Latest / The Daily Writer / Writing for Feature Films & Video Games | Tim Carter

Transcript

Writing for Feature Films & Video Games | Tim Carter · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author and ghost writer, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me for this episode of our special Summer Expert series.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've never done a poll on this, but I would venture to say that most of my listeners have books, blog posts, social media, and newsletters as their main writing outlets, and that probably includes you as well.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely includes me.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I write a lot of client books, I have some of my own books out there, several books on the way over the next eight or nine months.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I do a blog, I do social media, all those things, and chances are pretty high that you probably do those as well.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But as I'm sure that you know, there is a whole wide world of opportunity out there for writers.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I'm really excited today to bring you this conversation with Tim Carter.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's not only a novelist, but he's also done extensive writing for feature films, video games, and other mediums.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Tim always wanted to tell stories since he was a kid.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: After years in corporate writing and magazines, he jumped into film and TV in 2004, selling his first television pilot to CBS.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: He produced the groundbreaking digital series Mortal Kombat Legacy for Warner Bros., and later wrote and produced the Dead Rising movies for Legendary Pictures and Sony.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: As a lifelong gamer, he started writing for Computer Gaming World in 1991, and soon after breaking into film, he began to do double-duty writing games.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: To date, he has written or consulted for more than a dozen games of all sizes.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: He is best known for writing the award-winning AAA game Sleeping Dogs.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tim is also the author of Major Domo, a novella, as well as the novel Jester, which was released this past spring.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a really, really fun conversation where I got to ask Tim all of my nerdy questions about what it's like to write for films and games, how to get started in that career direction, how stories are developed for those mediums, and a lot more.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're really going to have fun with this conversation if you are a movie nerd like me, or if you enjoy video games and TV shows and all kinds of things in that realm.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you're not a total film nerd like I am, and like many other people are, that's okay because you're going to come away with a lot of lessons on creativity, writing, resilience, and most of all putting together the kind of career that you want to have, doing the kind of writing that you love.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So hope that you enjoy this conversation.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into that, I want to encourage you to check out Tim's books and projects at his website, which is TimBarter.com.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, here's our conversation.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, it's good to have you here on the show.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is your first appearance on the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh good to chat with you.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks very much.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a real pleasure to be here.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I mentioned before, a couple of minutes before I hit record, is I haven't really had a lot of people here on the show who've talked about writing for things like video games and movies and those kinds of things.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Primarily, most of my guests have been people who write books.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of my bread and butter, as it is for a lot of writers.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, as you know, better than almost anybody else, there are a lot of other opportunities for writers other than doing things like ghostwriting or writing your own books or building an author platform.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited to dive into some of these things today, but maybe let's start here.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a sense of where you got your start as a writer.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know it was in it was in an industry that had nothing to do with video games.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm really interested in that part of your story because a lot of writers just wonder how do I get started?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do I jump into the deep end with all the fun stuff?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that's not really where you got your start.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think that's right.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that's a great question.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: It, you know, I think everyone's journey is so different that um sometimes it's you know, it's worth thinking about well, what parts of this will translate over?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I am sufficiently old that I started in print magazines, um, which is probably, you know, doesn't even exist for a new writer starting out today.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, I always wanted to be a writer.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: I loved stories, I loved fiction.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as a grade six kid, I was trying to talk my social study teacher into letting me write a novel about Greek myths instead of the two paragraphs that were, you know, what was the required assignment.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I, in university, I did a little bit of freelance writing, ironically enough, for a magazine called Computer Gaming World, which at the time in the 1990s, you know, the it was a 200-page color, glossy, big, you know, almost phone book of a magazine that was sort of the industry leader at the time.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that was what one did.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: That if you wanted to get going, freelance writing, you know, cold calling editors and and saying, I'd like to write about this, or how about that, you know, I have an idea.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: That was the way that one started.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so I wrote for them for a long time.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: But when I graduated, I I sort of evolved into writing both for newspapers and other print journalism, and then becoming a magazine editor.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, so uh at that point I was sort of managing editors and steering the writing process rather than doing a lot of writing myself.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, that was my my first way in, and of course, over the years, um, like print journalism and and in particular, sort of print magazines with long, sort of um detailed write-ups mostly went the way of the dodo.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, right, right.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so from there, I think you know that was a really good gig.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was a it was a much more corporate gig, but it was it was uh a wonderful job, and the people I worked with were were lovely and that the topics were really interesting.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and when it ended, when the the people who were bankrolling that magazine, you know, sort of wrapped it up, uh, I was at a sort of point in my life where I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have a mortgage, I didn't have kids.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I thought, well, I I really want to be a creative writer.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: And this is sort of my best opportunity before getting another, you know, sort of corporate job and going back into that world, which was a really nice, reliable job, but it wasn't satisfying creatively.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I made the jump to to screenwriting with almost no knowledge of what was involved in that from a business point of view or or how one succeeded.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: I just uh it was the romance of it, I think, as much as anything.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and because it seemed like a viable way to tell stories and and perhaps make a living.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that launched me into film and television, which was sort of the next big chapter.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you actually make that leap on a practical level?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you do you have to know somebody who is in the film or or TV industry or that kind of a thing?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how do you actually get your foot in the door with that kind of career?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's it's really different today than it was when you got started, but I'm curious how you actually made that transition on a practical level.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so it would really help if you knew someone.