159 | Writing For Video Games & Interactive Screenwriting w/ Shanon M. Ingles and Stephan Bugaj

Throughout the 21st century, video games have become one of pop cultures most valuable mediums, and their narrative ambition grows with each passing year. Today we feature two of the industries top writers, Shanon M. Ingles (Batman: A Telltale Series) and Stephan Bugaj (Tales From the Borderlands) to discuss how the industry has evolved from a writing standpoint, and how you can break in.

TRANSCRIPTION

Meg LeFauve: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg LeFauve and my partner in crime, Lorien McKenna is out today. So Jeff is stepping in. 

Jeff Graham: Yes, I am here and I am thrilled to be here, of course, chatting with two leaders in the video game slash interactive screenwriting space. We have Stephan Bugaj and Shannon Ingles.

Meg LeFauve: Stephan is currently the CCO of Genvid Technologies and he has also held senior creative roles at Hanson Robotics and Telltale Games, overseeing creative and story for beloved narrative games, including Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. 

Jeff Graham: Shannon is a writer and narrative designer that has worked with Telltale Games as well, 2K, and Santa Monica Studios.

Jeff Graham: She also operates her own narrative studio, Martian Brothel, and is known for her work on Marvel's Midnight Gods and God of War Ragnarok.

Meg LeFauve: Today we're going to be chatting with Stephan and Shannon about their experience in the interactive narrative media space, how they broke in, and what a career in the medium looks like, and the craft of it, which I'm so super interested in.

Meg LeFauve: So welcome, you guys. Welcome to the show.  

Stephan Bugaj: Thank you. Thanks for having us. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, thanks. I'm really excited. 

Meg LeFauve: Cool. So, these guys are, have agreed to jump in with our adventures in screenwriting, AKA what our week was like I'll start, I'll just go first. My week was about process and three different ways.

Meg LeFauve: Well, it was kind of about process. Process, craft, and lava, which on our show, you guys, we talk about lava being that kind of, you know, when you're writing and it starts to get hot and burning and you may be thinking, I don't want to deal with that. In terms of process, my son, Aiden, is in college and has stuff to do that.

Meg LeFauve: Of course, he was supposed to do this summer and he didn't do it. Now he has to go back to school and he's like, I got to do this. I try really hard. I don't get involved with the creative, but I do get involved with his process and he was stuck in perfection mode and literally sitting there with his head in his hands.

Meg LeFauve: I've got nothing. This is all horrible. Meanwhile, he doesn't. Like, I can see that he doesn't. There's a whole whiteboard full of stuff. And it really was just about saying, I, even though you feel that way, you have to do it anyways. You know, it's, I guess the theme here is staying in. Like he was caught in perfectionism and that was telling him he had nothing and he needed to freeze up and stop.

Meg LeFauve: And it's just like, okay, stay in. And then on the Facebook page, we had somebody talking about, they were freezing up because their plot just didn't work. It just, none of it worked. And suddenly they're thinking, maybe I'll go do something else. I'll do a different idea. And I was like, no, no, no, you have to stay in.

Meg LeFauve: You got to break the cycle. You got to just stay in. And it doesn't even really matter if the plot works. It matters so much more to stay in and keep going because maybe the whole plot's going to go out the window, but you're going to find something else. You know, write a hundred crazy ideas, go to the engine of the story, go to the theme.

Meg LeFauve: What is this about? You know, maybe you're not making it hard enough on your character. You know, I always love to try, what I did this week was, when I got stuck and didn't want to stay in, I was like, okay, what's the, because of the plot, I was like, what's the craziest thing that could happen right now?

Meg LeFauve: Like, that I wouldn't even know how to get them out of it. And I'm so, I'm sure in video games, this must be what you're trying to do all the time. What is the craziest thing that could happen right now? And then the lava part of my week was my husband and I are writing a passion project during the strike, and, I just suddenly got really grumpy.

Meg LeFauve: I got really grumpy, you guys. Like, everything he said, I was like, What? I don't know. And he was like, What is happening? It’s going really well? And I'm like, I know, it's going too well. And I realized I was in Trying to pull out of the process because I was loving it so much. I was loving what we were doing.

Meg LeFauve: I don't know if you guys have ever had this experience where suddenly it is starting to work and you are starting to love these characters and it's starting to pop, but because it's a spec thing, you're like. I really cannot get rejected now on this. I really, I don't know if I can face the nose. I don't know if I can face those blank looks when people don't get it.

Meg LeFauve: I don't know if I can watch this die. Like the more I love it, the harder it's going to be to watch it die. And things do die, even though you love them, even though they're amazing. It doesn't mean the market wants them. It doesn't mean it's a good fit right now for this thing. So it was just me having to stay in.

Meg LeFauve: In terms of my theme, even though the lava was coming up, that I was getting really nervous about how much I was loving it and opening my heart. To what could happen, which is it still doesn't go. It's still dies. So that was my, my week was don't pull back, stay in Stephan, how was your week? 

Stephan Bugaj: My week was pretty intense and crazy as CCO of Genvid, I am basically a supervising creative director on our three projects.

Stephan Bugaj: That we have announced. So bouncing around between narrative and cinematics and design issues. But I am also doing a lot of writing. So I was intensely writing scenes and doing narrative design on one of our projects, hands on and training another team to do. What we do in our format and working with them in the room to get them exposed and learning about the ways that we do narrative design that that we do writing for our format.

Meg LeFauve: So are you kind of like a producer writer then? Because you said you're actually writing and you're doing producerial things. So in terms of… 

Stephan Bugaj: it's right, it's like, it's kind of like a television showrunner. So there's a lot of there's. It's producing, but it's also directing like the cinematics directors also are people that I'm working with to find our look and how we're going to make everything Compromises you have to make because production is all about compromises.

Stephan Bugaj: Writing is all about dreaming and production is all about compromises. 

Meg LeFauve: But it's always like, I used to get that advice. Do not compromise already in the script because it's only going to be a series of compromises after. 

Stephan Bugaj: When you were talking about things that are going to die, I or, or not, I also have some specs that are, are carved out of my agenda deal that I've been talking to some folks about as like, Oh, maybe we could talk about this when the strike is over.

Stephan Bugaj: And. My way of dealing with scripts that might die is to just refuse. And this is something I, when I was back, when I was at Pixar, I went to the very first producers guild conference and they had a great session called Gordon on Gordon where Larry Gordon interviewed Mark Gordon, Mark Gordon interviewed Larry Gordon and Mark asked Larry.

Stephan Bugaj: What's your strategy for getting something made? And Larry said, I, when I love something, I latch onto it and I take it to everyone in town and they say no. And then the next year I wait for all those people to have been fired or died. And I take it to everyone in town and they say no, and then the next year, I wait for all those guys who've been fired or died.

Stephan Bugaj: And after a few years or decades, I finally find someone who's too dumb to know that their job is to say no. And the movie gets made. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, my God. 

Meg LeFauve: Thank you. That really helps me today, actually, that it's all in my hands that I just have to have a stick to it. It is. And by the way, that's where Stephan and I met at Pixar and we had some fun times there.

Meg LeFauve: All right, Shannon, how was your week? 

Shanon M. Ingles: Bye. I, I'm also extremely busy. I am working on one of the projects that Stephan is overseeing from the narrative side. So I'm the lead writer and we're, we're trying to close it. So it's finishing scenes, overseeing scenes, revisions, notes, continued. 

Meg LeFauve: You mean close?

Meg LeFauve: Okay. Sorry. I'm going to be the novice.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, so you know it's getting the scripts done completely so they can, you know, go to voice production. 

Meg LeFauve: So if this was a TV show, you've got to get those scripts done so you can put them into production. Exactly. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. 

Shanon M. Ingles: So that, that's that part. And the lava part. 

Meg LeFauve: What's the 

Shanon M. Ingles: lava part? YEah.

Shanon M. Ingles: I think I think it is when you're really, really busy and we call it. I mean, I don't know if you guys call it crunching and TV, but we call it crunching. So towards the end of productions, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of overtime. And so you have, I sort of get that Jack Nicholson irritability.

Shanon M. Ingles: When people start texting me or bothering me when I'm writing, right? Especially so when you, when you're, sometimes when you have a lot to write, you feel overwhelmed, right? There's a lot going on. You don't know where to start. And you're like overwhelmed the amount of scenes or the amount of notes or the things that you know that you want to change here and there.

Shanon M. Ingles: And so once you get into the flow, the zone of like, okay, I'm feeling the scene. Now I have a plan. I can see a way forward. And you're in it. And then and then it's then when people start calling you, people start texting you, people start running your time. It's 

Meg LeFauve: almost like the universe saying, Are you sure?

