#I understand writing realistic text-based dialogue in a voice not your own is a whole different beast from spoken tho

[rioblitzle]

the thing about chatfics is that I don't dislike them in concept- I actually think the format of a group chat is a very creative and fun one for comedic or storytelling potential- however, almost every one I've tried to read writes every single character with the distinct texting voice of a teenager or maybe 20 something and when you've got middle aged or very offline characters involved that is such an immersion dealbreaker to me

[bmaxwell]

Number 1: Darkest Dungeon

Ruin...has come to our family.

Every so often a game comes along that feels like it was made specifically for you. So it was with Darkest Dungeon. First off, the game’s art style is breathtaking, I’d never seen a game look quite like it. The heavy shading on the characters gives everyone a severe, mysterious look. The combat is turn-based, with the twist that skills and abilities are based on where the characters are standing in a formation. It invokes HP Lovecraft* and makes the emotional stresses of being sent into dangerous places to battle horrors and abominations into a gameplay mechanism. The music is great. There’s a cool, spooky narrator. There are a bunch of different classes, and a town hub to upgrade. Darkest Dungeon ticks...all of my boxes? Almost. Make the adventurers high schoolers who attend classes, form social bonds, and manage relationships during the day before fighting monsters at night and you’d have it. 

I’ve played several hundred hours of Darkest Dungeon, and I still rarely skip the intro video when I launch the game. 

The first time I saw the above video, I was immediately reminded of two things:

- Eternal Darkness, a Gameube game about exploring mansion of your recently-deceased uncle and discovering an evil book that has been passed down through the generations.

- Lurker at the Threshold, which was my first HP Lovecraft story.**

This is my kind of horror. I dislike blood and guts slasher horror, but I love cosmic horror. This is very difficult for most games to capture, a lot of Lovecraft-inspired games tend to be about fighting tentacle monsters with tommy guns. And Darkest Dungeon is about fighting cool scary monsters, but Red Hook implemented a system in which your characters will have to deal with the psychological toll that living through life-threatening encounters with unspeakable horrors would take on a person. 

It’s easy to boil this down to just another meter to manage. “Oh, this monster monster used an ability which inflicted 6 points of stress on my Crusader, he is only 13 stress points away from his limit.” Most games can be boiled down to their mathematical skeletons. This is where the game’s incredible writing, art direction, and voice acting come through. Combat actions are often accompanied by a line of dialogue written over a character’s head and/or a line from the narrator (the excellent Wayne June). 

For example, you encounter an enemy called a Madman - a fairly disturbed fellow in a loose straightjacket. One of his attacks his one of your party members, inflicting stress and a debuff. How this looks in practice is like this: this dude in an unbuckled straight jacket who has been holding his head in his hands suddenly points and screams something muffled with one hand over his mouth. One of your party member’s screams “I-I don’t want to die here!” and the narrator says “Gasping...reeling...taken over the edge into madness!” The imagination doesn’t have to wander far to picture this distraught man suddenly pointing at you and screaming something he can’t possibly know about you. This marriage of theme and mechanisms is something that makes video games special. 

As someone who has always enjoyed the math puzzle-like nature of turn-based combat, Darkest Dungeon managed to somehow feel both familiar and innovative. Having combatants lined up from left to right seems like such a simple thing, but it brings into a play a whole layer of strategic considerations. There are abilities that can only be used from certain positions, or can only hit specific ranks on the enemy side; there are abilities that push and pull, that lunge forward or fall back. On any given delve, you are choosing a party of four from 17 classes, each of which has an assortment of abilities to choose from. Early in the game you can kind of get by with whatever party you choose, but as the difficulty ramps up you have to really think about your party makeup before setting out.

Darkest Dungeon’s late game features a fairly brutal difficulty spike. Most of my plays of the game are me having a laid back good time with the game until I get my ass handed to me in a few Champion dungeons, then putting the game down for months before starting a new save. This understandably turns a lot of players away from the game. Shit can go wrong in a hurry. Shit WILL go wrong in a hurry. If the enemies focus on a specific character and/or get a couple of critical hits in succession, you can lose party members permanently, and those setbacks can be deflating. You can’t avoid bad luck, but you can mitigate it and plan for it. And overcoming an “unfair” challenge is exhilarating. 

