This was my third visit to the BSFG, the second IRL, as the previous one was on Zoom with an author in the US. Antony Johnston writes in several genres and media: SF (of course), murder mystery, espionage, video games, graphic novels and non-fiction. He was interviewed and in answering the questions gave fascinating insights into how those different media work. He said that for graphic novels there's no set way that writers deliver their words to the artists, but he chose to do it in a screenplay format. That was handy when one of his works, Atomic Blonde, became a film. The process from start to finish was 5 years, which was, he found out, actually quite quick for the industry.
The process of writing for videogames has similarly no set format and varies between studios and even different games with the same set of people. That process is a lot more iterative than others. I learnt a new term - vertical slice. That describes how when a game is being prototyped the creators create a detailed part of the game, rather than sketching out everything. So it would have high quality graphics and gameplay, to see if it works, rather than launching into developing the whole thing.
If you're in the area, or want to join on Zoom I'd recommend these meetings as it's always interesting to hear from authors, even if you've never read their books (or graphic novels, or played their games...).
Photo credit: Sarah Walton Photography
Comments