Meg LeFauve: Are you sure that you want to keep writing? Are you sure you don't want to be distracted? Yeah, no, 

Shanon M. Ingles: no. That's exactly what's happening. And so no one's doing that when you're like, oh, I want to procrastinate and I need to take them off. Like or I can someone come out and like get a drink with me right now.

Shanon M. Ingles: I need to step away from my computer. No one's available. But as soon as I'm like. I have it. I'm in like the emotional space of the scene. Someone's like, just texting up a storm. It's it, it drives me crazy and I feel like a jerk. And I feel like, I'm just like, why are you texting me? I'm like, I'm your friend.

Shanon M. Ingles: I'm like, I'm busy. Don't you know, I'm busy. Don't you know? I'm like finally busy though. I can tell you wanted to hang out. And I'm like, that was eight hours ago. My whole life has changed. I'm a different 

Stephan Bugaj: person. I forgot to mention my lava. So I'll tell you, it's funny. So. beIng also a writer. I have to vent my director slash producer feelings somewhere that the writers won't see it.

Stephan Bugaj: So I will make a copy of the script to write my initial notes and I will write all of the angry notes that I'm not going to tell anyone where I'll be, where I'll put, where I'll put notes in that are things like, have you considered writing something good? And then, 

Shanon M. Ingles: and then I'll go through 

Meg LeFauve: and delete all of those.

Meg LeFauve: Of course, you've never, ever said that on a Shannon script. Wow. You have never, ever said that on a Shannon script. Ever. Of course not. Because it's always genius. 

Shanon M. Ingles: You better, you better like delete and 

Stephan Bugaj: wipe and Then I 

Meg LeFauve: delete them all. those. Yeah, really, Stephani, God help you. Exactly. If one of those gets out, oh, 

Shanon M. Ingles: that would be bad.

Shanon M. Ingles: Giving, giving notes can be stressful sometimes when you are dealing with a volume of content. And, you know, the Martian Brothel partnered with Genvid on Silent Hills. So, when I have like seven people, like, that are, that I'm, that are on my team. So, like, that, that's five writers and two narrative designers.

Shanon M. Ingles: And not, you know, like you have to sort of walk, check yourself when you're getting stuff. Like, that's not what I asked for. Or like, I know you can do better than this. Like, or like, why did you know this is not ready for me to look at yet? You know, and I think, but it's also remembering that everyone else is working really, really hard and really, really fast.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. Not all projects had the luxury of like a, of a, a luxurious, like television timeline or a, or a feature film timeline. And in video games, especially when you're talking about our like. Some of these games take like 60 hours to play through, and I'm not saying all the cut scenes are like that, sometimes the cut scenes are only three or four hours for most of them, but there's other stuff.

Shanon M. Ingles: There's quest dialogue, there's the barks, all that have to match up, and it's just an incredible volume that a very small group of people that are doing. So you have to be able to, yeah, get the right feedback to people, but in a way that won't discourage them, won't disrespect their work, won't disrespect their intelligence or their talent, but also sort of, not, you don't want to demoralize them.

Shanon M. Ingles: You want them to like find the thing that makes them happy or gets them inspired within that, within whatever their section of the right or like the scenes just fall dead. 

Meg LeFauve: It's a whole other skill. It's a whole other skill set, right? To give notes and especially to manage and give notes and not be under pressure and be on, you've got to write your own stuff and yeah, it's an incredibly difficult.

Meg LeFauve: Different skill 

Shanon M. Ingles: set. Yeah, and one of the things I let people do in, in my rooms is I let them criticize me back if they think I'm like being too harsh on something and I let them like, you know, basically bitch about like what's happening, you know, or like their, their perspective or like the note, 

Meg LeFauve: right?

Meg LeFauve: Like you feel like it's better to bitch to you in your face so you can deal with it versus behind your back. Maybe a little 

Shanon M. Ingles: bit, maybe a little bit. I'd rather, because I'd rather them let me know. I'm sure they do it behind my back, it's fine. It's exact, like that's part of it. Even if people really like you, they're still gonna, they're still gonna bitch, 

Meg LeFauve: right?

Meg LeFauve: It's so funny, because when you're in that position, you have to realize that they do need to bitch behind your back in a way, just to blow off steam, even if they don't even mean it. Like, I remember the first time I was producing a movie, and we were on set, and I walked into the bar, and everybody stopped talking.

Meg LeFauve: And I realized, oh right, I'm the boss. Nobody wants me here. Nobody wants me in the bar, hanging out with them. They want to like bitch about whatever. Yeah, it's a totally different experience. But you get to be the lead creative. So I'm so excited to talk about it. So, but first, Jeff, how was your week? 

Jeff Graham: It was good.

Jeff Graham: I'm Working on a feature right now and I'm very early on it. And that thing is happening that we sometimes talk about on the show where like, I'm finding that all of the side characters that are helping my protagonists are much more interesting and fun than my protagonists. And that sometimes happens where you're like a character shows up in a scene and you're like, Oh shit, like, should the movie be about this guy?

Jeff Graham: So it's fine. I'm, I'm having fun and just kind of being open. And but it's funny how sometimes it can be hard to make your protagonists is dynamic and kind of. 

Meg LeFauve: Round, you're not giving them permission to be, you know, have faults and mess up and do all the fun stuff that the side characters get to do.

Meg LeFauve: Right. 

Jeff Graham: I think that's right. And there's that thing too, where maybe you're protecting them from even a larger journey that they need to be taking in this story that you haven't even considered for them. You know, like maybe you are trying to withhold the big, you know, second act reveal that it should be showing up earlier to make your story more dynamic.

Jeff Graham: So it's 

Meg LeFauve: what's ironic about it is the actors want to play the other role too. Like they don't want to play that boring guy either. So you that what happens is you just let that go on and now you want to cast your movie and you can't get casting well because your lead is the least interesting. And yet that's the Part that has to get the casting to get the money, you know?

Meg LeFauve: So I, I always do kind of gut check that in terms of the lead has to be the most interesting person. Yeah, it's interesting. Does that happen in games 

Stephan Bugaj: too? Well, in games you have different situations. So if you've got a game where the player is supposed to inhabit and embody As an avatar, the main character, that main character has to be the least interesting person because you want to allow the player to imagine an idealized version of themself in all of these moments.

Stephan Bugaj: Oh, that's so interesting, 

Meg LeFauve: but I, 

Shanon M. Ingles: but I, but I disagree with this narratively and I'll, I'll, I'll give my spiel on it in a minute, 

Stephan Bugaj: but yes, so a lot of first person games end up with a very boring main character, but lots of interesting characters around them because they're leaving a hole in the middle for you.

Stephan Bugaj: But if you're trying to write a complete narrative, which you should for all games, but especially for narrative games like something like a Telltale or like the kind of mass audience interactive TV stuff that we're doing at Genvid, you have to have interesting main characters because they're not a hole that the audience is filling.

Stephan Bugaj: They are characters that the audience are making decisions for and around, and that needs to be interesting in the same way that a film or television protagonist needs to be interesting. So Shannon, go ahead. You can rant about the hole in the middle of the story. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, the hole. But yeah, but just going back quickly to your original ask about actors, I think, you know, it's voice acting is a little bit of a different world than screen acting.

Shanon M. Ingles: And so you are gonna, you're gonna probably get The best voice actors kind of dominate the entire industry because they can pretty much do any kind of voice. And so they're going to go for the, the leading role because it's the most work and it's a work thing, right? It's the highest pay, the most work.

Shanon M. Ingles: So it's, it's, they're not, their faces aren't represented. I don't, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched the game awards, but like nobody, nobody knows that people aren't celebrities, like forward facing celebrities and video games. You know, there's voice actors, like people don't recognize them when they walk down the street.

Shanon M. Ingles: Typically, there's maybe a couple that maybe some people who are superfans would know. You know, the same thing with writers, the people that make it because they're companies. 

Meg LeFauve: Nobody knows writers in any, any other medium either. I 

Shanon M. Ingles: mean, that's, that's true. That's true. 

Meg LeFauve: That's why, that's true. Don't get, be 

Shanon M. Ingles: fooled.

Shanon M. Ingles: Nobody knows writers. That is true. That's actually one 

Meg LeFauve: of the reasons. What about in creating the story though, in terms of like creating a great story for a game in terms of that main character? 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, so I think that What Stephan is talking about is usually RPGs, so like an RPG like Fallout you know, Grand Theft Auto and things like that.

Shanon M. Ingles: You have like a blank slate character and you can completely customize their body, their appearance, tattoos, I mean it's gotten better and better. And everything about them. But the, the issue with some of those games is that there is a story, the story gets started very late because that, that person is a complete blank slate.

