3 Reasons Why Submission Guidelines Exist

September 5, 2011 by Eddy Webb

Submission Guidelines

(Thanks to Genevieve for suggesting this topic.)

I have ranted about this topic before, but there’s a specific slice of it that I haven’t really talked about. It’s common writing wisdom that you should follow the publisher’s submission guidelines (and it’s usually the first thing I tell people when they ask me for one piece of advice on becoming a professional writer), but it’s not always clear why such guidelines are there or why it’s so important to follow them. Naturally, I can’t speak for every publisher, but I can tell you some reasons why the White Wolf submission guidelines exist, as I’ve revised them a few times over the years.

None of the reasons are “because editors and developers like putting prospective writers through arbitrary bureaucratic hoops,” surprisingly enough.

Legality. The biggest reason for our submission guidelines is to prevent liability. Plenty of times I’ve received a submission idea for something that we’re either discussed internally or that we’re in the process of making, but for whatever reason we haven’t announced that to the public yet. Without a disclaimer form, even receiving such a proposal opens us up for liability, as the proposing author can attempt to claim in court that we stole his idea, when in fact no such theft occurs. It’s even stickier when people send me such proposals to my personal email address or through this website, since I am now personally liable. My standard policy is that I have to delete proposals that don’t follow the process without reading them, which sucks. However, it’s the only way I can protect myself if people won’t follow the rules.
Time. I don’t get a ton of submissions — maybe a couple a week nowadays. However, I keep them all in a slush pile folder, and that folder is pretty huge. When I’m ready to compile ideas for our schedule, I need to be able to skim that folder and understand quickly what the proposal is all about. If a proposal follows the guidelines, I know that I’ll only be reading a few pages instead of having to slog through lots and lots of text to get to the point. My time is important to me, and a well-written and concise proposal shows that the author has respect for my time.
First Impressions. A side benefit of having guidelines is that it helps me realize whether the prospective author can actually follow rules or not. As a developer of in-house properties, I need to know that any freelancer will be able to take whatever vision I have for a project and work within those boundaries. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for creativity or exploration, but as the project gets closer to completion, I have to rely on the freelancer to deliver exactly what I’ve asked for, instead of requiring me to rewrite large chunks of it when things are already behind schedule. Everything else can likely be worked around at some level, but if you can’t follow instructions, I simply can’t use you.

Creative Fights

March 26, 2011 by Eddy Webb

The past week of discussion on Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition reminded me of this topic, but I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a while now.

I’m certainly no stranger to debate and discussion. I don’t have any formal training in debate – I can’t tell you what the Latin for “I called you a motherfucker” is, for example –but I have been in my share of conversations in which I have one opinion, someone else has another one, and we’re trying to sway each other.

I’m also no stranger to having these kinds of conversations in my job. When I worked at Procter & Gamble, the company encouraged employees to challenge processes and think of new ways to be more efficient or to produce better results. The culture of innovation wasn’t as omnipresent when I worked at the Washington University School of Medicine, but in my particular department I was given a fair bit of leeway to bring up new ideas and try new things. Sometimes I got my way, and sometimes I didn’t, but most of the time the conversation was completely in the realm of objective factors – this will save us a certain amount of money or that amount of time, or that will allow us new functionality that would bring more value to the company.

When I started working at CCP, I found that the company also encouraged employees to self-motivate and find new ways of doing things (sometimes to a startling degree). In fact, just yesterday I was in a meeting, and said that if there’s one thing I’ve learned at CCP, it’s that everyone has a fucking opinion.¹ So, naturally, I’ve been in a lot of conversations where one side is trying to convince the other of something.

Quick side note about actual fighting. While I haven’t personally been in a screaming match at work about work things, it has happened. People can get really passionate about their work, and some people deal with that by using volume. At most, I’ve been a little curt and grumbly, but I titled this post “creative fights,” and I stand by that.

