One of the interesting things about gaming is the idea that their settings can be turned into some awesome pieces of fictional work. A lot of my own fiction started in gaming (or “licensed settings”) because at the time it was a lower risk for the publishers to use unknown writers. That certainly isn’t the case anymore, as big name authors are writing some interesting settings. This accomplishes two things, really, in the publisher’s mind. One, a more well-known setting allows publishers to potentially sell books to a built-in fan base and two, the publisher could sell more books to the author’s fan base.
Game fiction, however, has some pretty interesting aspects that you may or may not have considered before. On Flames Rising, I wrote a blog post about this phenomenon entitled, “Game Fiction: Why it Works (And Why it Doesn’t).” Here’s a brief snippet from that blog post about game fiction writing:
The reason why this (how to write gaming fiction) can be a challenge for a lot of writers is that fiction – good fiction – tells a story. Gaming fiction doesn’t always accomplish this because it’s written for a different purpose, and often by the same writers who write the game. Sometimes, this can be a real detriment to the game simply because not all game writers can write fiction. Even the publishers sometimes make it harder to write because they’ll say things like: “Hey, I want you to use this ritual and describe what it does!” or “Can you create a character with this level of experience?”
The minute you dictate mechanical elements into a piece of game fiction it adds a layer of complexity that isn’t always successful. Writing RPGs or any other type of game takes a mixture of technical and research writing skills. In many ways, it’s always a good idea to write the flavor text last, because even if you’re the same writer who’s working on the game mechanics portion as the game fiction, there’s a definite shift in thinking that needs to occur in your mind.
As more and more video games are going the route of gaming fiction, the points I covered are fairly important to keep in mind. Mechanical elements to creative writing can bog it down and create unnecessary noise to cloud the true goal of what any piece of fiction should do — tell a story.
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