Writing and Narrative Design: A Relationship

[Music] we can get started so first and also thank you for coming bright and early in the morning so great to see so many happy smiling faces so my name is Molly Maloney and I am a narrative designer for telltale games and this is writing a narrative design relationship and my name is Eric Steffi I'm a writer also a telltale games and both of us have been a tell tale going on five years this year we actually met on the job and started dating going on like four years ago now we're getting married true thank you yeah no the weddings coming up in June and if you're curious about what they're planning a GDC talk and a wedding at the same time is stressful oh my god like I'm not gonna bet I do not regret it but we didn't plan ahead I would say no that the timing was a little stressful but well we we we first started discussing the idea for this talk based on a lot of conversations that we were having with other people you know I'm a

writer she's a narrative designer what's the difference between those a telltale what's it like working with the person you're dating it turns out when you're dating the person you work with people with a lot of questions for you all that must be amazing oh that oh I'm so sorry and we started realizing that there were a lot of parallels between the two subjects and that's kind of where this talk started coming together from so really quick before we dive in what we're gonna be discussing in this talk basically what is the difference between narrative design and writing specifically through the telltale lens because that's where we work how the two are mutually beneficial and can add a ton to your game make it better and then just tips and tricks for getting the most out of a writing and a narrative design team so let's dive in first off let's talk about what exactly the difference between narrative and blah blah it's the morning what's the difference between narrative design and writing yeah it's a question that still comes up a lot I think especially because narrative design is a role that's still sort of being defined in

the video game industry at large yeah I like to joke but if you ask for different narrative designers what their job is you get four different answers and it's not even a joke I actually did ask for so like it's crazy everybody will tell you something different yeah and it doesn't help that you know writing a narrative designer role or terms the candidates sometimes get tossed around interchangeably these days but I tell tell the two roles are currently distinct and our philosophy is that you know writing a narrative design those are two big jobs and asking one person to undertake both of them I'm not saying you can't do it but why not let two people do one thing really well then ask one person to stretch themselves across two different disciplines yeah so let's talk about what that looks like specifically so the simple definition that we like to use at work is writing is responsible for the characters and design is responsible for the player and that's a really simplified way to view it but it actually has been very useful for us because it provides a lens through which each of those disciplines can really focus their energy yeah and

so on the writing side of things that looks like you got your dialog which is what your characters are saying if your character arcs which is how the characters are growing and changing over the course of the story and then of your themes in tone which this is the most subjective of these but it basically means that if you're making a comedy I get funny for making a drama make sure you really tug on the heartstrings for the design side what this looks like a total is choices and consequences are a big part and and that is is the player making enough choices do they feel good in the moment are they paying off down the line next we've got branching is the player experiencing unique content and do they know it and then finally mechanics which is historically spearheaded by narrative design at telltale but it really prevents your mini games or your mechanics from being feeling different or out of place with the narrative it's an important thing to note is that none of these say that writing is the one responsible for the story because what makes the relationship between writing and design super unique it still tells their writing and designers sharing that story as a deliverable and you know because it doesn't matter how much agency your

player has they don't fall in love with the kiss story and characters yeah and so I also find that what's really great about this is that you've also got two people who are responsible for the story so that means you can have the story holders be in two places at one time so while Eric is like feverishly locked in a broom closet writing or whatever um I can run around and actually talk to people evangelize what's going on keep people up to date ramped up other departments work on my own stuff of which there's a ton and be able to be in those two places at once is really awesome because again the writer will be doing a lot of time blocked away so let's get more practical with this yeah cuz there with all the stuff you're saying you know this sounds like writing design don't need to actually have a relationship at all you could just divide up the work and call it a day like in this you know classic example from the highly topical reference about the Brady Bunch he's always trying to getting to me to watch the show with him so just looking at that previous slide not this Brady Bunch the one from a couple before where we've got like those two categories right it

would be so easy to say okay that's a pretty cut in to cut and dry breakdown of responsibilities like this is my piece of pie and this is your piece of pie and never the two shall touch but those roles are I like to think of them more as a starting place not a paint-by-numbers kind of thing on the balance of power or responsibility because writing a narrative design you know we might have different responsibilities but we share a goal which is to make a great game together and fundamentally it just doesn't get that cut and dry you're gonna step on each other's toes in the process yeah and it's like that you wouldn't have those kind of cut and dry responsibilities in a personal relationship either like let's say for instance Molly went out of town and doing dishes was her job you know if she got back in there was a sink of dishes waiting for her because that's her job she would kill me I would kill him I'd be dead actually what's funny is that I have done this to him many many times well I try not to do it to my writing partner yeah perfectly not you know you don't do it to your designer either no

