Script Doctoring - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 168

• Schedule regular check-ins so you can. . .

- see how you're doing so far;
- see what's changed since the last check-in—and something always changes.

•

Be consistent in the changes you make.

- Keep character voice consistent—if you're pulling all of the contractions
out of one character's speech, do it all the way through.
- Consistent spelling and capitalization go a long way towards reducing
confusion and making you look professional.

- And of course, consistency in formatting is essential.

• What you are there for is the difference —the changes you make. Therefore,

make it easy for people to find those changes and comment on them.

- Highlight changes you make for easy identification.
- Summarize what you've done so readers can look in the right place.

•

Find reference points for what you're doing.

- Actors, video clips, sequences in well-known topics or movies—all of
these make it much easier to communicate the changes that you're mak-
ing.
- It's much easier than making the folks you're working with hunt through
line by line to get a sense of what you have done.

•

Reference for yourself is important.

- Pull together the “definitive� traits and lines of the characters you'll be
writing for.

- Refer to them to make sure the doctoring work you do blends seamlessly
with the rest of the dialog.

•

Don't give yourself closure until the box is on the shelf.

- If you tell yourself that you're done, it will be that much harder to get
into gear once the inevitable last-minute request comes up.

- And if it's hard to get into gear, it's hard to do the work, which means it
takes that much longer.