The reason why brings me back to my original thread – in a creative company, you can have meaningful debates on not only the kinds of objective matters that I mentioned above, but also on purely subjective ones. Just yesterday, I had a lengthy debate with someone about what word we used to describe something. I have had discussions about the angle of a particular piece of artwork. I have argued with people about dice mechanics because of how they felt just as much as how they worked at the table. And while I try to avoid it, I have told my freelancers that I’ve changed their words just because I like my way better and for no other good reason.

The more subjective the topic, the more the conversation moves from “debate” to “fight.” You’re not really exchanging information for a more detailed understanding of the nuances of the problems; you’re slinging opinions back and forth until someone gives in. That doesn’t mean that subjective opinions can’t have objective nuances (such as the time I discussed the aesthetic impact of a website with the designer who was trying to make sure it hit certain thresholds for color-blindness), but at some point, an opinion has to change in order for the project to move forward. In my personal experience, 95% of these fights are resolved amiably, either through synthesis (“Okay, I see what you want, why don’t we try something that answers both of these problems?”) or voluntary retreat (“Well, you’re the boss, so let’s try it your way.”) Also, a lot of fights are often resolved by trying it out both ways and changing the subjective problems into something that can be objectively debated, usually through a prototype or a draft of some kind.

The one thing that took me a long time to wrap my head around is that this is normal. There are very few creative things that I’ve argued about that haven’t been somehow improved by the argument. I know that the person I’m arguing with is just as passionate to see this project succeed, so I end up not caring quite as much whether I win or lose, because at the core we both have the same goal – to make the project better. This is why a writer has to move from fearing criticism to embracing it – if someone isn’t annoyed or update at something you’ve done, maybe your work isn’t engaging them enough to care about its faults. (This does tie back a bit to my post on analyzing the sting of criticism, now that I think about it.)

Of course, people are people, and we all get wound up in trying to be right over being productive, and in the heat of the moment it’s easy to lose that focus. Even harder (because game design is an unholy blend of art and science), once in a while you get those strange situations where one person is having a subjective argument, and the other one is having an objective one. This happened to me recently – without going into details, I thought I was having a discussion about how something felt and what it implied, and the person I was arguing with thought he was having a discussion about objective facts as he saw them. Because I thought I was having a creative fight, I kept pointing out how things felt wrong and the implications of the topic, while he kept bringing up the faults in my logic. It did not end well.

Let me circle back to the Vampire project. In case you weren’t aware, we’re doing “open development” for the book, where Justin and I post drafts from parts of the book and we collect feedback on it. I’ve gotten a lot of conflicting and sometimes aggressive feedback on some of my chunks, but I’ve been loving every part of it. With every conversation, I know the book is getting better. It’s maddening and crazy and time-consuming and repetitive and sometimes even just flat-out irritating, but that’s what the process is about. Iteration through conflict, and success through iteration. And I love it.

If you find yourself in a creative fight, try to keep things about the project, not the person. If you find the conversation has stopped being productive, walk away from it or try to get to something objective, like a prototype or an action plan. And above all, try as hard as possible to remember that the person you’re fighting with wants exactly the same thing you do – to make the best project possible.

And yes, I said “fucking.” To the President, even. It’s just that kind of work environment. ↩

Fuck me, fuck this, or fuck you: A writer’s spectrum

March 12, 2011 by Eddy Webb

Before I dive into this, let me preface: editing and criticism are essential to being a professional writer. I don’t care if you think your words are the best thing since 8-bit graphics, there is nothing that can’t be improved by a critical review.

Let me give you a moment if you think that doesn’t apply to you: there is nothing that can’t be improved by a critical review.

I know it’s hard to have your carefully-crafted words torn apart the first few times, but one of the best skills you can cultivate as a writer is the ability to not only accept criticism, but use it to improve your work above and beyond the individual edits. Taking a collection of individual notations and finding patterns that can improve your writing holistically is an amazing skill to have, but a hard knack to learn. It takes time and experience, but you should never stop trying.

