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[danglass]

Hey Everyone,

My whole life I have been interested in writing. The idea of creating something completely new and bringing it to life on paper is a joy in itself, and I want to learn how to do that on a larger scale. I've written pieces as simple as creating a quest or an inner monologue of a character to larger endeavors such as building an entire new world with nations, religions, races, and events. My goal is to become a narrative designer and help contribute to the storytelling of the plot and characters, bringing them to life in the eyes of the player. I won't pretend that this will be an easy journey, but if that was enough to discourage someone none of us would be here right now. I want to help in any way I can, but I don't know where to start. I've been reading forums, blogs, and articles on the industry as well as brushing up my writing abilities in different genres. I have also began to teach myself C++ as I felt it would be useful pretty much anywhere involving games. If anyone has any advice or critiques on how to present myself and my work to others I would be grateful, and I hope in the future that I might get to contribute my work to a game.

Thank you for your time. 

[FabMariani]

If you have any interest in level building, then you might want to download Unity and build in it some kind of narrative exploration experience. Or get a visual novel tool like Ren'Py or TyranoBuilder or whatnot, and write some kind of interactive story. When you see the success of something like Choice of Robots (which, to be fair, is pretty great), it tells you that there's room for quality writing-based experiences that don't require a high level of dev work or a team.

[DireLogomachist]

I'd suggest Twine - https://twinery.org/

That will give you a chance to tell interactive stories without losing time/effort/motivation on aspects of game dev that you may not be ready or prepared for. As always, start simple. Don't write a novel. Start small and finish quick.

 

[jgrams]

Were you asking for advice on breaking into the industry, or advice on tools for writing your own narrative games?
I've heard a few people saying that having a portfolio helped them get their foot in the door, so maybe they're not all that different... but I don't really know anything about it.

As far as tools, I'd agree that Twine is a great place to start, perhaps the best.  Its sheer ease of use is hard to beat, and though it has limitations, you can go quite a long way with it.  You can publish your stuff for free any place that hosts free web pages (and you should list your work on the IFDB). The intfiction forums are a great place for critique and feedback.  You could also enter work in the IFComp (which you just missed this year) or the Spring Thing or the IntroComp for some exposure and feedback.

If and when you feel the need for something fancier than Twine, there are plenty of other things to try. Texture lets you drag verbs onto nouns instead of just clicking links. Ink, from the makers of 80 Days and Sorcery, embeds into Unity (there's a free starter project that is pretty easy to use).  ChoiceScript is similar, from Choice of Games, who has a big mailing list (160,000 people?) and will potentially pay you if you write something that fits their guidelines.  Inform is a tool for making classic parser-based text adventure games, if that's more your thing.

I recently wrote up a bunch of links and thoughts about narrative structures and tools for my local gamedev group: some of that might be helpful.

But yeah, start with Twine, do some simple stuff to get your feet wet. Writing interactive narrative is a bit different than writing static text, but the writers I've talked to who have tried it seem to find it very rewarding... sub-Q magazine has a bunch of bite-sized interactive fiction pieces that might prove inspiring.