Live To Write Another Day by Dean Orion (free ebooks for android .txt) 📕

degree of tension involved in the relationship between you and your employer. It’s okay. Just accept it.

•If you’re taking a writing class, approach the work as if it’s a job. Don’t be a writing student, be a writer for hire.

•Always have a passion project going on in the back of the shop. It will feed your soul.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

 

•What can you do to make the working relationship with your employer as productive as possible?

•Which are the most important battles to fight with respect to the work? Choose wisely. You can’t win them all.

•How can you use your creative talent to solve any issue that arises between you and your employer, writing-related or otherwise?

•Which is better for the project (and for your career)—to be effective or to be right?

•If you’re a writing student, what are the ways in which you can effectively turn your class into a work for hire? What do you want to get from your teacher? From your peers? Write down some goals.

•How can you shape the notes you get in class into something that is consistent with your vision?

13. Art vs. Commerce

Things to Remember:

 

•Financial success and writing success are not joined at the hip.

•You can learn the business of being a writer. But you also have to be lucky to be financially successful.

•The best way to get lucky is to be ready when luck comes your way—which means having a great script in your pocket.

•Writing success = writer gene + process. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

•Only you know when you have achieved writing success.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

•What is the definition of financial success for you as a writer? Write it down.

•Have you looked at your overall writing process and identified places where you need to improve?

•What can you do differently on your next project, process-wise, that might help you overcome some of the deficiencies in your last one?

•Have you rewritten the story you’re currently working on as much as you possibly can? Do you know in your heart that it is as good as you can make it?

14. The Write Community

Things to Remember:

 

•To whatever extent possible, make every effort to surround yourself with a community of other writers throughout every stage of your career.

•Writers need other writers not just for moral support, but also for the exchange of energy and ideas.

•Your community of writers is your umbilical cord to numerous resources, potential collaborators, and representatives.

•Being part of a community of writers helps you express who you are as an artist.

•One of the best ways to cultivate a community of writers is to start or join a writing group.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

 

•Do you know any writers who are as serious about writing as you are? Who are they? Make a list.

•Have you ever sat down and had an in-depth conversation about process with these writers? How are your processes different?

•Is there anything these other writers do that you might experiment with? Anything useful that you think you might be able to incorporate into your process?

•What aspects of your process can you share with them?

•Do you know five to ten other writers who might make a good writing group? Do you know of any existing writing groups that you might be able to join?

15. Live to Write Another Day

Things to Remember:

 

•As creative storytellers, we are the cultural record keepers of our generation.

•Be the hero of your own story. Never give up!

•Don’t be afraid to fail. No great story was ever written by a writer playing it safe.

•Your voice is worthy of being heard, and the fight to make it heard is never in vain.

AFTERWORD

Interactive Media and the Future of Storytelling

Without a doubt, the most unique aspect of my entertainment career is that in addition to working in the traditional mediums, I’ve also worked in so many different quarters of the interactive media business and in so many different capacities. I’ve been a writer on numerous projects, as well as an interactive designer, a voice director, a producer, and a creative director. My many adventures have taken me from developing PC games (back in the days of CD-ROMs), to online games, to console video games (Xbox, PlayStation etc.), to interactive theme park attractions.

The common thread that’s allowed me to navigate these many worlds has been my ability to tell a story, my writer gene, coupled with the growing need these emerging art forms have for good storytellers. I want to be careful, however, not to mislead you into thinking that interactive media is a land of milk and honey for writers. The fact is, this is an industry that’s very much in its infancy, one in which technology is still ahead of creativity and, at the moment, employs writers in a variety of different ways, from copywriters to pure dialogue writers to writer/designers to narrative directors. There’s also no real industry-wide standard in terms of the format in which writers work. Unlike screenplays or teleplays, which pretty much all look the same, if you were to study five different interactive scripts, they would probably vary quite dramatically in how they look, how they’re structured, and how they balance creative content with technical design.

For these and many other reasons, the subject of interactive writing really merits a much lengthier, in-depth discussion in its own right; however my intention here is to give you a relatively high-level treatment that focuses more on the impact interactive technology has had (and will continue to have) on us as writers, as well as on the entertainment world as a whole.

 Emotions and Games

For as long as I can remember the most hotly debated topic in the gaming world has revolved around the question of whether or not you can experience genuine emotion while playing a video game. Naturally, like everyone else I have a theory about this, though mine is a very nuanced one.

Yes, I think you can experience genuine emotion while playing a video game, but it’s not the same kind of emotion that you experience while consuming a traditional narrative.

Remember