Punch the Keys!

I finally finished my Pathfinder adventure, so I thought I'd celebrate by writing another blog. I know, I live a wild life, filled with cocktail parties and beautiful women, right? No, that's my boss, who rolls up on women in bars and tells them he owns a freaking publishing company, but never quite gets around to mentioning what he publishes. Because that would be like admitting you have a social infection. And before you jump on me for making fun of my boss, I'm actually referring to every boss I've ever had in this business. He's a composite figure. (I put that in there because my present boss is actually pretty keen).

Anyway, I was thinking about how I could help you, the aspiring, get into the business or get more work. There isn't some secret, magical formula for getting work from a game company. Well, actually, there is, but I don't have time to teach you Enochian. So instead I'm going to tell you what each and every line developer I've ever had the privilege to talk to has said on this subject. Because when we all get together at Gen Con, it's to complain about two things: a) writers and b) bosses.

Your editor is looking for three things from you, the writer. If you deliver on these things consistently, you will never have to look for work.

On Time: I can't stress this enough. In fact, it's a common theme in all my advice. Deliver on time. Your editor has a schedule. The book must make it to the printers by date certain, because the company has scheduled press time. It must make it to the distributors on time, because that affects payment. Once upon a time, when I worked for LUG/Decipher, we had distribution into the book trade through Simon & Schuster. I can't tell you how valuable this can be. The books, however, had to make it to Barnes & Noble by a specific date, or the book was returned. If it didn't, B&N would take the money they'd set aside for us and spend it on a different book; all they want is books on their shelves. They don't care which books. Then, we'd have to wait for the next quarter, until B&N allocated money for books again.

This is a business. We're trying to make money. It doesn't matter if the editor takes your work and sticks it in a drawer for a year (well, it does, because that affects your payment). All that matters is that you turn it in on time. I don't want to have to worry about when I'll get chapter three.

In English: This is an important one. You wouldn't believe the stuff I've received over the years that bears only a passing resemblance to English. I don't expect you to have memorized Strunk & White (in fact, I wish you wouldn't because there's a lot of bad advice in there). Nor do you have to follow the Chicago Manual of Style. You do, however, have to know the rules of written English. I've gotten stuff where it's obvious the writer didn't know what a paragraph was. I've gotten run-on sentences. I've gotten sentences that just end, in mid-sentence. A lot of people don't know what a comma is, or why it's important. Or that "it's" is the contraction for "it is". Before you can break the rules of grammar, and all good writers do, you have to demonstrate that you know those rules.

When I submitted my first book to Chaosium, which was actually the first thing I'd ever published, I'm told that Lynn Willis, the editor, let out a "whoop!"and ran up and down the halls yelling "it's in English! It's in English!" After years reading manuscripts, I understand his joy. I've spent many a late night turning someone's scribbling into a coherent manuscript. Basically, I've rewritten the entire piece. I shouldn't have to do that.

On Topic: If you're assigned 2,000 words to write about dwarven religious practices, you don't want to turn in 2,000 words about dwarven social practices. Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? I remember assigning out a chapter on technology, and getting back a chapter that had exactly four pieces of tech in it; the rest was a discussion of the role of technology and how technology worked. That's not what I asked for. Well, it was, technically, however the writer demonstrated that he had no idea what he was doing. It's like asking for a chapter on magic items and getting a chapter with no magic items. Or asking for a chapter on guns, and getting a bunch of stuff on how gunpowder works. What this particular writer showed me was a) he hadn't read the outline, where I told him to include ray guns and hand-held sensors and communication's gear; and b) that he had no idea what our game line was about.

You should know what an adventure looks like. You should know what should go in a gear chapter. Anyone who's read any game line knows what I'm talking about. When I say "write me an adventure about mites," you should know there should be a few attacks, and a lair, and treasure. You know the format, even if it's for a sci-fi game; you know the elements that go into an adventure. Moreover, you should know how that particular game handles those things. You should familiarize yourself with the product line before you write. If the game likes boxed text that the GM reads to players, then your work should use the same format.

If you do these three things -- be on time, write in grammatically correct English, and write what you were asked -- then you'd be in the top tier of freelance game writers pretty quickly. Your name would be passed around between line editors as a gold-star freelancer (yes, I call other line editors looking for recommendations and new writers). You'd get more work.

Freelancer Best Practices

Today I received my first official topic request. Darrin Drader, from Rhode Island, wrote in to ask for advice for dealing with editors. My advice, after 17 years in this business, both as a freelance writer and full-time line editor, is “with extreme caution.” Let’s put it this way: You wouldn’t walk up to a caged gorilla and poke it with sticks, would you? I don’t know how it is today because the market is so much different than it was ten years ago (though with this most recent project I’m going to go with “not much different”). But allow me to explain what your typical line editor has to deal with.

First of all, he has deadlines. He cannot miss these deadlines, because then the company has no money. Here’s how it works: Alliance orders 1,000 copies of your book (HA! We know that never happens) and expects them on November 1. They don’t have to pay you for 90-days after receipt of the shipment, so as soon as your book arrives in their warehouse the clock starts running. Then, 90-days later, you get a check from Alliance (HA! Again). So if you deliver your book on Nov. 15, that’s when the money-clock starts ticking. You’ve pushed the company’s payday back by two weeks. Most companies have reserves, so they can cover the two week gap in their cashflow (HA! How many lies can I stick in a paragraph?!), but you’ve made things tight.

