At this point in the series on how to write a video game script, you’ve brainstormed your idea and built out the world, meaning you’re now ready to fill that world with characters.
If you aren’t sure what this is referring to or haven’t yet built out your video game world, be sure to navigate back to the first post in the series using the navigation below:
Read MoreNow that you’ve learned how to approach writing a video game script, you’re now ready to start building the world of your narrative and start bringing it to life.
Though you can write a novel without doing any world building, it is absolutely essential for video games, as that is how all players will experience your story.
You cannot explore a video game through the mind, through contemplation and through thought the way you might in a novel—there always must be something for your character (and player) to wander through for your story to be a video game and not a movie or a TV series.
Read MoreWhether you’ve been playing video games since you were a kid or have recently noticed them as an exciting new medium to tell your story in, you may be wondering how to write a good video game story.
After all, video games seem deeply complex and overwhelming—not to mention all the development work behind them. Is writing a video game on your own really possible, let alone a good one?
Read MoreVideo games have so many different things they can teach every storyteller. They can teach them about possibility in a narrative, dialogue options, and how to introduce the player (or reader or viewer) into the story.
Read MoreAre you someone who has ever said "video games just aren't for me"? And are you also someone who considers themselves a writer? Then this post is made for you.
If you are a member of the Storytelling Society, you'll know why I wholeheartedly believe anyone who says they are a storyteller needs to play video games, even if they don't want to write them. As detailed in the Storytelling System, engaging with new mediums is essential to improving your abilities as a storyteller in general - not just as a writer of novels or plays or even poetry.
Read MoreIt happens every time. I walk into GameStop with my brother or boyfriend and the sales associate walks up to us and acts like I don't exist. They look the guy I'm with in the eye and pretend I'm the girlfriend or sister who was dragged along, never asking if there's anything I need when I stray away and start looking at the games for sale.
Read MoreThough video games have always been a part of my life, it wasn't until a few years ago when I really began to become what some call a "gamer" and began trying out new games I never had before, branching off from The Sims, Zelda and Nancy Drew (all of which are still fun, by the way) to try out the likes of Bioshock, Mass Effect and Skyrim. This was in part because as a child my parents never permitted us to have anything besides the Wii, so when I began dating my boyfriend I had two separate consoles (PlayStation and Xbox) that I had never owned or played anything on before until then.
Read MoreA lot of storytellers will tell you that the hardest part about writing is getting started, but for me that has always been the easiest part. Maybe that's because my whole youth involved me starting a bunch of stories I never finished, leading to my subsequent problem of never being able to figure out how to end my stories because all I had ever practiced was beginning. A lot of times I would leave my story endings in limbo, cutting the story off early because I couldn't figure out where to go or tying way too many loose ends together because I figured the reader wanted to know how every single detail worked out.
Read MoreWhen I first began navigating the world of video games in my adult years and unearthed the massive world of RPG gaming, I couldn't help but ask myself "What the heck does a script for this game look like?" After all, while I knew these games were written in a format similar to screenplays, I also realized that writers weren't just writing out one scene's dialogue, but all the different outcomes of that scenes dialogue, so I knew these scripts had to be massive to account for all the different possibilities.
Read MoreVideo games get a bad rep. This is perhaps due in part because to some extent, video games can be really bad for people. There are games that are addictive and remove people from life and games that promote violence and sexist or racist stereotypes.
Yet these traits, especially the latter, are equally as prevalently in movies and books and yet no one seems to be a harbinger of justice for those mediums. And that is because as a culture, we can see how these mediums can also be very good for our culture, parodying what is wrong with it or creating characters who address our current state of the world.
Read MoreCreative Writing Coach and Storyteller | Serving creative writers who want to write novels, movies, plays, and video games – and helping them learn how to write all four.
Hey there—I’m E.M. Welsh and I’m a writer and storyteller based in Texas. In my spare time, you can find me reading books, watching TV and movies, and playing video games. I also cook a lot of food and dabble in a plethora of other hobbies.
I’m currently working on my first book, which I hope to have published in 2024.
This blog is basically a diary of what I’m up to, random musings, and progress updates on my book.
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