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so and I did not.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if someone, anyone who's listening to this who wants to make that transition, um, regardless of how old you are or where you are in your career, I would strongly encourage them to uh listen to podcasts like yours, because when I did it in you know 2004 or so, there was no information out there really to guide you.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's a tremendous amount now.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the the information that's out there from industry professionals who are actually you know working in screenwriting, working in television, uh is really good.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're these are really knowledgeable people with with really solid advice.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: But in my case, I was living in Vancouver, which has a lot of film production, but not a lot of the writing of film.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's more the physical production of it.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: So if you wanted to, if you wanted to get on set and work in a film, um, this would be a great place to be because you could intern or mentor, you maybe get a very junior position in the union, and then slowly work your way up.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: And there were lots of films to and and TV shows to to sort of go and cut your teeth on.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: But as a writer, there was very little, and most of what was created out of Vancouver was was sort of low budget horror at the time.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: This is still the era of a lot of DVD sales and blockbuster being the dominant sort of force.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was a tremendous market for lower budget sort of genre, um, movies that maybe never made into theaters, but but were being made by the hundreds, and many of them were made here.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was the those were the doors that were open to me.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started, you know, I I literally contacted someone who I knew through, you know, sort of a friend of a friend of a friend that said, Can I volunteer in your office for free in order to learn how it all works?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and he was making low budget horror movies.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then from there, I, you know, it was a sort of a process of of writing things that weren't very good and and sort of trying to improve and soaking up how things were made and what the process was.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that eventually led me to create my own company, uh, to bring in a partner who was a longtime friend of mine who had a real, had a really strong business sense, uh, which was, you know, I wanted to be the creative guy and he was going to be the business guy.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: All of this was to say we we sort of jointly decided we need to make our own movies rather than try to get hired by someone else to do it.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I didn't think that that was that that didn't, especially in Vancouver, didn't seem to be a very uh very good way to go.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually moved to Los Angeles and sort of packed up and did the the kind of classic writer's dream thing when knowing literally nobody um and and just went to see if I could make my way, or we, as uh at that time it was a two-man company, we could we could sort of find our way by hook or by crook.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that was that was um what year was that in 2004 that you moved to LA?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: I moved to LA in February of 2004, yeah.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do you go from going to LA?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really know anybody, you have a partner, um, perhaps, but then you go on to you know produce several movies, uh like these full-fledged productions, which you know, I've never been on a movie set, but I've watched hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes stuff on DVDs.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of a movie nerd and all that, and it looks like it's something that's a very complicated, time-consuming, and expensive thing to do.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you go from being a writer in LA who doesn't know anybody to then you know, being in charge of movie productions, that seems like a massive leap and taking on a lot of a lot of things that probably were new to you at that period in your life?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's absolutely right.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it is a blend of, and and this is where, if you know, for people listening, this may not be the most sensible way of doing it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was just the path that was open to me.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just what what you did and what was open at the time.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: It so as a writer, what I did was go to LA, try to meet some people, uh basically by cold calling them, and met one guy who at the time was, I think he was buying movies for Columbia Pictures, but he was just basically a really nice guy.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: And through he said, I met him at the Toronto Film Festival, but he said when you come to LA, his first piece of advice was you have to come to LA.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: At that time, okay, all of the decisions, all of the creative was being done in Los Angeles with Zoom and post-COVID.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's not as true as it used to be.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: But back then it was really the only way to do things.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so when you come look me up, so uh we went, I looked him up.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he had one guy that he knew as a friend of his who had just started as a manager, which is, you know, there were managers and agents there, the sort of primary gatekeepers in in Hollywood.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's how you're gonna get introduced to people and and get into the system.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And just by pure dumb luck, this guy, uh his name is John Orlando.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: I believe he teaches at USC now.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, at the time he had just started as a manager at a really prestigious but boutique y uh management company, which is like no strategy on our part, but that's where you want to go at the beginning.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: You want to be in a small place where people will know you, uh, but that still has the cachet to actually get things done if they believe in a project.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and because he was brand new, he was looking for clients, which is again absolutely one in a million fluke.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: We met with him, their business model was smart genre.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly the kind of content we were creating.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so um uh again, by sheer dumb luck, I suddenly had a level representation uh in Los Angeles, and that got uh they said, look, give us one TV project and one film project, and they sold both of them.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so we thought foolishly that we had arrived.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this Hollywood thing is easy, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: We've been there about four months and you know, we had two deals, neither of those shows got made.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the total amount that I made off them was maybe ten thousand dollars over the course of about two years.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: So wow, remotely close to you know to uh being able to make a living.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it started us on the excuse me, on the inside of the process.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then the the next big step for us was after many failed attempts at getting projects off the ground, like you go, you pitch something, the studio you pitch really likes it, or maybe they have something that they pitched you.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, we just optioned a book.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, you know, we're looking for a writer to write it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or we're making a sequel.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I worked for a long time on the sequel to Hollow Man, I think it was Hollow Man Three or Hollow Man Four.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, interesting.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they made one movie, they're well down the down the path of of making sequels.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and none of these things got made.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, you know, it was a barely keeping your head above water kind of scenario.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then the two things that this is the very short answer to your question.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: We decided at some point we had to make something that that having things sold works up to a point, but at some point you have to have something made.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: And we knew a guy, again, through friends of friends, who uh owned a winery in Northern California and was really interested in in having a movie that that portrayed his winery in a positive light, and that maybe that, along with some other financing that we could access, would be enough to make a very small indie movie.