So your editor is in his office, furiously hacking away at a text full of “verys” and “wills” and “to bes”, he’s slashing someone’s manuscript down to the 6,000 words for which he asked, and he’s changing that section on monkey-thing sex into a section on monkey-thing religion. He’s got blue lines on his desk for the next release that he has to review. He’s got to outline the next book, set the word counts, and assign it. He’s got a meeting with the production department about the book two releases out. He’s got to wade through email, at least one of which says “your game sucks, hire me to fix it.” And his boss has just stopped playing XCom long enough to come out of his office to ask “where’s the next book, dude?” All the while, he’s got one eye on calendar, because he cannot miss a deadline. (Andrew Greenberg calls this “the mill” because it’s like a millstone that will grind you to paste if you don’t stay ahead of it).

That’s when a writer calls and says something like “I’m having a hard time finishing, because I’m just not feeling it. Can I have another week?” That’s when the editor wants to reach through the phone and strangle the writer until he’s “feeling it” and gets back to work...

Let’s talk about best practices for dealing with editors. I’ll be honest, I know we can be irrational. I worked for one guy who preferred I write through telepathy; he could never explain what he wanted, so I’d write something and he’d call up and say “nah, that’s not it.” I worked for another who wanted four drafts because I wasn’t writing in his style. One guy asked for extensive re-writes, I made all his changes, and he changed his mind back. The editor is, however, the dude in charge:

Say “Yes, Sir”

I once had a writer write something for me, and I didn’t like it. I asked for a race of monkey-things, and he droned on about monkey-thing mating rituals. I was working on a licensed property at the time, and I knew there was no way they’d approve anything covering monkey-thing sex in such extensive detail. Moreover, who the hell cares about how monkey-things get it on? So I called the writer and asked him to replace the section (it was about 500-words long). The writer told me, in no uncertain terms, that he would not.

The monkey-things were a work of art. Removing the section would wreck the artistic integrity of the piece. He felt the sexual practices of monkey-things was important, given that the property involved the captain getting it on with just about anything with a hole in it. I reiterated that the people who actually held the IP rights would never approve such a thing, even though the logical extension of their character jumping everything in a skirt was that a lot of boning was going on in their setting. No, the answer came back, it ruined the artistic integrity.

Okay. Back in the Renaissance, the Medicis were the richest guys around, and they hired artists to paint their portraits. If they asked the artist not to paint the giant, hairy mole on their cheek, the artist did it. Because he wants to get PAID (and not murdered in his sleep). So, if you want to get paid, you’ll remove the monkey-thing sexathon. There’s your “artistic integrity, dude.”

Your editor controls access to the checkbook. He tells his boss that your work is acceptable and he should cut you a check. If he doesn’t like the work, he tells the boss to go back to playing Xcom. Moreover, if I have to cut out the 500-words of monkey-thing sex and write it myself, you get paid for 500-words less (because I’m not paying you for words I wrote).

Therefore, if your editor asks you for something, the answer should be “yes, sir.” If he wants you to add flying donut-monsters, the answer is “yes, sir.” If he wants you to write it in Urdu, the answer is “yes, sir.” The editor is the guy in charge. That editor who asked me for four drafts of a 500-word piece? I told him “yes, sir.” The dude who had me change everything, only to change it back? “Yes, sir.”

If you disagree, then be respectful about it. I’ll listen to your ideas. Maybe we can come up with a compromise. Maybe you’re right, and you can convince me that monkey-thing sex is the most important part of the work. But, at the end of the day, if the editor puts his foot down, you’re answer should be “yes, sir.” Don’t argue with him.

Don’t Get Emotional

A lot of what we do is for lousy pay, so the only thing we have left is the sheer pleasure of creating. We get emotionally invested in our work. The words are “ours.” Those monkey-things are the greatest thing since toothpaste and shoelaces, and the editor is an irrational idiot for wanting to cut them. He’s asking for a ridiculous amount of words on an insanely-tight deadline, and now he’s being a mouth-breathing pinhead.

Stop. Don’t get emotional. Calling your editor and giving him what-for is not a good idea. I have several examples of writers who called to slag on me, the company, and my boss. I don’t need your tidal wave of righteous indignation, because I’ve got my own problems on my end. I’ve got a deadline. Often three. I’ve got a boss who’s breathing down my neck. I’m working 10 to 14 hours a day. You may be absolutely right, but cloaking things in emotion just adds fuel to the fire. He’s not going to listen to your perfectly reasonable request, because you just called him a moron.

If you’re really that upset about something, then stop, take a hot bath, take a walk, take a shot… whatever you have to do to calm down. Then, call your editor.

Be Honest

When I was a waiter, we once had a big party come in – 15 people. They sat in my section, so it was my table. The boss came over and asked, semi-jokingly, “can you handle it?” I told him the truth. No, I can’t handle it. I’m better with lots of small tables, because I like to keep moving, and 15 people can be hard to control. So the boss gave the table to someone else, and she made a $200 tip. Was I mad? Not really, because I also waited on 15 people, spread out across several tables and made $200 in tips. The boss, however, was thrilled because I was honest and there were no problems on the dining room floor.

My advice to you when dealing with an editor is to be honest. If you can’t write the assignment, be honest and tell him you’re not interested. It’s better than having to slog through 5,000 words writing something you don’t like. If he asks you to change something, and you can’t say “yes, sir,” then tell him so. If you’re going to be late, call up and be honest. Often times, the editor has a little space to wiggle, because he’s got five other chapters to read, so he can just move yours to the end. Don’t wait until the day of the deadline to do this, because that’s the gamer equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” And never, never, never make him call you looking for the work that should have been turned in two days ago. While he may have room to juggle things around to give you extra time, don’t make him chase you down to find that out.

Really, a little pro-action on your part can save you a lot of headaches. If you don’t understand something in the outline, call and ask about it. What may be clear to me, because I’m referencing Gormenghast, may be obscure to you, because you’ve never heard of it. Be honest. I’ll tell you what I meant by putting it another way. A half-hour phone call could save everyone a lot of headaches later on. Need more space? Call and be honest. Maybe the editor can find you some extra words, if you really need them. In the end, I’m more likely to give future work to someone who calls and is honest with me, even if he backs out of the project, than someone who screws me over a week after the deadline.

