Script Doctoring - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 158

15
Script Doctoring
Richard Dansky
In a perfect world, game writing follows a defined process that establishes room for
creativity. The writer works with the team start to finish, provides the dialog, story,
and other writing elements that the game requires, and is able to satisfy the needs of
the project while still carving out a satisfying space for creative endeavor. The process
flows smoothly, the schedule is reasonable, and the needed content is appropriate to
both the needs of the game and the capability of the writer or writers producing it.
Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen. Things go wrong, or at least go dif-
ferently from the initial plan. Scope changes. Deadlines shift. The need for five
thousand extra lines of dialog suddenly materializes. People roll onto and off of
projects, levels get redesigned, features get added or cut, and so forth.
In other words, stuff happens, and stuff happening is the main reason that game
writers are sometimes called on to fill the role of script doctor.
Technically, the term isn't quite accurate. After all, a writer coming onto a project
mid-development cycle may be asked to do anything from polishing up the dialog to
getting involved in major reworking of the story (and, by extension, gameplay). The
script is a large part of a game writer's focus under those circumstances, but it's not
always all of it. Sometimes, it's not even the most important part.
15.1 What Is Script Doctoring?
Script doctoring for video games is a catch-all term for coming onto a project to
assist with any and all writing-related tasks. It can be as light a task as polishing the
dialog to make sure all the slang is appropriate, or as heavy as doing a complete story
and character overhaul. It can be a couple of days of in-and-out, or it can be a task
requiring months of work.
What it is not is an entirely original task. A script doctor's work is to get a game's
writing where it needs to be, and that implies that there's already a game in place