That being said, I don’t think that initial sting ever goes away. Even after nine years of professional work, I still fear opening up an email with redlines. I still get a tiny sting when I see the meat of my work carefully shredded.¹ Once that sting is past, I can look to the bone that’s uncovered and rebuild on that skeleton, which is always awesome. However, my career thus far has been all about getting past that sting – ripping off the band-aid so I can get to the good part of making the work better.

I’ve been going through a number of revision cycles in short order recently, and I’ve noted that the revision sting actually comes in a few different flavors. Each flavor itself tells me something about what I’m feeling about the work on an almost subconscious level, and I think that the sting of criticism itself can be telling in how to improve the work. It’s that tiny little editor in the back of my head, poking at the writer portion of my brain and going “Hey, asshole, pay attention to this part.” Because my little editor a foul-mouthed bastard, I’ve broken the stings down into three categories of “fuck”.

Fuck me: This is the sting of “oh god, how in the hell did that get in there?” (Also known as “who wrote this crap? Oh wait, that was me.”) This is the easiest one to resolve – someone pointed out a mistake, and you completely agree with it. Make the change and move on. I actually like these, because that means that someone caught something I missed, and the manuscript is definitely improved as a result. Cherish these moments.

Fuck this: This is the sting of “why am I even changing this?” It’s not that you necessarily agree or disagree, but you’re wondering why this revision matters. This is likely a general dissatisfaction with a larger-scale problem. It’s a bit trickier to diagnose in isolation – if you’re only getting it in a particular section, say, that section might need to be completely rewritten or just cut. If you’re getting it all over the manuscript, though, you might be burned out – consider putting it away for a while and coming back to it later.

Fuck you: This is the sting of “no, you’re wrong, my way of doing this is right.” You’re disagreeing with the criticism, and you find yourself building up defenses of the work. This is where you need to tread carefully.

As you’re starting as a writer, you need to beware this response – take a moment to really think of why the change is being offered, and see if this doesn’t actually improve the work. Despite their reputations as destroyers of quality prose, a good editor needs to be cherished like a rare jewel. They’re not ripping this apart because they hate you, but because they want to see you do better. Think about what’s being said and why, and consider if the change isn’t really better for the manuscript.

If you’re writing for hire and the criticism is from the hiring editor, always reconsider this reaction – depending on the editor, they might be open to contrary opinions, but at the end of the day, you’re writing this for them, and they can do whatever the hell they want to the material. Make sure your points are genuinely making the work better, rather than you stubbornly clinging on to something you think is particularly clever or interesting.

In general, I’ve found that the more experience you have as a writer, the less often you come across this reaction. At that point, I think you should switch from watching out from this response to embracing it – it may be your subconscious experience telling you that there’s something here that’s worth defending.

Regardless of your experience level, though, this reaction is always a good point to pause and think. I’ve taken to skipping these edits and moving on to the other “fuck me” and “fuck this” edits. Once they’re all done, I can look at the “fuck you” edits in isolation, and really think about them.

It’s one of the reasons why I continue to offer my own writing up for review, even though I’m a developer now – I never want to be in a position where I’ve forgotten what it’s like on the other side of the red pen. ↩

My Advice? Stop Listening To Advice

January 17, 2011 by Eddy Webb

You.

Yes, you. The prospective writer or game designer. The one with over 500 unread blog posts in your RSS reader. You.

We need to talk. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? No? Okay.

Look, this isn’t easy for me to talk about, but I think you need to hear it. I’m not sure how to break this to you gently, so I’ll just be honest.

You need to stop spending all your time reading advice on writing and game design.

Don’t get me wrong. I totally get it. It’s hard not to find joy in Rob Donoghue’s mellow vibe. You get caught up in the frank nature of Gareth Skarka’s blogs. You laugh at the dick jokes and poop references that Chuck Wendig sprinkles into mad ramblings about writing. You have Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball and dozens of others pumping into Google Reader or Twitter, and you love every word of their sparkling, wonderful advice.

But… well, let me tell you a story.