See It From His Side

It’s always a good idea to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes and try to see things from the other direction. I think a good political debate would be the two guys have to argue the other guy’s case for him. Imagine if Mitt Romney had to make a forceful case for Obamacare; maybe he’d see that it wasn’t so bad after all. What if Obama had to argue in favor of tax cuts for the super-rich; maybe he’d adjust his policy a bit. I see this all the time in daily life. We’re so wrapped up in our own headspace that we fail to grasp what the other guy is saying. It’s polarizing.

Try to see life from the editor’s point of view. You innocently call to ask for more time, or for more words. Those are really the two biggest reasons I would get calls. My mind immediately runs to two things: deadlines and costs. Will it blow my deadline, or will it increase my costs? If I answer “yes” to either of those two questions, I’ve got to go to my boss and explain it to him. And he’s a lot less forgiving than I am, no matter who he is.

Deadlines: Will this request blow my deadline? Late is bad. It affects cashflow. I once had to tell a writer that his request for two more weeks meant that the entire project would be two weeks late, which meant the other five authors who managed to turn in their work on time had to wait two extra weeks to get paid. Deadlines are tight. It’s a millstone. It just keeps grinding. I want everything in on a certain date so I can get to the editing. I feel better with the whole book on my hard drive. My boss is asking me about it, and I really don’t want to tell him you’re late, because HE feels better with the whole book on my hard drive.

If I don’t give the writer the time, I don’t get my manuscript, and I have a hole to fill. If I do give him the time, will he call back later and ask for still more time? Is it just better to get another writer to do it? Should I write it myself? Can I switch things around so that the book still comes out on time, and the process still moves forward? How much time do I have to edit the late work, and still make deadline? Can I edit the chapter in a day? What if it’s total crap and it takes a week? These are the kinds of questions that are running through my mind while I’m still on the phone with you.

Costs: Will this increase the cost of the book? There is a layout guy who’s sitting at his computer waiting for a book to layout. There’s an art director waiting for the book so he can start assigning art. The boss has to schedule time at the printing press (oh yeah, you can’t just send your files to a printer any old time. You schedule press time, often weeks in advance. If you’re late, guess what, you’ve got to wait until they’re done printing 250,000 copies of J.K. Rowling’s latest wet dream). So my being late means a lot of people sitting around, getting paid for doing nothing, because there’s nothing to do yet. So they sit at their desks and play computer games. 

What about the costs to the project? Every project has an assigned budget. Can I find space for those extra 2,000 words the writer says he needs? Can I take up the per page word count to 650 or 700? Do I have to add another signature? Can I cut something someplace else? Are the extra words really necessary? While you’re talking to me, I’m thinking about money.

If you can say “I need more time, will this affect your deadline?” or “I know this will affect the book’s cost, but I really need another week,” at least he knows you understand his problems. Better if you can present a solution to the problem as part of your pitch; that’s called “being helpful” and your editor appreciates that. Even better if, after seeing it his way, you don’t even make the request in the first place, unless you really, really have to. In other words, just be on time and be on word count.

Ogre: One last thing on the subject. I’m not an ogre. I understand that you had to go to the hospital with your sick kid. I know what it’s like to spend the day at the DMV. I’ve had hard drive crashes before. Life happens. Tell me what’s going on, without getting too emotional (because then I think you’re just playing to my sympathies). Lastly, don’t play this card too much. If you blow every deadline because of a catastrophe in your life, I’m going to start thinking you’re the unluckiest person alive, or that you’re blowing smoke up my ass. 

There it is, Darren. These are the best practices for dealing with editors. Do what he asks. Don’t get emotional about it. If you can’t do what he asks, say so, respectfully. Be proactive. Try to see things from his side, and address his concerns. That’s how I did it as a freelancer, and what I appreciated when I was a line editor. Do you have any specific situations that you’d like to discuss? 

Words Make the World Go 'Round

Today, I’m going to talk to you about word counts, why they’re important, and why you should stick to them. For those of you not in the know, we freelance writers get paid by the word, not the page or a flat rate. Words, are, quite frankly, our bread-and-butter. And the pay isn’t that great, either. Ten years ago, the going per-word rate for freelance game designers was 2 cents per word. Now, ten years later, the going per-word rate is, you guessed it, 2 cents per word. So, for a 5,000-word piece, I’ve made the princely sum of $100. There’s a reason we’re wretches.

Anyway, back to word counts. When you get an assignment, it’s always couched in terms of word counts. Well, where do I, your humble line editor, get this magical number? I get it by stat-ing out the book, usually as I write the outline. I generally dislike figuring word counts, because I have to whip out a calculator and make a whole bunch of hard decisions, like “how many words does it take to describe the planet Vulcan?” If you haven’t noticed yet, I don’t like doing hard stuff. Also, I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time; seriously. All I’m doing is guessing. You could pay a monkey to throw darts at a board at this stage (except monkeys work for bananas, and have you seen the price of those things? It’s cheaper to pay me). So, to keep me honest, game companies come up with their specifications sheet.

Ever wonder why a book is 256-pages? Or 96-pages? Why not 95-pages, or 130-pages? Neither did I when I was just writing. As far as I knew, I sent in my text, and book happened. For all I knew, little gnomes came out and magicked my words into book form. It’s not nearly as much fun as that.

First of all, every book gets classified by a type. Is it a core book? Is it a supplement? A module? Those things get an established page count. A module IS 96-pages. If it’s going to be a module, then those are the pages you’ve got to fill. If it’s 128-pages, then it’s not a module, it’s a sourcebook. You cannot deviate from these specifications, because that affects cost. The company’s product spec sheet tells you the size of the products you can produce, how many pieces of art you can throw in, the words-per-page, and a bunch more.

