Writing is Different
As you already know if you read this blog, or listen to my podcast, this has been a hard year for creating games. My usual design process requires a constant availability of live test sessions, where I meet up with a variety of talented humans and we create games together, changing the rules as fast and as often as we can.
I sometimes test games before they are even games, spitballing stories and mechanics when there is nothing to play. Once I have real components, I still experiment with change after change, making deep cuts and exploring new versions until the group finds the fun. I did this regularly for 20 years, often coming to the table with something vaguely playable and often walking away with something slightly better, but completely different.
Since my testers couldn’t meet in person, I spent 2020 looking for new ways to make games, for old games I could polish, and for new things to do with my time. Animal Crossing ate a good deal of that, as you can imagine. You should really tour my island. It’s full of surprises. Look for DA-1442-5888-2116, Crab Cay.
But aside from wasting my life in a video game, the major new project of 2020 was learning how to write.
I don’t mean “how to string words together,” since I already have some experience there. This year I needed to figure out a process for starting, developing, and finishing short fiction. If I’m really smart I’ll also try to learn how to sell it, but I don’t think I’m ready. Baby steps, James.
What I learned is that my expectations from game development really didn’t prepare me for writing fiction, and that helps me understand how hard it is for people to make the jump in the other direction. Compared to game development, writing is an extremely solitary process. I can’t just bring an idea to the table; it has to be a solid draft. Start to finish, characters and plot all worked out.
As a game designer this feels completely alien to me, because I know that the more I work on the first draft of a game, the more time I’ll waste. No plan survives first exposure to the testers, and the harder I work on the first draft of a game, the more I have to throw away.
Yet I’ve met plenty of new game designers who feel like they have to design something complete before they bring it to a playtest group. It’s a completely different way of looking at design, and I just don’t think it makes good games.
So this year, it has been an exercise in egotistical fortitude to wander blindly into the woods and come back with a story. I can only imagine what it would feel like to be an author trying to learn game design, but I’ve seen plenty of people fall into that trap: working forever on a first draft with no testing, only to become so attached to it that they can’t accept feedback at any but the most superficial level.
I’m getting there slowly. Over the last few months, in the brief moments when I can shut off Animal Crossing, open my eyes to the real world, and sit down to work., I’ve drafted a dozen or so outlines for fiction set in the Dew Point, Carrisor, and VInlant universes, as well as a few stories that stand alone. Two of those stories are in the Crab Fragment Library.
“Into the Catacombs” is a short story defining the rules of the Vinlant universe, which is a colonial-era wizards’ school that was created as a setting for a new game by myself and Paul Peterson. That story was several years in the making.
“The Devil’s Walk” is a modern fantasy story about a man living in quarantine, and hanging out with an angel. That story was roughed out in September. So I’m getting faster at this.
“Henry at the Diner” is a very old short story. I wrote it for no reason at all in 1992 and published it in the middle of a Devil Bunny comic in 1995. I figure that to keep the Library interesting, I’ll go to the vault like this when I don’t have anything new. There are hundreds of stories from my high school and college days, mostly terrible, just waiting to see the light of day.
Hopefully as I continue to avoid social gatherings in 2021, I’ll take the time to create more fiction and get better at it. You can be the judge, and I hope you will.
If you like what I’m doing and want to keep it possible, please consider backing Crab Fragment Labs on Patreon. I expect I’ll continue to produce a mix of short fiction, game-related essays, and new games in 2021 and beyond.