Back before Al Gore invented the Internet, I would collect books on writing advice. I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I had written a couple of things that got some attention, so I decided that I needed to prepare to be a Real Writer. I was poor, so I couldn’t buy many books off the shelf, but I would scour library sales and used book stores, and over several years I ended up owning dozens of them. I would read and re-read each one, knowing that if I inhaled their advice often enough, I would eventually reach a point where I would be ready. I could accumulate the lore of Those Who Had Come Before, and be able to stride among them, a giant among artists.

And yet, during the entire time I was collecting books, I wasn’t writing.

Now that we have blog and microblogs and Facebook and podcasts and whatever, it’s easy to get fresh advice every hour of every day. You could spend hours reading and listening to advice, also learning from Those Who Have Come Before.

But I’ve been skimming those sites too. A few months ago, I saw you post that the blog on characterization was perfect for the first chapter of the story you were working on. A couple of months ago, the Facebook thread on setting was also perfect for that first chapter. Just last week, you were thrilled to learn how world-building would be just the thing for… your first chapter.

When are you going to work on that first chapter?

If you want to write a book, do it. If you want to design a game, make it happen. If you want to just read advice and appreciate what others have to say, that’s cool, but stop deluding yourself that you’re just waiting for that one last piece of advice to make your story or your game perfect before you start.

Because that perfect advice doesn’t exist. It won’t happen. The only thing that will get you writing and designing is to close the browser and open the word processor.

Now, see, don’t look at me like that. I know you’re mad, but it’s for the best. Let me explain.

If you never start, all of this advice might be Important, with a capital I. You might need that piece on dialogue cues, or there might be a place for that thought on resource management. So you become paralyzed, trying to hold it all in your head, trying to absorb it all.

But really, advice is best used when you’ve already done something. You reread chapter four and find that the romance subplot feels tacked on. Your character creation chapter reads like stereo instructions. You’ve called one character Robert and a different one Bob. You have a specific problem, and you need advice on it. That is when you go to the Twitternets and the Faceblogs. You’ll find the right piece of inspiration, the right piece of advice for your problem at the moment. Or maybe you won’t, but you’ll figure it out. That’s when the collective wisdom of Those Who Have Come Before will propel you, instead of inhibiting you.

For now, though, I think you need a break. Cut all your advice-lurking cold turkey, and focus on creating. Rob and Gareth and Chuck and Will and Jeff (and I) will still be there, ready to help you. We like helping and sharing knowledge, but we can’t help you write your book or make your game. Only you can do that. And it’ll be brilliant and terrible and inspiring and hateful and innovative and derivative. But it’s yours.

And then, you can give us some advice.

How I Write

November 21, 2010 by Eddy Webb

Recently on Chuck Wendig’s blog, he was talking about the nuts and bolts of his writing process. I posted a comment about my own process, but thought I would expand on it a bit.

First off, because I write at work as well as at home, I don’t have a daily timeframe in which I always write. What I’m working on in a particular day changes too frequently to fall into a process, and writing at home is often when I have some spare time and the energy to do it. As a result, my writing timetable is more about daily time management rather than something like “I get up at 5am and write for three hours.” That being said, I do try to write something meaningful every day, and I tend to write before noon on weekends, and between noon and early evening on weekdays.

I tend to write first drafts in plain text. For a while I just used Notepad in Windows, but I’ve recently been a convert to WriteMonkey. It doesn’t have easy text formatting tools or spell check (which is good, because that tends to be what I fiddle with when writing first drafts), but there are useful features like real time wordcount and a progress bar that keep me going back to it. Basically, it gets the hell out of the way and lets me write my ugly first draft without judging me. Even better, I can install it on my Dropbox, so I always have it on any computer I have my Dropbox hooked up to.