One of the things the game does brilliantly is give you those hopeless situations and occasionally offer a beacon of hope. This is by way of the game’s stress and affliction mechanism. When a hero’s stress level reaches 100, they will either become afflicted with a negative trait such as Paranoid or Abusive, or they will become virtuous, gaining a trait such as Stalwart or Focused. This seems to be tilted in favor of affliction about 70/30. Either way, this event is accompanied by a line of text from the character, and a callout by the narrator. 

In the case of an affliction, things go from bad to worse. Characters will change positions on their own (a fearful character will move back in the formation, or a masochistic one might move toward the front) or skip their turn altogether (if they’re hopeless). Afflicted characters will stress the rest of the party out as well whether it’s by being mopey, or verbally abusive - a paranoid arbalest who misses a shot will say “WHICH ONE OF YOU BUMPED MY ARM!?” and so on. On the other hand, sometimes when hope seems lost a character will become virtuous. They will shout encouragement, grant buffs and healing and the such. 

The game’s other big source of drama comes from its death’s door mechanism. When a character reaches zero health, they do not die. Instead they are in a state called death’s door, which means that any damage they take while at zero health could kill them. This leads to every attack being accompanied by held breath and a tightly clenched asshole. The game’s design lends it so much personality and breeds so many memorable stories. 

As impressive as the game’s design is, it is matched by the game’s sound design. Stuart Chatwood did an incredible job with the score. The music is deeply unsettling, a low thrum while you make your way through poorly lit dungeons where traps lie in wait and horrors potentially lie around every corner. Distant howls and screams  help set the stage. The battles themselves are against pounding drums and upsettingly realistic sounds of blows landing and gasps and chokes. 

Wayne June’s contribution as the narrator cannot be overstated. He is the heart and soul of Darkest Dungeon. Hs voicework captures the game’s dark humor, hope, despair, triumph and everything between. I cannot envision this game without him, and was thrilled to learn that he has signed on for Darkest Dungeon II.

It’s a game of long odds, despair, determination, and triumph. As someone who lives with depression, the game probably means more to me and hits me differently than most. The idea of throwing yourself headlong into a situation that seems hopeless, falling into despair, then getting back up and going again means something to me. The game brought tears to my eyes the first time, when a hero hit their stress limit and became Stalwart rather than afflicted, I heard Wayne June deliver the line “Many fall in the face of chaos. But not this one. Not today.” 

Darkest Dungeon isn’t the best game ever made by any metric, but it’s my favorite. 

*I’ve managed to make peace with enjoying Lovecraft’s fiction while being aware of what a racist, xenophobic shit stain he was

**Technically more August Derleth than HP Lovecraft I know.

[hydaelyn-arts]

Of the indelicacy of Witch Hunts

This could have been a day like any other. One where I would sit at my computer once my coffee was prepared, ready for another day, beginning with a quick glance at my emails and private messages on various social media platforms as is customary. Then, I noticed there was a submission waiting for me which isn’t unusual and always makes me happy. After over year, Hydaelyn Arts is keeping its promise to be a voice for every artist within our community. Yet when I checked, the name of the contributor was unknown and odd.

I checked the links, read the witty comment “Anon (trace@123.com)” found necessary to add, and set aside my breakfast to write what will be the second message of this blog.

About “using references” and “tracing”

Each and everyone has their own point of view on referencing and tracing, which can range from “It’s alright so long it follows some rules.” to “I’ll submit art to Hydaelyn Arts because it doesn’t matter if it’s traced or referenced, this person deserves to burn in hell!” So while my eggs and bacon are getting cold, I’m wondering if “Anon (trace@123.com)” knows the difference between referencing, tracing, and when one or the other is appropriate to do in as an artist in a variety of situations or if “Anon (trace@123.com)” thinks both are big, bad boogeyman to be avoided at all times. Apparently not.

