How to live as a Freelance Game Writer: Part 3 (Having the Right Stuff)
on unpredictability, looking at your work in the mirror, and making your own way
"If only I could be so grossly incandescent."
- Solaire of Astora, Dark Souls
(All the articles in this ‘Freelance’ series work standalone, but to read the previous:
Whatever your reasons for freelancing—by choice or necessity—you face the same fundamental challenge: getting the work.
People find it hard to stomach that something could simultaneously:
Not be inevitable or automatic
Not be entirely fair
Relate to the cause and effect of what is in our control
Require hard work and dedication
As human beings, we like effort expended to lead to clear results.
It doesn't always.
It can be easier to decide it never does than to accept this—to evade the heartbreak of putting time into something that doesn't quickly succeed, to avoid the inevitable bleeding of 'unfair' and 'not good enough' in our minds. Sometimes, even if we're good enough for a job, we won't get it.
The Recruiter's Perspective
Hard as it is, if we embrace the freelance life, we need to put ourselves in the mindset of a recruiter and look honestly through their eyes. A key principle is reducing ambiguity that you can do what you're being hired to do.
If you haven't produced many projects, there's understandable ambiguity that you'll be able to deliver, even if you can show the skills. They don't know if you've worked in the kind of environment they work in. They don't know if you're reliable with deadlines. They don't know if you understand the compromises required in game development to work through multiple types of projects.
Your portfolio is the single most important story you will tell: it's the story that lets you tell all the other stories. It's the story of why someone should hire you, the story that reveals all the qualities and experiences that clear up those ambiguities.
You want to build portfolios that can be appreciated by non-specialists. They'll have enough knowledge to discuss what they want, but ideally they won't know as much as you do. That's why they're hiring you—you're the expert who has the skill they don't have, who can add a missing piece to their team.
Broadcasting Yourself
It's not just skill and craft we need—it's packaging, it's getting your name out there.
Even if your packaging is great in terms of your portfolio, what does that matter if no one asks to read it or notices the name long enough to go through it in the depth it deserves?
As a freelancer, you're not selling yourself once to a small panel in an interview. You're continuously selling yourself to loads of different projects throughout the year, often without even being aware of it—so many will come to you if things are going well, rather than the other way around.
Your 'broadcasting' shouldn't be a hard sale. Networking works best when it feels like talking to cool people about things you both love. Talking on social media about your passions and interests, actually releasing things—this is far more attractive to potential employers as sincere demonstrations of skill than a sole focus on the unfairness of the universe when it comes to job matters.
Being Good to Work With
There are specific ways beyond a portfolio that can tangibly demonstrate this sense of 'being good to work with' while getting your name out there. In games specifically, this is hugely important because it's often producers who hire you, whose job is made so much easier by you being easier to employ.
In recruitment processes, be a good communicator. Answer questions, and ask them—if you're ever asked if you have a question, yes, yes you do! It feels like you're listening and engaging far more than the silent person with nothing to say. If there's a gap in contact? Follow up without being overly insistent, keeping it friendly. Sometimes there will be ghosting or bad recruitment processes, but this is also to your advantage to know: if you have multiple offers, why go with the company who can't bother to reply to a message after making you go through all their processes?
Showing you've worked with teams in any capacity in games is really useful. For those without experience of this, I highly recommend game jams, especially time-limited in-person jams »
If You Are Brand New Without Prior Experience
Plenty of people struggle to get gigs in games with team experience, so if you have none, ask yourself—how are you competitive with that?
Have you made a game?
Of course you've made a game, right?
If you haven't released a game with writing you're proud of, that took you a decent amount of time, and that others have enjoyed—why should anyone hire you versus all those others in an already unfair market? The balance of fair versus unfair, known versus unknowable, starts to look a lot less unfair when this is thought through.
A Fundamental Question
If you wrote a single page of a story or dialogue script, would a trustworthy and honest stranger tell you they enjoyed reading it?
The video game industry is full of people proclaiming that games are totally different to all other narrative forms—but although they have unique challenges, good writing is still good writing. If you can't tell a good story in a linear page or two, it's hard to imagine how you could craft one in a far more complex interactive form.
Those strangers who aren't enjoying your work? One day they'll be your bosses, your hiring managers, your teammates, your players. They may not know how to create good writing or what they're looking for when analyzing it, nor can you please everyone—but such people are the ultimate purchasers and users of your services. It's imperative you think about whether what you're producing will be enjoyable or emotional to strangers on some level.
If you've never had much high praise from non-family members, non-close-friends on your work—how do you know you're ready to apply for narrative jobs in games? The 'wish to be good enough' is not enough. Many inexperienced people applying for game writing jobs will not currently be good at writing, for the simple reason that they're inexperienced and haven't yet learned their craft.
