What fiction writers can learn from video games

After several months of abstaining, I spent the better part of this Sunday playing video games. It’s not like I don't have anything I should be doing—my to-do list is neverending. But time you enjoyed wasting isn’t wasted, or however the saying goes, right?

Still, I wanted to make myself feel better about “wasting” my Sunday, so I started thinking about whether I could learn anything useful for me as a writer. A lot of the writing strategies used in video games don’t really apply to fiction...