So instead of labeling references and tracing as evil in all situations outright, let’s demystify them a bit, shall we?

Using references

References are something which is accepted in the art community at large, utilized regularly by industry professionals who have directories full of references and should hopefully be used by every artist whenever it is needed. If an artist creates something without the use of references, it is usually because they have done multiple studies prior to creating a piece of artwork, to the point where they no longer need a reference to create the piece. However, nowhere in the professional art industry is it considered shameful or wrong to use reference when creating work.

To be quite frank, if you think references are taboo, it is a sign that you’re ignorant of what working in the art industry is like, have not been through any kind of formalized art training, never went to a museum to admire accurate portraits or watched a movie where people are asked to pose for an artist. Everyone from Da Vinci to Norman Rockwell to Disney used references for their craft. Entire films like Alice in Wonderland relied on live actors to perform for the artists so they could realistically get movements down as firmly as possible.

To consider using references as something bad is ridiculous.

Who hasn’t done a gesture to describe it properly in text? Who hasn’t looked at their hand to draw fingers properly? Who hasn’t done a google or youtube search to have a better idea of a movement before animating it? Using references helps artists progress, because who can draw or describe a Tacca chantrieri without having seen or heard of it before? Even if they have (heard of it), without having practiced it many times it’s unlikely an artist could pull all the details from memory. It is necessary for growth as an artist, to learn about the world in order to avoid things like this from happening:

Think of how much better the above artwork could have been if the artist just looked at some actual reference of what a real human woman looks like in a similar pose instead of just winging it. 

Tracing

Ladies and gentlemen, ready your pitchforks, the evil word has been written. The one that’s caused several artists in this community to be pilloried, at times unfairly. Most of these people have deleted their Tumblr blogs, after a group has tried and convicted them for something they did (and sometimes didn’t) do.

The term tracing means what it says: to trace, one works atop another piece of art to make an exact copy. Like using references, it can be a useful tool for artists to practice and learn from (if they are using it in an ethical manner for study), but it has its limitations. Very easily, tracing can become a crutch, hindering an artist’s progression in the long term. This post isn’t about singing the praises of the virtues of tracing, however. What needs to be discussed here are the times when a piece of art is posted by someone, and others decide it has been traced, often without taking the time to double check to make sure that it is actually the case.

The important words in that last sentence are “others decide it has been traced”.

In some cases, the evidence of tracing is flagrantly obvious. In other cases, the lines literally and figuratively are blurred. If you weren’t there during the process, or if the lines don’t match perfectly, it can be difficult to tell if a work has been traced, if it was just heavily referenced, or if both artworks in question coincidentally have a similar pose. Yes, it’s true that many art thieves will try to manipulate images to hide their tracing, but where do we draw the line? How do we know for absolute certain the difference between someone who tried really hard to obscure their tracing efforts and someone who just happened to draw a head at the same angle?

As an artist, it is easy to get fired up about destroying a potential art thief with extreme prejudice and understandably so. No one wants to work hard and study hard, spending years and years refining their skills only for some asshole to stroll along and profit from that effort by tracing it all and passing that work off as their own. However, if we don’t take the time to carefully decide for ourselves, investigate things on our own, and see with our own eyes whether something was traced or if something less insidious was perhaps at play, we’re liable to hurt people that were undeserving of our rage.

Is this person always an art thief or is this surprising new behavior? Has this artist created multiple original pieces before now or do all their works appear potentially traced? Are significant portions about the artwork an exact match or is this potentially a case where someone malicious can rely on Tumblr to get up in arms the moment it’s implied someone is tracing without some rock solid evidence?

The easiest method to refute accusations of tracing would be for an artist to provide their references. But, given that references are often derided as a sin on par with tracing, many artists feel uncomfortable admitting they used any material as support for their work at all.