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, they sort of said, look, if you can be here in three months, you can have the free run of the place until the harvest starts, at which point you have to get out.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we made a very small romantic comedy, uh, uh, not having us the clue what we were doing.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but fortunately hiring some good people to run the set so that the mechanics of it were um were handled properly and uh and you know, learning on the job.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was writing that movie as we were filming it, you know, which is absolutely not the way to write a movie.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it sounds stressful.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, it was.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it was also it was also a ton of fun and it was sort of glorious in its, you know, I mean, I think a lot of creative projects kind of come together in the crucible of of half not knowing what you're doing and half working with people who do, and you know, and and kind of you know, muddling through as you go.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that movie, you know, it it it wasn't my big fat Greek wedding or something like that that absolutely explodes on the marketplace, but it did really well.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: It we had no trouble getting a sales um company for it, which was um at first Lionsgate and then uh Stars, uh, just because of the there was a series of mergers that happened, and we sort of went along with them.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, a very reputable company and it immediately made its money back, and it was being seen in a lot of places, and that that sort of validated us.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and simultaneously with that, I had been working on the side because because I wasn't making enough money in the film industry to sustain myself in the video game industry, and that uh gave me a unique, uh, again, complete fluke, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: There's no there's no big business strategy to this, but I ended up suddenly being uh a produced uh screenwriter who was also a film producer who knew how to work on really, really small budgets by Hollywood standards, who had a foot in the video game industry and spoke the language of that tribe.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that was the I might have been the only person who had that combination of skills at the time.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I went to the there's a film and TV conference in Banff every year that is very big for Canadians.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's moderately big for the rest of the world, but for Canadians, it's the place to go.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I went, and again, I just co-called everyone on the on the speakers list who looked like they might be interesting to me.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: And most of those meetings went nowhere, and half those people never got back to me.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: But one person who did was a woman from Warner Brothers.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and when we sat down together, she said, Well, who are you?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of gave her, you know, my spiel about low-budget indie productions with a uh side hustle and video games.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: And she looked at me for about five seconds and said, Okay, the minute we're back in Los Angeles, you're coming to my office because I have a job for you.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they wanted to make uh a digital series adaptation of Mortal Kombat, which is obviously a massive franchise, um, but they had a very small budget on it.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: So they needed someone who spoke gaming because they also were having to um deal with Warner Interactive, which were the sort of controllers of the game, and the film people and the game people didn't play nicely together.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so they needed someone who spoke the language of the other tribe and uh uh and who knew how to make a show on a really small budget.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so, again, you can't plan that thing in advance, it's just a complete dumblock and a willingness to cold call everyone and take every meaning you possibly can.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but that led me to produce that for Warner Brothers, and it was a huge success.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then that in turn opened a ton of doors.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is what is involved in a practical level in in production on something?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does that mean when you are the and I know it can mean a lot of different things, but but basically when you are like a movie producer or you are a producer on a TV show, what what kinds of things does that entail on a day-to-day basis?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: One important thing to understand is that the word producer or the job description producer means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: So just to pick two on a film, uh the producer might be a guy sitting in an office in Los Angeles who's putting together the package, getting the A-level actors matched with an A-level director and a really good writer, and then talking to the studio and convincing them to put a hundred million bucks up to make the movie.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's a producer.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that kind of similar to the role that an acquisitions editor would play with a publisher?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: So an acquisitions editor, they're the ones basically acquiring the property or the book proposal for the publisher.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that person is matching a ghostwriter if they're using ghostwriter with the with the author.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're sort of bringing the whole thing together and presenting it, they're pitching that to the publisher.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it kind of a similar thing?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I think that that is pretty analogous.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um but then another producer, uh, exact same job title.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: You wouldn't know looking at the credits, these are different jobs, is uh going to set at the beginning.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: So now we've got a project and we've got all these elements to it, and we've got a budget.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: We pack the whole thing to wherever the location is, we open an office, you need to hire a staff of anywhere from two to three hundred people, build the budget, and oversee the physical production of the show day in and day out.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in in my case, I did with my business partner, we jointly did with him really in the lead, the sort of packaging and the dealing with the studio.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we're on set, it was exclusively me.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, that job is very much about budget management, personnel management, dealing with, you know, um, often some sort of challenging personalities, and making the thing happen on a day in and day out basis.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, one of the things I I typically would say is if everything is going smoothly, the job of a producer is incredibly boring because you just sit there watching the train go down the tracks.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: But the minute anything goes wrong, it's your problem.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so whether that's a budget thing or on the day, you know, you I mean, I can remember once walking into a uh a back lot and we walked into the building we were going to use, and the whole thing smelled like mold.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh oh, to the point where you couldn't possibly send a crew in there.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so it's like, okay, well, first of all, what are we gonna do today?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because we thought we were doing that, but now obviously we're not.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: And and second of all, we need to we need to get in experts to fix that.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: So tomorrow, you know, we can go back in there and everyone's gonna feel comfortable.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: It you know, multiply that by a hundred different challenges, and that's what the producer is sort of doing.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really, it's a problem solving role.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is that essentially what it comes down to?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Very much so.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then in TV, uh the important job is actually an executive producer.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, an executive producer in film is primarily someone that has something to do with bringing the money.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but in television, an executive producer Is the key creative force.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: They're typically the lead writer, or they're overseeing all of the writers.