Shanon M. Ingles: I sort of disagree with that from a narrative thing, narrative perspective, because I think people think that they They can't have it both ways, and I think that they can. I think that you can create a main character for an RPG, but also give them something, an immediate want and need. Something horrible that just happened to them, like their, you know, sister dying, or them needing money to pay rent, so they decide to go be a drug dealer.

Shanon M. Ingles: You just do, I don't know, like, just stealing from the plot of Go there. But you can do that, and still have it customizable. Completely gender and everything because so many of these, so many, so many of these stories are based on like universal human wants and needs and conflict anyway, and that puts the player who's inhabiting that character in a position to try to get the character what they want or decide that it's not good for them and get them something else.

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, I love 

Meg LeFauve: that because, you know, we talk about that all the time in terms of want, what do they want and how hard that is for emerging writers to really understand how that has to drive everything. Is that every scene? It's like that 

Shanon M. Ingles: thing in a scene where you feel like that person's ache, right? That ache, that hole in them for whatever's happening in the scene, even if it's a comedy, especially if it's a comedy, 

Meg LeFauve: especially if it's comedy.

Jeff Graham: We call it longing on the show often we'll talk about want yearning and longing and how like in every scene you can kind of feel the different ways that your protagonist wants and I think like longing is an interesting thing I think even early in your script to think about like what that long game goal is

Stephan Bugaj: the additional trick in any game where you allow the player to inhabit the main character if you're going to give the character

Stephan Bugaj: You're trying to get the user the player trying to get the player to accept those as their own. And if you do that successfully, when you come up with obstacles and conflicts and turns, you have to be able to get the player to accept the turn as an interesting turn that they are interested in for themselves, not something they've done wrong.

Stephan Bugaj: And so if you get them to buy into, like, say, a false want, and then you replace it with a deep need. You have to do extra work to sell it in such a way that it's kind of like pitching an executive. You need to make the player believe it was their own idea before you actually implement it. 

Meg LeFauve: I actually, I, I, I, I, I, I trumpet this horn all the time that in act one, you have to create a world and a psychology so that I want what they want.

Meg LeFauve: I want it so badly. That I'm going to watch them go through anything and everything and be involved in all of that act too. And if I don't want it, or I'm like, you don't need that, or, well, I don't think you should have that, or, yeah, okay, get it, don't get it, I don't care, the movie's over, like, it's just over, like, why go forward, right?

Meg LeFauve: And so much of act one is just Building that, I mean, it just takes so much. So, so many world. And so I, I, it's so amazing to me to hear and not amazing and unexpected, but I love it that it's the same in games. I love it that it's the same in games. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I mean, I think story is story, you know, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: Like beginning, middle, then you have a protagonist that wants something or protagonists that want something that are in conflict with what they want. And it goes, the best games honor that. Well, the best game narratives we'll say. 

Meg LeFauve: Now, what is choice design, and how does that come into WANT? 

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, so this is really, this is really interesting.

Shanon M. Ingles: So I worked at Telltale for almost three years, and I, and I wrote and designed the scenes. And what I mean by that is that you write the scene, and you also do the dialogue choices. And it allows you to have a dramatic scene where the person, the player can characterize The, the character and what they want and affect the relationship with someone else.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like you can kind of be mean to Alfred if you want Batman, or you can like Romance Catwoman or you know, betray her and things like that, right? It's very fun. But it only works if the character wants something like it. Not every choice in a game will honor this because it is hard. But the best choices are character wants something, there's an obstacle, and then the choice.

Shanon M. Ingles: space is how you're getting around that obstacle. And the best choice space, you have the, I call it like the internal and external motivation. The external motivation is like kind of more the plot want, and the internal motivation is sort of like the emotional yearning want, right? And if you put those two things, if you can manage it, not all choices are like this, but if you can manage it, you put those two things in conflict with any choice space to get around an obstacle, then it's incredibly difficult for people to make decisions.

Shanon M. Ingles: And that's exactly the space you want to 

Stephan Bugaj: be in. So when you're doing choice design, you are literally designing a choice that the player or the audience collectively in a Genvid project is going to make on behalf of a character. So you're giving them a setup. In which you're creating a proposition that there is a decision that the character needs to make.

Stephan Bugaj: They're going to say something. They're going to do something. They're trying to overcome an obstacle. They're trying to decide on a path. And you create the proposition. You do some work so that the audience, the users, the players will understand the risk reward proposition for each of the potential choices around that decision.

Stephan Bugaj: Because you're giving them... In a branching narrative 234 options that they're gonna choose from. So you're setting up the situation where they know what the question is, they know what the stakes are, and you're giving them some idea of risk and reward propositions for each of the choices. If you do this, this could go right, but this could go wrong.

Stephan Bugaj: If you just won, this could go right to this to go wrong and so on. You do that in the most artful way in the setup, right? You're trying to like all writing, you're trying to find the right balance between text and subtext between what you wear on your sleeve and what you're Allowing the audience to interpret.

Stephan Bugaj: And then you, the, the game, the engine, the, the interactive TV show will bring up. The choices, ABC, ABC, 

Meg LeFauve: and so are you saying that, especially Shannon, when you mentioned, do you want it to be hard for them to know what to pick? Because everyone has pluses and minuses. You kind of want them to be in a quandary, you know, because it's like some of my father when said to me, well, Meg, it's not a moral choice unless both things have good and bad.

Meg LeFauve: Like that's an actual moral choice. Like, is that what you're trying to put them into? And wow, this could go to shit or be great for every choice. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. So it's it's it's moral, but it's also sort of putting people's different motivations at odds. So like, you know, a great example of this comes from the Wolf Among Us.

Shanon M. Ingles: And I played that game. That's why I end up ended up applying to telltale because I liked it so much. And in it, you play as Big B Wolf. It's based on the fables. Graphic novels. He plays Bigby Wolf, and he's a detective in Fable Town, and everyone remembers how he was before, where he was the big bad wolf.

Shanon M. Ingles: And so people, he has like a reputation for being violent. He's not trying to be like that anymore. He is in love with Snow, who works for the mayor, Snow White, Colder Snow. It's, you know, it's, it's very good subtextual. You know, and there's these murders that are happening and you have a chance to like, kind of have to be brutal or to interrogate people to get answers to save other people.

Shanon M. Ingles: But if you do that, snow won't love you. So you're putting these two things and, and it's just like this really subtle thing, right? So it's really like, Someone mentions his crush or feeling on snow once in the first episode to him, which he denies, which means he really loves her, right? Right. He didn't talk about it at all.

Shanon M. Ingles: In fact, you know, they're friends, but you can tell there's like this tension, right? There's no, and you could tell that she just, she wants, she wants him to be a better person, you know, and he doesn't feel good enough for her. And you put those tensions into it and Ooh, like it's, it becomes a lot harder to make some of those, those more kind of procedural investigative decisions that are just the plot.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like, yeah, I really want to bust this guy's head now, but like, if I do that still, he won't love me. 

Stephan Bugaj: You put relationships at stake, especially in the risk reward propositions. There can be tactical and pragmatic concerns as well, but you want those balancing against relationship issues, moral issues, ethical issues, so that the best kinds of choices are ones where The player wants to take a certain action, but the consequences for doing it are maybe not worth it, but the weaker action that they might take while the emotional consequences may be better, might not actually achieve the goal that they're trying to reach or project the kind of characterization for that character that they're hoping to project, and you're putting those things at odds so that you can try and Allow the player to have fun figuring out which compromises they want to make in terms of how to act or have this character act in this particular particular situation.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. I mean, I think what what you're doing is you're taking the conflict that you would just see in a scene and that a character just in a movie or a TV show would be experiencing it. That conflicted, I have to make this decision and now you're making the player do it . I love 

Meg LeFauve: it. So then it branches, right?

Meg LeFauve: So I wanna talk about how do you plan this kind of branching? Like is it like we have an a narrative line and then there's things branching off of it? Like, how do you even start? I guess I want to know, how do you write it? How do you start this kind of branching narrative? 

Shanon M. Ingles: It depends on the kind of game you're making, okay?

Shanon M. Ingles: So there's like huge RPGs that have like a more of like a critical path storyline. And then they have all these side stories that you don't have to, you don't have to engage in them, but they can be really rich. Cyberpunk 2077 does a really good job of this. There's some of their side quests are their strongest part, some of the strongest character moments because you can actually have relationships with people and get to know people.

Shanon M. Ingles: But then you have some things sort of like more like Telltale where like it's, or like, Deck 9 which is like very linear and you're just, you're literally, there's no real gameplay other than the story. So you're making decisions all the way down. There's different ways of designing it. Usually, like, in a telltale scene, you'll just have dialogue choices.

Shanon M. Ingles: They don't, they don't really matter as much. Some of them, it's not for your character relationships, but there might be one choice, two choices a episode that would really branch and maybe affect something in the next episode. Branching means producing more things, and so a lot of people will limit branching.