Tumblr “domino effect”

I want to be clear. I don’t consider one artist copying another’s work and claiming it as their own a good thing. Tracing artwork and passing it off as your own work is unquestionably wrong, but I have seen too many witch hunts on Tumblr based upon half-baked evidence to let myself get swept up in emotion now.

After all this time spent on Tumblr, a question we should be asking ourselves is whether a barrage of fury, harassment, hate mail, and cruelty is really what we want our first response to be when we encounter someone who is potentially tracing, or if we want to approach things calmly, through private messages and peaceful dialogue - until we’re absolutely certain we’re dealing with an unrepentant thief willing to profit off of their fellow artists without guilt or shame.

For me, the answer is the latter.

There’s enough rage on Tumblr already. And I believe that most people who are using this platform have already witnessed what happens when someone is accused of something. Even more when the topic is "tracing". Not only does the primary post spread like wildfire, but people instantly see red and reblog within a few seconds without taking the time to make sure that it is actually a case of tracing. Then suddenly more posts pop up, often with blanket statements such as “Tracing is bad” or “If You are OK with Art Thieves Unfollow Me”, bland generic statements which are often reblogged by people who aren't aware of the drama but agree with the sentiment. All of this is like a whole orchestra shaming the artist whose voice cannot be heard through the clamor. At this point, it doesn't matter if the artist actually traced or not. Even if it's not the case, the harm has been done and nothing can repair it. Nothing. Tumblr already judged them guilty as charged.

How do you expect this experience, justified or not, to not have a huge impact on the person who is the victim of so much hate? Ask yourself how you would feel in such a situation, how you would deal with it, and how you would recover, even if by some miracle someone proves that the statement was wrong and their voice was heard.

I saw the effect first hand as I have been swimming in the artist community for long enough to have met victims of the Tumblr mob. They are broken. Judged guilty before they were allowed to be proven innocent. Sometimes even abandoned by people they thought as being friends. Alone, against a whole community. If they disappear, it's not always out of shame, but because the experience they dealt with left a trauma, at times even leading them to stop their craft for some time or forever. Is this really what you want? If it's a first time for them, if the proof is really hard to see or if they didn't do anything, they don't deserve any of this rage. Posting such an accusation on Tumblr is like a train breaking loose that you can never ever again stop. No matter what they do in the future, there will always be someone to remind them of what they did, or didn't do, sometimes waking up the rumors for another time. I'm asking you again... Is this really what you want?

Until I’m positive of what I’m dealing with, and that the artist in question is truly a thief who felt no remorse about what they were doing and only seemed sorry when they were caught in the act, I want to treat people with the dignity they deserve. I want to avoid jumping to conclusions and getting caught by the wild self-righteousness that Tumblr is infamous for. And if it turns out they are tracing? I want to be that person who calmly tries to help this artist see what they’re doing wrong. I want to talk them into embracing and enjoying what art really can become if they do things the right way. I’m not here to be a destructive force, I’m here to celebrate art, share it with the community, and get others to love it just as much as I do.

Thus, “Anon (trace@123.com)” if you want to start a crusade, you will have to do it from your own personal platform, rather than as a submission to mine. Especially as you took the time to create another account to submit your request since this blog doesn't accept anonymous ones. If you are REALLY positive that tracing was absolutely going on here, then find your courage and post this to your own blog instead of submitting it to mine, hoping you can foist the responsibility on someone else.

I’m not here for witch hunts, “Anon (trace@123.com)”. I’m here for beautiful artwork of Hydaelyn and sharing it with the community at large. If I discover artwork that is unquestionably traced on this blog, I will remove the post in question, but I will never accept submissions like what you sent to this blog. Relevant or not. And even if the person throwing around accusations is right on their statement, the accused deserves a private message and a chance to explain themselves before being burned at the stake.

[spiralatlas]

GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific) 2017 Day 1

I’m in Melbourne for GCAP and PAX Australia, and GCAP started today.