yeah exactly so but really like jokes aside like dividing up the responsibilities of who's responsible for what I find historically it can lead to a lot of false senses of ownership and also just resentment possessiveness and feuding murder and and killings so with that in mind let's just go through the process at telltale and see how the balance evolved over the course of making an actual episode so first up is pre-production which this is the writer and designer alone on the episode and it's putting together the outline an initial story and you know we've been talking about there's the differences between writing and narrative design differences responsibilities but what's interesting is at this point there's not a ton of friends than what you guys are doing from the outside because it's gonna be a lot of you sitting around talking and thinking yeah functionally it's just a lot of whiteboard time or coffee shop time or whatever you like to do and it looks a lot like this image you've got your writer and your narrative designer kind of locked in a room bouncing ideas off of each other I really think the only thing it's missing is like just out of frame a producer holding a baseball

bat fun fact you can put story and things on a Gantt chart creativity is a deliverable yeah and so the thing that is different between the two of you at this phase is what you're focusing on because like we were talking about before you know writing is focusing on making that can you know making the story compelling and making the character journey feel really good and design is responsible for making that story really fun and playable so we had a great example of this on an episode of minecraft story mode that we were working on together now they this didn't get made for various reasons but I had this idea for the player character I wanted him to have a job whereas all he would do all day was craft sticks for other cooler heroes that was all he would do all day he was gonna start off bored and hating his life but he's gonna be destined for greatness maybe edge so I stopped listening at bored and hating his life like this is a design nightmare for me like this guy is gonna be bored like how do I turn that into a mechanic right but the thing that I loved about it was that if you have a character who starts out bored and hating their life then you know what their trajectory is going to be over the course of the story yeah I think that trajectory is going to take them immediately to the player to

uninstalling the game but no it's seriously it's not like this is a movie where we can just show a montage and be like okay he hates his life but don't worry it's gonna get really good later right so I heard O'Malley was saying and tried to find a way to punch it up so I said okay what if he's super positive about making sticks yeah I said well if he's an optimist in spite of you know having to make sticks all day he's not gonna let that get him down this is that this is a kids game by the way I don't know if you that part so like that shifting of Eric's point of view who's willing to kind of Bend on these ideas it really helped me out a lot like all of a sudden we have this character they might be miserable but they're also super passionate about their crappy job and that really gave me an inroad as a designer where I'm like okay so we design like those super kind of over-the-top mechanic around it where it was almost like those ddrs thing where it was like you're crafting these sticks in Minecraft it was like awesome good job pal

and it was it was fun and it was funny and we actually laughed a lot and it didn't get made for like completely different reasons but what really what was great about it was Eric still got what he wanted like this character still wanted to get away from his boring job but we had a mechanic that was actually fun to play yeah so we had the character accident it being super fun and it was it was a really great example of writing and designing I'll kind of whack in that ball back and forth being collaborative which is you know how it should be except it doesn't always go that smoothly no no yeah cuz that developing that healthy level of collaboration takes time and Trust and if your partner is going to have I you're your partner is going to have ideas that you don't always agree with so let's talk about what happens when writing and design disagree about an idea during pre-production because it happens a lot yeah and if your partner is pitching and loving an idea that you don't like it's really critical to get on the same page as soon as possible and in our experience we've seen that there are certain red flags or bad habits that we've seen that are really not the correct way to handle disagreements so I'm gonna talk about our first bad habit we have to but basically fundamentally

bad habits in my opinion boiled down to over communication or under communication so click there are some people who I find dislike confrontation and when they hear an idea that they don't like they just not an agreement everything that you're saying secretly hating it and hoping that somebody else anybody else will kill it instead of them because they hate confrontation like I feel like everybody knows somebody like this everybody knows somebody like this I mean it's me Casey didn't get the hint there but I but this one has really been me in the butt alot in the past I was working on an episode of a tell tells Batman series and I told people that there was a scene that I'd write in a particular way that higher-ups were asking for and even though I really didn't think it was gonna be the best way to do it and I'd a better idea in my mind but I really didn't want to rock the boat so I said okay I'll write it the way they want it I'll wait til table reads someone else will shut it down and then I'll get to fix it the way that I want to a victimless crime right they're supposed to you know victims are supposed to be

