like Wandavision, which is an offbeat study in mourning and denial. At least until the Big Witch Fight at the end when things go boom.

These smaller stories get lifted in the updraft from all the capes flying around. I don't know how many people would watch an offbeat study in mourning and denial starring Elizabeth Olsen as a real suburban housewife. But the Scarlet Witch in mourning and denial, that has a built in audience. She's the gal who nearly put Thanos down! She's arguably the most powerful Avenger! 

The point of all this is, you have your story, and then you have the goods you have to deliver. The goods you have to deliver can be tangential to the story. If you are writing a western, and you have some shootouts, and horseriding sunsets, and a barroom fight, you can write a portrait of a marriage gone sour. 

This is why cop shows are all over tv:  once you have a dead body and some investigating, you can get away with writing all sorts of character stuff.

This is why those Star Wars prequels were so successful: they delivered weird looking aliens, pod races, lightsaber fights, etc. They didn't have coherent stories, but people enjoyed the spectacle. 

It is indeed better if the goods you have to deliver play an integral role in your story. It is always, in the abstract, better if all the pieces support each other. A great story lasts; spectacle fades quickly. 

But that is not necessarily what makes your story popular. 

Ask yourself what goods you have to deliver. Make sure they are goods that people want, and make sure you deliver them. Have fun with the rest.

Good Science Fiction is Frank Capra's Elevator Hat Scene

Showbiz writers have their own lore. For example, supposedly an actor told Steven Bochco, a legendary showrunner ("Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue," "LA Law"), that his character would never say a certain line. Bochco called the script supervisor over, had her pull out the script, and show him the page. "Sure he would. See? It's right there in the script."

A better story is told about Frank Capra, the 1930s comedy director (It Happened One Night, It's a Wonderful Life). Capra hired a famous playwright to write a script. The playwright spent the first act showing in aching, keenly observed detail how a couple's marriage had deteriorated.

Capra met with the writer. "Here's what we're going to do. The husband and wife get in an elevator. He keeps his hat on. A pretty girl gets in the elevator. He takes his hat off."

Tales From the Loop is an anthology science fiction show out now on Amazon Prime. In an episode, someone goes missing because of science fiction shenanigans. Someone goes looking for her. 

The episode is not about how she went missing, or where she went, or getting her back. It is about  how good people can be bad parents. It is about loneliness. 

The science fiction premise is just an excuse to tell a dramatic story about people. It is an extraordinarily efficient way to tell a dramatic story about loneliness and bad parents. Because the person disappears because of science fiction, the story can pretty much elide the how and why. How? It's science fiction, okay?

So the story can focus not on how or why they went missing, but on how the people left behind feel about it, and what they do about how they feel.

(Science fiction, in a way, is not a genre. It is a location. You can have sf action-adventure, sf tragedy, sf drama, sf romance, sf horror, etc. SF horror is just horror set in sf-land.)

Great science fiction can give the story teller a shortcut: a way of setting up the story math in a heightened way that does not require sophisticated parsing to understand. It is a way of finessing part of the story setup so we can get to the juicy payoff.

Just like Frank Capra's elevator hat scene. 

I have some questions about your scene

 I have some questions about the scene you're writing:

What does your protagonist want?

Why doesn't the other character want to give it to her?

What is she doing to get it that isn't asking for it outright?

What does the other character want?

Why doesn't your protagonist want to give it to him?

What is he doing to get it that isn't asking for it outright?

What does this scene reveal about your protagonist?

What does this scene reveal about the other character?

What emotion does the protagonist come into the scene with? How does she leave it?

What emotion does the other character come into the scene with? How does he leave it?

What is the turn in the scene -- the moment when something is decided, or revealed? When does something important change in the relationship between the two characters?

What happens in the scene that we did not expect to happen?

What is the moment where we see ourselves, or people we know, in the scene? When we think, oh, God, yes, I have been there? This moment may be comic or tragic; from a structural point of view they're more or less the same thing. 

(My working definition of comedy is tragedy, but you ought to know better, and it's your fault.)