Sadly things were cut short by me BREAKING MY WHEELCHAIR in a DOOMED QUEST FOR A SMOOTHIE. I got a replacement, but it was a hassle and I needed to go rest afterwards. But what I saw of GCAP was good!

Below: descriptions of talks by Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonya (creators of Gone Home and Tacoma) and by David Gaider (narrative designer on Dragon Age), plus misc other conference things.

There were three introductions, all about How Great The Melbourne Games Scene Is and how Everyone Is Friends And Awesome.

Keynote: Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonya from Fullbright Games: The names didn't mean much to me but then I realised THEY'RE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE GONE HOME AND TACOMA :D

The theme of GCAP this year is The Ripple Effect, and the theme of this talk was how people connect and affect each other.

Steve and Karla met as part of the team for Bioshock 2. Karla was a researcher, and Steve a level designer, and when they were in those roles they didn't interact. But they both finished their assigned tasks and asked around for other things that needed doing, which led them both to the massive task of writing all the little bits of extra dialogue around things like what enemies say when they attack, flavour text on objects, optional little stories told through random audio diaries etc. They made a great team (Steve as writer and Karla as editor) and got really into it. I think you can totally see how this grew into their later approach to games.

The company 2KMoran being willing to let them develop like this was part of them being a good company, with many ex-employees who have gone on to make interesting games.

Steve then got to design his own DLC, and went I MUST BRING IN KARLA. And after they did that, and Bioshock 2 was done, they created Fullbright and started working on Gone Home.

At some point Steve encountered some cool Bioshock fanart and became mutuals with the artist on twitter. Since she was a lesbian, he asked her if she'd be up for discussing things to help with the game. She brought along her wife for an extra point of view. The wife turned out to be a 3D artist, and both of them ended up hired to work on the game.

David Gaider: Creating a World and Making it Stick

So this was like 50% general advice and 50% morality tale about the Hubris Of The Writer Who Thinks His Worldbuilding Stands Alone.

Basically he created all the basic Thedas worldbuilding by himself, then told the rest of the team, and worked with his writers, and never checked in to make sure the game worked as a whole until it was Far Too Late.

He was trying to create a relatively grounded, dark, realistic story...and the art team was making orcs and bikini armour. He had lore about the mages being too oppressed to learn offensive spells or do anything flashy in public, while the gameplay team was implementing fireballs, and specialisations like Reaver which were not connected to the worldbuilding at all. And by the time these incompatibilities became apparent everyone was committed and refused to budge. So the final game is a hodge podge of inconsistent parts that all make sense individually but don't fit together.

Now my general notes:

He scrawled out the original Thedas map on paper the same way he would for a D&D game (his original draft looked very Middle Earth-ish in style), expecting someone who knew geography would go through and fix the rivers at some point. They did not.

One lesson he learned is that you can't just throw pages of worldbuilding at people and expect them to both read and be engaged with it. You have to have a "razor", a short description of the core of the game, and make sure everyone understands what it is. Anything that doesn't fit the razor gets cut. For example, DA2 had themes of The Price of Freedom, Family, and All Things Change. And you have to sell them on why your worldbuilding elements are interesting, and what makes them cool. Once the art team understood what darkspawn were they got invested and redesigned them to not just be orcs.

Remember to feel: Don't just come up with the history of your city: what is it like to visit, is it loud and friendly and sunny or oppressively silent?

Pick your battles: choose the parts of your worldbuilding you really value and emphasise those, be willing to let the others go, especially if it’s to follow changes that make the game more fun. The game being fun is the final aim, your worldbuilding is just a tool to get there.

He got confused by his cursor a lot :)

One good thing about the DAO worldbuilding is that he didn't know where it would be set at first, so worked out all the history for everywhere, and that added lots of depth.

Names are the devil, totally subjective so everyone argues about them and hates any new suggestion. Many names for DAO were bandied about, like "Chronicle". He has a rule to never put Shadow, Dark or Blood in a list of possible names or the publishers will go THAT ONE.

His two rules: 1) People aren't allowed to complain about a name unless they have a better suggestion. 2) Wait six months. Chances are people will be used to it and not mind any more.