no bad guys was that the problem with the scene what no bad guys in a Batman up scene anyway they know they're so they're so tape Reid comes and sure enough we get to the scene people don't like it but when it came time to fix it they asked someone else to do it so I gotta get to fix it like I wanted to and the big lesson I learned is that staying silent about these things you don't like it's never the right answer in fact holding your tongue it's just gonna hurt the rest of your team it's gonna hurt you and if you're not careful it could hurt the game in the end and I don't know if you're picking up on this yet from like my overall vibe but that's kind of me in life to not just work like I'm not a huge confrontation guy I can confront her you're a lover not a fighter which I would say is a really great transition to the other side of the spectrum yeah yeah because it turns out there are people who don't have a problem with confrontation you might say even like confrontation I like to call it communication but whatever I want the record to show I wasn't saying it was about her but there's a designer that I've worked with before who you know

maybe when they hear an idea they don't like they they might have a hard time I object to these this they have a hard time hiding how they feel about it I know she or he gets hung up on it and comes back to it over over again until they kill it dead even if it derails other confident conversations so yeah this one is definitely me I like to call it hyper communication which I feel like is a good rebranding but I really communicate a lot by nature and if something is wrong I want to see that stuff fixed right now and because like in my opinion like no longer a bad idea persists the more people hear about it you just want to nip it in the bud and functionally that's a great place to come at it from but practically it's not it's just not useful in the room and there were a couple of things that I've had to really work on over time to improve on this behavior and the way that I did this was the first thing listen and as it turns out listening is

not actually just being silent while waiting for your turn to talk which I thought counted for a really long time but you know actually just really listening to what the other person has to say before casting judgment was creat was critical for me and that was aided by the second thing which was that I had to really remember that everybody we're part of a team and everybody is here making a great game because they're passionate and talented and if you're the only person in the room disagreeing with something I mean I'm not saying that you're wrong but sometimes the problem lies within so for me I just found being obstinate in a meeting or trying to shut these things down so aggressively it usually surprised doesn't convince people you can't just shout at them or argue with them until they give up that doesn't actually sway hearts and minds that just makes everybody think you're a jerk so um yeah I learned some things along the way and it's funny like I was saying before you know these professional issues we're definitely things that we were also carrying into our personal lives you know and being in a personal relationship when we were first tasked

with working together it forced us to deal with a lot of those issues kind of head-on you know ordinarily I would have just gone home and complained to Eric about my annoying writer but suddenly I was the annoying writer so we had to talk it out a lot at our apartment usually enough our not the most fun but in our experience these two bad habits over communication and under communication those are them among the most common I find like this kind of thing is where most most of these issues find their roots and it's so important to just kind of notice them as they're cropping up yeah because if those are causing problems for you in pre-production it's only gonna get worse as you start making a script together and a telltale that's a hugely collaborative process between writing and design so let's talk a little bit about how we make a script it involves something that internally we like to call stubbing which is tell tells term for designs contribution to the script and it's where design maps out like the

choices and the nodes and the branches of a scene in our software and one of the things that I find makes telltale kind of unique is narrative designers are actually the first ones to crack open the scene files that become the script and by leading this phase design is able to ensure that those scenes don't get too passive that their player driven as much as possible but that doesn't mean we go wild and like if you remember that pre-production phase really what my job is is to remember the things we talked about during our whiteboard time and transcribed those into the script to jog Eric's memory yeah and and so writing is then able to come in and use that framework to go on and write all the dialogue and there's some writer so I talked to who are you like oh does it feel like someone else is doing your job for you does it feel like you don't have enough say but honestly like Molly said it's really rooted in that pre-production time and it actually saves a lot of time and energy for when you actually start writing because it means there's no blank page and there's already a rough structure there and in a video game what there's so much writing to do so much dialogue especially in a dialogue driven game like telltale makes it's nice to

have any way to save a little time and it works because again of that trust but in the relationship between writer and narrative designer that's true Eric knows but I'm not going to go wild in the script and just start writing in all my own ideas that's not very useful so let's take a look at what this actually looks like so here's what a choice in the telltale tool looks like it's not the sexiest slide so this is from just for context for you guys this is from the big exciting finale of minecraft story mode season 1 episode 5 which Eric and I were co-leads on I am the choice that we're looking at it comes in when our hero Jesse is confronting the villain of the episode his name is Aidan and Jesse is trying to take back this big MacGuffin that he's been trying to get the whole time called the eversource it's a magic chicken it's a kid's game but those blue nodes at the top those are basically with a non-interactive

