Write Your Way into Animation and Games

by Christy Marx (Editor)

Launch your career in writing for video games or animation with the best tips, tricks, and tutorials from the Focal press catalog--all at your fingertips. Let our award-winning writers and game developers show you how to generate ideas and create compelling storylines, concepts, and narratives for your next project. Write Your Way Into Animation and Games provides invaluable information on getting into the game and animation industries. You will benefit from decades of insider experience about the fields of animation and games, with an emphasis on what you really need to know to start working as a writer. Navigate the business aspects, gain unique skills, and develop the craft of writing specifically for aniamtion and games. Learn from the cream of the crop who have shared their knowledge and experience in these key Focal Press Digital Storytelling, Second Edition by Carolyn Handler Miller Animation Writing and Development by Jean Ann Wright Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games by Christy Marx Story and Simulations for Serious Games by Nick Iuppa and Terry Borst Writing for Multimedia and the Web, Third Edition by Timothy Garrand

Genres: Writing, Game Design, Nonfiction

418 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2010

About the author

Christy Marx has had an eclectic career as a transmedia writer, TV and animation series developer, game designer and narrative designer. Over the years, she has worked on live-action television, film, animation, videogames, comic books, graphic novels, manga, and non-fiction educational books.

She began her game design career creating award-winning adventure games for Sierra On-Line, and went on to work on console, MMO, Facebook, and mobile games.

Christy was awarded the Writers Guild of America/Animation Writers Caucus Award for contributions to the field of animation writing. Her TV credits include: Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, Spider-Man, G.I. Joe, Jem and the Holograms, ReBoot, Conan, Beast Wars, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With her partner, Randy Littlejohn, she has written for X-Men: Evolution, Stargate Infinity, He-Man and others.

She began writing comics with Conan and Red Sonja stories for Marvel. Her credits include Wolfrider, a graphic novel with Wendy Pini in the Elfquest series, and various other stories. She's written for DC Comics on fantasy series Amethyst, superhero series Birds of Prey, and Green Arrow. Her original Marvel/Epic series The Sisterhood of Steel, about a society of warrior-women is available from the author.

After six years providing Narrative Design at Zynga, she has returned to the freelance life to pursue her own projects, including a second edition of her book, Writing for Animation, Comics and Games, and a memoir about creating the animation series for Jem and the Holograms.

She lives on top of a huge ridge of volcanic stuff amidst towering pines, oaks, and cedars with her husband, Randy Littlejohn, and four...no, make that five...no, make that six cats. They're stopping at six. Really. They are.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I acquired this in a Humble Bundle, and didn't expect this to be as interesting or as lengthy as it is. The first half of the book is mainly about scriptwriting in a non-gaming context and is very interesting. The second half focuses on how it applies to computer games but that's actually not as interesting or informative despite my interest in computer games.

You learn about the content, structure, formatting of scripts. There's plenty of jargon, and variations depending on what you are writing for: live action or animation, and the format such as film or TV. So you learn about how to describe what to focus on in terms of camera, how to describe tone, and scene transitions.

There's tips on the structure of the plot, for example having an A and a B story, where the B is a smaller sublot that can intersect the A story. Main characters should have conflict and growth, and you learn what makes a good antagonist. There's different types of comedy, and you learn what to take into account when it comes to accents/dialect/translation issues.

There's loads of aspects that are easy to overlook or take for granted as a viewer. There's aspects like making animated scripts appeal to adults not just for the audience, but because the executives commissioning your script are adults so will choose scripts that appeal to them. There can be certain restrictions on animation like using the word "destroy" rather than "kill", and certain acts of violence may be banned (so the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles use their weapons on the environment and not directly on their enemies). Writing for a TV show needs convenient places for advertisement breaks, and should end in a suspenseful moment to make sure viewers stay tuned. This forces a different writing style as you need to make sure these moments are in the correct intervals.

If there's important objects/locales in the plot, it is necessary to describe them early in the script, so the set designer can build them in from the start. Eg if a room needs a bookcase with a secret passageway, then early scenes are required to show the bookcase so the audience isn't surprised when it suddenly appears in a later scene.

There's plenty of tips about the actual industry, like how to pitch, build up a portfolio, networking with people, and expected commissions/deals with agents and unions.

The gaming part of the book was less interesting. There's some aspects that seem irrelevant like defining gaming jargon that seemed to have no relevance to script writing. The most interesting parts were probably to do with the complexities of writing branching storylines, so you can cut corners by using "illusion of choice" or by making sure the branches quickly resolve back to the main story thread, which is very much how the Telltale Games work.

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am someone who really enjoys writing and have for a long time considered doing it a bit more “professionally.” As an outsider to the writing profession, I am not at all familiar with all the ways in which creative writing could lead to a career, or at least a fulfilling and enjoyable hobby. I picked up this book to see what animation and game writing is all about, and even thought I’ll probably never do any of it for a living, this book still taught me many valuable lessons about these very exciting creative fields.

This book contains a truly remarkable amount of useful and actionable information. About a third of it is dedicated to animation, with the rest covering video games. Material is aimed at the beginners in these fields, although many later concepts may require some prior experience with animation or game writing. The book is filled with thorough and detailed examples and case studies, and it gives a very good overview of what sorts of assignments and work are the game and animation writers expected to encounter. In my opinion, this is not exactly a book for absolute beginners, and some prior experience in writing, animation, or game design would be highly recommended. The book ends with a few excellent tips and suggestions for actually finding animation and writing jobs. The bad news is that there are no easy shortcuts and the straightforward entry points into these fields. One needs to be very dedicated and willing to take a lot of different assignments and routs before really making it as a writer.

The book comes with a companion website, with a lot of additional material. It is overall a very comprehensive resource. Animation and game writing is definitely more art than science, but a book like this one can help avoid much of the aimless wanderings and learning by trial and error. It is very well written and exceptionally helpful. I highly recommend it.