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: They probably either came up with the idea for the show themselves, or they were maybe brought in because someone more junior or without the sort of full breadth of experience needs, you know, a more senior person to oversee all aspects of creative, but also all of the aspects of the budget and typically the day-to-day challenges of shooting.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: And where a movie might be anywhere from six weeks on the low end to, you know, I mean, obviously, some of these huge Marvel movies might shoot for a year, but like a typical movie might be five or six months of filming.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: A TV series might be in the old days, like seven or eight months of shooting year in and year out, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so the logistics and the business side of that is enormous and enormously complex.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is it almost like you're starting a town in a sense?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have the you know, the craft, you have uh the offices, you have the trailers, you have all the makeup and the wardrobe and the all the millions of things that that you kind of see on like all these behind-the-scenes features uh of movie things, and it just seems like wow, this seems incredibly complicated.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I think that's completely fair.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And there are shows out there which for whatever reason the either the stars align or uh it's simply big enough that they have an unlimited budget and they can buy their way out of trouble and do whatever they want.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: But okay, I would say almost all productions, you're always limited by a whole set of variables.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the trick to getting quality is is figuring out, you know, for instance, we want to, you know, we either want to afford an additional actor, or maybe the the director wants to go do this particular set of things over here and they're quite expensive for whatever reason.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: We want to shut down a main street in Vancouver, you know, so that we can shoot in in, you know, I want to have a gunfight on a main street that looks like a main street, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: That isn't a backlot.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that might cost you$100,000 a day just to shut a main street down and and do all the things you would need to do to control that environment.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: How are we going to afford that?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we need to make some other decision somewhere in order to free up that money, right?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's both a very nuts and bolts-y sort of job, but then those nuts and bolts directly tie to the creative uh sort of decisions and and what you're able to do creatively because everything, you know, has some sort of resources that it's going to drain.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's balancing out, you know, the the various things available to you.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're good, you know, doing things in the most efficient and flexible way possible so that you know you can, you know, almost manufacture that by doing other things well.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then that frees up money that allows you to do the creative thing that you wanted to do.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to the conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a moment to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: As a writer, you not only want to write great books, but you also want them to look professionally formatted and give your reader a great experience.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why for years, my go-to choice for book formatting software has been Vellum.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Vellum gives you the power to build, style, and preview your book and have more fun than you ever thought possible while doing it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Vellum is the go-to choice for Mac users who care about creating beautiful ebooks and print books and they want to save tons of time in the process.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Best of all, you can download Vellum and play with your book's formatting to your heart's content, and you only have to purchase when you're ready to publish.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do, Vellum can create ebooks and print books for every platform.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: To download Vellum for free, visit trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's trivellum.com slash Kent.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to the conversation.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like going from that kind of environment then to writing for video games that that is that seems like a much calmer transition, maybe and maybe it's not, and I'm curious to dive into this a little bit.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um first of all, how did you get into video games from doing that?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm I'm curious like what led you into that direction?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it does seem like a completely different world.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's right.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so once again, I think a recurring theme here is complete lack of long-term strategic planning, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's all of us, I think.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's true.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, the root of it was being from Vancouver, a a number of my friends and other people that I knew in in creative communities up here were working in video games because in, you know, it it it is a production hub for film and TV, but it's not a creative center for film and TV, but it is a creative center for video games.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: There are huge companies here.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's been the case for 20 or 30 years.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's just a lot of games being built here.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so inevitably, if you have friends that are writers or directors or or uh you know want to be in creative industries, and some percentage of them get pulled into the gaming industry.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's sort of inevitable.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I was in Los Angeles, again, eking out a living, you know, sort of counting my pennies at the end of the month to see if I could afford food kind of thing.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and my friends in Vancouver were, you know, prospering greatly uh and kept sort of saying, you know, why don't you come back and work in video games?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like we have tons of jobs.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: At that time, it was a boom.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: This is in so in 2007-2008, which is when I started to work in video games.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was um, it was a boom time for games, particularly in Vancouver.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then there was a strike in Hollywood, not unlike the strike that just happened about a year ago.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: And everything got shut down.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: I had a TV series that I had pitched to CBS and it had been bought.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: It just got kicked out of the like they just dumped all of the projects that they had across the whole industry for everyone.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't it wasn't anything to do with me personally.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I was really faced with needing a way to make a living.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I just knew people in Vancouver who were constantly sort of saying, look, anytime you want, come up and and work on things.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I came up out of you know, out of sheer desperation and began almost as like a firefighter.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of being a um uh instead of being someone who was like a full-time employee, I was just someone who was available if you had a you know a disaster to come in for a weekend or or a few weeks to help fix it.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I think my very first job was uh there was a uh like a go-kart racing game that had to be rated E for everyone because of the nature of the game.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: And they discovered a week before they were gonna go gold, which is to say, you know, sort of basically lock the production, that um the ratings board had thrown out a whole bunch of their jokes and a whole bunch of their dialogue.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: And there was no way they could get the the old writers back in in such a short period of time.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think the old writers were were quite celebrated comedians in the UK.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um they had written some really, really funny stuff.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the but I just got a phone call saying, look, can you come in here and write jokes that are exactly the same length as the old jokes because you know we everything else is fixed, right?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um you simply can't have the character walk, you know, any further or or talk in a different way.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but they must satisfy the the ratings board, you know.