Shanon M. Ingles: I always, I always when I'm trying to explain this to my my screenwriting friends, I try to make them think about branching in this way. Like, take the, a big major moment in a movie and branch it. And I, I like to think about the English, the end of the English patient, because I think it's a good choice space.

Shanon M. Ingles: His lover is dying in, in the cave. And in order to save him, but in order to save her, he has to give him all, all of his maps to the Germans, to the Nazis. Now that's a choice. Now you have two different endings. So you already know what one ending is. What's the other? Write that. Please . Good. Doesn't that sound good?

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. I want, yeah, I wanna write that. I wanna write that. Yes. Right. What do you call it? Choice juice. What do you call it? Choice space. Space choice. I'm gonna ask everybody now even on their features, what's the choice space? Where is your choice space? 

Stephan Bugaj: Well, the way that I would Choice Fuel? Yeah, the fuel.

Stephan Bugaj: Yeah. I mean the, the, the way that I would teach writers who are coming from a linear medium to do telltale style branching narrative choice design. Is to give the example. I'd say, Well, okay, so you have a scene where Bob could give Jim a high five. He could give Jim the cold shoulder or he could punch him in the face.

Stephan Bugaj: Now, when you're writing a movie or a TV show, you're going to work through all three of those in your head, and you're going to choose the one that feels right for the scene here. You just write all three and let the player decide. 

Meg LeFauve: But don't I then, okay, but don't I then have to start branching it out?

Meg LeFauve: He punched him in the face and now they're, but at what point in your brain, are you having to know that whatever he chose chooses, I've got to get him back to this track or no, or no, is it an infinite and just keeps going? Do you know what I'm saying? 

Stephan Bugaj: Depends on your budget. If you have zillions of dollars, you can branch as much as you want.

Stephan Bugaj: But for people who have more normal work circumstances the You have to bring things back in. And there's, there's a few things that you did there, which is your coloring inevitabilities. So you could have Bob and Jim high five, cold shoulder or fight, and then they're going to go do the heist together, no matter what, and what you're going to do is you're going to do a callback to that earlier choice.

Stephan Bugaj: Where during the heist, there's going to be an opportunity for Jim to like. You know, help Bob, not help Bob, whatever. Or even just have a line of dialogue where he's like, fuck you. We're doing this anyway. Or we're in it together buds forever, whatever it may be. And you're coloring inevitably the heist is going to happen whether or not they have their blow up or their best buds.

Stephan Bugaj: It's just going to be, how is it colored? By that previous decision, you can also branch things where they don't have the heist, but that again is a, it's, it's trade offs where you're looking at, I'm going to produce a certain amount of content, what's going to be the most interesting variations to have, right?

Stephan Bugaj: And everyone in the audience thinks they want big variations in what happens and emotionally responds to variations and how people relate to each other. So everyone says, Oh, you did a bad job because you didn't branch things that happened extensively. But what they actually emotionally react to and make YouTube videos about posts on Reddit about his character relationships.

Stephan Bugaj: Yep. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I mean, another good way of saying this, too, is you want to contain it right like you can't make it you can't take If you only have the budget for like 10 hours or eight hours, you can't like suddenly make it 20 because you want to do all this branching. So you have to be smart about how you do it.

Shanon M. Ingles: And I think to stuff I think what's fun is also getting at is like it has to have emotional impact, it doesn't matter how much you branch you can you can say oh I you don't want to like for. One thing that I always, I'm training new interactive writers and, and narrative designers is a callback isn't repeating what happened.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's the emotional consequence of what happened. So if you were mean to someone, the character shouldn't be like, you were mean to me, they should just be cold to them, right? Or it's in the way that they speak to them. And that has more of an impact. If you're taking an example of like. Stephan is, we'll use Stephan's friend Bob.

Shanon M. Ingles: Bob will be her punching bag, right? So you have a choice of punching Bob or doing, you know, or being nice to him. What you can, you don't have to see him again in the story for a while, right? Then let's say the bank robbery happens, and now he helps you, right, based on that, or he calls the cops on you, or he takes, or he like betrays you and takes your money based on something that you did earlier in the story.

Shanon M. Ingles: And by the way, the earlier in the story it was, sort of like, it's like that rubber band theory, right? Of like, it was a hard, it will snap back because it was like an act one and now you're all the way towards the climax and you're like, Oh shit, that decision I made an act one. Wow. Oh, I shouldn't have done that in that moment because now he's going to screw me.

Shanon M. Ingles: That is, that's, that's kind of the spaces, some of the spaces that you want to 

Meg LeFauve: be. I love that. Yeah. And you've also talked about the knowledge of human behavior. Is that like, can you talk a little bit about that in terms of, because this is all in the same pot, right? Relationships and emotion. And, you know, you know, I love human psychology and I'm always thinking about it and why people do what they do and why I would expect her to take the orange.

Meg LeFauve: But of course she's not going to take the orange because to her. That is a completely different experience than to me because of her psychology and her worldview. Are you talking about that psychology that you're using? Or is it even deeper in terms of just all human beings as human beings act?

Meg LeFauve: Certainly 

Shanon M. Ingles: there's like a couple of things going on. So my, my, my undergrad was in psychology and I did like cognitive psychology and, but I also am really into like young, young Ian. Like theory, but that's more of a literary theory, if you know what I mean, that is not evidence based psychology and they don't teach it that way anymore.

Shanon M. Ingles: But I like to use, archetypes are great, I love to use the DSM when I'm creating characters too, because I feel like all characters are like, kind of disordered, and they're usually kind of, Cluster B, because they're the most entertaining people to watch. They're always getting themselves in trouble.

Shanon M. Ingles: Wait, 

Meg LeFauve: can we say what DSM is for our listeners? Can you tell us what DSM is? 

Shanon M. Ingles: It's the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual. It's the manual that, that the, in most of the, in most countries used to diagnose like a mental disorder, like a mood disorder. You know, even if you're just depressed, right? Like all of that, that's what they use.

Shanon M. Ingles: So. I like to use it in character creation. I don't always get to, but I, I, I prefer to use it because, like, I'll just put it this way, like, the most memorable characters are really disordered. Like, if you take all of the Seinfeld characters are kind of all psychopaths, and that's what they, and they never change, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: They never arc, and that's what makes them so funny. Like, George Costanza's character, you know, like, Pretending that he is, you know, disabled and all of that was he's, he's a jerk, right? And so that's the commentaries 

Meg LeFauve: there. Very true. It's very, very true. And I'm going to get this manual and start this. I'm just gonna have some fun with this.

Meg LeFauve: I think it's, I think I intuitively do it because I believe everybody's neurodivergent. I just do. Other people, some people are really good at faking it or using it to quote unquote success. But in fact, it's just not a nerd. Nobody's neurotypical. I guess that's what I'm saying. So I'm totally in your 

Shanon M. Ingles: ballpark.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, drama. Drama isn't like normal everyday healthy life, right? Drama is like about like terrible events that are happening and terrible people doing terrible things to each other or like rising to terrible challenges. It's not about anything normal and it's not about normal people, generally speaking.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, 

Stephan Bugaj: and there's the, there's the character design and development aspect of understanding human psychology and then there's also how it plays into the narrative design and the choice design. And there's a couple of aspects there. One of which is you use the fact that characters and humans are complex to smooth over some of the issues with things like you've had a particular relationship.

Stephan Bugaj: Decision. You've seen it play out where someone's had a fight or they've gotten along conditionally based on the player input, and you might play that out for a couple of scenes, but you also might have some things after or even interleaved where they behave differently towards each other. And you use human motivation psychology and the fact that people are complex to motivate the idea that they might just behave differently towards each other because of the situation and the motivations around it, in which they don't need to be fighting or being best buds.

Stephan Bugaj: They might feel the opposite because of what's happening right now. And the other aspect is in choice design. People generally want to make the nicest choice for the characters. Not me. This is just, this is just statistically true. All of the research shows that people are statistically nice. And so you want to design choices where you have three good options with risks or three bad options with potential upsides and to balance those out in ways that they're, they're conflicted about which of the good options are the goodest and carry the potentially the least risk.

Stephan Bugaj: And maybe. tweak the relationship that they're willing to risk as opposed to the one that they're not. Things like that. If you give people good choice, good choice and bad choice or even worse, good choice, bad choice and bad choice, you've made it not a choice because most people will just choose the good choice.

Stephan Bugaj: So you also have to take that into consideration when you're doing choice design. Because people generally want the best for the characters and you have to make them have to work for trying to decide what's actually the best. 

Meg LeFauve: I love that. And by the way, I think this applies to all great narrative, right?

