AMA: On writing too concisely

Valerie asked:

Do you have any advice for people who write too concisely (i.e., me)? 

Write more.

Okay, kidding. Honestly, I don't know how much help I can be here because personally I try to write concisely. I'm not a fan of purple prose, and I'm not sure how to write elaborate description well without falling into the purple trap (although I know it can be done).

So I aim for concise. I'm not sure you can write too concisely.

Rather than worrying about concise or verbose (which is really just word count, which really only matters if you're getting paid per word), take a look at whether the prose does it's job: to pull the reader into the story. There's like a bazillion ways to do that, but I think it can be done both concisely and verbosely. I've seen great authors do both.

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Got a question? Ask me anything.

AMA: Self-mutilation in Torment?

hightechzombie asked:

Do you intend to add self-mutilation to Tides of Numera like in Planescape: Torment during Ignus "lessons"?

Probably asking this way too early, considering that you are still in pre-production. Still, this is very important to me!

Backstory (because my audience includes non-Torment fans as well):
In Planescape: Torment, you played the role of an immortal who lost his memories each time he died. Because you're immortal, we were able to include moments like plucking out your own eye and replacing it with a demon's, or having a powerful wizard (Ignus) teach you how to use powerful fire magic by, literally, burning the lesson into your body.

In Torment: Tides of Numenera, you don't play an immortal, but the castoff shell of a man who cheats life by jumping from body to body (he doesn't realize the bodies he leaves behind wake up and have their own lives after he leaves them).

So you're not immortal, but the castoffs are quite hard to kill. We haven't drilled down into the details of every area yet (which is where a lot of this stuff will surface), and I'm not allowed to give spoilers, but there is definitely the opportunity for PST-like moments like Ignus and Ei-Vene.

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Got a question for me? Ask me anything.

Ask Me Anything

I'm adding a new feature to the blog (poor, neglected blog). You can now ask me anything you want. At any time. About writing or game design or how Torment's going or what it's like parenting a billion kids or living in Thailand or how awesome Firefly and Avatar are . . . whatever. Periodically, I'll answer your questions here (NDAs notwithstanding, of course).

Don't have any questions right now? There's a tab up top and a link on the sidebar. Use 'em.

(Why don't I use an existing platform for this, like tumblr or Formspring? (1) I have control here. (1a) When those platforms die (like Formspring almost did last year), I'll still be here. (2) I have enough platforms, thanks. (3) You don't need more places to go either, I imagine.)

That's it. Use it if you want it. I'll just be over here. You know. Waiting.

Why I Love the Banner Saga

Guys, I think I love this game. I mean, it's over now, which makes me sad, but... Well, maybe I should tell you what it is.

The Banner Saga is a tactical RPG, kickstarted by Stoic Studio almost 2 years ago backed by over 20,000 people. It feels like what would happen if George R. R. Martin hired Don Bluth to make a short version of Final Fantasy Tactics set in a Norse world. You think I'm joking, but play it and tell me I'm wrong.

It's set in a fantasy world inhabited primarily by humans, varl (giants with massive horns), and nasty armored things called dredge. For some reason, the sun stopped moving near the horizon and the world is freezing. On top of that, the dredge are rushing out of the north, crushing everything and everyone in their path. Men and varl have to put aside their differences to save both their peoples, but that proves rather difficult.

And then things get worse.

You play a few different characters across the game, reluctant leaders of men and varl stuck in impossible situations. This is the first thing I love about the game. You don't know how to lead. You don't even want to lead. But the game asks you to make impossible decisions of the stand-and-fight vs. run-and-abandon-our-ancestors-home variety and then it makes you question whether you did the right thing.

The second thing I love is the game makes you feel like your decisions matter. They don't always, but so many of them do that you don't even notice the others. If you stand and fight, you might lose and be run off anyway, or you might actually win and be forced to make a different decision. Do you let the women of your clan train to fight, even though the men are dead set against putting their wives and daughters in danger? Do you encourage a town you pass by to flee with you, as you did, or stay and defend their homes, as you wish you did?

The game itself is a series of macro decisions on how to help your clan escape and survive, interspersed with tactical battles pitting your heroes against a few enemies. These were the third thing I loved. There's almost no dice-rolling; the outcome of your attacks is almost entirely deterministic (some people like to give me crap for designing elements of chance, but guess what? I can love both). And the abilities of the different heroes at your disposal can be combined in unique, sometimes unexpected ways, so that a clever commander can sometimes win even a hopeless battle.

The music, the art, the prolonged scenes watching my caravan trudge across the waste (it sounds weird, but those scenes are part of what really drew me into the game), the deaths, the questioning myself as a leader, the triumph when I finally did something right... It's just a good game. If you like tactical games or RPGs, check this one out. The Banner Saga is strong evidence that games are art.

"You must keep writing, because you are a writer."

You know those writers who say, "I really need to get back into writing," and then two weeks later they're still saying that? Guess who's become one of them.

Well, not that guy. Me. I'm one of them.

You may be familiar with some of my reasons. Drafting is my least favorite part of the process, and with two unpaid novels in the hopper, and a yes-paid job, my motivation for doing the sucky part has been sapped.

And you know what? My reasons are good reasons. I'm doing creative work for my dream job and excelling at it, and I've got novels on the submission train. My priorities are right where they should be. This is what 99.9% of my friends tell me when I bring up the fact that I've written an average of 1,000 words/month lately.

