Oh wow. My first thought would be Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, but then I realized how nightmarish that could quickly become. Unblinking puppets and random giant men showing up? I think not.

I think I’d have to go with Sesame Street. Plenty of colorful characters, a variety of places to hang out, and everyone’s learning how to read. I think I could live with that.

MF: There is no one way to get into the game industry. There are a few paths that most

people try, but everyone’s situation is unique. Mostly? It’s about perseverance. In my case, it ended up being the last person on phone support for an MMO company, and being given a shot at designing. Then, laid off. Then, going into QA for another company, and getting promoted that way. That promotion managed to put me in a place where I could do mission/quest design, and that coupled with the degree I recently earned in Creative Writing pushed me over the top.

Thankfully, there aren’t a ton of differences between the two. You still have to pay attention to structure, and pacing, and using the right words at the right time. Most of the words involved are going to be dialogue, so… I hope you like writing dialogue. In video games, you really have to show instead of tell. It’s a visual medium, with a lot more in common with television/movie writing than short stories. And when I say “you’re going to be writing a lot of dialogue”, I mean that there’s a good chance that someone’s going to have to say the words you’re writing and you had better get it right the first time. Voice over time isn’t cheap!

Each medium has its strengths and weaknesses, and your writing has to reflect that. Being able to write with experience in other visual mediums can bleed right into your writing. When I sit down and write, I imagine the scene and let it play out in my head, and then write what I see. From there, I can use these visual images and translate them to whatever I’m going to be writing for. Knowing how to write in these different forms are just different tools in the toolbox.

Believe it or not, it was a writing prompt while I was in school! We came up with a dozen words and a character, and then the teacher handed each person’s list to another student. I took what was there and kind of went with what I was feeling.

It’s a very real fear, to me. I got to watch my adopted father and mother both get dementia when I was young, and that had a marked effect on me. I know it’s in my history, and something that’s kept me up every so often. As writers, it’s our job as writers to take our experiences and turn them into stories.

I think it was the subject matter that tripped me up. Stephen King said something to the effect that his writing comes from all of the things that catch in his head, and mine seems to operate the same way. Looking over all the words given, and my brain went right to some rather dark places that I hadn’t thought of in a long time. I ended up slamming the whole thing out in a night, and needing a nice, long walk afterward.

---