Meg LeFauve: I think I think it applies. And what I also love about what you're saying, in terms of thinking about them all as slightly disordered, is it immediately, immediately Just obliterates perfection as a, as a, as a, as a thing in your head that that you're unconsciously trying to make your characters perfect or protect them because there's not you and they're separate and they're disordered.

Meg LeFauve: And you can kind of almost embrace and love them for their disorder. As we, I do love everybody I know for their disorders. I love them. It's why I love them. So it takes that perfection and it immediately brings the lava up closer because you're dealing with something that's a little bit more. Rocky. And there's probably an unconscious reason you're choosing that particular disorder because it may be as close to you or close to somebody you're dealing with there.

Meg LeFauve: So suddenly that personal love is starting to come up and create much better narratives. So I love this technique. And if I was teaching, I would make everybody do it. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Fun. It's a great procrastination tool, too. I I 

Meg LeFauve: watch it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. We need those. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yes. Okay. But it, but it, yeah. No, I mean, it's for that.

Shanon M. Ingles: I think I had some really good mentors early on that really encouraged me to put your characters in the worst possible situations ever. But that's what that, what it's for. You take, I mean, it is, there's like, you know, you take a character's kind of mean and you, and you figure out like what their buttons are, and then you put them into like this, this terrible.

Shanon M. Ingles: Obstacle field that this is going to push their buttons until and hope that they make it out the other 

Meg LeFauve: side. And that's what, you know, it's funny because you know, Andrew Stanton always talks about expectation. That's what he's talking about. Like, I know this person's buttons are this, and we've just put them in a place where we're going to punch those buttons and the expectation of, oh my God, 

Shanon M. Ingles: what is going to happen?

Shanon M. Ingles: This means that, right? Yeah. And letting the player now push those, figure out what those buttons are. Whether it's in text or subtext, it's, it's stronger when it's the subtext, but you know, you have to balance that game. Like all of that, of course. And you have limitations also in game, you know, in game development, because everything's animated.

Shanon M. Ingles: So you don't, you know, sometimes you just get, you can't show because literally you don't have the budget to show, so you have to tell that's one of the hardest things about game writing for me. But yeah, it's 

Meg LeFauve: an animation too. Sometimes. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, but yeah, I mean, if you, if you figure out like what.

Shanon M. Ingles: What their buttons are as a player, you can push them. And I'm, I'm, I'm the person, you know, that likes to be a little mean to my, my player characters. I like to put them in hard situations. I think that is a reflection of how I like to write. So I was going to say 

Meg LeFauve: you're a writer. Of course, you're going towards conflict.

Meg LeFauve: You, you, you know, I don't like conflict in my real life, but I like writing. Right. So I think that's just part of the writer brain. All right, let me ask you about adapting material into this medium and how you do that. And what's that like? 

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh man. So I've worked on like mostly adapted stuff or pre existing stuff because that's just also part of the video game industry in general.

Shanon M. Ingles: There are like once in a while you might be working on an original IP, but like, when you're working with major corporations, they already have deals to do franchises that they think are going to be good for business. They're very similar to like film and TV and they're, they're hiring up that team.

Shanon M. Ingles: So it just depends, you know, some IP holders are easier to work with than others. There's already a lot of framework of what you can and cannot do. And a lot of it's just based on other projects that they have, right. They don't want things conflicting. And so you have to figure out how to tilt. to insert your voice and your originality and within the framework that you've been provided with into like the little box that they've put you in like this is what we're doing these are the characters that we are okay that we're allowed to use we can't do this person can't do this and this person can't do that i mean working on marvel's been like my sons i learned so much about marvel 

Meg LeFauve: I was going to say, when you were talking, I was like, this sounds familiar to me.

Meg LeFauve: yeAh, yeah. It's Marvel. Yeah. I mean, because that's what it is. That's the IP and any IP you're going to have that. How do you actually craft a story off of that IP that can have these choices? And is there anything you can tell us about or tips for anybody who wants to go into this part of the business?

Shanon M. Ingles: Sure, I mean, I think it's, it's both honoring who the characters are, right? Like, you're dealing with someone like Tony Stark, or Captain America you know, Captain Marvel. Honoring that, but also sort of being able to, like, infuse them, give them a little bit of new life. And also the choice design is around their character, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: Like, if you, like, you know, Steve is a goodie, you know, he's like a really good, good hearted guy. He doesn't like evil choices. Like when we were designing Midnight Suns, we had a friendship system. So being, you could kind of be mean to people and you could be you know, really nice. And then you can also, it's also dependent on the kind of combat you're doing.

Shanon M. Ingles: And of course, Captain America is going to be like, if you. Like you, if you become like a more dark character. What was fun for me on that project was writing for the characters that were more dark aligned, that were your friends. By the way, and still allies, they're still good people, they're just the goths, as I call them.

Shanon M. Ingles: The goth girls, which were Wanda, Magic, and Nico Minero. And they're all, you know, and the, and Nico and Magic are less, lesser known. a marvel character, so I had a lot more freedom with them. So you were, you, you had to figure out like, okay, so in the friendship system, kind of the dark choices is something that's going to let You get closer to magic.

Shanon M. Ingles: Magic likes it. So why? And so I'm thinking about magic and I've done a and this did a lot of research on her, um, in terms of like her childhood. She was like kidnapped and brought to hell and became a dark sorceress. And now she's here. And she doesn't like it when you are overly nice because she thinks that you're full of shit.

Shanon M. Ingles: She's, so I decided to write her as one of those people that, the way I kind of infused her character with honoring who she is as a Marvel character is that she's that friend who is really hard to get to know, but if you win her friendship will be loyal to you too. You know, until the day that she dies forever, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: But it is one of those little, she's a little icy. And if you're like, Hey, I want to be friends with you. She's like, fuck off. But if you're, but if you kind of like challenge her or like, be like, you know, if you just, you challenge her and you speak your mind a little bit more directly she really responds to that really, really well.

Shanon M. Ingles: And, and I remember when that game came out, people were really recognizing that because typically in game writing people, the way that things are designed is if you are nice to someone, they will like you. If you act in these certain ways, I and they and actually people were much more interested in magic as well because like she's not an easy made friend.

Shanon M. Ingles: So she's like a challenge. And so people started projecting this romantic tension between them because the conflict and it was really interesting what was going on in people's heads when they were interacting with with her. I love that. Yeah, 

Stephan Bugaj: I think any adaptation, you have to start with the pillars of the IP, the story that you're adapting.

Stephan Bugaj: Okay. And then play to the strengths of your medium. So, you know, for example you're doing a star Wars story. It's going to be a morality tale. It's going to be about the underdog versus overwhelming power. There's going to be a strong distinction between good and evil. There are going to be people who are allies and enemies, people that you thought you could trust who you can't.

Stephan Bugaj: There's going to be people who you thought you couldn't trust that might make a turn the other way. This is just part of the franchise. Like, that is going to be there. It's what the audience expects. It's what they're coming for, right? You also have to have space opera and certain specific things, but like, at the heart of it, there's a certain kind of story that you're telling.

Stephan Bugaj: And then you find your own version of that story to tell, and that comes down to a negotiation with your rights holder, creatively, as to what you can and can't change. And you're going to build the choices around the things that you can change. Because the audience, the players, want to be able to change something so they feel like they mattered.

Stephan Bugaj: So if you can change character relationships, you're going to make choices around the character relationships that you can change. If you can change character ethics, character morality, character personality presentation, you're going to make choices around which version of this character am I playing.

Stephan Bugaj: if You're allowed to create new characters in order to do that, you're going to create characters that fit the franchise archetypes. In this case, heroes and villains, anti heroes who choose between heroism and villainy, that sort of thing. And... Allow the players, the audience to make those decisions.

Stephan Bugaj: And that's exactly how we're approaching right now. Not just silent Hill that Shannon's working on, but also we're doing a borderlands project for borderlands, echo vision, and we're doing a justice league project called DC heroes United. And it's all a similar approach at the very high level, which is.

Stephan Bugaj: Understand what makes each of those universes interesting to the audience at a level of core pillars and keep that. And then talk with the creative representatives from the creators from the originators from the company that holds the rights about what you're allowed to alter under user influence and then give the players the audience those things to change.

Stephan Bugaj: So that is what makes it their own. And then you build from there. I have a 

Meg LeFauve: friend, Jess, who is a young woman who's a writer, and she's thinking about moving into video game writing. So I asked her, Hey, what do you want to, what do you want to know? So here's a couple of questions from her. A lot of them you've already answered.

Meg LeFauve: Can you name the best role playing games in the last 10 years? Like, what are some of your favorite written video games? What do you, where do you think the writing is just like? Yeah. Amazing. Something that you an emerging writer who should study. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. There's a lot. Yeah. I want to recommend a few different things because there's different ways of having narrative.