A quick side note: I know a lot of writers like programs like WriteMonkey because they are “distraction-free.” I’ve also heard stories of writers who turn of their Internet connection or shut down certain pieces of software while they’re writing. I don’t do that – the only concession I’ll make to the Internet when I’m writing is that I’ll switch my Google Talk to “Do Not Disturb.” When writing in the office, I can’t really block out email or IM, especially because our IM client (Communicator) also doubles as our office telephone system. But in general, I tend to work in short sprints of 10-15 minutes, instead of trying to run a marathon of several hours. Sure, sometimes I get into the groove and I’ll write until I stop, but more often than not taking two minutes to answer a quick work email will recharge me enough to start my next 10 minute sprint.

Second and subsequent drafts used to be done in Word 2010 at work and OpenOffice 3 for home, but over the past few months I’ve run into enough formatting problems trying to switch documents between the software suites that I went ahead and put Word 2010 on my personal laptop as well. I used to just copy and paste the text from WriteMonkey into Word, but recently I’ve been playing with the textile markup export. Between that and Word 2010 styles, I can go right from boring text to a look that is closer to what I want, so I can jump right into revision instead of (again) fucking around with formatting.

I do subsequent drafts in Word until I’m ready to call something final. Then I usually print it out, or export it to a new program to look at it one more time, because changing the context can often cause thing to jump out at me that I didn’t see before.

Blog posts like this one are generally written in Windows Live Writer 2011, because blogs are pretty much one-draft writing. The exceptions are my Tour de Holmes essays, which go through the usual WriteMonkey/Word process, because those require more research and crafting.

All of my writing (both work and personal) is saved to Dropbox. Not only does it mean I always have access to everything I’ve written, but Dropbox does save old versions of files, so if I really screw up (which I’ve done a couple of times), it’s easy for me to go back in time and get that draft I thoughtlessly deleted.¹ One side benefit is that I can also pull my drafts on my phone, which has been useful when I get a spontaneous idea or when asked about a particular point of a project in progress.

I’ve been trying out the Scrivener beta, and I’m already in love with its organizational options. It might replace WriteMonkey for longer projects like Whitechapel and Marvelous Superheroes, but thus far I haven’t done too much with it – I’ve tried out too many betas to trust a project I care about to them. But once it’s out of beta, I’ll likely drop the $40 and start moving some projects into it.

What’s your process like?

I’m ruthless in deleting old drafts. Unless there’s a strong reason for me to keep an old draft, I’ll delete it rather than letting it clog up my hard drive, and I’ll often delete old drafts once a project is done. ↩

Idea Churn

October 21, 2010 by Eddy Webb

One of my design coworkers, who will remain nameless in order to preserve his dignity, told me a dirty little secret: video game designers really aren’t that clever. He told me that they just keep tossing out idea after idea and turning them over and over until something good comes out of it.

I then told him a dirty little secret about writers and other creative professionals: We do the exact same thing.

One of the best things I’ve learned about brainstorming and idea generation is that it’s always worthwhile to write down the first idea that comes into your head, but only so you are never tempted to use it. Anything you’re trying to think of an idea for something, the obvious idea is almost never the right answer. Even if you’re intentionally going for something iconic, it’s always better to put some form of twist on it. The line between iconic and cliché is incredibly fine.

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These Words Are Broken – We Need New Ones

October 17, 2010 by Eddy Webb

As I dive more and more into transmedia and video game design, something has been bothering me. It started building my head when I was on the “Narrative Design” track at GDC Online, and has been growing ever since. In a nutshell, the problem is this:

“Writing” is only a small portion of what writers actually do these days.

Sure, I could get semantic on this point – technically what writers do nowadays is typing instead of writing manuscripts out by hand – but even the more liberal interpretation is becoming awkward. The idea of the professional who does nothing but sit at a typewriter or computer, churn out a manuscript or Word document, send it in, get paid, and move on to the next one is increasingly inaccurate. Now freelance writers need to know skills like blogging and marketing and networking, and that’s aside from other non-writing skills like research and editing that have been part of the craft for over a century now. It’s not uncommon for writers to have to learn things like HTML or audio recording or how to be interviewed in order to supplement their careers. But even then, while there might be a decreasing percentage of sitting at the computer and typing out stuff for people to read, it’s still a significant percentage for the purely prose writer.