What propels us out of the scene? (Sometimes called the button, especially when it's comedy.)

If your scene answers all of these, or even most of these, it's a pretty great scene. If you're having trouble writing the scene, if it's mushy or it's boring you, if it seems overwrought yet unsatisfying, odds are that you are missing one of the above. 

All writer's tools are for when things are broken. You don't need tools when the characters are having at it in your head and you're just writing down what they're saying to each other. All you need is to trim a bit. But when things are not working, it's often good to take the scene apart and make sure it has all the elements of story. These are, of course:

1. A character we care about
2. who has an opportunity, problem, or goal
3. who faces obstacles, an antagonist, and/or their own personal flaw
4. who has something to win (stakes)
5. and something to lose (jeopardy)

You can break a scene just as you break the whole story. What are the notes you want to hit? Put each on an index card and see what order makes the most sense. 

The more you write, the more you internalize these questions. I don't generally plot out a scene. But then, I have been writing scenes for decades. The same goes for an overall script. I outline with index cards, and David E. Kelley can get on the redeye and by the time the plane is landing he has a TV episode. But he's not ignoring these questions; he's just answering them in his head. Until you can answer them in your head, don't be too proud to write them down. 

Tell Your Actors

Here’s a weird thing about acting in video-games. I’m working on two big characters in two pretty massive new games and I don’t know anything about either of them. I couldn’t explain the concepts to you even if I wanted to.

— 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗳𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀 (@EliasToufexis) March 4, 2021

Video games came out of the software industry, which is probably where we get our secretiveness. I'm not really sure why we need to keep secret what we're working on. No one in the movie or tv industries signs an NDA. If there is a specific secret, like what Darth Vader said to Luke on that platform, then people make an effort to restrict the number of people who actually know it. "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." But generally no. 

Why? Because most people don't care about unfinished stuff. And most people don't want to read spoilers. TV critics might have early access to WandaVision, but no one wants to read an article explaining what's going on until after the episodes air, so people don't publist those articles. 

Somewhere someone with access to a script might say something on a forum somewhere. It's not going to affect ratings.

The sole place I can see where it makes sense is if you're making a game about a politically hot topic. You might not want Twitter mobs seizing on early drafts, which might still have rough edges or not quite say what you meant to say; or claiming that your game is about something it's not when your game can't speak for itself. 

But here's the thing. Actors are professionals. Why would we trust a 22 year old bro in QA, but not trust a veteran actor who's been the star of multiple AAA games? (Elias is the voice of Adam Jensen in the Deus Ex franchise, among others. He also played the irrepressible, utterly irresponsible Johnny Fenris in our game Contrast. He's terrific.)

I assume it's because some people think actors don't have a need to know. They're just emotion monkeys. You poke them in the right spots and they say the words with the right emotions. 

Obviously, it is insulting to actors, and takes some of the fun out of it. I also think it prevents them from having the confidence to give a surprising read in a scene. Maybe the writer or director does not know everything about the character. Some actors are famous for saying "my character wouldn't do that." Often they are right. Often they have thought through the character they are going to inhabit better than the writer has. 

The writer is prejudiced; we need the plot to go a certain way. Actors are in the moment. They feel their way from one emotion to another. If there's no human connection between moments, they will spot the chasm we writers have glossed over.

There's a story about Jane Fonda on the set of Klute. The director thought she should get upset. So he had the other actor yell at her. And as the character Brie, she went dead calm. What?

Well, explained Fonda, when someone is yelling at Brie, it's not nice but it's not stressful. She knows exactly where she stands. She's not waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The writer and director did not anticipate that. But it was humanly truthful. And more revelatory than her getting upset would have been. It's the way a character acts differently than your average person would act that defines a character.

I want our actors to know who they're playing so they can give me that kind of humanly truthful performance. So I tell them what the story is, and who they're playing, and what the world is like. Not every last detail. But enough to shape their character.

We've never had a leak to the press.

Actors will keep you honest, if you let them. 

