Secret Origins

I thought that talking about how I got started working on D&D 3rd Edition, or how I got hired at TSR, would cover it. Still, I get asked how I actually got started in the game industry. If this seems boring to you, I'm sorry. I present this because I figure perhaps someone else interested in getting into the game industry might be able to learn from my mistakes ... or maybe even from something I did right.

Remember my friend Steve from college? Well, Steve went to Origins (the big game convention) while we were in still in school. At the time, we played Rolemaster, a fantasy game by Iron Crown Enterprises. At the con, Steve went to the ICE booth and spoke to the people there. He asked them two important questions: What were they looking for, and did they have any writing requirements or guidelines. They told him they were looking for a monster book and gave him a set of their writer's guidelines.

Now, I owe a lot to Steve, because he brought that information back to me and encouraged me to go for it. So I gave it a shot. Following the guidelines to the letter, I wrote up a proposal for a monster book. I sent them a sample of my writing, and an outline for the product. I mailed it off with a lot of hope and just waited. To my surprise, about a month later, an editor at ICE called me and said that they were interested. He gave me a deadline and of course I said I could do it -- without having a clue if I actually could or not.

So I began writing Creatures and Treasures II, a sourcebook for Rolemaster. I worked like a dog, as I finished that year in school and into the summer. I finished the book (on time!) and turned it over. They accepted it, and I was... well, I was walking on air. When C&T II was done and ICE's editors were through with it (my editor was Kevin Barrett, a friend of mine to this day), I sent ICE a letter proposing more work I could do. More product ideas I had. They liked one of them and told me to go ahead and write it. This time, it was a Rolemaster/Space Master crossover product called Dark Space.

After C&T II came out, but before Dark Space did, I graduated college. Needing a job, I wrote to ICE again and said, "Hey, how about a job?"

They said, "Ah, no thanks."

But, then they said, "But we do have a summer internship position open."

And I said, "I'm there."

So for a summer I did all the stuff that no one else wanted to do at ICE. But I worked hard, got paid practically nothing, and strived to make myself indispensable. It must have worked, because that fall I got an offer to stay on full time.

So that's really pretty much it. No super-secret tricks involved -- just luck, hard work, and meeting deadlines. Doing good work and getting it done on time are probably the two most important things that you can do if you try to break into the industry.

As far as my novels went, well, even though they were published by TSR and Wizards of the Coast, I did what any writer would do. I submitted a writing sample and a story idea to the publisher. I got an opportunity to write a short story for an anthology and jumped on it. I wrote a few of those, and when I showed the book editors there (because they are a totally different portion of the company than the RPG editors, and thus were unfamiliar with my work) that I could do all right and get work in on time, they offered me a chance to do a novel -- well, actually it was a little harder than that. I had to submit a novel proposal into a blind submission process. That means that all names were taken off the submissions and they were judged on their merits alone -- not on whether or not the author had a "big name." I think that sort of process is great, by the way. I'm always in favor of judging a work for its own merits. Anyway, that led to The Glass Prison, my first novel. After that -- way after that, actually -- I got the offer to do another. So if being a novelist is your goal, then the lesson to be learned (I think) is similar to the lesson for those interested in being game designers: Get something written. Get it in front of the eyes of an editor. If given the chance to write, do your best work and get it in on time. Repeat. And repeat again.

I've talked to a lot of other people in the industry and have gleaned that reputation means a lot. Develop a reputation as a solid writer who makes deadlines, even in writing small pieces like magazine articles, and suddenly doors will open for you. Make one big mistake -- like blowing a deadline and wrecking the company's or the magazine's schedule, or turning in one bad manuscript -- and you might not work for them again. (This varies from company to company, but why risk it?)
Lastly, I'm also asked a lot how long it takes to write a game product. Well, let's take a single 32-page product (32 pages is a standard length, because printers work in either eight- or 16-page increments, called signatures). That's about 20 to 25 thousand words in length, and writers usually deal with "word counts" rather than page lengths. (On a side note, gamers should pay attention to word counts rather than page counts, too. Publishers who put less than 20k words in a product are ripping you off.)

Everyone writes at a different rate. There really isn't a standard, although I can tell you that if you can't produce at least 10,000 to 12,000 words in a month, you won't get a freelance job working with Wizards. But whatever. I can only tell you how I work. I write pretty much every day. 365 days a year. I write 1,000 words on a lax day, and maybe 6,000 or 7,000 words on a really busy day. An average day is 2,000 to 3,000 words. That means I can write a 32-page product in about two weeks (that doesn't include conceptual time and playtesting, of course). It's also worthwhile, once you've written something, to let it sit for a time and then come back later, reread, and revise it.

Then, it goes off to an editor. He or she looks it over and might ask you to do a second draft a couple weeks later. Or maybe not. It will take probably one-third to one-half the original time to do the second draft (unless you've got to rewrite the whole thing, but hopefully that won't happen). Then, the editor takes it and works on it for probably as long as you took to write it. Maybe a little less. Then, there are art and maps to be created, layout of the product, and finally printing. That's another two to four months (depending on the company). If it's Wizards, make that four to six months. So it's possible that you'll finish writing something, and it won't come out for six months to even a year after you are all done. You might have even forgotten what you wrote. It's a wacky and sometimes frustrating business that way. And sometimes, the company will change its mind, go out of business, or suddenly become unable to produce the product. Then, what you wrote will never come out. That happens. More than I'd like to think. But now this is starting to sound like a rant, so I'll quit there and go to bed.

See you next week.