When the Grey Wardens were first suggested they were supposed to be pretty minor, based off the rangers in Tolkein. So they got named the White Rangers, but that was too similar, so White Wardens, but that wasn't morally grey enough, so: Grey Wardens! Which was fine until they turned out to be important, people suggested "cooler" names like Blood Knight Brotherhood/Lords of War/Disciples of Pain (not sure if he was joking) but he waited six months and took a vote and lo, the old name stuck.

Track your changes.

Have an elevator pitch (not the same as the razor) If you can't come up with one your concept needs work.

Question your biases. He was originally inspired by Middle Earth and D&D, and his own ideas of Medieval Europe...all of which are way too white. Some of this could be fixed in later games, but the world he created closed off a lot of possibilities (he didn't say any examples but I guess he meant, like, Africa and Asia equivalents)

When he took inspiration from Jews and Romani for the elves he thought he was being very clever, and only later realised that this created all sorts of unfortunate implications, since now anything that happens to elves seems like a statement about those cultures.

He was happily surprised to be able to include bi characters in DAO.

The writers were all pretty happy with how they'd handled gender in DAI, then the Voice Over person was like "why are the vast majority of our lines for men?" and they realised they'd all made most of their background characters men for no reason.

At the start it's hard to walk the line between a long, boring, exposition heavy intro, and players getting confused by lack of explanation. (It felt like he wished players would just be smarter lol) He said "If DAO had started at Ostagar then the PC's backstory would have felt irrelevant" which made me think "So like DAI?".

Players have to know why to care about an event before it happens, or the emotional reaction will fall flat.

When you introduce the first member of a group, they should be fairly typical so the player gets a feel for the default. For example, Sten is a pretty typical Qunari. Only after that can you introduce outliers like The Iron Bull.

Every main character the player interacts with (for a RPG, the party members) should represent a different interesting facet of the worldbuilding.

They didn't think DAO would get sequels, and thus had those wildly differing epilogues. He isn't sure he'd change letting the player died, since it was a cool moment. But it was certainly inconvenient to deal with later.

They had a rough idea of how the history of Thedas would continue after DAO "but no plan survives contact with the enemy, in this case I guess that's EA" loll

Having player decisions affect so much has been a bit of a nightmare.

Card tricks in the dark: if you do something clever and the player doesn't notice, it doesn't matter.

If the enemies drink potions and it's not obvious they're doing it, it just looks like the AI is cheating. If a choice affects the plot but this fact isn't made clear, players will just think that's how the plot always goes. Need to heavily lampshade that this is the consequence of that choice. And keeping track of all the possibilities gets ridiculous with characters like Alistair, who can be any one of dead/king/a drunk etc.

The players who DO pay attention to these changes tend to want way more reactivity than is practical. So nobody is impressed. And most new players found the save game editors confusing and off putting. He thinks perhaps it would be better to have a smaller number of major choices.

He's not going to judge other writers but the HUGE changes at the end of the Mass Effect trilogy mean they can now no longer set anything in that galaxy again.

Question time!

Something about the process leading to Krem being written. He talked about the bad stuff previously, and them realising they'd screwed up. A trans fan on the forums said "Could we have a trans character who isn't a sex worker or the butt of a joke?". They got jumped on, but the team read it and went "Oh."

Gaider wrote Maevaris in the comics, talked to a trans woman friend about it. One of the other writers was working on Kress...*audience shouts KREM* and he seemed a bit boring so he got made trans, since it added some interest and fitted in well with the worldbuilding about the Qun etc.It would have been better with a trans voice actor but they couldn’t find one.

What program is best for explaining stuff to the art team etc early on: Biowre had a sort of Grey Box level for playing through choices, but something like twine is good, just to test pacing. (not sure this actually answers the question asked)

Are there any genres you would like to work on but haven't: Yes :D :D But he can't tell us about it yet :D :D

He got sick of high fantasy after ten years. Would look longingly at Mass Effect sometimes just for a change but then they would implode and he'd think"Actually I'm fine".