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it was write the joke, hand it to the producer, the producer would send it off to someone.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: We'd you know, we'd work on the next one until we heard back, yeah, that's okay, or no, that's still inappropriate.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, I sort of did that for about a week.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that company was called United Front Games.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: And having helped them with that, I then became someone that they called when they had a problem.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um interesting.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: Until the point where they had a huge game that really needed full-time writing.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I had just finished a film project.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: I then, you know, the strike eventually ended in Hollywood and I went back and continued to work there.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I had just finished a uh a uh a movie, and they're like, Okay, we've got a really big game.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: We need you to uh to now come on board and just write it.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like just come be here for a year, you know, it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I you know, I had a relationship with them, and and uh so it was a natural transition for both of us.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: What does that what is that what does it functionally look like to write for a video game?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think we're all familiar with, and when I say we, I mean listeners and and me, we're all familiar with what a movie script looks like or a TV script or uh a novel or something like that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um how is writing for a video game different than that in terms of what you actually have to construct as far as scenes or characters or plots or storylines or that kind of thing?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: I guess the first thing to say is that there's a much wider range of diversity.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you're right that most movie scripts look exactly like every other movie script.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: There may be some uh, you know, and the formatting is is basically locked because it has important downstream consequences for production.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like everyone needs to know that a page is this amount of filming and that the formatting is is in a particular way.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's really important for a film crew.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh whereas uh video games, there are certain engines like Unreal that are really dominating the market.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so how you're inputting your um dialogue into Unreal is going to define how that dialogue is kind of formatted to some degree.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but uh I think in the the to get to the root of your question, there's such a diversity of storytelling in video games that how you're creating scenes and characters really varies depending on the game.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because you might have a game like say The Last of Us is a great example, and in my opinion, one of the greatest sort of character-driven stories of recent years.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: The scenes and the composition of it is is quite similar to uh film and TV, which is why it made such a great TV adaptation when HBO took it on.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it's very character-driven.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: The the moments are are derived from characters, and so it's it's quite similar to what a TV show might look like.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of other games, as the writer, uh, first of all, you are not like the lead creative person, and the writing is not the thing that's driving creative, that's gameplay.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so that's a completely different department, it's completely different people.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: They have a different set of criteria that they're looking to to make the game engaging and to really hook players.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: Makes sense.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: What writing is doing is coming in in a supporting capacity to try to make that more engaging, also perhaps to explain what's going on.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like sometimes you know, it can be very mechanical, like you need to push button X in order to get effect Y.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: But it can also be okay, why am why is am I as the player doing this?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, writers are gonna come in and and and provide that sort of context, hopefully in a really engaging, maybe it's funny, maybe it's dramatic, it could even be sad, but but whatever the whatever the the sort of goal of the game is, it would be my job to come in and and put that onto the game.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: But the uh the way that I'm gonna do that is going to be very narrowly defined by the game itself.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes you'll come in and say, Look, we are never stopping the game to listen to your writing.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to find places to weave it in, you know, in between um gameplay.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Other games will have a sort of cadence where the game will stop for a cutscene, which is typically anywhere from 15 seconds to maybe at the outside 60 to 70 seconds.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think you start to lose players if it goes on for much longer than that.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: But so you're writing small scenes, but then you're continuing whatever that narrative is into the gameplay.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the characters will keep talking once we've stopped that cutscene and gone back to the game.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very different sort of set of tools that you have to convey whatever it is you're hoping to convey to the audience.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it it's also sort of, you know, another important context is well, how much are we leaning on narrative?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is it simply color and and we're trying to make people laugh once in a while?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Or do they really need to buy into these characters and whatever the mission is that they're doing in order for the game to have meaning to them?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so those are questions you typically sort of discuss with the game team at the beginning.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but the you know, the the job is very different depending on what the context of it is.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: And and I've done everything from you know, driving games where you're just laying in a little bit of talking, but honestly, people are there to drive, right?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: And and what's important is how the car drifts around a corner, not what the drivers are saying, you know, like maybe even one in five players is listening to what the drivers are saying.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, two games that are very heavily narratively based.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the uh the game that I'm probably best known for is called Sleeping Dogs.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's an undercover police thriller set in Hong Kong that was very strongly based on narrative.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the one of the primary attractions of the game was how much players liked the main character, liked the characters around him, even liked a lot of the bad guys.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: People really enjoyed some of the gangsters in that, in that game.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: So it's much more character-focused, and the writing becomes a much bigger part of the game and a bigger part of the game's sort of success or failure.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: It it sounds like a really important principle of this, particularly in games, is that you I guess I would call the term you're writing to the container, as opposed to what a lot of writers think of as creative writing, which is I'm just gonna go out and I'm just gonna create something.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's where a lot of writers, especially if they're writing quote unquote creatively, that's where they get stuck because there's not a container.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the container, you know, there's a container for everything, whether you're writing for sitcoms, for TV, it's a novel, it's a podcast script, it's a poem, it's a chapter on non-you know, today I spent five hours writing a 3,500-word nonfiction chapter over a client book.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the container for that.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it sounds like specifically, specifically in games, that that is even more critical because you're really dealing in these super small chunks, many times of dialogue or story or whatever it is.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: And also because you can't just let your creative wheels go in motion because you have all these other parameters, like, you know, the graphics and and the music and all these other kinds of things.