But why 256, 128, or 96? That number comes from the number of signatures in a book. Signatures are 16-page blocks of, well, pages. You know when you watch an old-timey movie, and they show that montage of the spinning newspapers that reveal the headline? Usually, behind the newspapers is a picture of a spinning press. That’s why pages are in 16-page blocks. Because books are printed on giant-ass pieces of paper.

The text gets broken down into 16-page blocks, which is printed on giant sheets of paper. That paper then goes to a machine that folds, and folds, and folds some more. Then, for good measure, it folds a few more times. And when it’s done, you’ve got a 16-page packet of pages. All those signatures then get bound together into a book. If you look at the binding on a book, you can actually see these bundles of pages all stuck together. Thus, 256, 128, and 96 can be divided by 16 (or rather, they’re multiples of 16, or whatever). So, a 256-page book has 16 signatures. A 128-page book has 8 signatures.

If I “break signature,” by using 98-pages, that costs more money. A lot more money. Mostly because you’re changing the production process. The printer has to stick two extra pages in every book, and you don’t get to use the giant sheets of paper or the magical fold-y machine for those two pages; they pay some schmuck to stick two extra sheets of paper in your book. So it costs extra money because you've complicated the production process. Same thing if you don’t use all your pages. You can either pay to cut them out, or just leave them in. (I remember seeing an indie game back in the late-90s that did just that. There were seven blank pages in the back of the book because he didn’t fill the signature and didn’t want to pay to have the blank pages cut out.)

So your editor knows that he has 128-pages to fill, because he’s doing a supplement. The boss isn’t going to let him make it 144-pages, because that increases his costs, and that means less money for hookers and blow. Now, each page also has an established word count per page. Remember, in a previous post, when I said this was 600-words per page at Last Unicorn? So, 128-pages times 600 is 76,800 words to assign. I could, theoretically, take that up to 700- or 800-words per page, but now I’m messing with two things: cost and readability.

Cost: At 600-words per page, at 2 cents/word, each page costs me $12. If I take that up to 700-words per page, now each page costs me $14. Over a 128-page book, the total cost for writing goes up from $1,536 to $1,792. That’s called “eating into profit margins,” and my boss hates that because it means fewer martinis at happy hour.

Readability: The more words I put on the page, the smaller the type I’ve got to use, which means it’s harder to read the text. I’m convinced Dungeons & Dragons 3^rd Edition had such tiny type because either everyone over-wrote or they didn’t want to publish an 800-page book (which would have been 50 signatures, by the way). Seriously, that thing had to have close to 800-words per page. (It also may explain why Pathfinder is thicker than the Brooklyn Yellow Pages. Fun fact: It’s 36 signatures).

You now know how much fun stat-ing out a book is. Oh no, wait, there’s more. Take a look at any book and you should immediately notice stuff. If you don’t, don’t worry; you will by the time I’m done with you. The first page is the title page. That’s followed by the indicia. Indicia is just a fancy word for the page that tells you who wrote it, who published it, who holds the copyright and all that crap you usually ignore. Then you need a table of contents. Then there’s a page of “nothing,” usually a full-page piece of art (we’ll get to why in the next paragraph). Wait, that’s four pages gone already. Now I’m down to a 124-page book. Crap, I forgot the introduction – that’s two more pages. 

Wait? What? Why two-pages? Ahhhh, ever notice how every chapter in a book starts on a left-facing page and ends on a right-facing page? (Or vice versa?) That’s because you can’t have a book going all willy-nilly with that; it’s standardized. All the chapters in a book can begin on a left-facing page, or a right-facing page, but not both. You can’t have a book where chapter one starts on a left-facing page, and chapter two starts on a right-facing page. Which means a chapter must be an even number of pages. Two, ten, twelve – doesn’t matter, so long as it’s even, because then all the chapters begin on the same facing page. So when I figure out word counts, I’m doing it in even page numbers. Isn’t this fun?

I decide that Chapter One: Boring Editing Chores is going to be ten-pages long, which at 600-words per page comes out to 6,000 words (No, I didn't need a calculator for that, which is why I chose those numbers). Here’s where I get to you, the freelancer.

If I assign you 6,000 words, and you over-write and send me back 7,000 words, I’m now two pages over. My 128-page book is now 130-pages. My boss won’t be happy, because I’ve just eaten into his Prada budget for the month. Thus, I must cut stuff or find the space.

Cutting Stuff: Contrary to what you may believe, I hate to cut stuff. Well, I hate to cut good stuff. With an overage that’s close to the assigned word count, I can cut out some fat and make it fit. When I ask for 6,000 words and get 10,000 words, now we have a problem. I can’t just stop at word 6,000 and cut the rest, because there may be important stuff in there. So instead I’ve got to cut something from everywhere; I’ve got to go through the entire document and slash-slash-slash. I hate to do that because it affects the integrity of the work, and I have to struggle with “is this paragraph necessary, or is that one?” Did I mention I hate hard work?

Finding Space: This is, again, easier the closer you are to your original word count. I can find two pages if I have to. I can cut down someone else’s dreck, because while I hate cutting good stuff, I LOVE cutting bad stuff. Editors are evil that way. However, ain’t enough trimming in the world is going to get me to 4,000 extra words. If you stick me with 4,000 more words than I asked for, it is impossible for me to make room for it by adding more pages to the book (see, above, less martinis and Prada for the boss), and I must resort to cutting stuff.

As you can see, then, giving me more words than I ask for could quickly become a real problem for me. I don’t like writers who make problems for me. While I can’t send out the kill-bots to hunt you down, for copyright reasons, I can imagine all kinds of nasty ways for you to suffer as an NPC in my next book. You’ll find your name as an anagram for the person being savaged by rabid, syphilitic leucrotta. Oh, and I won’t give you any more work.