cutscenes live in our tool and then the yellow nodes are the choices so let's break this open and see what it looks like inside I'm just going to give a super fast overview of what this is so here we've got a cutscene the one that is preceding the choice and what I've done in here so this is my work and we have like a stamp that says who does what so you know what I've done is I've fudged in a couple of those blue directors notes kind of just to depict what's going on in the scene and then the pink stubs are the standings for the actual lines so the sole purpose of these stubs Dandan lines are to jog Eric's memory and just give him the gist of the scene that we talked about possibly weeks before in our whiteboard time and Molly and I have stubbed and written for each other a lot so we've talked a lot about kind of you know best practices and Molyneux's had a lot of the best shorthand use to get the best writing out of me yeah actually we will whenever you sit with a writer if you're the narrative designer we usually talk about how you prefer your stubs so these are just the ones that work best for us so running through the thing real fast so

we've got Reggie who's another character in the scene he's super surprised to see you cuz spoilers he thought you were dead Aidan was talking to Reggie and doesn't like being ignored so he spawns a creeper in your Reiji and the creeper explodes and Reggie is incapacitated and Reggie's in some pain and then Aiden turns his attention to you the cool player and he cannot believe that you are still alive how many times does he have to kill you and that last stub is actually a little more specific and there's a reason for that so that's what we call the feeder line and that's any line that leads into a choice space and that is something that we get a little picky about as narrative designers writing and design do a lot of back and forth about those because it's dialogue but at the same time it's also you know really integral to the choices and so it's kind of a shared custody thing yeah if you don't have a great theatre line setting up your choices and your choices aren't so good and choices are technically if you remember that first slide one of my pieces of pie so then we have the individual choices themselves I'm not as

particular about how these are stuck because the display text ie the the text in the yellow nodes which is actually what we will see on the face buttons when you're playing the game that display text basically conveys most of what I want already so I just like to put the roleplay rails in for Eric's guidance so we've got the first one you've lost Aiden which i think is going to be our cool badass choice then we've got the you thought it would be that easy which is probably your snarky choice and then we've got the old give me the other source which is our straight to the point kind of cut the crap choice yeah and so again like we were talking about designer right or Paris approach stuffing in writing lots of different ways and it's important to discuss and figure out what's what works best for your team so after all that I'm able to come in and write lines using ah those stubs as the basis for this cutscene dramatic reading please so it is eyes widen looking over his shoulder and Reggie turns oh my good gosh you're alive you're alive and you know that must mean is the founder alive is she with you hey I'm not done talking

to you they didn't sponsor a creeper in your Reggie what the bridge the creeper explodes incapacitating him Jesse our hero comes running in Reggie not one more step Jesse Hall says Aidan Stan's getting angry I killed you once I can do it again you were a fool to come back here Jesse and seen ya so I think it's feeling pretty good it's pretty early in the morning for that level of excitement I've amped up the drama in a few spots you know I've added some character beats you can see the note that I left there for my like kind of calling out rad it's a new dialogue and the only problem with it is it's starting to feel a little bit long yeah so Eric's idea for this new line I really liked it he actually caught something that I completely spaced on in our whiteboard time which was that you supposedly died with another person so that's really good but when you start to read all of it out loud it's actually getting a bit long with no player interaction whatsoever so I'd recommend a trim would possible which happens you know writers love writing dialogue as it turns out yeah which is good it's good to love to love things so part of what I

do is I actually will go through so basically I do the stubs son judge Eric Eric makes it amazing and then I get it back and one of the things that I do and director does this too is we look for potential cuts if it starts to feel like it's getting too long you know what can we trim down and I don't like to do this but it's a necessary evil to kind of keep the player driving so I would also suggest that we consider cutting these two lines as well because I mean they're not totally necessary and you know heaven forbid we have things that aren't totally necessary finally I like what Eric was going for with this last line but the one before it is actually going to lead into that choice space that we looked at earlier a lot better so I would recommend that we either cut or move that one as well sorry sweetheart I'll survive nobody's that like the negotiations that we do no but no but seriously and something like that really is better coming from your creative partner rather than like an executive or

someone down the road and I know that if it was a line I was really passionate about I know we'd be able to have a discussion about it again because of all the trust and communication and all that stuff we honestly do talk about it a ton yeah and so now we're gonna move on to these choices and Molyneux's I have fun writing dialogue like this so her stubs are pretty open-ended so for that badass choice we've got you know just you and me Aiden just you and me now for snarky we've got give me some credit Aiden I'm a lot harder to kill than that and then to the point we don't need to fight Aiden all I want is a chicken hand it over and so for this first one here Eric really took the stub and ran with it which is good and like exactly what we want but it's actually getting a little far away from the original intent of the display text which is it's over 8 and hour no it's you've lost Aiden whatever something like that so but honestly this is a great example where I like that line so much I'm just going to quietly change my display text to match it rather than ask Eric to adjust his line see the process yeah so we're joking