Shanon M. Ingles: In a video game so more traditionally, I would look at like the last of us. I would look at God of War Ragnarok 2008. I'm sorry, God of War, not the game I worked on God of War both, but God of War 2008. You can say your game, that's fine. I would look at Telltale's Walking Dead from 2012, which was kind of a seminal game for for a narrative.

Shanon M. Ingles: I'd look at The Wolf Among Us. So that that's more of like the more of the linear choice space, right? The Witcher is a really, really amazing and beautifully well made RPG. So if you're interested in RPG writer, people love the Mass Effect series as well for narrative design and role playing. And, but then I would look at things that are a little more indie, like Hades.

Shanon M. Ingles: You know, is an amazing game, and it has a really elegant narrative design, but it's not scene writing, but the writing is good and the narrative design of it is good and how the story unfolds is good, you know, it was dominated and won BAFTAs, it's great, it's like, games like unpacking is the same thing, another indie game that was a BAFTA winner that is, it's all visual, it's basically a story about, you go in and you un, like, it's like you go into a room and you unpack stuff from a box and it goes, it follows someone through their entire life and that's all it is.

Shanon M. Ingles: And it made people cry. Wow. That's amazing. Right? Because it's like, because you remember, like it tells a story. So there's different ways of telling stories. Another big one for RPGs is a disco Elysium. That is one that people really, really gravitate towards. I think it, it, it's, it's a really irreverent and it's written in a way that I don't think people were 

Stephan Bugaj: expecting.

Stephan Bugaj: Yeah. Disco Elysium is pretty great. I mean, Shannon mentioned a lot of excellent options. I. I personally, it also depends on what kind of tone you want to write. So mass effect last of us, I 

Meg LeFauve: think she's more fantasy. 

Stephan Bugaj: Okay. Cause like, so fantasy kind of stuff, then, you know, I mean, I last 10 years, I don't know what his time, a flat circle.

Stephan Bugaj: I don't know what, I don't know, I don't know what years, I don't know what years anything is. What comes to mind I would look at in the high fantasy space. I would look at planescape torment. I would look at the never went through series. I would go all the way back to the Ultima series, which is one of the genre defining fantasy RPG series of all time.

Stephan Bugaj: And I personally really like comedy games, so I also recommend, because many games take themselves way too seriously, so I also frequently recommend that writers look at things like Borderlands 2 or Tales from the Borderlands, which I worked on The Stanley Parable. Disco Elysium is kind of a nice mix between irreverent but also serious high stakes.

Stephan Bugaj: So there's a lot out 

Meg LeFauve: there. Yeah, that's great. No, that's amazing. Those are great. So her other question is, how do you when you're designing your main storyline not get lost in branching things? And, and her second question, which I think is still in this bucket is, how do you not Have too many non playing characters.

Meg LeFauve: I think, do you see what she's trying to figure out? How do you design a game so that it has the richness and the branching and the non player characters, but still, like you said, this has to be made for a budget. So how do you keep it kind of on the track? 

Stephan Bugaj: You write the core narrative of your main protagonist first, then you branch the very ending of that core narrative of the main protagonist, and then you work backwards.

Shanon M. Ingles: That's a good way of seeing it. I mean, I, I think for me, it's, it's, it's sort of like writing a movie if you look at, it's not usually that many key characters, right, that are in a movie. That's all you, all you need anyway. So you, you just take that and then you figure out how you branch those relationships.

Shanon M. Ingles: You, you track them obviously. And I would only make decisions on things that you know that matter. That's 

Meg LeFauve: great. Okay. 

Shanon M. Ingles: It's like editing, right? It's the same thing. Like this line's not working, choice isn't working. Throw it away. 

Meg LeFauve: Right. The choice isn't emotional. The choice isn't hard enough. The choice isn't complex enough.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. Say here's her nerd question, which I love. iF you've ever been a dungeon master for a dungeon and dragons campaign, how does writing out a D and D campaign compared to writing out a role playing style video game? 

Stephan Bugaj: They're fairly similar. And, but what you're doing is you are creating structure around all of the on the fly improv and ad hoc decision making that you're doing as a dungeon master.

Stephan Bugaj: And you're putting that into structure and character dialogue and choice design because you're not going to be sitting across the table from every hopefully millions of users making those decisions on the fly. So you're basically choice design in terms of thinking like a dungeon master is you're presenting scenarios to yourself and you're writing down the two, three or four ways that they might play out and then giving the user the opportunity to choose.

Stephan Bugaj: Between one of those four options or three options or two options and having that 

Shanon M. Ingles: play out. I have never been a Dungeon Master. 

Meg LeFauve: I don't, me neither, but it sounds super, I wish I was. Honestly, if I could go back in time, I wish I, as a kid, had found that game because I think I would have loved it. And 

Stephan Bugaj: there also, to be clear, there are no non nerdy questions in writing.

Meg LeFauve: Writing in general. That's true. This whole show is nerdy. Okay. So for our emerging writers who are listening or writers who do other things and are thinking, I really want to move over to video, writing, video game, writing, what our media writing, what would you say, you know, when people ask us, we always talk about what kind of samples they need.

Meg LeFauve: Right. What for, in your business does a writer need to show what they can do, like in terms of what are you looking at to hire people or, or 

Shanon M. Ingles: what would you suggest? Honestly, I'm looking for the same thing that I think, you know, a showrunner is looking for, voice. At the end of the day, like that's just something that you can't, you can't teach, you can't train you.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's just something that someone brings with them. So I actually try to make it a role to ask for feature length samples because there I, I, I, people disagree with me, but I feel really passionate that they're game writing and people feel like game writing isn't the same as screenwriting or other like it's not dramatic writing, which it is dramatic writing, it's completely dramatic on the screen.

Shanon M. Ingles: Most of what you're seeing are actual scenes like if you look at the last of us who actual dramatic scenes, there might be hours of them in it, right, just from that perspective, forget the interactive part right. And so people sort of assume that they don't need to know how to write a scene or write a long piece scene, like even like an hour of television, because.

Shanon M. Ingles: They don't, they don't think that they need to even like know how to write like a feature, like screenplay, just like 90 minutes, an hour of a teleplay or whatever. But like what they're going to be, what they're asking for is, well, you trust me with 200 million budget to help you write a four hour movie, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: And like, so, so that's the first thing I say is like, this isn't less than film and TV. That's also part of why I, I'm in the industry as well, is because I, I want to elevate as well, like what our craft is and what we can do story wise. So, you know, come in, like, just come in like anyone else who's trying to get a job as a dramatic writer.

Shanon M. Ingles: aNd and I, and it's honestly, when you're reading Samuels, it's his voice, because I can teach narrative design, right? Every studio has like a different way of doing things, and you might need to write a lot of combat barks. There might be game, you know, like, Mission like it like mission dialogue, which is like when a non player character is telling the player to go on a mission, but it'll but you know, but it's still a scene because you want it to make it feel like that.

Shanon M. Ingles: There's an interaction there. It's not just like go that way. And there's gold, right? Like you want to make it feel like it's like a cool interaction that you had with somebody on the road. So that, that's my first thing is, is just sort of don't, don't take it less seriously as if you're trying to break into movies or games.

Shanon M. Ingles: And by the way, you shouldn't, because it's getting really competitive. It is not the same way it used to be like five, 10 years ago. It's not, I, when I, when I put out calls for writers, I straight up just writers that are right now, because I did a call writers, writers that are striking in TV, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: Like I get a lot of TV writers. Coming my way and it's gonna get more and more competitive that way. And so I'm telling people to like, please make sure that you are putting the effort into your own craft before you are coming into a video game space. Yeah, 

Meg LeFauve: great. I love that. That's, it's such good advice because it's the advice I give all the time on the other side.

Meg LeFauve: And you know, voice is, is not perfect and it's not perfect and it's lava. That is what creates voice and of course craft and all blah, blah, blah. But those two things, well, that's you, that is it. 

Shanon M. Ingles: That's it, because that just differentiates you, right? Like I had a really good mentor say that scene writing is like an impressionistic painting, and he'd be like, what, who, what paintings are worth the most?

Shanon M. Ingles: The impressionist, it's not an exact perfect portrait. It is a sloppy, emotional reaction to something. You can feel the, you know, a field of flowers. You can feel that, like, you know, So I, that's, that's sort of what it's, it's, it's hard, it's harder to, unless you're really good at reading scripts, like it's, it's hard for other people to sort of pick up on that, but when you are, you see it right away and you're like, Ooh, that person's 

Meg LeFauve: exactly, yeah.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah, you didn't describe it the way I thought she didn't. What, who is she? And you know, that neurodivergent, what, what is she doing? Oh my gosh, that's so cool that she would make that choice. And I kind of think I would wish I could have made that choice. And suddenly all that stuff starts kind of like, I'm sorry, this is my soap box that I'm on right now.