Have I mentioned I’m doing all this under tremendous time constraints? And that my boss is poking his head into my cubicle every half-hour asking “is it done yet?” And the layout guy is playing XCom on his computer because he’s waiting for my book to lay out? That all adds to costs, by the way. 

Anyway, you now know how your word count assignment was arrived at, and why. You should also have a good idea of why your humble, well-armed editor (who knows your home address) doesn’t want you to go over your word count. I didn't make the rules to this game, but I've got to enforce them. 

More Freelancer Advice

By far, the article that's received the most hits on this blog was the one about freelancer advice. I don't know if you're a gamer looking to break into this business, or a seasoned pro just looking for more advice. I don't really care, because I'm an attention whore, so I've decided to do it again. Here's more advice for freelance game designers out there.

A couple of days ago, I received a chapter from a freelance writer for my current project. I opened the file and the first thing that jumped out at me was that it was properly formatted. Now, format may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's a big deal to me. Because, one of the things I'm doing, in addition to correcting your grammar and making sure everything you wrote is accurate, is prepping the book for layout. Someone's got to tell the layout guy where the sidebars and tables go, and what the header levels are, and a bunch of other things you've likely never considered. 

When I opened this file from this writer, it was almost perfect. It was obvious someone had told him the what-for when it comes to what line editors want to see in a manuscript. Contrast this to what I routinely get, and I realized that maybe you'd like to learn what to do and what NOT to do to make your editor's life easier. A writer who makes my life easier is more apt to get more work. Now, a caveat: Not all line editors are the same, so check with them beforehand. 

Double-spacing After Punctuation

Back in the day, when people used typewriters you had to double-space after punctuation. This is because it was a primitive machine that evenly spaced all the letters. So to denote the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, you put two spaces after the punctuation mark. It was another way, besides capitalizing the first word in a sentence, to say "here's the start of a new sentence." It also made it easier on the eyes. When I learned how to type in high school, the teacher drilled this practice into our heads. 

But now we live in the 21st Century. We may not have flying cars or food pills, but we've got word processing software. Modern word processing programs automatically insert a little space after the punctuation mark (in addition to not giving equal space to each letter); we no longer have to double-space. What once made blocks of text easier to read now actually makes it harder. So I don't know why I'm still opening up files and seeing double spaces after punctuation marks. We haven't used typewriters in, like, 25 years. You don't say "KLondike 5-1212" when giving out your phone number, do you? The odd thing is, I'm getting it from people too young to have actually used a typewriter...

Do you know what I have to do to every file I open? I globally search-and-replace for "[period] [space][space]". Then I have to do it for question marks and exclamation points, just to be sure. And I have to do it for every file, even if I don't see it when I open the file, just to be sure, because people are still doing this. Don't double-space after punctuation. 

Tables

I hate tables. I hate them because Quark hates them (Quark is a layout program), which means the layout guy hates them. I know it's a nifty functionality of word processing programs to neatly organize tables. But it's a pain in the tuchas for the editor, because he has to select the table, select "convert table to text" and set "tab delimited." I have to do this for every table you put in your manuscript. It's time consuming, especially for rule-heavy sections. 

Why not do this for your editor. It's simple. All you have to do is stop trying to make your table look like it does in the book, and delimit your tables using tabs yourself. It should look like this:

[[BEGIN TABLE]]

Annoying the Editor Effect Table

% Roll [tab] Effect

01-05 [tab] Editor fumes

06-10 [tab] Editor gets mad

11-15 [tab] Editor gets really mad

(and so on)

[[END TABLE]]

Notice a few other things about the table. It's got a title, "Annoying the Editor Effect Table." This helps the editor know what the freaking table is about. Notice there's only one tab space between the numbers and the effects. Yes, I know that when you type it, this means the table doesn't look all neat and column-y. That's okay. Moreover, this doesn't change for tables with three or four columns. Separate each entry with a single tab space:

[[BEGIN TABLE]]

Annoying the Editor Effect Table

% Roll [tab] Effect [tab] Consequences

01-05 [tab] Editor fumes [tab] Gets coffee

06-10 [tab] Editor gets mad [tab] Grabs a smoke

11-15 [tab] Editor gets really mad [tab] considers killing you

[[END TABLE]]

One other thing. Notice how I signpost that it's a table by putting a [[BEGIN TABLE]] and [[END TABLE]] at the beginning and end? My most favorite freelancer in the whole world automatically did this without having to be told. Which is why he's now my favorite freelancer in the whole world. This tells me, and the layout guy, what is table and what is not table. 

Sidebars

Some of you out there throw out sidebars like a Pez dispenser. First of all, if you can, try to put this material into the body of your manuscript. The more sidebars you put in, the more boxes have to be accounted for in the layout. I once had a situation where the layout guy came to me and said there were more boxes on the page than space for them. Sidebar boxes get treated like a piece of art, and the text gets flowed around it. This means your sidebar is taking the place of art. It also means that space has to be found for your sidebar on the page. Believe it or not, one of the things game companies do is define the words per page before writing even gets started. LUG's Star Trek was pegged at 600 words per page, for example. Each sidebar brings this count down, because it's treated as "art" not "text." Lastly, sidebars piss off the layout guy because he has to create a little box, then flow text in it, then place the little box on the overall page. It makes more work for him. Sometimes, this messes up his carefully designed layout, which really pisses him off. 

You know what else happens? For every one of your sidebars, and tables for that matter, I have to cut it from the body text, give it a label ([[SIDEBAR 2.1]]), then insert that label into the text to tell the layout guy where the box should go. So the layout guy gets two files for every chapter, one is the body text, the other is just the sidebars and tables. Quark just flows text; it can't tell what is sidebar and what isn't. If I leave the boxed material in the body text, it gets flowed into the body text, which is why I have to pull it out into a separate file. Needless to say, I love this like I love hitting my little toe with a hammer. 

