I am obsessed witht he writing and world-building in Obscura and was wondering if you could offer some guidance. I am currently in school for game development and we have touched a little on character creation and creative writing, but not as much as I'd like.
What resources would you recommend a new game dev to check out to build creative writing skills? Would you recommend going to college for it and/or are there books you could recommend?
Thank you so much for your time!
If you ask 100 writers about tips to develop their skills you are going to get 1000 answers, so I'm gonna try giving classic advice in a way that won't be extremely boring. There's going to be a lot of links to media here, every link should be to something free and available, but I can't help it if a link dies, sorry.
No matter what else you're doing, try to experience a wide variety of narratives and learn about what they're doing and why. And while, yes, reading is really important for that, I don't just mean "read a ton of books". Books are fabulous, but books are just one medium. Watch an anime, check out a comedy film from the black-and-white days, here's a ballet and an opera that are freely available to watch, Julie Andrews is reading Pride and Prejudice in podcast form, here's two of my favourite video essays. How do these tell their stories in their mediums? What kind of context and history did they emerge out of? What works? What doesn't?
Play a wide variety of games! Realistic Kissing Simulator may not have a narrative in the same way a film might, but it does have something to say about consent and physical intimacy. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is consistently praised for its grounded and realistic dialogue; what makes it so good? How does IMMORTALITY reveal its hidden narrative when it's structured like a sandbox? How do the Our Life games let players construct themselves within the game world and where are the restrictions?
Approach media with the same mindset as a ten-year-old watching their PS5 getting dismantled for a repair: be curious! Take pieces apart and try to figure out how they tick! The joy of doing that with narratives is that there's no risk of frying a motherboard.
And write! Write fanfic, write original work, play a journaling game or a solo RPG, invent OCs and smash them together, write an essay about something you love with academic references and citations, keep a diary of what media you've experienced and your impressions of it, write smut for your own gratification, make an interactive story in Twine. Writing is a skill like any other, and the single best way to develop it is to write, read what you've written, and then write more.
As for education, if it's accessible to you and you find that framework for learning works for you, I recommend it. It doesn't have to be a full post-secondary program; one of the best bits of education I ever had as a writer was a three-day workshop hosted by a local writer at the local uni.
And when it comes to resources, I'd say it's good to get a general understanding of dramaturgy (no specific resources, sorry, I got this education Way Back), but if you're looking for specific texts then I'd say The Game Narrative Toolbox for game writing, On Writing by Stephen King and The Elements of Style and The Elements of Eloquence for prose-writing in general, and as a little bonus rec Passion and Play specifically for including sex in games. None of these are required reading to write for games and none of them are rules for good writing, but if you find that reading books is helpful to your learning process then these are a pretty good way to start.
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