Why not tell them who they're playing? 

Kelsey Beachum, A Need for Joy, Part Three

Alex:So last question. How do you not overwork yourself?

Kelsey: You tell me. I will say, as much as I loved working on Outer Wilds, Möbius does not need a full time writer. I was only ever part time with them. Like you asked earlier, why my brother and I didn't end up as a designer writer team, and it's just he's employed by a studio that does not need a writer full time.

Outer Wilds started as a passion project. And it kept being a passion project. We were in development for so, so long. What was it like eight years? At the time when I started doing that, even just for fun, let alone professionally, I was still working a day job. It made my day jobs a lot more tolerable because I was getting to do something creative on the side.

Alex: The dreary mundane job you're referring to is The Onion?

Kelsey: It was the Cryogenics Society to begin with. And while it was really cool to get to talk about particle accelerators, at the end of the day, that was very much about the scientific information needed to be conveyed. Not having a creative, whimsical experience, you know, so to go home and work on a game was a lot of fun.

And then at The Onion, I was in editorial operations and there's a fairly strict divide. The writers are who are allowed to create content. I got to head up the Instagram team when it started. We were pulling old stories and repackaging that content. It was fun, but it was not super creatively fulfilling for me.

As an editor you are trying to make the piece better. Remaining in the author's original voice. You cannot insert your own voice. That's rule number one. Right. I've been writing creatively my whole life, just like short stories. And I think I wrote a novel in high school, but nothing published. So then the big shift for me coming into games full time was realizing that [even though games are creative, it is still] a bad idea to rely on that for your sole source of creative fulfillment. At one point working at Insomniac I was trying to put in just everything I had into this game. And I kept getting these chest pains and my partner eventually was like, you have to go check these out. I had to go to the hospital. It ended up just being stress. And there is nothing like the face an E.R. doctor will make at you when he's like, oh, you must have a stressful job? And you're like, I write games.

Oh, I thought this and that moment, honestly, has been one of the biggest for me. I'm not an E.R. doctor. Nobody's life depends on how good this dialog is or how can I revamp this quest to make more logical sense. It's fine. And it's also coming to accept that you are given a set amount of resources and a set amount of time, and it's a business. And your goal is to do the best you can. It is not take it home and obsess over it in all of your free time and try to push all of these new ideas.

Alex: You mentioned not making your job your only source of creative fulfillment. Do you write short stories on the side or... ?

Kelsey: Oh, yeah, I'm working on one now that I might actually -- I've never sent anything around for publishing, and now I'm finally getting around to considering it, now that writing for games is not my hobby anymore. I have time to do other things. Also, I do a ton of hands-on physical crafting. You can see my sewing machine in the background. I just taught myself how to knit in November. I knitted a bunch of hats, now I'm making mittens. That's fun. I do a ton of paper crafting. I stained the desk that I'm sitting at. I've been doing some woodworking. I cartoon, I doodle a lot. I kind of explode creatively sometimes. I'm trying to teach myself some things that will be useful for game dev as well. A little bit of very basic animation or some art assets. I'll never be doing that professionally. But it is a fun thing to be able to do. I'm working on a comic just for fun. I make a lot of things that other people are never going to see. I'm making myself a standup notebook. Bookbinding is really fun.

Alex: I've never had a hobby. I've been told by doctors to have a hobby and I've never, I mean, writing this book about game writing, that's the closest I have to a hobby.

Kelsey: That is kind of my shower time. A lot of people have those aha moments in the shower. My brain works in very particular ways. I have OCD and I tend to obsess over particular ideas and it's really missing the forest for the trees, getting closer and closer to a single tree, being like, tell me your secrets, which is insane. And I know I need to back out of the forest. I am getting closer to that one stupid tree. And if I'm not careful, I'm going to cut it down. So this is using my hands to make something that doesn't require a ton of thought. OK, I'm cutting the paper this size now. We're going to puncture this with the awl. Now we're going to thread it with blah, blah, blah. That's kind of the thing that gets my mind to disengage enough to actually have ideas. The short story that I'm working on right now is something that came up as a result of making this notebook and I had that kind of aha moment. And it's an idea that I've been kind of wrestling with for a long time that I wasn't sure how to commit to paper. And now I think I have kind of an in for it.

