SJ Longthorne

Obviously games weren't a part of my degree, so there was a learning curve adapting what I knew to interactive environments and player psychology, but that all came quite naturally by playing games, observing the devs I worked with and reading player feedback.

Interesting! Thanks for responding so detailed by the way. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, your degree is very fundamental to what practice daily as a narrative designer, with practical experience still, of course, being important. From your POV, what kind 1/2

of workshopping would you suggest aspiring narrative designers research and do - are there some that have helped you a lot? I'm very interested in workshops and how to create an educational and welcoming environment for writing workshops.

Workshopping is really just reading others' work and giving them constructive feedback, then having them do the same for you and editing accordingly, either remotely or in-person. Best practise imo is when the recipient doesn't defend their ideas during the session...

But simply takes it all in, then picks and chooses afterwards what to listen to. Not all solutions offered will be correct, but even when they're not, they usually highlight a problem. It's the writer's responsibility to determine what the problem is and the best way to solve it.

Another thing: all participants should be cognisant of what it means to give constructive feedback. My formula is: "This thing isn't working for me. This is why I think that is. This is my recommendation for solving it." They may only take on part of that, but that's fine.

Are these workshops something that you do/did outside of your job or have they become a part of the daily discussions you have with the other writers/narrative designers when you are discussing a story or other narrative element of the game?

They were a core part of my degree and my previous job. Since uni it's just been exchanging work via email and leaving comments and suggestions in the margins. It's slightly different on my current project because we usually evaluate the writing in the context of gameplay...