They're absolutely right. Everything's cool. I don't have to write.

But there was that 0.1%, that one friend (I have exactly 1,000 friends; prove I don't), who had to go and say something different that stabbed me right in the gut because it was exactly what I needed to hear. The wonderful and not-at-all maniacal Authoress grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "You must keep writing, because you are a writer."

Ow! OwowowowowieowieOWow.

It's absolutely true that when push comes to shove, the paid job wins (actually the family wins, but they get on a timeout when they shove me, so . . .). But I've been tackling every single day like my job was in crunch time. I am a game designer. But I'm also a writer. If I can't figure out a way to do both, then . . .

Well, I just have to figure out a way to do both.

I know it can be done. I know because I find time to tweet, read, play chess online, and even draw. I don't have to write a lot (see the aforementioned priorities), but if I can't find time to squeeze out even 250 words in a day? That qualifies as pathetic.

Well, pathetic for me. You make your own goals.

What are your goals? How's your writing going?

You Get One Debut... But That's Not All You Get

My friend and former query twin* Krista Van Dolzer wrote this excellent post for authors trying to get published.

There have been a few exceptions...but for the most part, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Stated another way, you can only be a variable when you're actually a variable. If you don't have a sales record, publishers have to rely on a set of complicated formulas--and possibly their tea leaves--to determine how much your book is worth...

But once you have a sales record, it will follow you around for the rest of your career. Publishers no longer have to guess how much your books are worth; your sales figures will tell them.

Her point (which I totally agree with) is that you should be careful how you debut and whom you debut with. Don't jump at the first small press or self-publishing option you get without really thinking about it. People generally put more value in unknown potential than they do in someone who has a record we can look at. Publishers and the reading market are not immune to this. (This has recently become an additional reason for me not to jump onto Kickstarter with my beloved-but-rejected novels. Not yet, anyway.)

However, I would submit that you're more likely to write a bestseller in your 3rd or 4th or 10th book than you are in your first. I'm basing this on the fact that many of the bestselling novels I know and love were not debut novels:

• Orson Scott Card. Best known for Ender's Game (1985). It was his 8th published novel.
• Suzanne Collins. Best known for Hunger Games (2008). It was her 8th published novel.
• Scott Westerfeld. Best known for Uglies (2005) and Leviathan (2009). Uglies was his 8th published novel (dang, a trend!).
• Brandon Sanderson. Best known for Mistborn (2006) and his contributions to the Wheel of Time series (2009+). Mistborn was his 2nd published novel.
• Neil Gaiman. Best known for Sandman (1989+), Neverwhere (1996) and a bunch of other stuff. But his first published novel was co-written in 1990 and he'd been writing graphic novels since 1987.
• Chuck Palahniuk. Best known for Fight Club (1996). This actually was his first novel, but according to Chuck it "was a huge failure" and the film (released three years later) "was a flop."

Of course we know plenty of debut success stories: J.K. Rowling, Pat Rothfuss, Kiersten White, Stephanie Meyer. But I hypothesize that they are the exceptions. (I admit I could be totally wrong about this, of course. I would love to see some data on this :-). Most of the big authors I've seen have worked and failed** and worked hard again until FINALLY they had something that hit that elusive golden snitch of a nerve that every publisher is looking for.

My point is that, yes, your debut is something special that you should take care of. Don't squander it the first chance you get. BUT if selling stories is something you really want, don't stop writing. Ever. No matter how you debut, no matter what publishers or the market thinks of you, there will always be a way for you to get new words to your readers. There will always be a chance that the next thing you write could be The One.

Statistically, the more you write, the better that chance gets.

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* Krista and I were on surprisingly parallel querying-agent-submission paths for about a year or two, before she got a book deal and I got a job.

** Maybe not "failed" so much as "didn't hit it ridiculously big."

Status of the Update

For those of you who don't read every single one of my Facebook posts (it's cool; even my wife doesn't read them), here's a quick rundown of what's going on and where.

I sent Ninjas off to my agent. You probably know this. She's still reading it, but I'm naively hoping she likes it and wants to start submitting like really, really soon. Cuz getting published (and paid) would be rad.

I went to California. I spoke at my church, had meals with a quarter bazillion people, played and occasionally acquired new games, and then spent a week at inXile HQ where...

I got promoted to Torment's Design Lead. That does not mean I'm in charge of the whole thing (thank God; Colin's still Creative Lead (making sure the story, characters, writing, etc. are awesome) and Kevin's still the Project Lead (making sure the game actually gets done)). It does mean I'm in charge of the game's rules, systems, interfaces, and other designy tidbits. It's pretty much the same stuff I was doing before, except with higher expectations and less ability to blame others when things go wrong. Should be fun.

I watched like 8 movies/shows on the plane trip back. And I have determined that Disney's The Lone Ranger is stupid. BBC's Sherlock, however, is intelligently awesome.

I got home. Wherein I've played a bunch of games with the boys, given out cheap American candy, seen Catching Fire with the wife, and done very little work (except the work of getting over jet lag, which is ongoing).

Tomorrow I plan to play Wasteland 2, write >= 500 words (I've lowered my standards, for reasons), and entertain a 3-year-old tyrant. Among other things.

What have you been up to?