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a fairly accurate way of looking at that?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's yeah an excellent way of of looking at it.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're 100% on.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, I'm so I'm presently still writing for for film and TV, although with less urgency.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I recently published my first sort of self-published fiction.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then congrats, by the way.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, thanks very much.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: My and my main, you know, sort of day job is writing for video games, and they all have vastly different sort of containers and and relationships between the writing and the container.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, whereas in fiction, I can kind of do or say whatever I want.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: The, you know, I think that's what people, when they think of writing, like they're classically thinking of writing a novel, if they're thinking of fictional storytelling.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, you want 25 dragons, you can have 25 dragons, right?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: You've just got to describe them.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, whereas in in video games, like a classic sort of challenge that you might face would be okay, we have a certain very limited number of seconds in order to sort of tell the core narrative elements of it.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have maybe let's say three or four different other narrative tools at our disposal with varying levels of sort of both like sort of like meat that we can put on it.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so some you can really put a fair bit of content into, and other ones you like, look, we got two seconds, we can have someone yell something over top of gunfire.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then at you know, for each tool, you also have to think about okay, if someone is running and shooting and ducking, are they really going to hear what you know, like what percentage of my audience is actually hearing what gets said?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Good point.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, you you have to think in terms of both, well, okay, what can I do with these tools?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: But then also, how do I structure a story such that if people miss the bottom end of it, if they if they're not listening at all to the gunfights, uh to the dialogue that's in the gunfights, you know, I need to tell a story where it's still going to make sense.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, for instance, a classic one would be I have a character, he goes into the base, he talks to his boss.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: I've got 100% of the player's attention.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: I can, you know, but I've got a ticking clock on how long I can do that for.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Then when they leave the base, they get in a car or a tank or an automobile of some kind.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: The player's steering, they've got to be like paying attention to their environment, but fundamentally, they've still got quite a lot of mental bandwidth.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I can have people talk in that car and convey a lot of information.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: And they can, you know, we can broaden the story out.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Most people will get most of it.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then at some point, the car is going to slam into a wall and they're going to have to run, and there's going to be things exploding and people shooting at them or whatever it is, aliens are landing.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: And now I'm adding additional context, but it's got to be things that if people didn't get it, it doesn't matter.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: They've still they're still along for the ride.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't given them some key piece of information that's important to their emotional engagement, because frankly, three-quarters of people might not get it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, whereas in if you're writing a book, you, you know, you sort of assume that people are reading along and that, you know, one chapter isn't you're not going to structure a chapter well.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no one's really paying attention to chapter four, but in chapter five, I'm really going to have their attention again.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that's not a those aren't decisions you need to make when you're writing a book, but they're very much what drives video game writing.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like this this idea of writing to the container, and I feel like this should have another term.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Surely there's another term out there that describes this idea.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know what it is, but I feel like this is a really underrated tool of writing.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I use it all the time whenever I'm writing client books.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm if a typical nonfiction book chapter is 3,500 words or so, uh, of course it depends on the book and a lot of other factors.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's sort of the container I'm writing to, and I know I need about five to seven sections within that chapter just to sort of break it up.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have subheads, it's all gonna flow.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is a really great help to me as I write that chapter because I kind of know, well, like today, for example, I had, you know, one section of transcript from a client call that had, let's say, 300 words.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was very short, but I had another section that had like 1,500 words.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you either have to expand or contract things according to where that's going to fit in the thing.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a super handy tool because you kind of know how much do I need to write, what's the gap that I need to fill here, what's the box, etc.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and it sounds like that's an especially helpful thing when it comes to things like gaming or, you know, perhaps scripts or other kinds of things.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, there are I've always felt there are certain rules that are general to all kind of creative writing endeavors, and then there are things that are specific to each medium.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, one that's general is that often the constraints you have to work with can be fuel for your creativity.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, the totally agree.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Where you see people go sideways is when the instead of starting with, okay, what are the constraints or the tools that I have, what sandbox am I playing in?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: They come at it with, well, here's my grand vision, and I'm just going to try to bend the toolbox to suit rarely, if ever, turns out well.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas when you start with, okay, what are the, you know, what what do I have to work with here?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: What are the strengths, what are the weaknesses?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: You often find ideas coming out that wouldn't have come out otherwise.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the constraints are almost dictating to you uh the best way to tell the story.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you just have to sort of embrace that, you know, and and go with it, you know.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: And there's having done an awful lot of games now, there are certain things that appear in games uh from time to time that don't really appear in other forms of storytelling.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: That the minute I see them, I'm like, oh, okay, there's an opportunity, right?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: We can, I can do something with that.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even necessarily know what at the beginning, but wow, you know, and so the uh it really does at times become a like fuel for your for your storytelling, as opposed to, you know, when you say constraints, you immediately think, oh, this is gonna limit me in some way, which of course it is on some level.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: But but that's isn't that all art to some degree?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all art has limits.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a a painter doesn't have a can, I mean, unless you're, you know, uh unless you're painting on physically a massive canvas.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, most paintings take place within a certain size of a canvas and they they constrain their vision to that specific canvas.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: A pop song is not going to be typically eight minutes long on the radio.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are a handful that are, but those kind of prove the prove the rule uh generally.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: So in CIDCOMs do this all the time, you know, there's kind of like the three ac structure or a four ac structure, and they have, you know, 22 and a half minutes or whatever, whatever number of minutes.