Off the top of his head: Victorian London, finding husbands for your girlfriends while fighting zombies and also it's a Western?

Misc other things: I didn't make it to any more talks because Wheelchair, but met some cool people, and played some of the student games on display. My favourite was a time travel murder mystery called Lacuna where you have to connect clues. Apparently I was way better at it than most people :D I also actually enjoyed one of the puzzle platformers (I forget the name but it's about a little grumpy blue hexagon), which is a pretty big achievement.

GCAP has a "food intolerances station" with special food options and knowledgeable staff which was pretty great. Morning tea was just various gluten free biscuits, but for lunch there was poached chicken and salmon and various plain chopped vegetables, as well as dressed salads and gluten free bread and dessert. I could eat about 1/3 of it which is pretty good odds, I ended up happier than my partner who doesn’t have as many intolerances but just didn't like any of the food options.

[jesspaulblog]

HOW “THE GUIDE FOR EVERY SCREENWRITER” ANSWERS: WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCRIPT?

When I started screenwriting at 19, it seemed like the purest outlet for my fantasy world: nothing was off the table in my brainstorm notebooks and Word Docs (who else used a basic word processor before realizing there’s an app for that??). But, as I became more serious about the craft, I realized there were standards, structures and conventions to not only screenplays but the movie and TV business itself that I glossed over when translating my campfire stories to page.  

“The Guide…”, as I affectionately call Geoffery Calhoun’s “The Guide For Every Screenwriter | From Synopsis to Subplots: The Secrets of Screenwriting Revealed” (which will very simply be referred to as “The Guide…” for the rest of my article), is one book of many that graces the cyber-shelves of BarnesandNoble.com. So what makes this pocketable 114 page handbook so different from all the rest? Geoff tells me the issues he’s found in other tomes on screenwriting. “The first is oversaturation... It can be difficult to comb through that many choices to try and find knowledge that rings true for you. The second thing I’ve noticed is specialization. Many books on screenwriting will focus on a particular aspect of the craft such as concept design, theme, or format. This can lead to being overwhelmed with a myriad of screenwriting books.”

CAPTION: “The Guide…” on my cool, distressed rug that I bought brand new.

And a myriad there is. So what gives Geoff the authority to write the all-inclusive Guide to our craft? Maybe years of fixing other people’s scripts. Geoff inhabits the unique title as founder of WeFixYourScript.com, a screenwriting consultation service that focuses on award-winning and experienced professionals breaking down a client’s story from concept development to the polishing of a feature, short or TV pilot. Geoff has said of his experience at the screenplay chopping block, “It has really forced me to understand structure. I’ve been brought on to fix scripts that have been as short as 57 pages before. That is a script which should be in the 90-page range. Solving issues like that which tends to be in a short turnover when a script is about to hit production really tempers your ability as a screenwriter.”

I read “The Guide…” in chunks during my ride-shares to auditions and on set in-between set-ups. I’ve been a self-taught screenwriter for a decade now, a trial and error story-structurer who learned from harsh-but-friendly peer critiques as well as reading other scripts, both famous and unproduced, to help me hone my own knowledge and style. Besides making me seem super career-invested to anyone who read the cover on set, I was also picking up new tips, ideas and angles to film-writing that hadn’t occurred to me. “The Guide…” seemed incredibly compact yet full of both the basic and more involved elements of screenwriting.

CAPTION: Me (obviously) taking set-selfies on the CBS lot while I read “The Guide…”

Filled with diagrams to illustrate structure and worksheets to test what you’ve learned so far, “The Guide…” was filling in tiny holes of information that I didn’t even know I was really missing. Part I starts off by breaking down the basics from the attitude you should encompass when starting a screenwriter career to the myths you too often hear (can you guess what Geoff thinks of the old “Write what you know” idiom?) to then gently ease into the foundations of structure and format.