Also, if you have to include a sidebar, signpost it with [[BEGIN SIDEBAR]] and [[END SIDEBAR]], so your editor knows what's supposed to be in the little box, and what is, in fact, body text. 

Paragraph Marks

When I open up a file, I've got Word set to automatically show me the paragraph marks, tab marks and spaces. That's just second nature (and how I know you've used double-spacing after punctuation). One of the things that ticks me off is the double hard return to separate paragraphs. This is something else Quark does not like, I'm told. Really, when you think about it, a lot of what I do is to satisfy this infernal program; it's like dating a high-maintenence girl. 

Here's what you do. Go to Format on the menu bar. Select "paragraph." There's a section that says "spacing." Set this to 12 pt. After. Every time you hit the return key, it automatically inserts 12 pts. of space between paragraphs. Then, I don't have to "select all" and globally search for [[paragraph mark]][[paragraph mark]] and replace with [[paragraph mark]]. Then, go to Format on the menu bar...

Formatting in General

Please, set your margins to 1 inch all around. Set your point size to a nice, even number, like 12. (Believe it or not, reading 9 pt. type is a pain. Ditto 11 pt. type). Single space; I keep getting files where the writer's messed with the spacing between lines somehow; I've got to tear all that formatting stuff out, because it messes with Quark (or could mess with Quark). Then, I and the layout guy have to figure out why Quark is doing what it's doing...

Lastly, I know you may think Optima or Arial are the greatest fonts in the whole wide world, but a font without a serif (sans serif) is harder to read than a font with a serif (like New Times Roman or Courier). Don't use color to set off text. 

Headings

This is not the same as headers (as in headers and footers). I'm talking about the heading levels in the text. Ours is a curious profession, where you have to keep track of the heading levels. If you look at any game product, there's a big heading, then headings of various sizes underneath, to signpost to the reader that material is related and thus falls under a larger heading. It looks like this in a published book:

The Land of Angry Editors

Who are the Editors?

What Makes Them Angry?

Nature, Really

Passive Voice

Looking at that, you can tell the relationship between the subjects. The problem is that, while this is what you see in a finished game product, which is often laid out in two columns, this is not what your editor sees. It might be four pages between a level 1 heading and the next heading. Is the next heading related to the first one? Does it fall under the previous heading, or are we introducing a new section? 

You try to be helpful and do what I did above, and what you see in games: You use point size, font type, bolding and italics to try to signpost a heading's level. Too bad I'm not going to see that in your manuscript, because I've "selected all" and changed the font to a serif in a point size I can read. And even if I don't, I still have to scroll between pages to figure out your particular heading system ("Does bold 12pt mean a level 2 heading, or is it level 3?")

Layout guys have the same problem. If I give them a manuscript with the above example, they're going to come back scratching their heads. So they've come up with an elegant solution:

<1>The Land of Angry Editors

<2>Who are the Editors?

<2>What Makes Them Angry?

<3>Nature, Really

<3>Passive Voice

Look at that. You can tell easily what the relationship is between sections just by looking at the number in front of the section's title. I know instantly that "<3>Nature, Really"is related to, and falls under, "<2>What Makes Them Angry?" It tells me we're discussing what makes an editor angry, by type. 

These are pretty much all the things your editor is looking for in an manuscript. Well, that I can think of for now. I'm certain someone will send me a file, I'll open it up, and I'll realize I forgot something. Again, each editor is different, so he might want you to use some other way to signpost tables or label headings, but he'll be happy if you at least make the effort. 

I Did Not Come to Bury Ceasar

Yesterday's blog post about a particular game may have been perceived wrongly. It was not my intention to slag on Pathfinder, but to use it as an example of a more fundamental problem in the table-top games industry. I could have taken TSR to task for inventing the whole "splatbook" phenomenon (The Complete Guide to Syphilitic Halflings? Really TSR?). I could have gone after White Wolf for perfecting this model, because who doesn't need Topeka By Night? Right now, the game of finding paths is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the one with which people are the most familiar. It's not the sole, or greatest, purveyor of a more basic problem -- bloat.

I think some fundamental assumptions have taken root in the hobby games industry. Certainly, some of this is understandable. Game companies exist to make money (believe it or not), and they do this by putting out product. At a certain point, a game line reaches critical mass of information; I generally peg this at around seven products. But I'm not talking about the economic aspect. I'm referring to a philosophy that seems to dominate game design these days.

1) Bad GM Proofing
We've all had this experience. You join a group, or drop in on someone's game, and the Gamemaster is horrible. He doesn't know the rules, or he seems to have read them in a different language from everyone else at the table, or he has his own "homebrew" rules that he wants to use. Worse are the ones who think it's their job to murderate all the characters in the game; even the tavern-keepers whip out Shotguns of Lighting Bolts at the slightest provocation. You get the mumbling ya-yas who present everything in a monotone, or the theater major who wants to act (Acting!) every little scene and forgets about rolling dice.

You are, largely, at the whims of whomever is narrating your game. That's a basic weakness of the shared, interactive experience. You can write the greatest game ever in the history of humanity, and it turns to dreck in the hands of some moron with anger management issues. Game companies know this, because we've all been a victim of it; we played RPGs in basements, too. We hear about your terrible experiences at conventions and in e-mail. I've gotten emotional e-mails from fans telling me about how their GM is running a game I've written and begging me to fire off an "official" letter telling the guy how the rule actually works. (I kid you not.) And my advice was always the same: Find a new GM.

