1.

Personal Writing Advice

For me writing is one of the most enjoyable, but frustrating and anxiety causing things in my
life. I've published dozens of educational and training books and a ton of articles and tutorials
and scripts over the course of my life, as well as a secret cache of creative writing that usually I
just keep for myself. But when I set out to write for somebody else, whether it's a creative project
or not, I have to find that special place in my mind where I allow myself to move on and actually
be productive. Maybe some of you will resonate along with this feeling, but I really am, my own
worst enemy, and I put myself through a neurotic hell, before even the first words hit my
keyboard. Writing this course alone, I went through dozens of drafts and edits. The entire time, I
chewed myself up on the inside. Writing and communicating your honest ideas to the world, it
can be as daunting and traumatizing as dancing naked in front of a giant audience. It's just not a
pretty thought to think about. You have to find your comfort zone, and you have to allow
yourself the room to be creative, and think beyond the simple mechanics of your game, and get
into the creative guts of why these things happen the way they do. Explore the emotions of the
game and, in doing so, you're going to bring a lot of yourself into it. 

To do that, I want to tell you about the single best advice I've gotten from a writing teacher. A
teacher I only had for a short period of time, a guy named Michael McCarthy. Michael laid out a
great creative process that helped me get over this nausea I have about writing and and when I
follow it, it works really well. 

First dedicate a routine for yourself. Set aside a number of minutes per day, where you do
nothing but prepare and write. When you're on a project like a game you wanna create,
take a week and everyday of that week, set aside 60 minutes. 

Find a place where it's quiet and no one is gonna bother you. And your not gonna distract
yourself with emails or calls or games or anything. That sixty minutes and in that place your
spending your time purely on your story. Set a timer, and spend the first 15 minutes
reading. Read anything. Read the paper, read a magazine, read a letter, read a book. Just don't
read what you've written before. It gets you all judgey about your own stuff, and definitely do
not get on the internet. The Internet's a black-hole of time with Facebook and Twitter and Google
and all that. Those 15 minutes are going to turn into an hour easy, before you even know it. The
next 15 minutes, spend writing out those single line ideas. Pepper that sheet of paper with
scribbles and thoughts about that single subject. Like the sheet of ideas on why the heroes goal in
your game is so important. If you get to the end of that sheet and you still have some of that 15
minutes left, start a new sheet, but stay on that same idea. 
With some practice, don't be surprised you're gonna wind up with multiple sheets of paper in just
15 minutes, where you've got 50 or 60 ideas scribbled out. And that's great. Then take a one or
two minute break and don't do anything. Sit there and just stare at something. Stare at the
wall. Stare at the ceiling. Stare at the cockroaches in your kitchen. Just clear your mind. Don't let
the idea of dancing naked in front of that audience come into your head. There's just under 30
minutes left of your hour, and in that time, take a look and review the idea sheet you just
wrote. And start making the connections that we talked about in the last lecture. 
Write that out in a paragraph form on a new sheet of paper, on those six to ten ideas and how
they correlate to each other, and how they build on top of each other to craft a richer description
of your starting idea. When 60 minutes is up, stop and walk away, and get on with the rest of
your day. Now it's okay to maybe go a minute over here or there, but don't run wild at this
point. Keep it to an hour. But the deal is, commit to that hour fully, every single day for that
week. 
By the end of that week you should have some pretty good, fleshed-out ideas for your goals and
your settings and your characters. You can easily build on this every week. Slowly increase this
sacred time you spend writing on your game. 
Maybe week two, you spend 75 minutes a day, instead of 60. But you have to stay consistent
with it. This is key. Don't let anything pull you away before that time is up. And don't let it keep
you there longer than that time. That discipline, when I use it, really helps me get over my own
fears, and regiments me into writing so many things that I've been most proud of. Some of these
things I actually share with people, and I don't feel like I'm dancing naked in front of an
audience. 
Try it out. Maybe it's gonna work for you too. 

About Idea Sheets

In the previous lectures, we discussed creating Idea Sheets to generate ideas and thoughts on
various aspects of your game story. These lists are for you to freestyle brainstorm thoughts onto
paper to commit them to words, without judgement or hesitation. The concept is to allow
yourself free-form creativity and just throw these ideas, however useful they may end up being,
down on paper. As you may recall, the Idea Sheets I recommend are for the following:

1. Game Goals Idea Sheet - The hero’s quest in the game

2. Protagonist Idea Sheet - How the hero feels about his goals, developing wider character goals

3. Antagonist Idea Sheet - Goals and motivations for the antagonist

4. Settings and Levels Idea Sheet - Settings and environments where the story takes place.

Once you have these ideas scribbled out, you can begin to formulate connections between them
and sculpt them into clearer descriptions and cohesive designs.

In the following examples, I've presented two of the Idea Sheets I generated by hand while I was
thinking The Shooter. The first is for the antagonist, Dead-Eye Jane. The second is for the
locations and settings of the game and how they could be game levels. I have typed them up
without editing them for legibility, but I do suggest that you write them out by hand when
creating them.

As you read these, keep in mind only a handful of these ideas end up being used in the game and
character descriptions. And that is what this is all about! Most of them are thrown away in the
end, but the ones that stick can be essential to the characters and the world of the game. I have
highlighted the ideas on these sheets that I want to use moving forward in the game creation.