Writerly Advice

If it ain't meat, it's sauce. Dialogue material comes in two main categories: meat and sauce. Mixing the two is like putting ketchup on prime rib. Anything thick and juicy is meat. It often has an emotional edge that helps bring the player into the world. It's serious and delivers important lore to the player. We don't fool around with…

Be Clever But not too clever. Your real job as a game writer is to make the game's dialogue interesting within the confines of character limits, ESRB restrictions, and your world's story. It's not always easy, but it's loving that challenge that makes you a writer at heart. The best way you can inject cleverness (drama/humor/tragedy) is on a meta…

Be Clear We've all seen game writing that was cumbersome to read. Every sentence began with a subordinate clause or had a stream-of-consciousness feel that lost you halfway through it. I can only imagine that these writers thought they were being artsy. Unfortunately, artsy does you no good if your audience doesn't know what the Hell you're saying. Keep your…

Be Concise There are two reasons to be concise when writing dialogue for a video game. Space is limited. Player attention span is limited. The first limitation is the user interface (U.I.). If the game uses a text pop-up, then you have a character limitation. Since writing for Guild Wars 2, I've had to get better at relaying as much…