Writing Strategy Guides - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 138

Turning In Your Draft Chapter by Chapter
If you have a short deadline, you'll likely be assigned this method. The layout people
do a lot of work to transform your manuscript into the full-color glossy format it
gets published in, so they need those chapters as soon as you write them. You won't
have the luxury of being able to go back and add to chapters, so you'll have to get
organized quickly right from the start. Carefully think out what you want to include
in every chapter. The good news is that if your editor wants you to change something
about how you'll write subsequent chapters, you can do so early on in the process.

Turning In Your Manuscript One Half at a Time
If you have a month or longer to write the guide, you have more breathing room.
You can go back and add bits to chapters, perhaps inserting sidebars. Still, it might
not be a bad idea to send your first chapter to your editor, just to be sure your vision
jives with hers.

The Game Company Review Process
After you've turned in your manuscript and the layout people have made it beautiful,
the game company receives a copy. They mark corrections and send it back to you.
Set aside ample time to make these changes. By the time you've written the guide,
the layout people have set it up, and the game company has received and reviewed
it, many changes will have happened to the game. Perhaps you described defeating a
boss using fire arrows, and now no fire arrows are available on that level. Or maybe
you told the player to use a shortcut through a cavern that now no longer exists
because the designers had too many collision problems with it. This stage may be
time-consuming, depending on how much the game changes prerelease.

13.9 Deadlines
Deadlines can vary greatly, depending on when you are brought on board. If you're
the initial writer assigned to the project, you might have six weeks or more to write
the guide. But if you're filling in for a staff writer who had too many projects, you
might find yourself looking at 10 to 14 days. Depending on the type of game, you
may want to request more time from the get-go. Writing a guide for an RPG in that
limited time will be very difficult, and you likely won't get much sleep. The nature
of an RPG, with all its quests, miniquests, spells, magical items, and so on, makes
it a very complex game to write a guide for. A guide for a survival horror game or
first-person shooter will be a little easier to pull off with a shorter deadline.
If you have a very short deadline, keep in mind the following time-saving tips.

•

Do your screenshots during your playthroughs, instead of taking them all after
you've finished writing the guide.

• Ask designers early on for the stats you'll need for the appendices.