The Dice Summit opened this year with four talks, presented by Randy Pitchford, founder and president of Gearbox Entertainment. The opening session was called Voices of the Story Ahead.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was nominated for eight awards and it won Game of the Year again, topping more than 400 awards to date. Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, lead writer and localization director at Expedition 33 creator Sandfall Interactive, talked about the three core elements and three skills of being a creative.
One of the keys to being creative is to have a rich life outside your work, Svedberg-Yen said. As someone who works a lot, I thought maybe I was suffering from not having enough inspiration coming from non-work channels. But then I thought more about it.
In my work, I get to talk to different people every day. They’re creative people who lead rich lives. They teach me and inspire me with their words and deeds. This way, I’ve felt my work crossed over from work to fun along the way. I felt like I had a rich work life. I interviewed Svedberg-Yen backstage after she won a prestigious Dice Award. I ran this reasoning by her and she acknowledged it was logical. I felt validated. (Here’s the video here).
All of this made me think her whole talk was worth listening to. It was one of the most inspiring things of the proceedings, short as they were. Svedberg-Yen said she had a bad back so she sat on the edge of the stage, close to the crowd.
In her talk, she said the key to creativity is about taste, execution and having something to say. These are non-linear and subjective, but they do evolve and deepen, she said.
Taste is the destination of where you are trying to go. Execution is how close you can get to that. Our taste evolves faster than execution, as kids. We can’t keep with it, like our ability to paint isn’t as good as our imaginations envision paintings. As an fyi, she said the initials ATBGE on Reddit stand for “awful taste but good execution.”
But as adults, our taste evolves faster. It can be demoralizing. This is a journey we all take. We all suck at first. In the VC world, they say we should fail fast and learn fast. The analogy to this is the first pancake. It’s mishapen and burnt. You can’t go to the second perfect pancake without the first sacrificial pancake.
Some stories are a series of cool events with the characters along for the ride. But in such stories we may lack something to say. Those are perhaps action movies. People can copy your execution, but nobody can copy your life experiences and what you want to say. No one has the same thing to say, Svedberg-Yen said.
A richer life
She said, “I am a Type-A perfectionist. How do I get better/” A key point to emphasize is the richer your life is outside of writing, the richer your writing will be.
The three skills you need are curiosity, empathy and logic. it’s important to cultivate curiosity, asking why things are the way they are. Looking at world around you with an active eye. Everything around us is a potential element for story.
Empathy is applying that curiosity to the people around us and walking in their shoes. Each of us is the bad guy in someone else’s story. This is three-dimenionsionl storytelling. The tone will change depending of the genre you are in. From the outside, the characters may seem wrong, but the elements make sense to the character.
Logic is not a blank check. There must be internal logic to characters, she sai. Her pet peeve is characters who don’t change offstage. Would a real person say it? The more you adhere to internal logic, the tighter the story will be. This happens, therefore that happens but this also happens. It’s cause and effect.
You want to know how this changes things. Svedberg-Yen said her pet peeve is characters who talk at each other but not with each other. How do characters change each other? If you use this in your writing, then your worlds will feel fuller, your characters more evocative….Drawing from something that is real. It will have a tangible point of view. Have empathy and kindness for yourself. We can be our own harshest critics.
In conclusion, Svedberg-Yen said you should cultivate your non-writing life. Practice curiosity, empathy and logic. Use this to develop your taste, execution and point of view. And be kind. Don’t stop.