[Development]A Game Designer's Manifesto, Tips on writing for your game! Options

[Strangeluv]

This is a 15,000-word document I wrote about a year back on a different site on how to improve the plot and character of your games. People seemed to like it back then. Hopefully those who haven't seen it would find it useful.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

An Introduction / PRELUDE.............................. 3
PART ONE - General Plot Outline........................ 11
PART TWO - A Look at Plot and Conflict................. 18
PART THREE - Cutscenes, Focus, Mood and Theme.......... 28
PART FOUR - Spike-Haired Heroes, One-Winged Villains... 39
PART FIVE - Dealing with Dialogue..................... 45
PART SIX - Creating, Shaping My World Into Something Not Embarrassing........................................... 59
PART SEVEN - A Brief Note on Storylines for Short Games 75
PART EIGHT - Closing Statements....................... 79

I'll just post the introduction here:

"This tiny tome of mine would probably more suit makers of RPG's or games with long storylines, though I will also try to write a little for those who want to write a simple, hour-long game or so. But I want to concentrate more on story-oriented games.

It's no secret that some of you produce some very, very bad story scripts for your games. Story may not always be the element of a game people look most forward to, but I always like to think of it like a knot or a cog. If the knot is loose, if the cog is rusty, there is a great possibility the machinery isn't going to work as well as it can. And within that possibility, the chance lies that your machinery can fall apart.

And we don't want that to happen.

We want to make sure all the little cogs, all the springs, all the nuts, bolts, wires, are all in place and ready to go. That's why I'm writing this – to help you prepare yourself to do this. One last thing to keep in mind, I'm not an expert at game scripting. I've never produced anything I have been very proud of, with respect to writing a game's script (that has been turned into a game, anyway) but I do think I know some tricks, some hints, some tips that could at least help you improve a little, help you see your faults.

This guide is split into parts and at the end of each part I will pose a number of questions that you can ask yourself, as well as supplementary material, mostly about literary writing, not game writing, that I thought would be great extra reading material."

The file is attached to this post.

 StrangersTips.doc ( 168K ) Number of downloads: 228

[K.A.O.S]

OK I know... This is a old topic but still...

Dude, I admit that i just registered here to thank you for this worderful text... Seriously, ever though i'm not really the writter type, this made me see my upcomming project in other lights.

I'm still reading it, but this surprised me! Everything on this doc is making me reflect on what i've been doing on my project and how to fix it. I'm going to finish reading this up before going any further on my coment, but again... Thanks for the tips!

Also, sorry for my english, I just had to make sure to praise you for this lesson!