Anybody here thought of branching out to other forms of department?
- Thread starter Casket
- Start date
For nine years, I produced a quarterly wildlife newsletter with around 600 subscribers across the country. I've also written feature articles for newspapers and magazines for several decades. It's easier to sell short nonfiction than fiction or poetry, and some markets pay exceptionally well.
In a past life (read: about 10 years ago), I was a member of a semi-pro Gilbert-and-Sullivan society (who put on plays and did research and such). As such, I wrote several articles for them about the then-current plays -- e.g. for HMS Pinafore, an article about life in the 19th-century British Navy.
They were fairly easy sells, although it was just for fun.
I also wrote several satirical 'newspapers' for the same society -- again, just for fun. (For instance, during a production of Iolanthe: "Shock! Horror! Politicians caught LYING!!!" etc., with a picture of the leading actors looking horrified.)
Besides the novel department, I wrote loads of haiku, limericks, song parodies, and short stories. (Alas, they were all fiction and were difficult to sell). Oh, well.
They were fairly easy sells, although it was just for fun.
I also wrote several satirical 'newspapers' for the same society -- again, just for fun. (For instance, during a production of Iolanthe: "Shock! Horror! Politicians caught LYING!!!" etc., with a picture of the leading actors looking horrified.) Besides the novel department, I wrote loads of haiku, limericks, song parodies, and short stories. (Alas, they were all fiction and were difficult to sell). Oh, well.
No. Scripts don't interest me. Well, I wrote a script with my brother for a stop-motion film, but it's not like I'm itching to ever do it again.
Writing for video games doesn't interest me either. That is odd, given that in the past I've worked on my own freeware games like anyone my age probably has as a teen. A part of me is still okay with making a point and click adventure (most iconic for me and other bored kids on dial-up was that freeware one Five Days a Stranger, and later its sequels as an adult), especially with a workspace like Godot which doesn't really sacrifice a significant amount of power for ease of use. I'd have fun with it, and still plan to, but it will never be a writing feat in my mind, rather, a technical one.
Overall, interactive multimedia just doesn't inspire me, especially with just how much noise there is now. It seems to take too long to consume, yet it's fast-forgotten too. I see indie videogames get released that either took one person ten years or a team of twenty people two years (heh, that's 1990s AAA development) and they just vanish. They leave the cultural discourse so quickly I'm not even sure they existed, yet they take intense effort, and worse, they are clearly worthy experiences. It wasn't this bad in 2015. It's bad now.
Novels seem less likely to be so rapidly swept away with time.
In the event I would ever be hired to write a script for someone else's game, not that it would ever happen, what would they expect of me? "Okay so there's this purple goo that corrupts the land and mutates monsters into a conveniently unified graphical motif..." Or it would be lore-work for a souls-like AKA austere-plot-like, which chronic world-builders were born to do. Or perhaps it would be quippy dialogue for a AAA game? "There this ten second part where the characters are running across a bridge and we don't have any lines written, but as you know, silence is unacceptable at this budget level. Please review the last ten Marvel movies for inspiration, thank you."
My negativity is probably coming from my lack of enthusiasm, rather than the other way around, though.
Writing for video games doesn't interest me either. That is odd, given that in the past I've worked on my own freeware games like anyone my age probably has as a teen. A part of me is still okay with making a point and click adventure (most iconic for me and other bored kids on dial-up was that freeware one Five Days a Stranger, and later its sequels as an adult), especially with a workspace like Godot which doesn't really sacrifice a significant amount of power for ease of use. I'd have fun with it, and still plan to, but it will never be a writing feat in my mind, rather, a technical one.
Overall, interactive multimedia just doesn't inspire me, especially with just how much noise there is now. It seems to take too long to consume, yet it's fast-forgotten too. I see indie videogames get released that either took one person ten years or a team of twenty people two years (heh, that's 1990s AAA development) and they just vanish. They leave the cultural discourse so quickly I'm not even sure they existed, yet they take intense effort, and worse, they are clearly worthy experiences. It wasn't this bad in 2015. It's bad now.
Novels seem less likely to be so rapidly swept away with time.
In the event I would ever be hired to write a script for someone else's game, not that it would ever happen, what would they expect of me? "Okay so there's this purple goo that corrupts the land and mutates monsters into a conveniently unified graphical motif..." Or it would be lore-work for a souls-like AKA austere-plot-like, which chronic world-builders were born to do. Or perhaps it would be quippy dialogue for a AAA game? "There this ten second part where the characters are running across a bridge and we don't have any lines written, but as you know, silence is unacceptable at this budget level. Please review the last ten Marvel movies for inspiration, thank you."
My negativity is probably coming from my lack of enthusiasm, rather than the other way around, though.
Heh, I used to write "interactive fiction" (aka text adventure games) when I was a teen.
I only played two text adventure games in my life. Softcore or whatever it's called that came free with one of those Leisure Suit Larry games. And horror indie game Trilby's Notes which Stuart Dren most likely had also played.
Scripts can be very frustrating to write. Something about one page being one minute or something.
Lemme guess, 7 Days A Sceptic,Trilby's Notes and 6 Days A Sacrifice right? I too played all the sequels of
5 Days A Stranger with interest. 
Last edited:
Lemme guess, 7 Days A Sceptic,Trilby's Notes and 6 Days A Sacrifice right? I too played all the sequels of
Hell yeah man. I was so excited when I learned that Trilby's Notes even existed, let alone 6 Days a Sacrifice (though I prefer the former). I spent a decade thinking it ended at 7 Days a Skeptic.
Last edited:
Why do you call them "departments." Just curious. Interesting word choice. I'd probably have said "formats."
Be grateful you never played the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game. It is justly famous as one of the most difficult games to finish.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
True, but calling them "departments" is much better than calling them "deportments".
I checked the dictionary beforehand looking for the correct word and then found that department meant "A division of a business specializing in a particular product or service" so I decided to use that word.
Similar threads