Meg LeFauve: Oh, it's 

Shanon M. Ingles: true. It's just sort of like, yeah. I mean, and I think a lot of times too, people are copying what they've seen. Yes. Instead of letting it inform them on how to like, bring what they want to say out. Yeah, great, 

Stephan Bugaj: great point. Voice is definitely the most important thing. You have a sound, but you asked like, what kind of samples should you create?

Stephan Bugaj: I mean, feature samples, sure. TV samples are also valuable. You can also go and get your hands on something like back like gem or twine or something like that and do something that is a branching sample. That is particularly useful if you're trying to get in as a narrative designer or a hybrid designer writer.

Stephan Bugaj: Where the linear writing is not necessarily the only thing that's important. It is a more difficult but also higher paid job than just being a writer where you need to be able to write great dialogue and craft great scenes to be able to do the branching stuff. So if that's your goal. Get one of those tools and start learning to create interactive samples that you can share that you feel proud of that feel that show your design voice as well as your writing voice.

Stephan Bugaj: And in terms of like people who might be doing something else that want to come over into into gaming the television experience is very valuable. Because it's a room and a lot of game writing feels like a room. It's a group effort. It's a team sport. So having that room experience can be very valuable.

Stephan Bugaj: So, like, if you're looking to do, say, an internship or an entry level thing and you've not found a way into games, a television room would be a good place to go on your way there because it has a lot of overlap. I love that. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I, I also, I also just want to add like, it, the, I, so when you're writing for some of the bigger games, you are also doing the choice design, like when you are write, an RPG writer that is an interactive writer, that means you are doing the choices.

Shanon M. Ingles: You know, when I worked on Ragnarok, I was doing a lot of side quests. I was also designing the quests. It's not, you know, so I just want to also, you know, tell people that that sometimes I feel like there's like people like to say that there's this straight delineation between narrative design and writing.

Shanon M. Ingles: I don't, I haven't actually experienced a whole lot of that. So I don't want to, I would rather let people know that like, if you want to practice choice design, like writing, like a scene, there was a choice and people react to it. That's actually really strong writing sample because at the end of the day, if you're saying that somebody else is putting the choice in for you, you're saying they're designing the scene while writing is designing.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's the same thing. You're designing the conflict. If you're the writer, it has to come from that. Doesn't mean that is writing. All that 

Stephan Bugaj: said, I would much rather have a strong writing. Linear writer who has a voice who can craft scenes with good characterization that are efficient and punchy and have a good feel and flow and who understand story structure than someone who has mastered the machinery of creating graphs and can't write a scene.

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, sure. You have to be both sort of like saying that there is, it's like, it's sort of like saying that my analogy for, for screenwriters is sort of like saying, well, you need a camera designer to basically tell you what happens in the scene and you just write the dialogue to it. Right. That's not right.

Shanon M. Ingles: Writing. So it's the same thing with interactive is it becomes the same thing. Now, sometimes there's a narrative design positions that are a little different, but a lot, honestly, even in some of the bigger studios and air designers are also writers and everyone was kind of doing the same work. So it's, it's, it's, it's very confused.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's a, it's a, it's very confusing, but it's 

Meg LeFauve: fascinating. I mean, I just find it fascinating. You know, thank you guys so much for bringing us into this world. Honestly, I could talk for another like two hours, but I know I have to let you go. So, we always ask the last our guests, the same three questions at the end.

Meg LeFauve: So now we're going to ask you the end questions. All right, Shannon, don't look scared. Okay. thEse will not be moral choice juice questions. Well, maybe What brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing or creative life?

Stephan Bugaj: Having an audience get joy of their own out of something that I've created or helped create.

Shanon M. Ingles: I mean, I, I think it's just, it's when you're in a, it is when you're in a scene and you've been working out for a really long time and then you're smiling when you're rereading it. 

Meg LeFauve: I love when that happens. When you're, but they're all 

Shanon M. Ingles: like, exactly. Ooh. It's like, it's, it is, it's a weird, it's, I'm very process oriented.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like I'll, you know, like once something is shipped and gone, I'm, you know, I'm already kind of thinking about the next project. So I, for me, it, it's, it's cool when people love it and stuff, but also because the world's so critical, I don't, like, I can't put my joy onto that. Because then I'll just die. Like, you sort of have to.

Shanon M. Ingles: So, 

Meg LeFauve: so for me. You have to love it. That's right. I have to love it. 

Shanon M. Ingles: So when I'm in there and I'm like, especially if I'm like, oh, this is going to be hard for the player, or like, oh, I totally screwed them over. Like I, it's a little, I'm a little, 

Meg LeFauve: oh, I can't help it. You're amazing. Okay, what pisses you off about your writing or creative life?

Stephan Bugaj: Finite budgets. 

Meg LeFauve: That's so true.

Meg LeFauve: I mean this usually you guys, you guys must love your jobs because this is not normally so hard to answer. 

Jeff Graham: I mean, there's a lot, it's usually the opposite where people wait for a long time on that first one. They jump right in with the second question. 

Stephan Bugaj: Look, there's a lot, there's a lot of things about professional writing, professional being a creative writing design, cinematography, that's frustrating because it is all about production, compromises and every day.

Stephan Bugaj: You're killing your babies. You're doing something that you're considering half assed. You're going and having to make some compromise that you're like, Oh, if only we didn't have to do this, my perfect vision would finally be implemented. But if you let that piss you off... You're going to be an angry person all day, every day, so maybe don't do that.

Meg LeFauve: That's fair. Okay. That's fair. 

Shanon M. Ingles: It's a similar thing. I mean, it's funny because I do love my job, but I do get angry a lot. And so I'm trying to, I'm trying to like pinpoint of like why I get angry and when I think there's a button. Yeah, I think it's like being asked to do something really, really, you know, it's being asked to do something but not getting the resources and budget to be given it right, but being so sort of like having all the responsibility of the power that can be a button for me.

Shanon M. Ingles: I think also, like,

Shanon M. Ingles: I feel like it's also sort of like, especially when you're a freelancer, because that's what we do in our studios, that we go from project to project, there is a feast and famine, so there is, I'm either like overwhelmed, like I want work, I want work, and then I have too much work, and then I am, it's hard for me to go and do things, you know, like, I'm just overwhelmed with it, and then.

Shanon M. Ingles: And then when you're on the other side of it, you're, you feel, yes, you have lots of spare time, but then you feel like the emptiness inside of you, because you're not working all the time, the great void. It 

Meg LeFauve: is true, it 

Stephan Bugaj: is true. So the things that actually do piss me off, one, people who give notes from a position of ignorance and do it in a way that is assertive and comes off as if they know everything.

Stephan Bugaj: That one really pisses me off. It's not, it's not uncommon. 

Meg LeFauve: I have actually seen you in this state, I believe. 

Stephan Bugaj: I think you maybe have. And the other one is when someone phones it in. Like, if you, when you get something from another creative that you're collaborating with and it's obvious they don't care or don't care about the same things that you do, that also pisses me off.

Stephan Bugaj: Fair enough. Go do 

Shanon M. Ingles: something else conflicting notes can be frustrating, but I don't think they pissed me off. I just, I sort of just want people to resolve them. So, like, when you're working on a project, there's a lot of stakeholders and you're getting, like, different notes and they're saying exact, exact opposite things.

Shanon M. Ingles: And, like, I've just learned to sort of be like, Zen with it. And I'm just kind of like, You guys make the decision about what note you want me to go 

Meg LeFauve: with. And it's great advice. It's great advice. When it's a situation of being in a professional situations, you can do that. You can be like, you know what, you guys, let me know what note, cause these are opposite.

Meg LeFauve: I know when it's your friends, you're going to have to go deal with that and figure out what the note you want to follow. But all right, Jeff, what's the third one? 

Stephan Bugaj: Wait, hang on. Just, sorry, quickly. Conflicting notes from people who know what they're doing. Great. No problem. They can be frustrating. They can be annoying.

Stephan Bugaj: They can be time consuming. That's fine. Notes from people who don't know what the hell they're doing, who insist that they do, that's what pisses me off. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Lava is 

Meg LeFauve: arriving. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Now we have entered the darkness. Lava is arriving. 

Jeff Graham: Well, and I find that there, there can be a correlation between people who are absolutely definitive about notes, kind of in the way you're saying, Stephan.

Jeff Graham: And a lack of creativity and understanding about the process. Like it, I do find that people with a sharp creative instinct and emotional intelligence are usually a little more generous and kind of gentle with notes. There, I think there could be a correlation with kind of what you're talking about, which is very interesting.

Jeff Graham: So the final question we ask is if you two could go back and have coffee with your younger selves, sort of right on the precipice of your career, what would you tell yourself? 