To combat this, we've tried to make our games "Bad GM Proof." More and more rules to handle every situation that could possibly come up. Example after example of game play to illustrate how a particular rule should be applied. New rules to modify old rules when an unforeseen problem crops up. Here's the thing though: You cannot "Bad GM Proof" a game. Can't be done. You can never regulate bad behavior in this way; a bad GM is always going to be a bad GM unless you actually go to his house and run the game for him.

2) There's a Right Way to Play
This is the converse impulse of trying to make a game unbreakable, I believe. There is a right way to play a game and a wrong way to play a game, and by God you're going to play it the way the designer intended. If you're playing Call of Cthulhu as a group of super-agents armed to the teeth with machine guns, you're not playing it right. If you want to use the rules for All Flesh Must Be Eaten to tell your touching story about love and redemption, then you're not playing it right. Admittedly, I hear this more from game players than game creators. I think most of us are just happy you're buying our products. We don't care how you use them, as long as you're using them.

I think this crops up in design thinking as a way to support established play. We have an idea of how the game should work, and we write more and more stuff to support that vision. This is the origin of the "splatbook." Dungeons & Dragons was a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff. TSR put out books to support that trope -- The Complete Book of How Dwarves Kill Things and Take Their Stuff, The Complete Book of How Elves Kill Things and Take their Stuff, and so on. We continue to find ways to refine and expand on the original game play experience.

The idea, particularly with AD&D 3E, was that everyone should have a shared experience. A group in Belfast and a group in Topeka should be able to play through a module and have similar experiences. They tried to emulate what had happened in the early 80s; take any of us from those days and ask us about Tomb of Horrors, and we've all played it. We wax nostalgic about that trap that vaporized the dwarf, or the one that killed the halfling. That shared experience, however, didn't come from playing the game the "right" way or even "the same way." In fact, I submit this shared experience was easier to achieve because the rules were less comprehensive. Simpler is better.

(And really, Pathfinder does this (cultivating a shared experience) really well with their adventure path series. In fact, I think you could play a great game with just their boxed set and the adventure path material; you don't need that 600-page behemoth of a rulesbook. Which makes me wonder why they even bother with it... )

At a point, you reach a point of diminishing returns; there literally becomes no way to continue to expand on the original game experience. Once TSR put out the Complete Book of Gnomes, they should have turned out the lights and moved on to something else. The game becomes too bloated, which makes it hard for newcomers to get into.

3) More is More
I blame Harn. Harn was the first real "expansive" game setting. That thing was breathtaking in its scope. It was like reading a travel guide for a place that didn't exist. I know it opened my eyes to the possibilities of world building and redefined what a setting looks like. The next setting I remember capturing my imagination was Talislanta; that setting had a book for each region, and each was a joy to read. I could go on -- Arduin, Jorune, Forgotten Realms... I haven't even gotten into the big daddy of them all: Empire of the Petal Throne. At a certain point, for me as a designer, if it wasn't as detailed as Harn, it just wasn't a setting.

You all learned that lesson, too. That's why you demand the kind of detail I railed against yesterday. The more detail a setting has, the better is must be. I get the impulse, because I have it, too. The question becomes, then, how much detail is enough, and is the information actually useful in game play? I think that point is different for different kinds of game players. Some people want tons of information about the setting, while others really don't need that much at all.

As I get older, as a game designer, I've come to appreciate the converse: Less is more. It's a Zen thing. What makes the cup useful? The empty space in the middle. What makes the Zen painting profound? The white space surrounding the subject. By not covering every little detail, you give the reader permission to fill in the blanks. You let him or her make their own connections. In short, you encourage them to use their imaginations.

When I look back on those early, awesome settings, there was actually a lot of stuff they left out. I had no idea why the Yittek delved into tombs in Talislanta, I just knew they did, so I created all these connections in my head to answer the question. If you look at Empire of the Petal Throne, there was a lot of "white space" between the elements MAR Barker included. I'd much rather a game setting that leaves things unspoken and unconnected over one that tells me all about the sociological effects of cotton exports to the elves.

As I begin to design games again, I find myself coming back to this question: How much detail is enough, is it useful to the game, and am I leaving enough room for the end user to create?

Freelancer Advice

I've been reading a lot of work lately, and I see we're still making the same mistakes we made ten years ago. By "we" I mean writers. I'm guilty of a lot of these things, too, because in the heat of the deadline it's better to just get words on paper. Generally, I try to sit on a draft for a few days after it's done and give it an editing pass. I'm often horrified by what I read. Did I really think that was a good sentence? That paragraph isn't really a paragraph at all, but a collection of unrelated sentences....

In an effort to help people out, I'm going to talk a bit about these common mistakes.

Will: I totally get that the module is going to be played sometime in the future. This can often mess with a writer's mind. He ends up writing stuff like "the orcs will attack at dawn" and "the PCs will find a magic dagger." After all, it's not happening now; he's technically describing something that will happen in the future. The only problem is, this is horrible writing. You can totally drop the "will" from those sentences and they stand up fine. Moreover, they're more readable. "The orcs attack at dawn" and "the PCs find a magic dagger." Try to write in what is known as the "ever present now." The action is happening now, in your head. Write it that way. Because if I have to read another sentence about how the PCs will enter a room and will be attacked by orcs, and will find a rod of wonder, then I WILL kill someone.

To Be: I think there's a perfectly good reason the guy who invented the Klingon language purposely omitted the verb "to be." It's the single most boring verb in the language. Certainly, there are times when something just exists. "I am at the store." "He is angry." But because the verb is so broad, it can be easily applied. Why bother to find a more exciting verb? Because "to be" is boring. I can't tell you the number of times I read a sentence like "he is tall" or "he is sitting at the bar." Really? That's the best verb you can come up with? How about "he towers over the rest of the crowd"? Gee, that's pretty freaking tall. How about "he sits at the bar" or "he lounges at the bar" or "he hunches over the bar"? Not only are those more interesting to read, notice the subtle difference in tone -- he's either lounging (relaxed) or hunched (tense). The only time you should use "to be" is when no other verb works.