The Barn Exercise
Something a good writer can do:
Describe a barn from the point of view of a farmer standing inside it (one from your own imagination)
The farmer has just opened and read a letter telling him his son has died at war
You are not allowed to mention the letter, the son, the war, or that someone close to the farmer has died
Your description from the farmer's POV should be around 100-300 words
If you have a friend interested in writing, both do it without discussing it, then swap answers. Assess how well the writing keeps to the spirit of the instruction and modify accordingly to remove any references to letter/son/war.
Show your work to someone who has no idea what this exercise was, without letting them know the context. Ask for their opinion about your writing and about this character—what is the farmer going through emotionally? Did you describe a worldview well enough that even without context, people can understand your fictional character's heart?
Did you enjoy doing this? Did people respond well? If so—you've created something with the elusive art of subtext, containing meaning but suppressing it beneath the surface so characters aren't just stating what they mean in unrealistic ways. You've used language to contain emotion without stating the emotion.
Game writing will involve different skills that might rarely touch on physical descriptions and hidden meanings like this—but being able to do this well and subtly? In my experience, it's a good sign of a writer's ability in general.
Make a Game
That barn exercise—maybe you're thinking it's so different from what a game writer typically does that it's not applicable. You're special, right?
Well... Something an aspiring professional game writer should really have done?
Make a game.
I've grown tired repeating this advice since 2015, but I'll repeat it again. So many who want to get into game narrative still believe they can waltz into jobs at big companies without ever having written a game before. People from other industries are often terrible for this mode of thinking when they especially should know better.
Would you expect a Hollywood executive to hire someone who'd never written a script before to write a big film? No. Because we're all capable of writing scripts without studio approval using the tools we already have. The absence of such a calling card shows a lack of passion toward filmwriting and suggests arrogance—believing you should be paid to do something you've never demonstrated tangible interest in doing.
You might wonder—how can I do this with a game? I don't have millions of dollars or programming knowledge—
No. You can make a game.
You don't need the huge preparatory work or magical feeling of readiness you think you do. An afternoon is all you need to craft something. An experience of 5-10 minutes is all you need to aim for.
I even have a tool here: https://toolbox.writinginteractive.com/gettingstarted that explains all the coding you need!
Twine and Ink—two tools, free even for commercial use, with simple logic. They're enough to make an interactive narrative with the writing skills you should already have.
What to Make
Focus on a brief dramatic scene, ideally in one location with two characters and dialogue-based choices.
For example, the player could be:
An employer having to tell someone they're being fired
A doctor telling someone they're going to die
A partner telling their other half they want to marry them
Why this approach?
Short, emotion-driven narratives resonate with audiences and grab attention
Prevents over-complication and over-scoping—you're capturing a moment rather than an extended narrative
Dialogue means writing people talking to people—one of the main things you'd do as a paid writer
Your primary goal isn't perfection, but getting started. Do this and you're a game writer!
Publishing and Getting Real Feedback
If you just want to hear your work is great, I don't believe you really wish to improve—and everyone can improve, even if it's just mastering different skills and opening to more perspectives.
When you get a project you really believe in AND that previously harsher people are now praising? Publish it on a site like itch.io. Polish it up in whatever visual and audio ways you can. Seek feedback from wider communities. Get quotes from others for the site itself—social proof like you'd see on film posters.
Once you have that? Congratulations—you've made a game you're proud of and that's high quality enough for people to talk about how good it is.
Then you're probably ready to apply for game writing freelance jobs. It's still a difficult market, but times change quickly—and doing the above is likely a far better use of your time than sending CV after CV if you don't have a game out there that people have praised.
The Bottom Line
This is doubly important if you're not a proven writer in other media. At least if you're successful in TV, film, novels, etc., prospective employers know you can write in general, even if you haven't proven it in games.
If you have no background anywhere, it's even more imperative you grow your craft, build projects, get feedback, and release and sing about the best ones to grow your reputation. If you're not getting great feedback, how do you know you're good enough right now? That isn't to say you won't get there—I see writers experience dramatic improvements all the time with hard work and the right attitude—but saying you want to be a professional writer is not enough to make you one.
All those CVs and portfolios sent out with bad samples? Not only wasting your time, but potentially damaging future chances if your name is still on file from previous attempts.
The above shouldn't be scary. If you really like writing and want to write games for a living, the idea of writing your own games and working hard on your craft should not be a problem.
Next up: Freelancing Contracts and Writing Formats
Updates:
Not much to report, though I just signed a really cool contract for a company I have long played the productions of myself!
And we’ve just started a cohort of my main MFA-style game writing workshop, though I’m still open to applications for the shorter 101: Branching Dialogue course: https://www.gregbuchanangames.com/courses — something that I started doing earlier this year and which has a very fancy custom tool and custom narrative structure we work through fairly intensively, including all kinds of influences from film, real life, and interactivity. It’s been fun and looking forward to the next run!
Until next time!