Shanon M. Ingles: I mean, actually, this is a really happy thing for me. I mean, I would, I would say you, you, you're going to do what you wanted to do.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like, I've been a writer since second grade. That's what I wanted to do. So I think my backup career was psychologist. Maybe I'll do that when I'm retired, but like, I just decided to try writing first because you, you want to kind of try it when you're younger. Right. So if it doesn't, if it, and like, if it didn't work out, if it was really, really bad, I'll just go back to grad school.

Shanon M. Ingles: And you know, I'll, you know, 

Meg LeFauve: Any advice for her? 

Jeff Graham: Ooh. 

Shanon M. Ingles: No, you're worth At an earlier age, I feel like that is one of the biggest struggles that I think most people have, but like professionally, you know, don't, don't feel so intimidated. Don't feel like an imposter when people offer you things or, or give you compliments, like, no, your worth don't take less than that.

Shanon M. Ingles: And don't work for that awful guy in Los Angeles. Don't be his assistant. Don't do that. That was a bad, bad. Bet you learned a lot though. I did, but I don't know if there's the lessons that I want, like it's the kind of lessons that I don't want to have to use again. 

Meg LeFauve: Fair enough. All right, Stephan, what's your advice for your younger self?

Stephan Bugaj: Gosh, I mean the know your worth advice that Shannon suggested is definitely solid advice that I would give my younger self. I don't know, I'd probably tell myself generally to make it easier on myself. No, you're worth. Don't be so hard on yourself. You know, forget about the imposter syndrome thing.

Stephan Bugaj: Forget about the whole shtick of the self deprecating artists and just go for it. And I would, yeah, and I would also give anyone who is not me the advice to definitely do not attempt to replicate my career path because it was very circuitous and difficult and you should be, you should be more focused and targeted in your approach.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I think too I had a fear of success for a long time that I had to get over. You know, and it was funny because I had, when I went to, where I went to film school and at UT, I went to graduate film school at UT Austin and I had like a, a really talented screenwriting professor who like sold a lot of screenplays and stuff, nothing ever, everything got canceled like every time, but I mean really big high profile projects and he ended up coming to teach.

Shanon M. Ingles: And we were, we were talking about being a showrunner. You know, people, you know, he was writing another spec or something. And I'm like, well, if you get the spec, what are you going to go like run the show? And he goes, no, I'm afraid of like, I'm afraid of success. I don't actually want to do that. I just want to sell it.

Meg LeFauve: Well, and I think a lot of women are taught to be afraid of success because we're taught to be afraid of our own power as a way to keep us small. And again, I don't think it's by other women. Or in the culture, but I think it's a big deal to, I think self sabotage and afraid of success is a big thing to think about if you're our listener and you're starting to get a little, a little quiver in your tummy as I say that, because maybe it's just something to think about, right? What will happen if you are successful?

Meg LeFauve: What will happen if you are powerful and a creator? What will happen? Right? And there, it feels like there will be loss. But in fact, there won't be right there might be to the P things that need to fall away. But I, it's, it's a, it's a big thing for me to help, especially women negotiate that. 

Stephan Bugaj: I think also there's a another piece of advice that you just made me think of in terms of not, uh, not denying oneself the opportunity for smaller successes.

Stephan Bugaj: If you're always out there trying to sell the 250 million sci fi blockbuster, and you never let yourself write. The 50, 000 horror movie, or, you know, the 150, 000 rom com or the comic book that you didn't even get paid for, then you're denying yourself an opportunity for building your career and you just like, it's like being a baseball player who can only swing for the fences.

Stephan Bugaj: You're going to lower your batting average. And. Most people aren't sluggers. Most people aren't sluggers. Most people are not 

Meg LeFauve: sluggers and the odds are against you. Just statistically, the odds are against you. It's great advice. Wonderful, wonderful advice, especially for our emerging writers. You've got to really consider what you're swinging for and.

Meg LeFauve: Enjoy and, and go after those small successes and not, and 

Shanon M. Ingles: not forget why you're not, forget why you're doing it. Because it is, it is hard. I mean, when you're a professional writer, you're a professional writer. I mean, I, I was, I, I brought on some interns this summer and I was interviewing them and I, when they asked me questions, you know, they were like, so this was, you know, these are all your ideas when you're, you know, making a video game.

Shanon M. Ingles: And I'm like, no. So what happens is this multi-billion dollar corporation. Decides they're going to do something and they're hiring me to execute on the narrative part of it. Like, and I think we can, as professional writers, we get used to approaching things as work. And I think probably, probably what Stephan is getting at is that it's Not letting go of some of those personal passion projects, even if it's just doing some photography or taking dance classes, or like, what's another smaller goal that you can do for yourself?

Shanon M. Ingles: Because even if you're working on a really high profile project, sometimes video game development can be like five, seven years, you can't even announce it or talk about it for years. So you just feel like you're in this hole of like. You know, I guess for me, I don't know about other people, but for me, there is a nice feedback loop.

Shanon M. Ingles: It used to be, I used to do freelance journalism and stuff. And part of the reason that was is because I would put something out in the world and I would get some feedback on it. Right. And the same thing of like put a game in the world and like people like it or they don't know, but you're constantly getting feedback working at telltale.

Shanon M. Ingles: I was kind of lucky because things were coming out every few months because we were making these little episodes. So you're constantly getting feedback, but there was a period of time when I was just working right after telltale where. Nothing came out for like four years. 

Meg LeFauve: No, it's true. It's true. And I also think those small artistic things that you're doing, I don't know, deciding that you're going to learn the cello or like whatever.

Meg LeFauve: It doesn't even, it can be, you're going to make a short film on your phone, whatever that even as a professional, you should be doing that to keep the, the, the saw sharp. You know, 

Stephan Bugaj: but also, yeah, you keep the saw sharp with personal projects, but also don't be afraid to take the smaller jobs because sometimes people see that they're beneath them and.

Stephan Bugaj: I have a story, which may be apocryphal because that's how stories go, but Ned Beatty, when he won the Academy Award for Network after that, when he would teach younger actors, he would say, never say no to any role because you never know when you might win an Academy Award for one day's work. Oh my 

Shanon M. Ingles: God.

Shanon M. Ingles: I love that. That's actually, that's amazing advice. No, it's true. Yeah. I, I, I do think that, you know, It was hard. I remember going to LA and it was really, really hard because I was like, I went from being like, I was like a writing fellow and grad school, film school in Austin. And you're like, super cool.

Shanon M. Ingles: You know, you're like TAing and it's a different world. And then you go to LA and everyone is trying to do kind of what you're doing. You're not special anymore. And now someone's yelling at you about how your cappuccinos aren't great. And you're, you know, I do think that. It's good for people to understand they're trying to break into this kind of business that they're not going to come probably to Hollywood or, you know, or into any kind of game development and have ultimate automatic success.

Shanon M. Ingles: They might have to take some other steps to get there. 

Meg LeFauve: And you don't want it. You don't want automatic success. It's too, too much, too fast. Those people tend to not always run out. Yeah, they don't. They can't because they don't have the muscles. They don't have the experience or to, to, to make it through.

Meg LeFauve: You guys, this has been so amazing. I just loved having you. Like I said, I could talk for two more hours with you guys and pick your brains. I'm fascinated by what you do as writers and creators. Thank you so much for coming on the show. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Thank you. This is a real honor. And so thank you so much. 

Stephan Bugaj: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Bugaj: Thanks for having us and we'll come back and talk with you for another two hours. 

Shanon M. Ingles: Anytime. Please do. Yes, 

Meg LeFauve: I would love that. Part two. Yay. 

Jeff Graham: Thank you so much, y'all. This is great. 

Meg LeFauve: Hey, before we go, I wanted to mention that we're going to be at AFF this year, and on Saturday, October 28th, after our panel, we are going to have a party.

Meg LeFauve: Woohoo! The Stephen F. Austin Bar. It's in partnership with Final Draft. We love Final Draft. We both use it. And, you know, it really is the industry standard for a reason. Everybody uses it. You gotta use it. So come on over to the party. Get some swag. Get some fun times. Meet each other. Meet 5 to 8 on Saturday, October 28th at the Stephen, uh, Austin Bar in partnership with Final Draft.

Jeff Graham: And for more TSL support, you can check out our Facebook group where tons of folks are finding support from both emerging and pro writers. And also it's just a great place to find comfort during what we can all admit is a pretty challenging time right now in our business. So we love it over there. It feels like a little life raft kind of in the sea of chaos of our industry.

Meg LeFauve: It is. I love jumping on it there every day. Yeah, seeing how I can help you guys and I'm really enjoying the patreon where we've got more and more people coming over Come over check out some workshops Interact with me and laurie and we love helping you with your stories because we always want to support you and have you remember You are not alone and keep writing