Alex: What would you say is the most valuable creative lesson you learned from anything that isn't a game or a TV show or some fictional linear narrative?

Kelsey: So that rules out books.

Alex: Yeah, because obviously you learn a lot about storytelling from books.

Kelsey: I shouldn't tell you how much of a giant nerd I am, but I will.

Alex: We're all nerds. We're in the game industry, for God's sake.

Kelsey: Oh, it's true. But every now and then, I have to dial the enthusiasm back because what it comes across as is intensity. I get really intense.

One of the most rewarding things is when you're working with a dev that does not think that they are really connected to storytelling and they don't see how their discipline would be related. And they're like, well, I don't really have story ideas. And you get to the point through encouragement and chatting and brainstorming and just being interested in their work and finding ways that narrative can support their work in fun and interesting and novel ways to then have them come up to you later and be like, hey, I was thinking about this gameplay mechanic and I think maybe it could tie into this narrative thing. Oh, my God, dude. The first time that happened to me, I heard angels. So that was, sorry, completely off topic. But a thing that happens that I just was overjoyed.

So the thing that -- Empathy, I think. Can I answer that long of a question with one word? I think that's just a life thing, but it is very easy, I think, to assume that you are being empathetic, but it's shockingly difficult to actually get to that point. And I think the more people care about your protagonist or your character, the more that they are allowed to care, the more that they are allowed that space [in which] to be kind of emotionally vulnerable -- really makes one of the greatest impacts on the success or ability of a story.

Alex: I think that's right, and I think that ties back in with why you don't want logic breaking moments. Because, yeah, you will get away with it, but you will also subtract from how much players care about your character. You are chipping away the players connection to the character and at a certain point they stop caring. Like, whatever, I don't trust you, you're just doing whatever you feel like, and I'm just along for the ride and I don't care anymore. So, yeah, I like to define game narrative is just "whatever answers the question, ‘why do I care?’"

Kelsey: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. That's the thing that I get. You know, make me go get your bread for you, sir, but make me care. You can't just tell the player, hey, you should care. And--

Alex: --that's not how that works.

Kelsey: I think we get distracted by what's cool and shiny and oh, look, at this jump, or, look at this item. We're oh, it'll be so cool to have the sequence with these enemies. And I'm like, yeah, but those enemies are all the villagers. Can we not -- should we be killing them?

Alex: There's a powerful sequence in the Witcher series, where Geralt, in the town of Blaviken, is set upon by half of the village. And he kills everybody. Totally righteously, they're trying to kill him. But for the rest of his life he is known as the Butcher of Blaviken. It doesn't make him evil, but it does add weight, credibility to the narrative. Games rarely acknowledge the death toll you leave in your wake. And maybe we would care more if they did, in some cases.

Kelsey: We have to do an amount of convincing people that this is in fact a story that is happening, because a lot of people do not, I think, view games as stories. And I one hundred percent do even from the lens of a player experience.

Kelsey: The thing I was looking for, the answer to your original question, is someone once gave me a piece of advice that was, An artist's number one job is fighting despair. I've talked a lot about joy in these situations--

Alex: So whose despair are we fighting? Our own, or other people's?

Kelsey: I think it was meant to be our own. But I don't know if my despair is necessarily productive to actively battle. So it. It is just the idea of it came at a time where I was really struggling on a particular project and I felt I just was not making any kind of forward progress, and this person told me, you are becoming a better game dev and writer every day, even if it doesn't feel like it. I think there's a lot to be said for that. I'm very impatient. I try really hard. I'm not blessed with patience.

I think acknowledging that you are making progress, even if you're not seeing a lot of it yet. That it does crystallize later. I've learned that some of my ideas just need a little more time in the oven. It's important to be able to to go, OK, I'm going to put this down now and come back to it.