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: So those constraints do seem like they can really fuel our creative process.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Process because we know what we have to fill and we know where we're going and we don't have to guess.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's right.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think if you start with the idea, well, I want to emotionally engage the audience uh in whatever way it is that I want, I want to scare them, or I want to make them laugh, or I want to make them, you know, care about the dog, right?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, whatever it is, uh matching that with the tools you have available to you is really the first place you ought to start.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: The other, you know, I think again to compare it to fiction, uh I'm I'm working on my second novel now.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it, you know, the blank canvas can be an intimidating place, you know, because you you could kind of go anywhere and and how you solve problems is that's frequently what slows me down, is is not knowing how I'm gonna solve a problem and and having to try various things.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas when you're working, when you're when you're not sort of at the head of the of the sort of creative pyramid, and you have limited resources to work with, it it often you know gives you a roadmap, and that can actually be uh a real blessing.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody listening is they're really intrigued by what you're talking about with games, and they decide that they would maybe like to give this a try or that they have a skill set to do that.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: What kinds of skills would somebody need to get involved in writing for games and how would they take some first steps toward doing that?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: I that's an excellent question.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a couple of things to keep in mind.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the first one is you need to play games, right?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think that it's astounding how many times people will ask me how to get into the industry, and I'll ask, Well, what kind of games you like?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they say, Well, I don't play games, right?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, Oh, okay, well, that's going to be tough, and you're jobing abuse.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to in in the same way that if uh you know, I think most fiction writers like me came up reading a lot of fiction, developing a sense for what they liked and what they thought worked and what didn't, and then someone new will come along and they'll think, oh, that's amazing, and they'll sort of incorporate that in.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's important to play games and think about how the writing is used and executed and what you liked and what you didn't like.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, then I think it's important to write.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't actually matter what.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: There are ways to write sort of what like indie games.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: So there's programs like Twine, which I haven't used, but is very popular, where you can write a sort of a branching narrative game.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think the the tech is all that hard to master.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: So anyone who's starting out could spend a couple of days maybe watching a couple Google videos, figure out how to work Twine, and have a game that they have created that they can share online.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's totally possible.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: But you could also write short stories, you could write plays, you could write short films and make them with your friends.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Just write something, finish it, and somehow get it out in the world, I think is really important because when you're trying to break in, you you're always going to confront that sort of how do you get experience except through getting experience?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the the closest you can get to solving that is to be writing things that are, you know, in the right voice.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you if you want to work in games, you're most likely writing fantasy or genre of some kind, maybe you're ranking science fiction, whatever, you know, whatever speaks to you.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: But but something where if if you're writing short stories, a someone in the gaming industry might be thinking about hiring you could read them and go, ah, yeah, okay, this person is in our zone.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're a member of our tribe, you know.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then there is, unlike film, I think film and TV is really hard to break into.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that gaming is easy, it's that the mechanics are a lot more conventional.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: So there are game developers all over North America and all over the world.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: Many of them hire remotely.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm starting a gig on Wednesday that is the company, the whole company is remote.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: There is no head office.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a pretty big game.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: So uh the chances are that there are gaming jobs that are available to you.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And unlike film and TV, the games industry posts, you know, they post jobs and they actually hire people off of uh of job postings.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and there's a whole hierarchy of of, you know, like a the the highest roles would either be a creative director or a narrative director.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's sort of the most senior kind of writing-related gigs in gaming.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's sort of head writer or the French call it expert writer, uh, and it works all the way down to, you know, somewhere between an intern and a junior writer would be the most entry-level position.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: But you can search for those jobs online, you can find the job listings, and it's perfectly legit to apply for an entry-level position as someone who hasn't written in video games before, but has some published writing and or or some writing out there and is a is a huge fan.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: Those, you know, those jobs get filled with people like that.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh interesting.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it's in that, whereas there are no help-wanted ads for writing in film and TV.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: You need to be in one of the production centers, you need an agent, you you know, like there's a there's a whole other process for getting into that industry that is not as simple as finding a job posting on LinkedIn and sending them a Euresme.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of nice though, that that there's some accessibility there.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: It is, and it's a very, you know, I think that it's and unless someone is listening from say India or maybe Europe, um, all of the sort of English English language film and TV production is centered in Hollywood even today.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, whereas video games are all over the place.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, in Vancouver, like right off the top of my head, without even thinking too hard about it, there's the coalition, which is Microsoft's big studio.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there's Electronic Arts, um, there's uh a number of other, like Humanoid is sort of based in Vancouver, but also based in in Kelowna, which is a city just a bit north of here.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there like Netes has a big studio here.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: There's a number of other ones.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: So there's these are big publishers with big offices where all of the creative people, all the people making decisions, all the people the writer would need to work with are in the in that studio and are local.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and that's true in Canada.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: There are, you know, Edmonton is a production hub, Toronto, Montreal, then there's Indies scattered all over in the United States.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, the obvious places Los Angeles, San Francisco, uh, Seattle has a number of really big studios.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's a number of places opening in Boston and a couple in Chicago, you know, they're so they're they're kind of all over.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh Texas is big as well.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: Austin has quite a few game companies, and then there's a lot of people, in particular for writers.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: Writing is one of the one of the easiest game jobs to do remotely.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's a higher, it's not all, and there's definitely some really great gigs out there where they're sort of insisting that you be in the office because they want you to be integrated into the rest of the team.