One thing I also found surprising was that amongst the new tidbits of info I grabbed, I also found some of my own lessons being reflected back to me. It was validating to see that aspects I have voiced myself (see my article “Why You Only Write What You See In Screenplays”) were echoed in “The Guide’s” formatting section, meaning that the real-life experience I picked up while screenwriting in the industry since I was 19 was true to the page. Geoff’s a screenwriter’s screenwriter.

CAPTION: One of the many helpful diagrams that assembles your larger-than-life story into a comprehensive structure.

I have to say, though, my favorite chapters of this “non-hyperbolic nor long-winded” guide (thank you!) are the last: PART IV: What Comes Next and PART V: Networking. As screenwriters, we tend to hole up in our tiny, dark writer’s rooms (and hopefully not as tiny nor dark minds) when we are doing this job. But, once we’ve finally spent all that personal time with our characters, it’s sometimes hard to transition from the introverted, focused writer to the salesman of our own art. Most screenwriting texts dive into the tedium of the craft (which is fine!), but “The Guide…” displays a realistic overview from first pen-to-page to actually becoming involved with the screenwriting community and elevating yourself in the industry so that your script doesn’t sit in a dark drawer but may soon be produced into the art form in which it was intended.

After I was done, I felt like I had a more complete embrace on the craft of screenwriting than the pieced together lessons I had on my own throughout the years. It was the perfect, completing accessory to the outfit of knowledge I already had. Geoff says about screenwriter education, “Some people are suited to the college environment. Others like myself lean into being an autodidact and learn on their own. No one should feel like they need a degree though. In this business, no one cares where you went to school. They only care if you can provide value to a project.”

CAPTION: Not enough screenwriting references tell you what to do after you actually finish the damned thing!

When I touched base with Geoff, I decided to ask him one of the broadest questions any journalist or screenwriter alike would ask someone who has been in this business for decades to see what he would say: What makes a good screenplay? “On the surface, it seems simple enough to answer, but once you contemplate it, the sheer depth of this question threatens to swallow you whole,” Geoff starts. “A script well-structured, that has excellent character development, has dialogue with depth, and is pleasing to the eye are all aspects that when done well, will make a good script.  But this has sparked a different question within me. What makes a great screenplay?”

Geoff walks me through a thought experiment: “I want you to sit back for a moment and recall the last great screenplay you’ve read. Or the last great film you’ve watched.” Me, I’m going to choose 8th Grade. “Got one? Good. Now, remember a part that sticks out in your mind and hold onto it for just a moment. How did that make you feel? See, there’s an emotional component to it. A feeling that comes from remembering that script. That feeling in you is what makes a great script. A great script moves you.” The film 8th Grade was a rollercoaster of emotions for me. The actors’ performances mixed with the scenarios Bo Burnham’s script drove the audience through surfaced hyper-empathetic adoration and anxiety for the main character like you were the one sitting in her classroom seat. “See, you can have perfect structure,” Geoff explains. “Your dialogue can be on point, and your characters can be unique. You can have a killer concept and be thematically relevant. BUT… if your script doesn’t resonate with a reader, if it doesn’t have heart, then you have failed. A great script resonates within someone. It makes them feel. Something. Anything.”

“The Guide…” aptly embraces this concept by teaching you to combine structure with imaginativeness, the bones with the heart. “How do you make that happen?” Geoff leads. “By creating a script that puts a character on a journey that brings out the emotional truth of the reader. One way to do this is to craft a deep empathy and sympathy for your characters by instilling them with universal truths we all suffer with. Such as loss of a loved one, the desire to belong, the shallow pain of loneliness, the regret of poor choices in our past are just a few you can use. These are things that we as people struggle with from all parts of the world. Race nor creed nor status of wealth matters. These are the things that make us human. To craft a script which deals with themes that are relayed through a character’s struggles. A character on a path we can relate with, root for, weep with and think about once the story is over. That is what makes a great script.”

“The Guide For Every Screenwriter” is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Apple Books as both paperback and ebook. Link me to that Amazon review you leave once you’ve read it to tell me what you think.