around but what design is doing here is actually really important and it's a great example of the different lenses that we were talking about before really enhancing the process as we go back and forth you know I'm focusing on the characters in the scene I'm always focusing on the player's experience through it and the combination of those efforts you know it's just gonna make for a stronger game in the end so let's show you how the scene ended up in the ship game Oh God I'm gonna click it [Music] not one more step I killed you once I could do it again just you and me Aiden just you had me I really loved that scene actually and they have a lot more energy than I do right now I think everything should have

a chicken in it it really solves a lot of problems but that's seen I think really is it did come together it's a great example of that writing design you know being in balance and going back and forth with each other yeah and so we're starting to get toward the end of things now and we thought it would be really useful to share what happens when writing and design might be a little less balanced in your game because we're sending where we're talking about a lot of the ideal versions of things but functionally that's not always the case and what I mean by this is how to identify when perhaps one discipline might be overpowering the other and why that can be bad yeah so first up I've got some signs that your game might be suffering for something I'm calling writing domination it's a little dramatic I think it's cool so that includes you've got cut scenes where the player character is feeling all sorts of emotions that the player themselves might not be feeling this is your classic example if you got a character on-screen who's being super upset or angry about something while you're laughing and then you've got you know a diverse range of dialogue choices that are only really saying one thing and

this is commonly a problem that happens where writers written a line or a moment that they really really love and they're like well let's just make sure all the choices lead right into that I'm angry I'm really angry I'm so mad right and so that's the sort of thing that does an idol come in and be like Nana we need to actually and then this last ones that this lesson is a pretty common one but it's a player only reacting to what other more interesting characters in the scene are doing this is a great example if you might have an ensemble a big ensemble cast is you've got all these wacky NPC's in the group with you and you know they have their interesting backstories and their cool character growth well you're just kind of being told and watching their story instead of one that you're driving and playing I find a red flag on this one is if you have them if you have the choice calm down that's usually a tip-off that two other people are doing something really interesting that you're watching and so they those are the kind of traps that we have avoid falling on the flip side you've got signs that design might be throwing a little too much weight around and those include things like you get those super to a

point lines that tell you exactly where to go and what to do because clarity is king go to the place get the thing bring it back like it's just like not as that is fun to listen to it's very clear Mechanics for the sake of mechanics because what better to amp up the emotional stakes in your scene than a sick round of shuffle puck or some mini game and then finally the old no one can be interesting except the player ever and this is actually kind of the inverse of Eric's last point but it's one of the things that I find design does a lot where it's like I like to call it dumb NPC in syndrome because you'll have a bunch of NPC's standing around an unlocked door waiting for you to open it things like that and so we're obviously describing exaggerated worst-case scenarios to be funny here but hopefully it's getting to the root of what we've been talking about and if you take away anything from this talk we hope it's what's on this slide so first that's you know having those lenses through which you evaluate your game are really

important you know because if you're writing if writing is responsible for your characters design is responsible for your player then it means that you know they can both share responsibility for the story and mean that no and that means that no one has monopoly over the two which is good because making a game is a team effort and then there's also the fact that I find if the writer and designer if they're not supporting each other in the room then why would you expect the writing and design to support each other in your game like it's a very fundamental thing but it really is true and and one of the things that I kind of love about telltale is Eric and I are on equal footing design doesn't actually get to tell writing what to do we do need to agree on things which really makes it so that we are kind of forced to see things eye to eye in a what I find is a very productive way it means our stories are really the most important thing which I love and we learned all this the hard way working professionally with your significant other is not easy all the time and it really forced us to have some tough conversations I hate tough conversations

yeah and honestly one of the reasons that we really wanted to have this talk in the first place is to allow people to kind of not end up in the position that we found ourselves in where you know you'd have these tensions at work but you can never escape them because you live with that person but it actually forced us to do a lot of work right and then you know because you might not be dating your creative partner but you are in a relationship with them whether you like it or not you know an honesty and trust are just as important in a professional relationship as they are in a personal relationship so you know nice to each other be nice to each other so really quick I do want to thank GDC for letting us have this talk tell-tell as well and mostly for you guys for coming at 11 o'clock in the morning on Wednesday so thank you appreciate that and please please say you should be getting some surveys and your email inboxes if you could you know let us know how we did we would love to hear it and okay and we're going to be over in this wrap-up area for questions so we are going to leave and be in the wrap-up area so thank you thank you everybody [Applause]