Very: I hate this word with a passion. How very is very? It's meant to convey a sense of degree or effect. It's very hot outside today. The tree is very tall. She's very mad. What they hell do those sentences even mean? How hot is "very hot?" How tall is "very tall?" How mad is "very mad?" Really, when you think about it, not much. The English language has millions of words, most of them defining precise degrees and effects; all of them are better than "very." It's sweltering outside today. The tree soars above the forest floor. Is your girlfriend angry you forgot to take out the trash, or is she furious that you hit on her sister? That makes a difference, which cannot be conveyed by the word "very." It also makes the sentence more informative and more interesting to read. Seriously, if I have to read about how the orcs are very angry about their stuff being stolen one more time, I will be very angry. Or rather, I'll be enraged to the point of finding a penguin and beating a kitten with it.

Passive Voice: If you don't know what this is, turn in your writer card. Let's try this on for size: The gnolls are angry that their totem was stolen by the PCs. That sentence just lays there. It does nothing for you. The way to fix this is to find out who acts and the action they take, and flipping the sentence structure around. It's actually an easy fix. "When the PCs stole their totem, the gnolls became enraged." Who stole the totem? The PCs. Passive voice is like going to a party where no one can eat, drink or dance. Yeah, you're at a party, but nothing really happens.

With a little bit of time and effort on our part, we can create some vibrant, exciting work. Moreover, we make the line editor's job easier. Take my advice, and write well.

What the What?

For those of you not in the know, I've spent the last six weeks busily developing my first game product in ten years. It's amazing, actually, how quickly I fell back into the routine. It's almost as amazing as how fast I started slamming my head into the keyboard. I couldn't believe what I was reading, and the answers I was getting back from writers when I asked the question "what the what?"

Now, I don't want to name names and out the game system for which I'm developing, though it has something to do with finding paths. One of the first things I received was a packet of material that had already been written before I even signed on as line editor. I read all this stuff about economics and history and politics. It was a completely realized fantasy setting rooted in reality. Let me break that last sentence down for you: It was a fantasy world struggling mightily to be grounded in reality. Does that not strike you as fundamentally wrong somehow?

Let's put it a different way. When you watched Lord of the Rings, did you ask yourself "how did Sauron build that giant tower thing?" or "Geez, how does he feed everyone in that thing?" Of course not. You just accepted that Sauron has a giant tower that should topple over since it doesn't have any steel girders in there holding it up. Okay, movies are a visual medium, and while you're enjoying the movie you're not really evaluating it critically (that's why you go see it with friends, so you can tear it apart after the movie). While you were reading the novels, you totally asked yourself how Rivendell traded with the local communities surrounding it, right? Of course you didn't. Because you don't really care about that stuff.

As I'm reading this material, I kept waiting to get to the game. So I called up a few of the writers and asked them "is this really what the market wants?" I was told, in no uncertain terms, that fans of this particular game expect an insane amount of detail. One of these writers was kind enough to forward me some of the products for this game. Needless to say, I was floored.

I was reading monster descriptions that detailed their societies and mating habits. Yes, you read that right. Someone thought it was vital to know how the monster screws. This is critical information? And we're not talking just a few lines about how it lays its eggs in offal or something; I mean it talks all about mating rituals and mating seasons and how the monster likes it if you bring it flowers first. I can't imagine an adventure where this is somehow important. Let's just get this out of the way: If you interrupt a monster while it's getting its freak on, it's gonna be mad. And most creatures are highly protective of their young. Back in the day, all I needed to know was how to kill the monster, how it was going to try to kill me, and what stuff I could steal from it after I was done murderizing it.

Similarly, I read encounters with an insane amount of useless detail. I realize that a large portion of the game involves moving miniatures around a board, and that knowing where the tables and chairs are could be tactically important. But do I need to know the light source for every room? I need to know the bar is ten feet into the room, and five feet from the back door? It's like the writer had a specific image in his head about the tactical situation, and dammit, you were going to play it his way. Once again, back in the day, we had room descriptions, too. But if someone needed to know how the room was lit, and the module didn't tell me -- guess what? -- I made it up. Most of the information I was reading would actually never come up in normal play. If they didn't mention how the room was lit and how many tankards were on the bar, no one would miss it.

So, what's going on? Three things. First, writers get paid by the word. The more words they write, the more money they get paid. Once upon a time, a writer sent in an insane amount of verbiage, and it got published. Then, other writers sent in huge documents, and they got published, too. Soon, writers and readers came to expect an insane amount of detail because that's what they were seeing in the finished product. This triggers the second reason: Developers can be lazy. I'm guilty of it, too. Someone sends me 5,000 words, and if I cut out 2,000 of them as really useless then I have a smaller product; I have to work harder fill that hole; and I have a deadline to meet. It's more expedient to just print the 5,000 words about tentamort screwing and be done with it.

The third reason for insane amounts of needless detail: The market has come to expect it. Some people have come to read games as a form of entertainment; they don't really intend to play the game (well, maybe some day), they just want to read it. If you can't explain how the economics between Rivendell and Bree work, then your game must suck. Now, on a certain level, I'll agree with that. But then tie it to actual game play. Stick in an adventure hook or three. Write a mini-quest involving Rivendell/Bree trade. I call this making the product "chunky." Don't tell me in boring detail about economics, history, and sociology; I don't want to read a textbook about a fantasy world. I want to play a game.

If you like highly realized game settings and complicated tactics, hey that's great. I can churn that stuff out like no one's business. As I've eased myself back into the business, however, I'm just stunned at the crazy amount of detail people have come to expect.