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: But as a percentage, a much higher percentage of writers are working remotely than just about anything else in video games.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounds like if somebody has a gift for storytelling and they have some published stuff out there and they're interested in this and they love games, that they might have a good shot at just getting started in the gaming industry.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: They certainly have as good a shot as anybody else.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the gaming industry is going through a pretty sort of highly publicized set of contractions at the moment.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's it's a tough time for it in the immediate term.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I think you know, these things come in waves and you know, the number of people playing games and the number of games getting made isn't really shrinking.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so those jobs will, you know, that market will contract and then expand again as they as it sort of processes.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in the meantime, you know, what often happens, uh this this is a slightly optimistic spin, but I don't think it's necessarily untrue, is when there's a contraction, a lot of really good people get laid off.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's that's sort of an unfortunate um consequence of the way the finances work in the industry.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but a decent percentage of those people start up little startup companies, many of which succeed and become part of the, you know, the next wave of the industry.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: And if I was a writer just trying to break in, uh I'd be keeping an eye out for new companies that are starting up, a because they, you know, it let let's say it's three or four big level creatives that they're gonna need junior people.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you can't go to someone like Ubisoft and say, look, I'll work for free on the weekends for a couple months to prove my worth, and then, you know, let's talk about bringing me on or something like that, um, which is a really good way to get into a creative industry, obviously within reason.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if you know, if the little four-man startup company, first of all, you're not going to feel bad, uh, right, kind of contributing to the team because they're not exploiting you, they're just a tiny little four-man startup that maybe doesn't have any financing yet.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but that's a great way in, and and that that is a much easier door to open than you know, first of all, than anything in Hollywood, but but second of all, even just you know, sort of the big institutional publishers, it's it's the the hiring process is is always a bit long and arduous.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh whereas, you know, a little four-man shop that just needs some help is yeah, is much easier to access.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and the, you know, there's always that's always a pretty vibrant part of the industry.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I the the unfortunate side effect of a lot of people being laid off is there's probably a lot more of those companies out there.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Tim, this has been an absolute blast having you on the show.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel like I should have um taken a lot of notes.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna have to go back and re-listen to this again.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I tried to take a lot of notes while I'm interviewing somebody, but but I have so many interesting guests.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you are one of the most fascinating ones that I've ever had on the show just because of what you've done and the variety of your experience.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is really, really fun.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is gonna inspire a lot of our listeners too to maybe consider video games if they love storytelling and they love playing games.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: What a cool opportunity! And I think this is right under people's noses.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds very accessible, but a lot of people haven't considered this as a possible career path for their writing.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for coming on today.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a blast.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you very much for having me.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: I really uh appreciate it.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's very flattering.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'll, I'll, I'll uh so I I greatly appreciate the compliment.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I would strongly encourage people to look into it.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my career has always been a mishmash of things, but since 2007, which is quite a ways now, uh, you know, writing for games has always been a huge part of it.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and frankly, we didn't really go into this, but um one of the most rewarding fields of writing, uh, you know, as I said, I'm just starting in fiction, but um, I, you know, it it all all creative endeavors have both their frustrations and their their rewards, but um the the sort of the amount of pleasure per minute I've gotten out of writing for video games is probably higher than uh film, television, or or pretty much anything.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: What that's worth.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really interesting observation.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how can listeners get in touch with you and find out more about your book and your work and all the cool stuff that you're doing?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a website, it's timbcarter.com, and that is primarily at the moment uh focused on my fiction, but that's as much as anything because I'm the one creating it and and I just haven't got around to um to building it out.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm active on X because I also love politics and I love board games, and and both of those communities are are very active there.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm at TB Cart on Twitter slash X.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and through those, anyone can reach me and and I'm happy to answer questions.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, there's there's a world in which one day my DMs are so full that I won't be able to, but that's absolutely not the case now.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: So but anyone who who wants to should reach out to me there.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on Instagram at at TB Cart, but I am an Instagram rookie.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I wouldn't uh I'm there and I'll notice things, but I'm not very uh present.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't post very much.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and my book is called Major Domo.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: It is a uh humorous fantasy, and you can find it on Amazon.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have a link, link to that in the show notes uh as well as your website and all the other good stuff.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: So Tim, thanks again.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: This has been an absolute pleasure.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: So glad that we've connected and um I'm super excited to see what the future holds for you.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks very much.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was an absolute pleasure to come on and uh you know, reach out anytime.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love to come back.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you again.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining me for another episode of The Profitable Rider.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I appreciate you taking time to listen.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking forward to the next episode, which features the conversation with my friend Phil White Bloom, who is a sales and business coach.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna help us level up our sales game, which is going to be especially helpful for those of us who do client work.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: So don't miss that conversation coming up on the next episode.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Before we go, I want to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you may have written a great book, but it's not ready for publication until it's been in the hands of a great editor.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why my friend Karen Hunsinger, also known as The Word Wizard, is the perfect partner to help you craft the highest quality book possible.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a great editor doesn't just correct grammar and spelling, they also correct wordiness, shifts in tone and voice, overuse of particular words, and they also enhance transitions, clarity, and accuracy.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with Karen many times, and she is your secret weapon for crafting an amazing book.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Visit Karen Hunsinger.com for a free sample edit.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's KarenHunsinger.com for a free sample edit.