[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: 227

[Sparrowsmith]

fantastic guide, really I was impressed. I was expecting some little fidgety cliche post by someone with 0 knowledge of what they're talking about, because this happens all but too often on the internets, but instead I found a well thought out, enthralling, informative (albeit badly spelt at times ) guide that really was an eye opener.
I can't think of a single missed point really. Very professional, easy to read, well laid out.
Well done, well done indeed.

Things I learnt:
stop doing '...' so much
don't write emotion, show it
learn your worlds history, even if you don't make it compulsory to learn.
You don't have to understand something to make it, because your audience probably doesn't care how each little mechanical thing works.
and much more...

I would highly recommend this (and a few other guides I've read recently) to the majority or game makers