Yesterday was an interesting day. Most of it involved writing material for a computer game. Not character dialogue or plots, which is what many games require writers for, but rich and idiosyncratic detail relevant to the genre of the game…until I’m sure of my position regarding confidentiality I can’t say any more. 

Anyway, the nature of the work is providing what amounts to capsule stories; descriptions of people and events that serve to flesh out the experience of gaming for those players interested in scratching the surface of the world to see what makes it tick. The style I chose for this – a job which I’ve been putting time into for a few days now – was information-rich nuggets, 8-10 lines for each piece, varying in tone from plausible to eccentric. Hopefully, just what players will be interested in discovering, so they can build on those easter eggs in online forums etc.

After that – or more accurately during it, since this was something that consumed several short chunks of the day as I liased with my client and the artist also working on the job – a marketing piece for a business involved in the digital sector. The issue here was problem solving: how do we get across a particular issue of relevance to the story, without upsetting anyone in the various cultures who’ll be reading it, while staying reasonably true to the concept that runs through the piece, which itself has an element that many will find inherently offensive? No wonder the main contact at the client is away.

But, over the course of several surreal phone calls and emails, a solution is brokered that seems to satisfy all parties involved. No small feat, given the way we were headed at one point, when part of the possible solution which the three of us were discussing in something almost like seriousness read “The stranger stretched his underpants out in front of him and gave them a mighty TWANG…creating a resonating frequency that knocked out XXX’s corrupt and antiquated circuitry, rendering him helpless.” But détente is achieved, and an international marketing campaign can be rolled out.

And then there’s another ongoing concern, a new one: how to develop a low-budget feature film with a director who, fingers crossed, wood touched, has the money for one and wants me to be involved. This took the form of a couple of phone calls while the director juggled babies and visitors, and the gradual development of a strategy for going about how to realise our ambition. At this point the story is scarcely an issue, though I run a concept past the director that he seems to like, and which I’ll now have to find time to write a treatment for.

The object of all the above is to give some insight into the life of the gigging writer. Yes, writing was done, and quite a useful chunk of it. But it was also a day characterised by the need for listening skills, tact, the ability to change what I’m doing in response to feedback, and a bullish attitude to self-promotion. In short form then, and I may yet run a course with this title:

Be Your Own Pimp –

someone’s going to be making money out of you,

and it might as well be you